The Archives: Crashing

Back in my scarfie days before Facebook, Myspace and Vorb, I made Faceplant on a crapped-out Celeron 433 from the PC company. It's all mildly embarrassing, but worth preserving for posterity.... I think.

Let’s face it, if you ride a mountain-bike, chances are that at some stage you’re gonna crash! Here at Faceplant, in the interests of being informative and showing some form of humanity wish to provide some helpful advice on the age-old tradition of crashing, because mountain-biking is a serious sport, and serious web-sites have hints and tips on riding....

Let it happen, it comes naturally and it's one of the few skills you'll ever have to try hard to learn, but how do you achieve that really special crash? Here’s a few pointers...

• Remember, speed and height are your friends!
• Ignore those cracks around your head tube, some will say it's a broken frame, we say it's an opportunity.
• It's not a crash unless there's blood or bruises, bonus points for broken bones.
• If at a popular event, look around for a camera crew or journalists to document your exploits, that way you can sit around with your friends later on with a few beers looking at what happened and remembering the fun times you had (before you ended up in that neckbrace...)
• Body armour is for wimps, you want some decent scars to show off to girls at the bar. Nix that tip if you have a girlfriend or wife....
• Having said that, an exception would be that you really should wear a full-face helmet, unless sucking mashed peas through a straw and paying for your dentist's new Mercedes appeals to you.

As the most hard-core and experienced rider may know, there’s about two seconds just before your body makes contact with the hard ground or tree, where your mind suddenly processes millions of thoughts. This is often referred to as “MY LIFE FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES!!!”, that may be true, but speaking from personal experience here’s what usually goes through my mind....

• awwwwwwnononononononononononoaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh!
• watch out for that tree, tree, tree, tree, TREE!!!
• Go limp, don’t tense up.... yeah right, like that'll make much difference
• Fluffing = tweaking, so why did that stem bolt come loose?
• You are NOT Brian Lopes, You are NOT Bender, so what the F@#k was that you were trying to do back there?
• How much damage will this do to my bike?
• CAN I AFFORD WHAT THIS WILL DO TO MY BIKE !?!?
• I remember this rock from last time....
• This is the last time I try this double.
• “oh yeah!” said the salesman, “dual suspension is so safe, you’ll hardly ever crash!” he said...

Why single pivots kick ass.

I did a wee rave about the bullit and it's ilk over at Stylie's.

Is it bad I really WANT this?

Behold, BACON EXPLOSION!!!  Here’s what you’ll need…

2 pounds thick cut bacon
2 pounds Italian sausage
1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/

barred up.

Oh god. The pie-sized spring for the Bullit's shock is here. Excitement abounds.

I must however, cork the enthusiasm, lest I end up like this guy...

Having said that, the thought of having a whole bunch of squishy travel with which to huck myself of small buildings really has me fizzing at the bung. Hopefully I'll have some evidence of the fun-making sometime soon.

The Archives: Injuries

Back in my scarfie days before Facebook, Myspace and Vorb, I made Faceplant on a crapped-out Celeron 433 from the PC company. It's all mildly embarrassing, but worth preserving for posterity.... I think.


Have you ever walked down the street and seen someone with a cycling top on looking like a complete punter on their $10000 lizzed-out super-slushee wondering if they've got the goods or are they just there for pose value? Well look no further fellow cynics! Use this page as a reference point, secure in the knowledge that when they look down their nose at you and your humble, faithful steed, you can look 'em straight in the eye and and say with confidence...POSER!

The Archives: Sifting

Back in my scarfie days before Facebook, Myspace and Vorb, I made Faceplant on a crapped-out Celeron 433 from the PC company. It's all mildly embarrassing, but worth preserving for posterity.... I think. 
I should also note that "sifting" used to refer to a somewhat dubious night out on the town trying to find a member of the opposite sex to keep you warm at night. These days its supposed meanings are far more innocent. Although after what I saw over the holidays, the first one seems far more appropriate.

You thought all of that riding would bring you success, you'd be the ultimate chick/stud-puller with your rock hard legs and wash-board abs from all the miles you were putting in the saddle. Then you discovered downhill, and all of a sudden riding uphill and getting fit became nothing more than a hassle...

New bike! Back to the future!

Stylie is a wonderful man. I've been taking my time in-between baby feeds and impromptu naps to build up this:

2010 Santa Cruz Bullit, seven inches of single-pivot travel wrapped up in a tasty red paint job. I spent a lot of last week hand-wringing over what I wanted to do with it, full-on gravity sled for doing shuttles or heavy-duty all-mountain rig? Given the parts I had lying around I went for the former, this sin't much of a problem in the long run because I remembered this:

My original 2003 Bullit, I bought this second-hand back in 2006 after waiting far too long for Santa Cruz to release the new version. I built this thing up in so many different configurations that by the time I moved it on I was trail-riding it every day. So maybe with a few component changes my current bike might end up the same way, who knows? That's part of the fun on owning a frame like this.

