Author: Ben

I’ll start with the best part of today and work backwards.. Mishmash went in for her 20 week scan and found out that we are adding a little girl to the Storer stable! Can’t express just how stoked we are!! Looking forward to meeting her this January. Ok, next best bit of today? My Salsa La Cruz finally rocked up after a marathon journey. It looks as every bit awesome as I had hoped it would be. Next? I rode my Wife’s pushie to the beach towing the surfboard behind and enjoyed a sunset surf. Reckon I smiled through every wave as I thought back over my great day. Epic.

My internal ‘motor’ is a single piston job.. problem is, I think I may have a blown head gasket. Y’see there is no compression in the cylinder when the trail incline is upward.     …and when you live where the terrain is decidedly ‘Himalayan’ it makes riding a single speed difficult. No ticker means a lot of walking. Kiwi John suggested I ‘cowboy up’ a tad but the only horse can seem to muster up these days is ‘shanks pony’. I had a crack at the Taranna State Forest this morning, up Pirates Road and down Camp Road.. well not really down Camp Road, it was mostly up. These two Forestry roads seem to go against the ‘grain’ of the land, not following contours but cutting across them at odd angles. Lots of off camber corners and unnecessary pinches. A local told me that Bullock Teams cut these roads back in the 1880s. Story goes that the oxen were just pointed towards a coup and left to pick their own line through the heavy bush. The animals wove around the biggest of trees and avoided areas wet under foot. This could explain the odd line of road I suppose. Crossed a couple of beautiful creeks swollen by the recent rains and snuck down some overgrown singletrack before popping back out onto the black top a couple of hours after I started. Think I better cut back on the beer and pies and do some work on my engine before September.

Former Hobart Lad and the Netherlands finest dyke plugger, Danger Tim does it again. Does what again you ask? I’ll let Tim explain..

I posted some pictures on FB of a guy crashing in the Swiss mountains and getting airlifted off the mountain. Benny commented: “Danger Tim, is this you?”. Unfortunately I had to tell him yes, it is me. I had lived up to my name once again. When I visited Hobart in ’08 I met up with Benny and Mischa. After breaking my elbow in the first week (Editor: Crashed his bike) Ben and Mischa thought it would be a good idea to teach me some skills on a mountainbike and I must say, they did a fine job! (Editor: Tim failed to mention he was run-over by his own car whilst in Tassie. That particular run-in took off a LOT of bark). After the BnC Bike Bootcamp I left Tassie and went back home to mountainless Holland. Since than I’ve been showing off the BnC jersey while riding enduro races. Last week I left for a bikeholiday in Switserland with my girlfriend. Muddy forests and lack of altimeters were traded in for some serious Alpine terrain and we were loving it! On Friday I decided to take my DH-bike up the skilifts to have some fun on the trails with my friend Thomas. We had just starting going down the first decent when I completely overlooked a junction. The track curved hard right, while I was under the impression I had to go straight ahead. I hit a metal pole that was used to mark off the trail, getting launched in the air and hitting the dirt some heartbeats later. Result: dislocated kneecap, fissure in the kneecap and thighbone and a lot of pain. They flew in a helicopter to airlift me off the mountain. The French medic from the helicopter was a funny guy. He gave me a good dose of morfine and told me I would feel like I would be flying up in the air. Well, 2 minutes later I was in the helicopter so he was right about that… Yesterday I arrived back home and today they’ll take an MRI to see what the deal is with my ligaments. Hopefully I will be up and runnin asap, so I can start showing off the BnC jersey again! 

Mish suggested to Danger Tim that he give-away cycling and take up something safer and more sedate like, say, knitting. We here at Bottles and Chains hope that he doesn’t, as Danger Tim would be sure to injure himself with the knitting needles or trip over the woollen yarn. Get better soon mate. For those who wanna see more carnage, click on the crash photo below to see the full crash sequence! OUCH!

Snug Tiers some Sundays ago..

Whoa! With kids, time sure does fly. Strapped the Weeride back on the BMX this weekend to take Huon on his first downhill shuttle run.. got to say I was pretty shocked when he reached out and grabbed the handlebars to assist steer! Wow, this kid has grown!! It wasn’t that long ago that he could barely see over the headrest, and now he’s co-piloting the rig? Rad. Dug out a ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo for your reference.

….oh, and the downhill run? Harts Hill to Dru Point via as many dirt roads, walking tracks and grassy lanes as we could find. The boy loved it, especially the skid into the children’s playground at the end.

Bicycle Tim (and his good woman) is at present touring Scotland on his hot pink Velosmith and thought to send through a shot from ‘the best coffee shop in Glasgow’. Coffee shop is now clad a with a BnC sticker, appropriately partially obscuring the er, ‘dodgy’, House of Pistard sticker.

The fabled BnC ‘(D)overnighter’ ride finally happened this June after at least two years of discussion. Not going to say much about this one as I’ll soon descend into a dark place filled with swearing and unhappy memories of hills. So how about a synopsis? The dirt between Huonville and Dover is hilly, I learnt to put new emphasis on old swear words, Mischa knows way too much about Border Collies, the sticky date pudding at the Dover Pub is good, Kiwi stayed awake at the table, the Esperance Coast road is amazing, and my cycling shoes are quite comfortable to walk in. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

I find it hard to pry myself away from the fireside this time of year. Hobart in June is far, far removed from ‘balmy’. The evenings are worse of course, the air with a frosty bite to it. The type of cold that stings your eyes. I was already ugg-boot clad and fireside when I remembered the ‘Dash of Honour II’ was due to commence in an hours time.. For a moment I considered ‘forgetting’ and explaining my absence at a later date, but remembering the fun filled tales of the previous event I donned some winter woollies and headed out the door.

Steam rose above twenty cyclists already gathered on the cobbled avenue of Cenotaph and I rolled over to join them on my 20″ whip. Pretty good turnout considering the single digit temperature. Too cold to hang about, Liam Correy kicked off the event in short order, quickly explaining the rules; ‘First to 100 laps wins,  1 beer adds 1o laps to your tally’. Simple. The bunch (which included a 26″ sidehack) set off at a cracking pace.. obviously there were some serious contenders. Not being so serious myself, I rolled out an earnest 10 laps then stopped to drink beer, scab a lift on the sidehack and cheer on the race leaders. Who was leading? Dunno, but Killick, Tim, Jono and a guy I vaguely remember from hazy nights in Mobius all had their heads down spinning furiously. Who won? Can’t say I paid that much attention as I was having to much fun socialising. There were a few claims of ‘doping’ at the event end, but in the vein of  Jacques Anquetil, ‘You don’t win the Dash of Honour on mineral water’.