Number 1.

I've been scared to start a blog. I also have an irrational fear of social networking in any of it's degrees or guises. A blog can be a good excuse to stroke and cajole your hideous ego, it can be a narcissistic voyage of self promotion and self flagellation, an ode to ones self and nothing more. Hopefully that isn't going to happen here. In order to keep myself in check I need to keep a healthy respect and underlying fear for my creation no matter how depraved, tormented and disgusting it becomes just like Dr. Frankenstein.

My situation has changed a little, I have lived in Newcastle for a long time, coming up to somewhere near a decade but I've recently moved to the ass end of Whickham. I'm way out of Whickham town, my house is nestled right in the woods, my nearest neighbours are a decent walk in either direction. One neighbour or cluster of neighbours being a middle class housing estate where fastidious car washing and obsessive attending of floral window boxes is all that appears to happen. In the other direction there is a cow farmer who has real 'keep off my land' signs. I have no friends here as yet. I've been spending most of my time walking about in the extensive woods that surround the Derwent river.

When I first moved to Whickham it was the deepest winter, the snow was 2 feet thick, it was regularly minus 10 degrees and I had to find a way of travelling 7 miles to work everyday. I was reliably informed that it would cost about £7.50 a day to get the bus and it would take in excess of an hour and 15 minutes. I was quite prepared to ride to work but the snow was preventing me from using my track bike. My route to work was also of concern as Whickham is at the top of some serious hills no matter how you propose tackling them. I've tried to ride up both Dunston and Whickham banks on a single speed and failed spectacularly with knee and chest related explosive pain. These hills are just too steep for single speed. Whickham bank even has one of those escape lanes incase the brakes go out on your 18 wheeler like in the movies.

Felling Road Race

As an idea of how steep these hills are here's an image from 1950 of the Felling Road Race (photo courtesy of nordique). Whickham bank is a 12% climb and is a bit over half a mile long. Look at these dudes straining and gritting teeth on an unreasonable climb no doubt done at pace, they had it rough. I particularly like the bow armed stance of the guy in the middle. Those moustache bars he's rocking can't be good for aerodynamics although they do afford space to carry 2 water bottles. His stance is kinda reminiscent of BMX legend Taj Milhelich, although I doubt he could bosh downside whips out on that road bike. Taj however did jump a six foot spine ramp in the drops of his Giant roadbike.

Taj.

After a couple of attempts my feeble legs could not force my stupidly overgeared hipster cycle up the hill in fine weather let alone nightmare snowy conditions. A solution had to be found. The indignity of walking up a hill I fully knew I could climb on the right bike was all it took for a plan to hatch. Being fiercely adherent to a single speed bike for my entire life I was starting to embrace the idea of gears. Gears annoyed me from the get go, from the un-PC 'gears for queers' anodised pink everything MTB Vs chromed out, short top tube and standing platform BMX era. I have since probably unjustly hated on gears. A couple of my commuters had gears notably a Fuji Crosstown which I grew to despise after finding out the bizzies ride Fuji's in NYC. I only ever used 2 or three of the Fuji's gears because my commute used to be flat. The other massive reason I hate gears is that my day job is that of a cycle mechanic and has been for 10+ years at a variety of different bike shops but currently Hopkirk's Cycle Centre, Shields Road, Byker. When you spend 8 hours a day scraping crud, road film and sometimes animal lard from a vast array of disrespected groupsets the simplicity of a single speed is unreservedly appealing on your own set up.

My winter bike.

I found a Scott Timber 4130 chromoly mountain bike with no wheels on a piece of grass near the Tanners pub. It was a Sunday, I couldn't tell if the bike was abandoned or not. It wasn't locked. I thought it had a little potential but forgot about it. On the Monday I rode past the same spot and it was still there only now it was stood on a brick wall a few meters from where it had been the day before. I was sat doing nothing in Newcastle on the Tuesday and decided to see if it was still there. As I rounded the corner to where it was I was a little nervous, for some reason it felt like what I was doing was stealing. As I approached my heart sank it appeared the bike had gone. Upon closer inspection it had merely been thrown on to the grass and stamped upon repeatedly bending the bars. I picked it up and raced home fearful I would be accosted by either the bikes owner or the police sky high on a sugar derived doughnut rush.

Rebuilding the bike was easy. There was an abandoned Kona Steel frame mountain bike at work with a seized in and destroyed bottom bracket. It was a simple task of removing all the parts from the Kona including Project 2 forks (my favourite MTB fork of all time) and fitting them to the Scott frame, simple. I scored some massive 2.35 Maxxis tyres from El-Boosterino and I was set. Apart from the seized in and too low for me seatpost the Scott was done. I considered a few different ideas to remedy the seat post and settled upon cutting the micro adjust clamp off the Scott's existing 25.4 mm seat post and sliding a 30.8 mm seatpost over the top with a slot cut in it exactly like a frame cut and running two seat clamps it was a bit messy but it worked a treat. instant free winter bike that could roll through super deep snow and climb hills like a bitch. I could now ride all the way to and from work in any weather and get to the top of Dunston or Whickham bank with relative ease.