Bottles And Chains

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’.

I curse alot when I cycle. ‘Fuck! A big hill’, ‘Fuuck this hill!’ and ‘Fuuuck!’ are exclaimations that regularly pass my lips when turning pedals over. Hillary or Tenzing I’m not. Hills and my foul mouth are two of my short comings as a cyclist (no-one enjoys riding with a whinger). The third field I come up short in is gauging distance.. and in a perverse way I really enjoy this particular fault. You see, I like maps, the old fashioned paper kind. The maps I generally own are out of date, show routes long overgrown and are missing roads recently cut. To my mind, perfect. Forgotten farming roads ooze adventure, dead ends and unmarked routes are exciting.. but measuring distances on these scruffy bits of paper poses a problem for me. It’s the ‘squiggly’ lines, I just can’t get a grasp on them. On more than one occasion I’ve glanced at a map then declared the destination to be, say, 70 kilometres away when it is actually some 100 kilometres distant. Liam White has personally suffered from my third failing when I took him riding in the Northern Territory. “Benny how long is this ride going to be?” he asked. I replied, “20 kilometres mate”. Turned out it was 60. Oops.

I had been imagining a dirt road ride from Dunalley to Rheban returning via the coast for some time. Last night I decided Tuesday (today) would be the day I finally tackled the trip. I dug through my extensive map collection only to find the necessary ‘Prosser’ map missing. No problem, I’ll use the ‘Tasmania’ map instead. No contour lines, inappropriate scale and most of the roads I needed weren’t marked. I estimated the intended route to be about 50 kilometres in distance with an absence of ugly hills. Perfect. I finished packing and went to bed.

Woke late and didn’t mount to bike until mid morning. Not ideal, but I had an easy day ahead of me. Wrong. The ground truth was so, SO different. The hills started slowly at first, then BAM! The Himilayas. Yep, the fucken Himilayas right here in south-east Tasmania. I started to swear. I swore alot. I had epiphanies like ‘What do I value in a cycling shoe? One that is comfortable to walk long distances in’, and ‘I hate hills’. As I’ve already mentioned, no-body likes a whinger so I’ll stop there and finish by saying the views were good. Really good. Oh, and it was ALOT further than 50 kilometres, 80 kilometres would have been closer to the mark.