scruffian

I am trying to update the photoblog every day at the moment.
If you are around on Saturday, let me know.

Sorry no updates for a while. I have been on holiday in Wales, so there might be some pictures of that soon

I rode trails yesterday which was really fun. You forget how fun riding is when you haven’t done it for a while. More motivated to dig now.

I have uploaded some pictures of churtsey trails from September.

Aiden just sent me this.

If you don’t know, Aiden rides trails in Oxford with Yak and they make a website called The Shovel Load. Aiden is the one in the middle. On the right is Aiden’s tazmanian freind. If you don’t know who that is on the left, here is a clue. I am jealous.

Today I saw Roger the tramp! For people who have been looking at this website for a long time, you will remember that Roger was a tramp who lived in Headcorn and Tim and Rudi hung around with him when Tim had a broken arm. Rudi has some pictures but I can’t find them. A few years ago he disappeared from Headcorn and people said he was dead. He’s not.

Apparently he went to Bestival and spent some time on the Isle of White. He has left the Green Party, so he didn’t want to go back to Headcorn, but he came back to the South East to trace his roots and now he is living in the woods near Teson in his tent, all year round. He said lots of other stuff too but it was a bit rambled. Roger is amazing.

Its digging season. I can tell this because there has been no-one at the trails for over a week (apart from “the diggers”, you know who they are). We have some good ideas for new lines next year, and they will get built whether you turn up to help dig or not, becasue some people are prepared to put in the hard work to make things happen. However, if you don’t turn up and help out this winter, you will not be riding any of these new lines.

However, building someone elses trails for them is not fun. You don’t see the thing come together in the same way, or get the same satisfaction from riding it. Much more rewarding is starting your own place and making something you want to ride. You have six months…

By the way Richard_McCourt (one half of Dick and Dom from Dick and Dom in da bungalow) is 31.

Radiohead – In Rainbows
I hate record reviews so let me just say, “so good”.

Get it.

If you missed this a few weeks ago:

Get well soon Rich.

In Rainbows.

I almost wet myself.

I am ill

Sorry I don’t update much at the moment I am extraordinarily busy. I know what its like to keep visiting websites that aren’t updated, so really you should subscribe to my feed so you can be informed of updates without checking. I love feeds.

I think have recovered enough from last night’s trauma to share…

I went off exploring, looking for a new place to dig, and I got sort of lost. I mean I wasn’t really lost but I didn’t know the best way to get back to the road. I had been following this river for about a mile after I crossed it, and there was no bridge. It was getting a bit dark, and I had to get back to the road before I got trapped outdoors all night. I had to cross the river to get back to the road and I didnt’ want to walk all the way back to the bridge, so I found a narrow place to jump across.

Another complication was that I had my bike with me, so I decided to see if I could jump across the river first, intending to go back for my bike if I was successful. So I jumped cleanly over the river on my first attempt. No problem, just go back for the bike, chuck it across, and I can get back to the road.

On my second attempt to jump the river, the foot that I jumped off sank into the mud, making my jump short. Both of my shoes got stuck in the mud, but i carried on to the other bank. So I am standing in a bog on the edge of this river in my socks. Somewhere in the bog infront of me are my shoes. So I got stuck in. I was up to my kness and elbows in mud and stucks. It really really stank. I cleared a large part of the bog (about a square meter) in search of one shoe, but after about 15 minutes it was too dark, so I retrieved the other shoe, walked across the bog and all the way back home, covered in stinky slime. I was really sad because I was wearing my orchid shoes and I really liked them.

So I need a new pair of shoes. Cheap ones. Any suggestions.