A wet and windy day
 

Part One:

Had a great day out today with the "original" crew, all present and correct as we haven't all ridden together for ages.
Started out from my house at 8am, Paul picked me up in his landy, then we headed off to get Simon, then off to meet Pete at 9am.
Simon thought he'd make my journey more interesting by dumping his unsealed 20 litre canister of petrol in the back of the landrover, which was where my accomodation for the second leg was.
Anyways we all arrived safely and got ourselves kitted for the ride.
We set off at about 09:30 into the mountains.
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12...ting_ready.jpg

Here's one that often causes chaos, it's on a shallow climb of about 20 degrees, but very deeply rutted and very slippery
Paul got stuck and I ended up having to take this route
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/rut.jpg
I saw it coming and stood up, gave it a handfull, got my weight over the front end as it flipped over the edge, woohooo, made it, then the rear wheel hit flipped up and the seat smacked me in the bollicks fek that hurt for a while.
Walked back down to help unstick Simon as he was having nightmares with his bike stalling under power (chain too tight and clutch needed adjusting)

Straight into the nadgery stuff and the first victim was Pete, it's a very slippery ascent with a 90 degree left hander and a raised, wet tree root about 12 inches tall on the turn, Pete had hit it and got stuck, gave it a handfull, his bike climbed up over the root then continued to loft the front til it was facing the other way.
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/flip.jpg

Stopped here after a couple more climbs as Simon's bike was still playing up, so he headed back to base to adjust his chain as we didn't have a spanner big enough, we was to meet up with him later.
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/rest.jpg
Got a call from Simon as when he got back to base he discovered that he'd hit a root and buckled an oil pipe on his WR450F and it was leaking, so we all headed back to base to put our heads together and fix it
Luckily we bring Peter with us as he's a good engineer and he managed to fix it.

Once all done we headed back up, avoiding the bits we'd already done,
Heading back up I was mindfull to keep an eye on Simon behind me incase he had any more bike trouble, as I was riding a flat rocky track I looked over my shoulder hit a rock and the bike got deflected 90 degrees left where I got spat off to the right, no trouble, I spotted my landing area and did a Jui Jitsu roll, my bike however faired less well, with a broken scoop and a severely dented and bent pipe (crap Minxy was looking so nice)

Continued....

Part Two
 

Part Two...

After a few more nice tracks and numerous bogs we finally got to the top, approximately 600m above sea level
The weather was crap, with hail and gale like winds battering us, but we'd been working so hard on the trails that it didn't really bother us
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/top_1.jpg

We hid behind the hill to shelter from the wind for a while, had a fag to boost our fitness and some chocolate to wash it down (hmmmm chocolate)
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/rest_2.jpg

The view from here were great, though you can't see the distant mist covered mountains in the pics very well
http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/top_2.jpg

http://www.riderz.co.uk/pics/2006-12-03/top_3.jpg

After our rest we headed back down, my bike was running like a pig all the way, even after re-jetting for higher altitude it's still running crap so I'll have to get some tech support from BikeTech
When I got home I had to get the Mrs to hose me down as I was covered in mud all over my nice new Sinisalo enduro kit, which by the way did itself proud, it certainly does breathe properly unlike some other waterproof kit I've tried, it also seems to maintain a good temperature whether your working hard on grueling climbs or having a fag break, it didn't let in any water either except for when I put my hands in a very wet bog I was stuck in to lift my bike out and the water got down the cuff my hands were fekin freezing all the after that.


Yes, I know you thought after recent posts that this was my attempt at some arty black and white photography, NOT
I borrowed my daughters camera for the day as it's less expensive and smaller than mine, unfortunately it was in black and white mode, which I didn't dicover til I got home and viewed the pics.

I had a chuckle when U were looking out for your friend behind U. Whenever I was going to try something new or possibly above my level, one of our group would always ride behind me in order to give help if needed.