Turning back the clock

Man turns back the clock, not in a good way, just catches the hands and stops them spinning rapidly back to a time when he couldn't balance on two wheels.

Missed out on what should have been a cracking weekend away with friends. Managed a little muddy outing Sunday morning. First time off road in a looong time. Funny how you forget, riding a bike, that is. Alarmingly funny.

Comically bad at anything remotely techy, kept putting a foot down on the approach to puddles, you know in case they were fifty foot deep or contained killer whales or something. Confidence. Slowly it came back.

Delamere's changed a fair bit this summer, lots of the spadework has been levelled, presumably by the Forestry covering its back. Some of it's left though. Enough I think, for punters like me to aspire to something. Anyway I found myself looking up from the bottom of No Brains. This used to be the initiation test when I first started. My old mate Steve wrote a rather nice piece on it in Singletrack a couple of years ago. Things have moved on, but it's still some kind of benchmark I think, so I had to go and have a peek from the top.

First attempt I got no more than a few feet down the now deep cut channel at the top and slithered into the slides, whimpering at the drop-off ahead. Really this wouldn't do. Second go, get off the front brake a bit, get off the back of the saddle further (on a 1994 race bike, that started life jey-as-you-like, that's a long way back). Much better. And you know, I got a real sense of achievement from staying in control on something I've done hundreds of times.

Bikes eh. Always the same, always different.