Apologies for ‘Going Dark’ for the last few weeks…..it has been a tiring and stressful time full of Terminal Illness, Hospices, Hospitals, thousands of miles driving and sadly a family funeral, I haven’t seen or touched a bike since the Thetford Forest Ride
Lots of other ‘hard stuff’ is also seeming to be rearing its head too so its been all energy focussed on these things recently and it really doesn’t feel like time to celebrate Xmas 
. Anyway, enough depressing bullshit, hopefully I might get out on the EWR next week (it’s my Birthday on Monday…Yaaaaay 
)
I’m negotiating on a set of Accu Trax forks in the correct size for the EWR so I can finally ditch the King Devolution Headset and nail the bar/stem height demon forever, I also now have some NOS Campagnolo Mirox to get laced to some NOS Shimano DX hubs so this bike is getting quite close to completion 
Category Archives: Main Page - Page 6
This is for when the Föhn Wind rattles the telegraph wires like a handful of bones…
Thetford Forest Ride – Primordial Shitfest
Main Entry: penis en·vy
Pronunciation: -“en-vE
Function: noun
: the supposed coveting of the penis by a young human female which is held inpsychoanalytic theory to lead to feelings of inferiority and defensive or compensatory behavior.
Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
…a little twist on this:
Main Entry: 29er en·vy
Pronunciation: -“en-vE
Function: noun
: the supposed coveting of a 29″ bicycle by a man which leads to feelings of inferiority and defensive or compensatory behavior by owning a 26″ bicycle when the fact dawns on him he has just been ‘outgunned’ by superior technology…..so, NEVER try and keep up with someone on a 29er, especially when you are on an early 90’s fully rigid 26″ MTB
It was like a Roadrunner cartoon….Jango was off into the distance, casually pedalling while still seated, as if he was on a genteel Sunday amble. I was Wile.E. Coyote (Pure Genius) pedalling crazily like a schoolkid on a BMX, bouncing off tree roots, slipping all over the trail, vibrations from the trail jarring my body, repeatedly looking down at my gears as if there was something wrong or about to fall off…..there wasn’t, I was just riding ‘Old Tech’ and the 29er, as horribly modern and soul-less as it is, this was was the superior machine on the day…..it was like trying to follow a Cruise Missile in downtown Bagdad (remember the Speederbike chases in Star Wars?)
Thetford was cold and wet but the sun was out and the clouds had gone, only two of us turned out for the smallest Mini-Meet in history. Thetford Forest’s trails had turned into Primordial Ooze…..it was a Shitfest of the highest order, gloopy brackish slimey puddles, slippery trails and a cold wind but it was great riding. We did most of the Dusk Till Dawn route, plus some of the Black Route and The Beast in the morning (12 miles) then back to Brandon for Macaroni Cheese and unedible Bread Pudding before hitting the trails again after lunch, our bottom brackets feeling like someone had packed them full of sand and refitted them and our rear mechs complaining bitterly about all the gritty shit they were being force fed
The afternoon was a shorter 7 mile route on the Visitor Center side with some great flowing Singletrack.
A brilliant days riding, cold wet legs and some very dirty bikes!!
Dangerous times?…Health & Safety paranoia
Shitfest got my EWR – Part 3
Vintage Saracen Catalogue Mother Lode
On Monday I spent the day at Saracen HQ as a guest of Simon Wild, the designer of the relaunched Saracen bike range. Saracen has been brought back from the dead by Madison Cycles and they have launched an entire range of bikes in the last two months.
Of interest to any Retro MTB fans might well be the 2010 Kili Flyer that I reported on a while back on this blog . This bike is going to be fillet brazed in the UK and available in small numbers next year.
The purpose of my visit to Saracen was to scan in all of their catalogue archives from the original Saracen company, these will prove to be valuable documents to anyone with an interest in this iconic British MTB company, or anyone restoring an old Saracen MTB.
I was given an office for the day and took in my own equipment but despite scanning non-stop from 9:30am until late in the afternoon I only managed to get from 1987 to 1998 (somewhere in the region of 350 Hi-Res scans 
).
Simon was kind enough to let me take the archives home with me so I can complete this mammoth task over the Christmas break. The intention is to tidy up and crop all of the scans and create a high quality PDF for each year. Once this is done they will be hosted on both my site, Saracen.co.uk and also in the RetroBike Archive
Some teasers 
1 x 7 Beater Project – Pt 4
Some minor updates on the Beater Project…..got most of the parts now for the brakes, had to go buy some items as I seem to have given away too many Magura parts recently and left myself short . Gear cable outers have now been cut to size and fitted in the cable stops and I’ve found a rough-ish Mavic 231CD/Shimano DX wheelset laying around that will do just fine for this build.
I’m still searching for the crown bolts I put in a ‘safe place’ when I traded some Pace crowns earlier in the year….if the damn things don’t show up I’ll have to source some replacements from someplace. A friend of mine has some tatty old bars that sound just right for this bike, hopefully I’ll get my hands on those soon then I can cable up the one Thumbie, fix up the Magura’s and get them bled. I’m kinda concerned about them stem as it does look to short but we’ll have to see how it rides…
Bike shaped at last
Wot no crown bolts…..
Mavic 231CD’s….Mmmmmmm
No Sleep Til Hammersmith…..or Leicester even….
