Not much riding at the weekend, mainly because I’m saving my legs for next weekend so I finally got around to building up Michael’s Trailstar. All the parts were from his old bike apart from a rear Hope Mini brake that I got second hand and I did the whole build in the garden whilst the sun was shining, which was nice.

Being a caring type of bloke I figured that it would be unfair to expect him to ride it if I hadn’t ridden it myself. So….I did. One lap of the HTN course with Andrew, me riding a bike that by my reckoning is a good inch too short in length and a few inches short of a “suitable” saddle height. With the maximum amount of seatpost showing I still felt like my knees were up around my ears. I’m sure it will be fine for the lad though.

Riding a too-short bike has a number of disadvantages as you can probably imagine. It was awful on climbs. Too cramped and it just felt like it wanted to wheelie all the time. The flat pedals scared me. My feet were bouncing all over the place and if I’d scraped my already tenderised shin on the pedal I would have made up a few brand new words on the spot. Going downhill though was a different story. It’s ACE. He’s not seen it yet, in fact the first time he’ll get to ride it is when we get to Eastnor at the weekend. I might take some spare pedals and shoes and teach him how to ride SPD’s while we’re there. Then we might start to plan some proper rides again.

At some point this week I’ll finish the job by trimming the front brake hose and swapping the Deore chainset for a lovely Race Face one. If I had a bike like this when I was 14 I might not have descended into delinquency ;0)

Meanwhile, Debbie’s mum (who lives in leafy Cheshire) is in Italy at the moment with one of her friends. By chance, they got talking to another couple of ladies who apparently live down the road from us in Whitefield. So that was a coincidence. Then it turns out that one of the Whitefield ladies’ aunts used to live in Prestwich – in OUR HOUSE. In fact, her aunt is the same wizened old crone we bought the house off. It’s a small world, I tell thee.