Blog this!

I’ve been inundated by bizzare and annoying questions on ebay lately from people who don’t appear to read the item description. Item contains xyz. “Does the item contain x and/or z?” To add to my ebay woes I’ve had a rash of people who have bidded and then been slow or not paid for the item. Other bidders have sent me messages pleading “times are tough sell the item to me cheap because I don’t have any more money”… Sure if times are tough and I’m selling my items I need the money too. I’m not a charity, and selling them for $1000 under cost is hardly like I’m profiteering…

I was lucky enough to have my dad at this event to give me encouragement before the finish line and to take my tired photo 5 hours into the race.

Dad’s photos from the event can be found on the Two Wheel Promotions site.

Jeremy Caldwell at the Coffs Harbour Mountain bike Marathon

I felt sorry for a girl behind the group who fell off the singletrack whilst clipped into her pedals but she made a loud and dramatic high pitched “eeeeep” as she fell that I couldn’t help laughing. (She was fine)…

After watching some friends practice a climb out of a creekbed (steep rise over a root) I waited for them to go home and had another two attempts on a dare from Bridget. The first of which was completely hopeless and the second attempt I tried to be clever using a different technique but lost momentum at the critical moment and fell heavily on my back across a large rocky ridge knocking the air out of my lungs. After a second to collect myself I found that I only had a few bruises and a cut to my ankle from the chainring. I was pretty pleased with myself for creating an impressive crash for the audience even if I didn’t manage to match Bridget’s climb a second beforehand.

Bridget then managed to round off her first ride in clips with a loud thump tumbling through the bushes eating dirt at low speed but scoring plenty of bruises and cuts. She’s an awesome friend to go riding with. After her ‘adventure’ down the hill she sent me an sms containing “Mountain biking is awesome!”

I agree.

My previous car had a towball so I had the option of fitting my bike onto a towball mounted bike rack or folding down the rear seat and putting it into the car.

Unfortunately my new car doesn’t have a towbar and whilst I can still fit one bike (and sometimes two) into the back with the rear seats down, a third really starts to push things. The other issue with putting a bike into the back of the car is that after an endurance race the bikes are typically wet and/or covered in mud.

Enter the strap-on rack. My riding partner bought a strap on rack from a local bike store which strapped underneath the car, the top of the bootlid and to the sides. And the bikes rested on a plastic lug that sat on a pole fastened by a screw and nut. Unfortunately the screw protrudes past the end of the plastic lug and scratched every bike we used on the rack.

I then looked around for a replacement strap-on that would be more gentle to the bikes but still strapped on the back. I found the Pendle strap-on rack on chainreactioncycles.com but didn’t find many reviews for it.

Unpacking the box I was immeadiately impressed. Rubber coated hooks to protect the paintwork and the supplied tie down straps were of a high quality. The rack itself consists of a simple arm which you lift the bikes over and rest them on the rubber coated section. Rather than the other design of attempting to hold all of the bikes individually seperate, the Pendle requires you to strap all the bikes together which should help keep the load stable and prevent the bikes from being damaged through swinging around etc.

The final impressive feature of the Pendle over the other design is that it allows the tailgate to be opened without removing the rack – and if you’re strong enough allows you to open the tailgate with the bikes still on the boot.

A group of three of us recently competed in the Coffs Mountainbike Marathon and the Pendle did a fine job of ferrying 3 bikes safely on the 1000km round trip.

I can easily recommend the Pendle if you are unable to use a tow-ball mount.

Typically because the trails I ride have a build up of dirt on the uphill side making them quite easy to roll over on the downhill journey but have most of the dirt washed away from them on the bottom of the step. Usually when climbing the hill I have my body weighted low over the bars and I’m pedalling at a constant pace to maintain traction but when faced with the log I attempt to unweight the bars which causes the front wheel to lift which either has one of two results.

1) I lift the front of the bike too fast and too far leaving me in a situation where I have to quickly unclip from the bike before I end up on my back or

2)I clear the log with my front wheel but then I have difficulty geting my rear wheel to power over the log. If I attempt to roll over the log using momentum I can sometimes roll over it but other times it will stop my rear wheel dead. If I attempt to pedal over thhe log I often clash pedals with the log or I spin up the rear tyre on the wood leaving me stuck.

I believe the correct technique is to unweight the front to clear at the front then as the rear wheel is approaching to throw my weight further forward so the rear wheel can easily climb the log.

However if I unweight the rear wheel I find it difficult to pedal over the log because it increases the chance of spinning the tyres.

The obvious solution is to go much much faster so I don’t need to pedal over logs but unfortunately I’m not that fast at climbing hills yet and I’d prefer to get a good climbing technique that would have me bouncing over logs like a mountain goat.