The journey from small guy to teenager...

[weeksy]

Not the most exciting video for today, it was wet and horrible out there. But he stayed for nearly 5 hours so must've been fun.



Next up is Hopton for testing/practice. He wants more grip so the Assegai has come off and a DH22 thrown on the front of the purple GT Fury.

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

Yesterday the boy met up with one of his team-mates and they continued with building their friendship and getting to know how eachother ride. Drew is 15 months older than my boy, but shorter and indeed lighter. But also interesting faster... However there's really not much in it so they can both push eachother and on various terrain both out-ride eachother. It was epic to see as they also had another mate of ours there to push them too.

We also noticed Drew had a load of new parts fitted which then means we're able to discuss their final sponsor for 2022 and into 2023 which is DMR. After some discussions with Upgrade Bikes a month or so ago they have a new Marketing Manager who was massively interested at first in getting weeksy08 onboard with DMR, but then moved on to sponsor the whole team with box upon box of components lets just say, we've not fitted ours yet, but there's a lot of STW mega-sack bits that are remarkably similar but it really is brilliant to have DMR as part of their team.

Riding in earnest starts on the 8th, we're currently booked at Bucknell with Pearce Cycles, which funnily is 2 miles from where we spent yesterday lol. But we're having some little debates on that as both his team-mates are at Dyyfi as it's one of their birthday trips. We were all supposed to book Bucknell, but mails got missed and Dyyfi ended up getting some instead. So we're in the discussion of "team-mates or track we'll be racing on"... Mmmmm tricky one.

The boy has been testing the GoPro Hero11 mini he got, so i'll see if i can pull some footage from it and get it up onto YouTube later on today.

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

So we're off to Dyfi this weekend. I'm still not convinced he's massively in love with the air Boxxer forks. So i'm probably going to take the XFusions and swap them over at lunch to see if he prefers the coil over the air.

Of course, some of this could be simply from accidents, crashes and an overall lack of grip at the moment due to wet/mud. Sometimes he goes out and i think "Yup, he's back on the pace" and it seems not. Not a lot I can do to support him other than more bike time and more fun.

The Privateer 141 is due in about a weeks time, all the DMR parts for both the DH bike and the Privateer are already here and ready to be installed.

I've just put up the blue DH 'spare' bike for sale as it's getting a bit too small as the boy continues to grow, whilst it's a lovely thing, it doesn't have a lot of point in the world if it can't be used. So it's up for sale now and we'll see what happens from there.

Happily even if we're inbetween bikes and it's sold, the Slayer is compatible with dual crown forks so we could run the Slayer with his spare forks in it if needed for a race weekend.

We've got a fair few little adventures coming up with Bringewood with Pearce, then BPW and finally a race at FoD all before the end of Jan. We'll potentially hit either Afan or Surrey Hills when the 141 arrives to get some bike time in, he's due to race it in early March and obviously we've not even seen it yet. As much as 'he' wants to concentrate on DH Racing, we do have a requirement with Katy and Privateer to do things for them, so he'll have to split his time between both.

[Mr Moofo]

Keeping the sponsor happy is a good thing to learn early!

[weeksy]

Following his mate down 'sharkfin' in our local woods. I say local, it's 3.5 miles away



This is my most common trail to ride over there.

[weeksy]

Wet as heck at Dyfi! But he enjoyed it

2023-01-08_08-44-45 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-01-08_08-44-34 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I did an Enduro there in Febuary 20 years ago, it was much like that, wet.

[weeksy]

Also got a load of DMR parts to fit when the Privateer arrives

2023-01-08_10-06-25 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

After yesterday that cup may become the 'little bits holder' we had a bit of a bloody farce in the morning actually.

Arrived and it was wet...wet and yukky... Got everything ready, kitted up, bikes sorted and set off to the uplift "ping"... he'd snapped his chain. Which really really irritated me as we only fitted it new on Friday lol. We used a Shimano pin type, which i've used plenty before in the past, but usually we go for a quick link, but as it came with a pin, i fitted it and yup, it snapped on the pin.
Still raining, i took his bike back to the van and sent him out on the Slayer.

I then found the chain splitter/tool, the quick link and started splitting the chain correctly to fit the quick-link.... In the meantime i'd once again lost the quick-link...

So i grabbed the spare KMC chain instead and fitted that, it was brand new... I then realised it was about 4 links too long so wouldn't work... So went to split it again to shorted, but i'd thrown the chain tool at the tool box in frustration earlier and i'd now not only lost the quick-link, but lost the sodding chain tool too ! All in a SWB Transit !!! really !!
So i grabbed the spare race bike and went up to meet him, sent him out on that... (which has now brought a whole new world of potential complexity as it's not terribly keen on the Blue bike any more lol).... That worked fine and once the rain stopped (for a bit anyway) it gave me a chance to find the chain quick-link and the chain tool and repair his purple bike. Both bikes were then thrashed by him and his mate who fancied trying the DH bike, for the rest of the day. But i do REALLY need to work on a better plan when working on the bike...
It also dawned on me as to why my usual plan wasn't in place and it was because we'd not taken the gazebo. Normally i'm under the gazebo, working on a fold up table, with the bits in the right place etc.. I didn't even think about the gazebo for yesterday... but i reallly should have done.
It didn't spoil the day for him, but it did for me as i missed a couple of runs.

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

I have to admit i do love this GT Fury. Everything is just built 'right' , nice easy bearing covers, big meaty bearings, everything just nicely put together.

I'm even tempted if i can't sell his blue DH bike that i'll buy a used later frame like the purple one and swap most of the bits over from the blue frame onto it

2023-01-11_11-17-18 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

As always i got a little carried away yesterday and have thrown a minor curve ball at the lad

I've re-fitted the XFusion front end. As i've said he's still not fully on his game at the moment and there's only 2 things that have changed.
1. Crash
2. Forks

So i've taken it upon myself to swap back and remove the forks from the discussion for this weekend, all we have planned for this weekend is messing about riding, so a good chance to just get out and do some testing out there. Bit of fun, messing about and seeing how things feel. We could even take the Boxxers along too and swap between sessions to see how it feels from one to the other.

[weeksy]

Excited boy

[weeksy]

Another sponsor signed up today for the team too. Really amazing work from Katy his team principal.

[weeksy]

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/madison-s ... -2023.html

I know you guys don't follow the junior DH stuff like i do.... but that's a pretty impressive team by Saracen for this season.

[weeksy]

We'll that was interesting. He felt at home quickly on the Coil XFusions and said "feels more poppy".
He did say on one it was all over the place but that's part of playing on muddy winter trails I guess

Tomorrow has now changed to a coaching day for him at FoD which has changed my plans a bit too and I'm taking my injured mate @crust on a very gentle ride over for cake and coffee while the lad gets coached. But that'll be nice as we've not ridden together for months.

Hopefully the lads will grab some footage tomorrow

[Flux]

Hope he realises how lucky he is with your support and encouragement.

[weeksy]

Hope he realises how lucky he is with your support and encouragement.

He's a teenage boy, he does and doesn't. We as humans don't learn and appreciate it for many years yet, but I know when he looks back he'll get it.
As @crust will tell you, he's a super kid to spend time with. He listens, is attentive and polite. I can't ask for much more.