Getting Closer

I really think that a bike isn’t totally yours until you’ve had to get intimate with fixing something. The relationship is all the better if you have to do this in bad conditions. Luckily (or something) I was given the opportunity to do this with the new bike as the first puncture I’ve had coincided with a heavy rainstorm on Saturday.

In fact I had stopped to let the rain ease and wasted time taking this picture without realising that the tyre was going down.

As I set off into the rain the rumble of a flat over flint made it obvious. So I pushed on to more shelter and contemplated the repair. Here I should make some confessions. First, I hadn’t changed a wheel on a bolt through axle before so I was basically guessing at how it would work. Luckily that was as straight forward as I thought and the first obstacle was dealt with. Secondly the wheels are marked as “tubeless ready” but I wasn’t actually sure if they had been set up tubeless or not. I figured not as they had gone flat from a puncture, but it was only easing the tyre off that made me sure that there was a tube in there. Luckily this was also a simple tyre and rim combination and I settled into a routine tube change in the muddy shelter of the trees.

So I’ve now ridden the Process in the rain, fallen off it and fixed a puncture on the fly so we’re pretty well into a relationship now and I have to say that I’m still enjoying it a lot (and not looking at all at the new Whyte 130 trail bike). I took it on one of those Chilterns rides that combines long smooth climbs, brutal chalk ramps and some fast and fun downhills that were almost perfect as the brief heavy rain just nicely combined the sandy dust to give ideal grip. As me and the bike get on better I’m finding more and more fast downhill lines as we trust each other more. I was pounding the downs and finding a lovely amount of flow through them all. I even found a cheeky back route to hit the tough rooty climb that opens the ride-proper as a fast jump-in downhill.

To reward both me and the bike we both headed off to Swinley on Sunday to play on the berms and jumps, pushing myself to ride it all in the bigger ring and pump some fast jumps on a dusty hot sunny loop where I flowed into the tight woody turns and let it hang out a bit on the fast open spaces. Overall not a bad combination.

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