ibrakeforcake goes International

It's official, team ibrakeforcake has been accepted for the 2007 Plymouth to Banjul Rally, official launch party 8th July !!!!!!! Me and Davros the co-pilot will be driving an as yet undecided left hand wagon to Gambia leaving some time in December this year. Loads more detail to come but thought I'd put a quick post up to mark the start of the shennaigans.

Chris 'desert rat' Lawler

P.S. http://rallybrakeforcake.blogspot.com is where the action will be unfolding!

21/5/06 Leith Hill

WET! Thats all there is to say really! Manning-Jones missed out as it was spectacularly good fun and slidey. No-one else there and very deep wet puddles and mud. Brilliant.

20/5/06 Chicksands

What with a awful weather forcast and a general trend towards saving petrol money, we scratched our original idea of riding at Afon in Wales and opted for the slightly drier and much closer, Chicksands! This also served as a group introduction for Neil and considering he's only riden mtb once before, we really threw him in at the deep end, but he handled it really well. We'll have you bombing down stuff before you know it! It was still a bit wet, but we had a good blast around with some good runs on the dual course and some nice trail runs too. Have posted some pics of a few guys riding the dual much better than us - one of them we'd bumped into before at Swinley when Mike was being gay and not dropping anything. Situation normal, there, then!


I was very excited as I had just got a new full face, in preparation for Morzine. Spesh Deviant - amazingly light weight and breezy, it really didn't feel any different to normal. Stoked!

Dawn Raid

Hello people... All has been quiet on the activity front of late with peopletrading exercise and excitement for work and beer fuelled shinanigans!!! Bucking this trend Mike and I had a wicked evening at Swinley on Friday, fitting in some new fast trails and a bit of dirt jumping, where Mikes' ambition got the better of his ability once again on the last run of the night. Priceless. We then got up just after 6am (!) and hit Leith hill for a quick blast before ten. Freeride is all about the dawn raids. Yeah right. both of us nearly threw up.

Easter Weekend

Easter Sunday saw Daryl, Chris, Dave and Gav in Friston Forest. It had been raining all Saturday and as such the majority of the downhills were greasy and just a tad hairy!! After a few attempts, some jumping and a long search for a mystical bombhole which had been trashed we finished the riding with a blitz down to the pub (Not so much of a blitz for Daryl due to a puncture a 1/4 of the way down!) where Dave to his delight found the Hungry Monk Reastaurant, 'The Birthplace of Banoffi Pie'


In an attempt to better the previous days activities on Easter Monday Chris, Dave, Gav, Daryl, Amy and Gemma headed to Harrison's Rock for the first outdoor climb of the year. Following the sharp realisation that we couldn't climb the first route described as 'slippery and unclimable' in the guide, we moved on to have some good climbs including the aptly named 'Hell Wall' (Difficult start according to the guide.....Chris!!), some falls and a fun day out for all.

Mike riding desert extreme stylee

Here are some pics from my desert riding in Egypt. The valley is a wadi, a dried up river bed, and made of mostly sharp rocks and sand. It is just on the edge of Cairo city and a truly spectacular setting for a peddle. Even though it was evening it was pretty warm, although ice-cold by Egyptian standards, and my face passed through various shades of beetroot before giving up completely. The ride was finished off with a cold beer at the car, a tradition that I strongly suggest we adopt at webrakeforcake!

Mike

Just a thought, peepes.... Since Steffi has initiated the IBaketheCake blog, we seeem to be pretty down on cake for our adventures!!!!! WE DEMAND CAKE!!!!! I know that the fortunate eaters of IBFC ate cake whilst recently round mine and the Mrs-to-be the other day, but we want more! How cN WE COMPLETE dventures propperly without the heroes of sponge, fruit, rock or ginger (gavin to the rest of us), cake?

Chicksands 01/04/06

Hello Peeps! More boring pics of what you guys missed out on... Nice weather and a bit of a hangover, so I wasn't feeling it too much, but as ever, Adam and fellow Brightonian Andy were on form. Andy did all of the chickshore, except the see-saw (terrifying) whilst i managed to wheelspin off the 3 inch high one, straight off. pro. Had a good blast with those guys on the DS and other jumps and we all had a play on the ladder drops, with Andy claiming the big beast - first drop he pretty much dribbled off the end and I was releived to see him rolling out down the hill! I allways think the locals are a bit intimidating there, but the reality is far from it and everyone was super nice. Mike showed up late and we had a great blast for a few more hours including some more DS where I had a catastrophic berm related crash from trying to show off!! No pics of mike as I'd put the camera away by then, but he did the ladder too.