Much fun and merriment shall commence.

Weights room, how I missed you

First hit out in the weights room since bubs was born this morning, I'm not big on being indoors doing the whole 'exercise' thing but since I work somewhere that gives me access to use that sort of stuff I might as well make the most of it, right?

I thought I'd be ten-foot tall and bullet-proof and load up the bars with what I was doing before I had my break, turns out it wasn't that hard. Which leads me to the following conclusions:

1. I wasn't lifting enough initially.
2. My technique's pretty good.
3. NEED MORE WEIGHT ON THE BARS!

So in short, I need to stop arsing around. 

Which brings me onto this picture, I found it while looking for a generic picture of a weights room in action that didn't look mildly homo-erotic but surprisingly enough, found this far more entertaining. This picture concerns me:

• Who let her into a weights room wearing that? While I'm sure the boys would love it, the heels that no doubt go with something like this ensemble would be a major health and safety issue.
• Standard issue Olympic bar is twenty kilograms, each of those weights plates is twenty kilograms, by my reckoning she's about to lift 140 kilograms. If she can lift that I need to seriously lift my game...
• She may be a spotter, in which case the person lifting the weights must be feeling pretty stoked with themselves.

In short, picture contains much win and is entirely believable. Totally.

The Archives: Drinking

Back in my scarfie days before Facebook, Myspace and Vorb, I made Faceplant on a crapped-out Celeron 433 from the PC company. It's all mildly embarrassing, but worth preserving for posterity.... I think. This was written by my mate, Ash.

There comes a time in every young mountain bikers life when he is faced with the prospect of indulging in a drop of the devils brew, or alcohol if you will. Sometimes it's a celebration; sometimes it is simply a response to the knocks and bumps of day to day life. And in a world where there are such things as broken bikes and temperamental girlfriends, walking-only tracks and Boyzone videos is it any wonder a bloke occasionally turns to the bottle?

Time to back up on yesterday's effort

After yesterday's ride my legs were a bit toasted, so today it was time to give them another throw up the hill and see how the body responded.

Again, I surprised myself, it was quite good. I chucked on the GPS on the phone just so I could show you guys where I'm going, you can check it out here.

Bring the pain

So the first step in the kegs-be-gone plan is to shock my body into thinking "holy shit maing! WTF are you doing to me?!?!?", North Road hill climbs on the roadie should do it, a 6.5km climb over 343m.

I've been looking for something that I could approach in a brain-dead way that offered high-intensity without taking up heaps of time. Back when I was really into my roadies I did this for four weeks straight, slowly hauling my portly physique up the hill in a big gear. Funnily enough I wasn't so portly after doing it day-in-day-out.

Okay, it wasn't as much fun as shredding singletrack but it got results, so I might as well try it out again.

before the crank swap

Meet the slow one, a humorous take on my BMC's model designation (SL01) and an accurate reflection on the pilot's abilities. Over the years I've had to replace the frame and I've upgraded it to some 7800 Dura-ace, the latest upgrade was getting rid of the compact crankset. As long as there is cartilage in my knees I figure if you're going to do hills on a road bike you might as well do them hard, right?

Today's ride was a pleasant surprise, I thought I was going to DIE on the first pinch out of North East Valley but things seemed to go quite well and I managed a 35:00 flat to the lookout plaque. Not bad, I wonder what sort of time I can pull at the end of January?

Curse you, tasty treats!

Okay, So one of my goals for 2011 is to reduce the pies. Maybe become a little more whippet and a little less Clydesdale-class.

Putting that up here kinda sucks, because I now have to front up on that goal with everyone watching. All the motivational speakers out there say you should write your goals down, when you do that you give the goal some tangibility, solidity, a bit of purpose. The problem for me being that it's easy to lose that paper and forget it, finding it sometime later at the back of the sock-and-jock draw long after the deadline has passed.

I find broadcasting them on the internet is far more entertaining. I shall call it kegs-be-gone, and I will do it.

Back to the future

There's some things I want to do during 2011, this is one of them.

Yup, it seems a bit weird but I'm back at this old grindstone, resurrecting a relic of what seems like ages past. Faceplant was a web-zine I started off on Geocities (remember them?) during the late 90's, over the next few years it started getting quite a bit of traffic. Vorb then came along and I flagged the whole web-site thing to go waste time over there with Tama and co.

I'm no longer a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed scarfie with time to burn, these days I'm more a time-poor married father-of-one. However, I still like pies... and beer, riding bikes and talking about them.

Change happens, for better or worse I'm finding myself wanting to go back to expressing myself . So here we are.

Welcome to my own little corner of the internet.