BIt of a weekend epic coming up here, so grab a coffee
Started off on Sat with a trip to Afan, bunch of adults and a bunch of teenagers. By golly they're getting quick.. both up and down !
We spent the day on 'Y Wal' (The wall) which is a trail i really like. It went fine and happy up until one of the adults caught a rock and smashed his rear mech to bits... He had to go back down and get it replaced while we cracked on.
2021-07-04_08-17-29 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
2021-07-04_08-17-25 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
Pic was near the top of the climb.
On the way down i was honestly really struggling with the Aether7. I'm finding it a bit well, long on the turns, i can't get it to get round stuff and the front end wasn't exactly filling me with inspiration. I got down everything, but wasn't what i'd call 'on it'.
It was hard to compare Strava times as we kept stopping and waiting for different parents, youngsters and the odd mechanical/punctures.
In the hotel that night consuming beers and massive burgers me and Beancounter and Tall Dan set the world to rights and i had a bundle of doubts about the Bird.
The next morning brought Bike Park Wales, jumpy droppy, fast, crazy stuff. Same group mostly but Crust had gone home.
We started with me leading the small ones down and on Sixtapod, it's a fast flowy blue and we all had a blast, from there into Willy Waver, again, loads of fun. Of course i was holding them back, but i was enjoying it LOTS and keeping them sane as a few of them had never been to BPW, so trying to keep them in check.
After that we jump on Sixtapod again, but a left 3/4 of the way down into Locomotion, a red with some drops..... Well they seem to have grown !!!! They were more substantial than i recall. By this time we'd had 4 people hit the deck whoops. All youngsters who bounce so all was good
They were fine.
We then jumped on a few reds, like Vicious Valley, A470 and a few new trails like Merthyr Rocks.... again, lots of fun.
Any worries with the Bird had evaporated there, it was fantastic at BPW and on the flowy stuff i was going really well. Again, hard to check on Strava runs as we stopped for people, crashes and rests at times, but i think i did OK overall.
Coming toward the end of the day, my lad wanted to do A470 again.
This isn't my video but it's the same jump, same landing and same over the bars tumbling down the other side too.
The trail is 12-15 of these, some bigger, some slightly smaller. In terms of height they're about 15-18' tall and 25' in length. The last few, including this are sort of step ups, so the landing is higher than the take off, unless you make the full other side. Which at my level is bloody hard.
So as I land I semi plant my front which bucks the back and sends me over the bars, landing head and shoulder first, then tumbling over and over to a stop.
I'd had 3-4 warnings on it, almost doing it on other runs, bit was feeling good still at the time. Right up until it wasn't good of course.
Only real damage is a dead leg from where I landed on my car keys and an overall feeling of "ooooohhhh" that's all a bit stiff when I move. The body armour did it's job. My jersey is ripped in several places, but hey, it's far from terrible.
2021-07-04_08-17-14 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
2021-07-04_08-17-05 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
Bike needs a new mech hanger which is £15 so no biggy.
But overall i went away happy... The day was fantastic, a few beers, some laughs and some crashes of course
I am of course sitting here thinking, does the Aether7 go up for sale and what would i get for it... I think it's worth £2000 as it sits, but you don't get a lot for that and i end up with the same possibility of getting something not quite right.
I'm going to start of by fitting the mech hanger, getting it fully cleaned and then fitting a WTB Vigilante on the front. I've run Vigilantes for a while on the front now on the G-160 and love them.
I've been running Specialized Butchers at 26psi and i dropped 3-4 psi out today, so was it the pressures that helped me ? Or indeed was it just me yesterday ? But overall i'm still not fully in love with the LLS geometry of the Aether7. I also had more pedal strikes than i've had at BPW today, although not big ones, they were still enough to irritate me.
2021-06-09_01-54-17 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr
2021-06-22_10-01-07 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr
moment on the jumps today. Listening to small child and his technique of pumping near top lip, difference is huge, more height and clearing the table and landing nicely on the downslope