Climbing K2

Well, well... With weather worse than of late and an out of action bike after the crash that caused Chris' brand new brake leaver to twang in two, we headed to the new K2 climbing wall in Crawley for a spot of monkeying around before a night of dancing and drinking (in reverse order!) in Brighton. (poetry style) K-2 is nice and new and bathed in lovely light, with grippy holds and moves so bold, it was a true delight. We shimmy-ed up and fell back down, all afternoon it seemed, we forced a frown from local staff and left there fully creamed!!! (bit gay. Sorry, catalogue Argoh is getting to me...)


Twas good to see Rich and Anna and Chris and I ended the day with a nice lead to get the adrenalin going. Where was the bouldering area? Idiots.

J's Band!

Have been to see Mr Newton in action, was accurately descibed by the lead singer as being 'a bit edgy, but your Mum'd like him', brilliant.

Check out the links section for their website, upcoming gigs etc, with brakeforcake support we'll have you at number one in no time.

Buy the single.............................. go on try it,you might like it.

Chris

Another Sunny Sunday!

Yep, Spring is definately on the way and the sun shone down on another nice days jaunt for the IBFC crew... This week Ad, Neil and The Lawlers came up from hip, gay Brighton in search of more manly persuits, namely riding Bracknell with me and Mike. Bob is a weapon. Not only does he not really ride (borrowing Mike's backup once again), but he and Chris have no fear whatsoever of hitting the deck and proceeded to drop off everything in sight. Apologies to Ad and Neil who are used to more of a 'ride', but we had some good fun sessioning some of the drops and discovered the nicely built Swinley dirt jumps. After a few tentative runs, everyone got well into it and twas great to have a go at pretending to be Cowan.

A week in the life of Mowglie the Jungle Boy

Well well, what can happen in a week.

Monday morning 11.30

Turn up at the inkfish offices stylelish entrance 2 and a half hours late for work and in a foul Monday morning, Im in the rat race kind of mood. This doesn’t bother my bosses I just have to work 2 and a half hours later! Flexi hours in an office rock.
Seeing the sun out for the first time in England and being in an office with about 100 pale looking people got me inspired to start thinking about going travelling again. So though the phone book it is having a chat with everyone I know who works in water sports. Had some good chats with people.

Tuesday

The dreaded 12-hour shift! Lots more time on the phone following up all the phone calls made on Monday. Another day in the office.

Wednesday

Take the day off work to hammer out some c.vs to worldwide destinations. Im beginning to scratch those itchy feet. Had a good swim and gym session. Good for the soul. I’ve been feeling pretty restless lately due to this fact I’ve not been sleeping well and have found myself on the couch at four in the morning Supping red wine.

Thursday

Not much too report about today had a pretty bit of a headache from a few drinks last night and a couple of bottles of wine whilst chatting about the cycles of life.
Ha Ha get a phone call from Chris he has locked himself out and is waiting for me in the pub near work for my keys. So the only sensible thing I can see to do is sign myself out of work (don’t really need the money as some freelance work has just paid off and Im doing overtime anyway) and go and join Chris the mechanical marvel on the nice comfy leather sofa in the pub. One drink quickly turns into five. A good chat with some fellow windsurfers/kite surfers that live on a yacht in Brighton marina and randomly happened to sit down oppisit us. (Brighton is such a cool place for randomly meeting people like that hence I’ve been here on and off for the past two years) A bit of a stumble home, a quick stop for chips and a bit of a rumble between the two siblings (just play fighting but Chris still gave in first. one up for BOB) its time for bed.

Friday morning

Quick look out the window. MY GOD surf able waves and the sun is out nothing better to cure a booze headache than getting in the water. I manage to bribe Chris to take the day off work with a good old bacon sarnie. Tainted!

Quick drive off to Berling gap with a video camera in my hand shouting out of the car window to anyone who will listen that ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY. Some of the reactions are fairly amusing. (As soon as I’ve found a good video hosting web site I will post the vid on here!)
Friday 10.30am
Berlin gap
Wave size 3-4 foot messy
Extremely cold
Watched 1 solitary surfer paddle out and got two of his waves on camera. Half an hour of doing this and the wind picking up enough to windsurf. We came to the decision that It was too cold to go for a surf and a windsurf. So we drive back to Hove lagoon via all the surf spots to get a couple more waves for the camera.

1.0 Pm Hove Lagoon
Within 10 minutes of turning up the wind drops and swings off shore. Bugger!
We decide to wait around for Mr Maylon, Kai, and Germbag to see if the wind is going to play ball with our plans.

