If variety is the spice of life, then last week was hot, hot, hot…
I don’t usually write accounts of my day to day life, even though I am lucky enough to enjoy more than my fair share of bikes, mountains or both. But last week was different.
Monday, Steph and I were invited up to Cannock Chase where our sponsors, Marin, were launching the 2015 bikes. It was great to see the new bikes; it’s amazing how far bike design has come on in the last few years and the 2015 models look even better than the current range. And it was also really enjoyable to meet and spend some time with the Paligap team.
2015 Marin Mount Vision XM9
We were also able to sneak out in the middle of the day and ride the excellent Follow the Dog and Monkey Trail. Under the guise, of course, of looking after some of the dealers 🙂 The weather was superb and the dusty trails ran a treat.
By contrast, the weather on Thursday wasn’t superb at all. But the day’s work was. We spent the day on the Marins being filmed for a vidoe being made by Discover Carmarthenshire, in conjunction with our friends at Mudtrek Mountain Bike Holidays.
But this wasn’t any ordinary filming, the camera team were from Skycam Wales and the camera was attached to a seriously space-age drone that hovered in the sky, following us as we rode taking aerial shots as well as more typical angles.
It was amazing seeing this thing take off and land, and the noise was incredible – like a giant swarm of mosquitos. But the spookiest thing was having this kind of inanimate flying robot actually following me, tracking my progress and watching me. Can’t wait to see the finished film!
The team and the drone in a soggy Brechfa Forest
Biking’s a broad church. And just to prove it we finished the week by doing something neither of us have ever done before: visiting a Velodrome for an hour on the boards! Wow! just riding a bike with no brakes and no gears is pretty out there. Add in the fact that it has a fixed wheel so you can’t stop pedalling and suddenly everything I ever knew went out the window.
The experience was awesome though and I loved it. The speed is incredible and the banking that looks so steep when you first set off doesn’t feel steep at all as you start cranking it round. You just have to remember not to look down. It’s a bit weird overtaking people from above though. And even weirder having others overtake you from way up. All very 3D.
An hour didn’t quite seem long enough though and I’m sure we’ll be back for more.
After all that excitement, Saturday on the mountain bike on my local hills and Sunday on the road bike on a very wet lap of Snowdonia, seemed really quite ordinary.
Guess that makes me pretty fortunate 🙂
Who’d have thought an oval could be so much fun…