Non bike related blog post here…..me and Mrs Billy Goat had a Rock ‘n’ Roll Road Trip at the weekend and guess what? We ain’t as young as we used to be and now we’re both tired
Drove down to London and parked up in Park Lane, took Mrs Billy Goat round Covent Garden and bought some of her Xmas presents (warning….don’t go in the UGG shop ), we then went round Seven Dials in Holborn (great shopping area!!) before heading back to our hotel room in the Barbican. That night we went across town to the Hammersmith Apollo to see Girlschool, The Damned and Motörhead. Girlschool were pretty lame but they did do Please Don’t Touch and Lemmy came on for this…
The Damned played a ‘greatest hits’ type set, opening with New Rose and ending with Smash It Up, an unexpected nicety along the way being a cover of the MC5’s Looking At You. I’m not a massive Damned fan but they can still ‘do the business’ as they say.
Motörhead were not the best I’ve ever seen them and the sound at Hammersmith was pretty lame for some reason but they did a fairly good set (apart from the guitar and drum solo’s…)
Set List:
Iron Fist
Stay Clean
Be My Baby
Metropolis
Over The Top
One Night Stand
I Got Mine
Guitar Solo
The Thousand Names of God
Cradle to the Grave
In The Name Of Tragedy (Drum Solo…)
Just ‘Cos You Got The Power
Shoot ’em Down (Twisted Sister cover)
Orgasmatron
Going To Brazil
Killed By Death
Bomber
Encore:
Whorehouse Blues
Ace Of Spades
Overkill
Photograph: © Clemens Bilan/AFP/Getty Images
Some cellphone YouTube footage of Ace Of Spades (not mine btw)
We stayed down in the Barbican overnight and called in to visit relatives in Hackney the next morning, before driving up to Leicester (Du Montfort Hall) to see Ian Brown on Sunday.
Brown was his usual arrogant/brilliant self and despite the fact that he cannot sing very well, soon had the virtual capacity crowd eating out of his hand as he delivered a great set taking in material from most of the old albums and encoring with The Stone Roses Fools Gold.
The crowd went wild and got so drunk so fast the security staff closed the bar by 10pm
‘King Monkey’
250 miles, lots of cash, hotel rooms and five bands later we are VERY tired
Laugh? I nearly fell off my chair….
No intro needed….regardless of where your allegiances lay…this IS funny
(sound required…..)
1 x 7 Beater Project – Pt 3
Not any riding currently going on at GoatSurfer Central, still suffering from dental trauma (with more on the way this coming week )
Some minor updates on my ‘not to be taken too seriously’ Beater project.
The trashed Kona Racelight saddle has been ‘sympathetically’ repaired and I’ve found a stem in the parts bin that will do for now. I reckon I have some old Mavic 231 CD’s that will do for wheels and I’m sifting round for some suitable bars.
DUCT tape repair one…
DUCT rape repair two…
Et Voila
Old Spesh stem
EWR Project – Phase Nine (Part 2) – Dang Stems…
My dentist put pay to my Sunday ride (an un-blogworthy story) but just think Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you'll get close to the Codeine popping pain I'm currently in…
So, where were we?….oh yeah, continuation of Thursday's Steam Tweak…..Ok, anyone that has fitted a Syncros stem and not wanted to damage/scratch their bars will be well aware of what we call in the UK 'The 2p Trick' (some of you might well know this as the Dime Trick or Euro Trick ). It's the one where you unthread the alloy bolts from the bar clamp, feed them in from the underside against a coin and force open the bars wide enough so that they don't scratch your beloved NOS-ness as you slide on your new stem. Well, I'm using riser bars on the EWR so we have all those bends to negotiate so we're into a whole bunch of fun with these!!!
You see, the 2p Trick spreads the clamp using the maximum of the bolt thread, plus the thickness of the coin……and the stem is aluminium, which don't like being bent….EVER!!
The '2p Trick'
So, we start with the 2p Trick and voila, the Cattlehead stem glides round the first bend gracefully
Round the first bend
I start to feel confident and everything on earth was at peace……UNTIL, we get to the centre bulge on the bars .
This is where you need to grow a set of balls as big as that Bull I posted up on here a while back and go for the 'Open Wide And Say My Name' 8p Trick.
The 8p trick is FOUR 2p coins and my NOS Syncros stem stretched wide open to heart stopping, this baby's gonna crack, proportions
If I open any wider I'm gonna split asunder
Someone was on my side, I got round the second bend and quickly cranked the stem back up tight. Not had a chance to ride the bike yet and I'm into that whole messy, sloping top cap rubbish you get with Syncros stems (say goodbye to another lovely King Top Cap…)
Third stem on my EWR, third time lucky?
EWR Project – Phase Nine, another week another stem…
We’re still deep in Dial Time on my Woods Bike so here we are with yet another stem, the third one now
This one aesthetically is perfect for the build as its a NOS Syncros Cattlehead in 10° rise flavour so it’s the right amount of rise and will match the cranks and seatpost, however, for me its all about how it rides so if it doesn’t do the job then it’s off the bike. I only collected it last night so sadly it won’t be installed for tonight’s weekly Night Ride but I’ll try and get in on for the weekend.
I was trying to avoid Syncros on this build, not cos I hate it but cos I’ve got Syncros on every other bike I own and I wanted to shake off the stigma, oh well I’ll just have to make sure the next build is Syncros Free 
Mmmmmm NOS Syncros
Mmmmmm…more NOS Syncros
Happy Birthday Wallace and Grommit
I dunno if this stuff reaches outside of the UK but I must say I’m shocked to realise that Wallace and Grommit celebrate their 20th Birthday today
This makes me feel really old as I can remember A Grand Day Out as if it was yesterday and remember the tears rolling down my face as I split my sides laughing. To celebrate in the coolest manner Google have given over the Google Doodle to them for the day
Happy Birthday