2.00pm Sweet as the wind fills back in and swings back to dead cross-shore with some nice clean waves.

Sail choice 5.3 its good to sail out from hove as you can park right on the prom to rig up. Have to be a bit wary about the traffic wardens as they like to put these really annoying yellow clamps round your wheels and charge you £120 to take them off.
John hadn’t sailed for a while but got straight back into it with some good air and over rotating so far on his loops it looked like he was attempting double back loops.
The cold got the better of Kai whilst he was walking down to give Chris a hand who got worked over in the waves and ended about a mile down wind. Adam got some nice wave riding in bashing away at the lips of the pretty clean waves that don’t appear too often in Brighton and I had a nice one too. Got round cleanly on most of my carve gybes almost put my feet though my sail on a fairly big jump that went a bit wrong. Time to head in though cos I cant feel my fingers anymore and Chris needs picking up from down the beach to save him from the walk of shame with all his kit. It was too cold for Mr traffic warden so all cars were fully operational.

Friday 12.00pm
After a good windsurf like that (Its just what you do in Brighton) and it being Sali,s birthday who’s back off to turkey soon. We hit a night club the dancing was ridiculous with John and Sali making everyone participate in the famous “how silly can you do it) dance off. Where those boys picked up some of their moves God only knows.

Saturday 5.30 pm

Chilled out day here at the flat had a swim at the King Alfred and saving some energy for a mountain bike ride down some nice steep hills tomorrow. Think Im going to take the video camera along and immortalise your guys riding on video on ibreakforcake.

GET INVOLVED keep your eyes here Im going to be somwhere hot soon for you all to come out and have a good holiday in the sun sea and sand.

robertjlawler@hotmail.com
07861249092
for all you out there that dont know how to contact me.

Leith Hill Ride

Sunny weather and the promise of some fresh trails lured us out for another Leith mission with Chris and the Brighton crew...

Turned out we knew the trails, but Ad, Kem and Ben had us peddling all over the surrey trails in the usual non-stop fashion that had Gav spewing (literally, 4 times!) from our excesses the night before - to be fair, not our fault, we wouldn't have got drunk if either K2 or Shorham climbing walls had been open past 6:30pm on a sat! Anyway, after getting to Leith via the scenic route, the trails were in perfect condition and DRY, promting a good day and a little spell of jumping at the Bomb-'oles! see pics. Ben and Ad showed us all how its supposed to be done, with Ben producing some nice big tables and a taboggon!

Road Trip 2005 Scotland and Scarfell

A few pics from the end of May/start of June last year of our road trip to Scotland. Gav, Dave, Rich and myself.

Friday was spent pitching our home, having driven up over Thursday night, we pitched 3 times due to 70mph gust blowing straight down the valley at the foot of Ben Nevis, nice. Then a further couple of hours up to Invernes near to where Gav's Dad used to work.

Saturday turned out rubbish weather wise, wind still howling and white out conditions forecast so we reccon'd the walk in for our Ben Nevis route, up the first 400m odd to the Lochan and the split between the donkey path that goes straight up and the descent back down to the stream and Photo 1 of Rich and Gav, that man has missed his calling as a catalogue model, seriously.

Sunday we were up at sparrows to pack the tent and car before retracing our reccy route from Saturday. Dropping down to the stream loses nearly all of the height you gain getting up to the Lochan, the result being you start from scratch up the foot of the Cairn Morg Dearg arrete with the North face of Ben Nevis looming occasionally over your right shoulder out of the clouds.

Far too many hundreds of meters later up constant, steep gradient scrub and rock scatter we reached Photo 2, the sharp contrast between the arrete and the snow clad North face to the right of the picture.

Photo 3 of Rich is after the arrete on the climb up to the summit plateau, I think this was the first of June we did this and there was no lack of snow! The summit plateau itself had coating of a foot or so of snow which made spotting the piking great gully, on the way back to the tourist path, impossible until we'd safely gone past it. Not a nav f&*k up you'd want to make in a hurry.

Sunday night was spent with Maddy and Laura in Glasgow which for a variety of reasons was most agreeable.

Monday saw another stretch of driving back down to the Lakes and several hours of fraught YHA searching.

Tuesday Scarfell Pike, it has to be said, in the sun was a walk in the park compared to Ben, so much so we ended up climbing up a route shown in Photos 4 & 5 to avoid the boring zig zag path and too many other people. Got buzzed by a Tornado which almost blew Gav of the side of the climb before Dave managed to bag a pic of a Jaguar using the peak as a Nav point to make a turn down the valley.

Finally made it home well after midnight on Tuesday.

Photos courtesy of Branfield as per usual, text by Chris.