Page 146 - Paddock Life Issue 13 ADRENALINE

IT‘S ALL
DOWNHILL
WORDS & IMAGES CRAIG BLAKE-JONES
FROM HERE
We do like our wine at Paddock Life, so as I’m the wrong side of 50 I decided that it was ludicrous to even consider stopping drinking and fairly daft to try to cut down. No, the answer was more exercise. Life had moved on and all the things I used to do that kept me fit seemed to have reduced, so I needed to do something. I get bored easily so I needed an activity that kept me engaged. My teenage son Harvey wanted to start mountain biking with a mate of his from school so this was my chance.
In the early ‘90’s I was a very keen mountain biker, right back when the first mass produced bike hit the market, the Specialised Stumpjumper. There was a crew of about 8 of us that used to ride every week, we scoured the country for specialist builders and all had serious custom bikes, all of which would look decidedly basic and “Heath Robinson” by today’s standards. My “Overburry” framed pride and joy was stolen from my garage years ago and I hadn’t replaced it, so I committed to getting us some bikes with the double excuse of getting fit and spending some quality time with my sons on the weekends I’m not trackside at a race.
I didn’t have a budget in mind, but was quite surprised to see just how much you can spend when you get into these bikes. Harvey found himself a bike from direct sales outfit YT; a German company, it had a Carbon Fibre frame and decent spec group set (that’s the gears and brakes) good wheels and an aggressive “Enduro” geometry that made it lean toward “downhill”. So, now I need a lesson from my 15 year old in bike lingo. There are three basic types of real mountain bike, Trail, which as the name suggests is for general off road riding, usually point to point, with some climbs and some descent’s a trail bike will have front suspension and sometimes rear. Enduro bikes, have a bit more suspension travel and are more extreme, they go up hill well and downhill very well so very good all-rounders. Then there are Downhill bikes, which are for going downhill, very fast. These will handle serious jumps (and landings) usually have double crowned suspension forks and very aggressive geometry that allows you to handle the bike while it’s jumping around.
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A DAY OUT IN THE WOODS