Slick as chapel street on a friday...

The past few nights I've been lucky enough to get some time to put aside to go riding, and so the trusty mud machine SS has been getting out the door. Tuesday night was a few hours out and about on the bike path, learning to make legs go round and round, instead of turning squares after a pleasant few days off. Something that caught my eye, after all the Mac vs. PC ads that have been on tv recently, was floating in Scotchman's creek - a shiny blue Mac floating amongst the shopping trolleys. I guess someone has lodged their vote...! Cold, wet and windy was the order of the evening, and the sentiment continued through to Fatties ride on Wednesday.

I should note that bald Piranhas are possibly not ideal mud tyres, but with a 20km commute to the start and 20km home, concession to efficiency have to be made. So I arrived a little early and played in some of the singletrack, just bobbling around trying to get my eye in, and rollled down a little chute with a turn before the river. About a 3rd of the way down, I noticed my tyres had locked up and I was accelerating still. Turning the bike sideways did little to stop the speed, in fact it seemed to make it worse, so I put the foot out and that whipped away and went down to the knee, Doohan style. As that whipped away as well, I discovered there is no shock absorbing properties in hip joints, and proceeded to try and separate my hip. Sadly I failed miserably, and just ended up in pain... Not to self, slow down - you have no grip.

For the actual ride, we only had a few takers and we toddled around the suburbs dipping into single tracks regularly but keeping off the really low lying points as I was dying..! A profound lack of traction was the problem, not being able to change direction, accelerate or brake was very challenging and not really that much fun as there was no way to stay upright. Every little turn was a 2 wheel slide to stop if I was lucky, so I wasn't unhappy to get up into the drier trails! At any rate, it was a good ride, and I'm glad I stuck with it as I was pretty keen to bail when I spear tackled a normally dry creek bed - I didn't even make it to the bottom on my bike, I was flying through the air as the bike tipped onto the down ramp. Slippery with bald tyres. Boo.

So that was wednesday. Muddy. Cleanup not much fun as usual. Thursday, guess what...? Dirt Crits. Muddy. Cleanup not much fun. Oh, and didn't change the tyres for this one either. And whadya know. They didn't grip in the mud here either! Matt L (DBike) and Jack were away with myself for the start of the race, and it was going fine. In fact, I think the race would have been fine but for the rest of the people who spread the water from puddles around the track, turning it into a skidpan. So that was my race... Jack went on the attack at the start of lap 3, to cement his series win, and put the hurt on Matt, leaving him to dangle in no mans land for the rest of the race. And in a great result, he cleaned up the series and took the win tonight as well.

Thats enough writing for now, I had some photos of us covered in mud, but they all looked like we were trying to pass something painful, so I think we'll give them a miss. This weekend should be some more k's in the legs, and the next CTS is coming up, and we're stoked to let you know that Jason will be back aboard and ready to smash out some laps!