Category: Photography

Just Riding Along…

Gotta love a good JRA story. Here’s one from Ryan, who had a good time riding the Luge MTB trail in Hobart a little while back. Photo after the jump…it’s a good one!

The tale:

a ‘just riding along’ story…
….so i was riding the luge a few weeks ago at the end of a sunday – was pretty fatigued (I’d just been yelling at Karl and Robbie to hand over the chocolate but none was forthcoming) and hit that bit where there’s a steep chute of white bulldust in the saplings and Karl had come off or stopped or something and he was on the side of the track and I just rolled over with weight too far forward or too much front brake, dont know or remember, but took the dive, but its a bit of a drop there so i landed hard. the bike belted Karl in the head so I checked to make sure he was ok then did the visual inspection only to fine this little baby under my left glove (i think its called a compound dislocation of the interphalangeal joint) . off to the Royal for a luxury 3 day retreat.
thanks to: Damian and Ange (ambo’s);
Konrad and Jeremy who tried to put the top back on the bottom in emerg without any luck but lots of vigourous yanking (said a white faced Robbie who witnessed the triage scene: “they were doing things youre not meant to do to a body!” – I was gassing myself silly at the time so wasnt as fussed as you might imagine;
thanks also to Mr Quarmby and the smiling Physios who made it work again.
The bikes fine (on-one with Rohloff – tough as nails); thumb will be ok – they reckon i’ll be predicting the weather; back on bike next week..

Continue reading “Just Riding Along…”

Shit The Bed

Can you tell I’m bored on the internet tonight? Luckily for you hapless souls it means more pointless content that you’ll regret ever bothering to read. In fact, most of the time while I’m writing it my finger is hovering around the backspace key and my head is filled with with self-doubt and despair. It’s true.

A few weeks (months?) back the highly motivated and deadline-driven crew over at House of Pistard (by which I mean Xander) launched their webshop, which definitely hasn’t been delayed for the last several years and has had no mention of excuses as to its lack of existance or anything like that. It appeared on time and on target and anyone who says otherwise is a goddamn liar. Over at the HoP shop you can purchase attractive garments printed with clever and aesthetically pleasing designs. They’ll be posted to your door and you’ll be the envy of all your friends.

This all kicked off a while ago and in fact, I visited the shop the moment it was open and bought a bunch of shit. I decided not to post anything because otherwise I end up wearing the same t-shirts as everyone else and looking like a complete goose (more so than usual). So in the interest of self-interest and complete disregard for anyone else, I decided to be a bastard and leave you all to figure it out for yourselves. Given that HoP has a bigger following than BnC, that’s not really a concern, but I did feel a little bad about it. So now here’s a link to the HoP compound and also to their shop, so you can go buy some sweet shit and we can all hang out at the pub together admiring each others t-shirts and talking about how edgy and underground we are for wearing a courier-run brand from the other side of the world. Or maybe it’ll just be me.

The following website contains the teenie-tiniest navigation you’ll ever see, so if you’re some kind of hyper-GUI-sensitive freak or struggle to read anything smaller than font size 12 then it may be worth enlisting a nearby small child to help you out. I was meandering through Seb Kemp’s blog 2Flat earlier and he happened to link to a chap called Jordan Manley. I’m a sucker for a good MTB photo, especially one that kicks the tedious ‘high speed berm with ten flash units and mud’ cliche. Jordan’s work definitely does that. Not sure why I haven’t come across it before, but now that I have I’m happily appreciating it as much as possible via this here laptop. It’s photography like this that tears me out of my chair and onto my bike and I don’t think you can ask for anything better from a mountain bike photograph.  It serves as an awesome reminder of how epic it can be out on the trail and how the machines we ride may take all our money and make everyone else look at us funny but they rule our world with good reason.

Liam, Ben, Jordy, and anyone else who loves shutterspeeds and apertures, go have a look.

Breakfast Ridin’

So a few months back we went for a bit of a roll down south. Ben, Kiwi, Hunners and I loaded up and hit the gravel, making our way to Egg & Bacon Bay via a few choice back roads. Hunners came along on his SS roadie and peeled off after a while, while the remaining three of us continued on for an overnight stay and a fine selection of Tassie mussels, bad pub food and far too much (not enough) beer. I took along my ailing old digicam and took a heap of bad, over-exposed, blurry photos. Here they are, and it’s a fine tale they tell…

Buy Buy Buy!

Holy shit, the best bike in the world is for sale!

For a complete bastard of a reason, we will no longer be selling Scott brand bicycles in the fine retail establishment that provides me with employment and entertainment. This sucks for several reasons, one of which being that they make pretty sweet bikes and I’ve really quite enjoyed being able to sell them. Another reason and possibly the most sucky-est, is that I kinda have to sell a bike that has been nothing but awesome, and resulted in nothing but thick grins and a giddy head (ok, and a bunch of cursing at myself for not riding it as much as I should). I’ve had my Scott Genius 40 (2009) for just over a year now and it’s been more fun than I could have ever imagined.

The six inches of front and rear travel is pretty much the golden mean of the cycling world as far as I’m concerned. Light enough to get up any hill without much effort at all, but big enough that I’ve been able to hook back down again at speeds far beyond my comfort level (my standard comfort level is: couch, while the trails are usually: swimming with sharks and burly). Not only that, but the forks are Fox TALAS 150s, so they’re plenty versatile(110-130-150mm). Combine that with the small piece of future-tech that is the rear shock and you’ve got a bike that’ll handle pretty much anything you throw it at. The (DT Swiss) Equalizer 2 rear shock has 150mm of travel, but is fitted with a remote lever that allows you to reduce that to 95mm and firm everything up at the same time. It means you get rear wheel travel at a rate that pretty much glues the rear tyre to the ground and will climb up and over anything so long as you keep your legs going round in circles. I am a terrible climber but the Genius has seen me overtake people I really shouldn’t, usually on climbs that I’d probably rather avoid. It’s also got a lockout, for those shitty times when you end up riding up sealed roads.

The whole bike’s in excellent condition. It hasn’t seen nearly as much riding as it should have (ask anyone who knows me), and it spent almost all of last winter inside due to me being a soft bastard who’s afraid of the cold and the rain. The drivetrain’s got plenty of life in it, the forks have no wear at all, and the rear shock is running like a dream. There are a few tiny marks from regular wear and tear, but overall it’s pretty much as sexy as the day I bought it. It’s been serviced regularly and checked, cleaned and lubed after almost every ride (with wax lube, none of that grimy oil).

Anyway, I’m chasing $3,000 for it, which is pretty much a decent price I reckon. It’s a Large size, so if you’re between 5’10” and 6’1″ you’ll probably do alright on it.

If you’re interested (or know someone who might be), drop me an e-mail: mischa[at]aetheus.com

Here are some more beautiful photos of it…

Keep reading for a full spec list…

Continue reading “Buy Buy Buy!”

BnC Gallery ReLaunch

Calling all BnC’ers . . . The time has come to search those hard drives, mobile phones, photo albums and undie draws to get our gallery page back on track. Please send in any happy snaps you have from BnC related events/races/booze-ups. No image will be turned down, unless its just crap. Nudity and substance abuse encouraged. Try to keep file sizes down.

Send images through to jdavis@utas.edu.au and write a quick description of Who/ What/Where and Why so its easier to label etc

cheeeeeers jordy