The Tipping Point

Nice dry trails this summer… here's hoping (Jonny Gawler)

Hey, we’re at the tipping point.  That time when the trails are beginning to get super dry and we can really enjoy riding in the evening, yes evening, sunlight.  More importantly, we don’t have to clean our bikes (then clean them again, because the first wash didn’t get all the grit out…!)  

At this time of year I even contemplate getting one of those complicated suspension systems instead of my single pivot all year rounder…hell, at this time of year, I even forgive the designers for building their suspension systems predominantly to tackle their local year round dusty trails in SoCal, instead of having systems that work wherever you live, and in what season: read, for the grit and grime of the British North, for example…so much am I sun burnt by the start of the great British summer, that I am close to sticking my hand in my pocket to sign up to this SoCal dream until…

I suddenly remember that this is the tipping point…the pendulum can swing back as well as forward. ...so hold your horses, the bluebells might be out, and the new born lambs may be skipping in the fields, but we can still reach back and grasp winter…so much so, that I’m still reluctant to take off the Mud-X tyres yet, until ALL of  the mud has gone…

I remember the false sense of hope that last summer delivered. You remember last summer, don’t you? Let me remind you – it was that one where it became Glastonbury mud festival to the power of 10,000,000 on every trail throughout the land for the majority of the summer.  So bad that the Mud-X tyres went back on in July, as did the end of my yearly yearning love affair with complex suspension systems, as cleaning the single pivot was bad enough…

Let’s hope this year is different…let’s hope it’s sunny and bike cleaning free…then I can remember what it really means to be British. To long for the Summer all through the coldness of Winter and Spring, until when Summer finally arrives, you decide that it’s far too hot and you begin to long for winter instead, and so on and on!

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