Alps Trip!

Okey Kokey people, the Alps trip has come and gone and we are all sadly back in the harsh reality of WORK! Never mind, all good things come to an end...
It really did live up to all the hype that we'd heard from other people and I can't wait to get back there, so I'll let the others fill in the gaps as I usually misinform on a grand scale when jotting my blog entires...Dave

Chris

Hmmph, not in the mountains anymore. Have however just booked this weekend in Dorset with Kate, might help ease me back into working what with my 3 and half day this week and having just found out I'm owed another 5 days, woohoo.

Firstly, I'm just glad I got to go on holiday at all, on account of Gemma's flippant remark about idiots not checking their passports before they travel, lead to me clocking my passport was out of date a good 15mins before we left for the ferry, helpful. What with Finters patented cross country route fitting squarley into the detour rather than short cut box we arived at the check in with about 10mins till the ferry sailing, Daryl nailed an entire bag of choccy eclairs in nervous uncontrolled face filling, Dave 'nochalant' Branfield was fighting the urge leap out of the car and hand himself over to the authorities on 1 count of person smuggling and 1 count of wearing indecent underwear and I bored all and sundry to distraction blurting out the details of my current love life (Kate if you're reading this it was the PG version). Anyway it would appear that a valid passport is surplus to requirements entering or leaving France but does make for a stressful start to the holiday. Still at least I didn't notice on the Morrocon border sometime in December.................

The Alps rule, winter summer whatever. Getting that first lift in the morning while its all still quite and there's just the occassional rumble of the lift bumbing over the pylons is a good feeling. Picking out new lines and checking if take offs and landings are dry and just getting worked up for the days riding.

My hire bike (GT Ruckus i-drive) may have the heaviest rear end ever seen this side of celebrity fat camp. Didn't really realise until I picked Dave's bike off the lift with about a tenth of the effort!! looking forward to riding the Kona again, with all that reduced weight I'll have no excuse.

I reckon you could spend a good couple of months out there before you had to start riding any of the same trials all the time and it would take you that long to build up a bit of specific fitness, riding downhill constantly is just as knackering as taking on a cross country loop and occasionally a far sight more painful. Anyone whose thinking about going, do it! If you want to prepare, go to Wales and ride the meanest section of the MBR run in Coed-y over and over in the wet till your hands feel like they might fall off, then brush up on your Aussie accent.......Finter.

Finally to anyone who may well be reading this in the Boomerang bar, sorry. Also all Australian beer sucks, not just the Tooheys although I thnk Daryl may have made this point somewhat forcefully already.

Daryl...
General impression and comment of the week was 'Epic'. I think that summed it up quite nicely, the sheer scale and endless number of different trails was amazing. It was a real shock to the system to be back riding the "Advanced loop" at QE country park near Portsmouth last night. Not exactly what you would call advanced, as we finished in the dark and I still nearly fell asleep at the helm of the Giant!!

The trails in Les Get and Morzine are so much different to anything we ride over here it is difficult to draw comparisons. The major thing that surprised us all was just how difficult it is to ride any of the Black runs in one hit without losing complete feeling in hands and forearms. Other than bumpy they can best be descrbed as steep, rocky and rooty with the odd sneaky drop, landing onto wet roots, just to keep you focused!! (Red run in the rain from the top of super Morzine anyone??)

On the bike front the Giant Reign was superb, only major drawback was the forks. The splice elite's have to go. Whilst the back end was soaking up everything I threw at it the forks were doing their best bucking bronco impression, leaving me sorely dissapointed that I didn't have a set of Fox 36's on the front. Best of all I managed all the ups last night at QE without any change of rear shock setting.

Final note...If you are going to visit Les Get don't make complete fools of yourselves by smashing into Le Boomerang and doing really bad Australian accents all night whilst abusing the regulars. Good job I don't have a loud voice hey!!

IBFC return

Back from the alps. Bummer. Not many pics either, enjoying it too much!!

2006 Kona Srap Medium (17")

Mmm new shiny thing. Kona Scrap 2006 (not Scrape thank you Michael) Only had one ride real ride on the new steed, well kind of 2 including the test ride on the Kona Stuff. The whole experience is very very different to the Aggressor, the Marzochi Dirt Jam Pros are such a difference to the old school ‘Judy’ Rox Shox that adorned the GT god rest its soul. Having uncharacteristically read the destructions I upped the rebound damping to 1 turn off fully damped set the air pressure in the right fork to 35psi and wound the preload to ¾ full for a pre alps huck round Chicksands.

Spent a bit of time tinkering before hitting the dual slalom. It was a completely different experience riding it on the Kona compared to the GT, where as on the GT I felt slightly like I was surviving the course, on the Kona landings felt much more planted and stable and the smaller frame made muscling the bike round in the air much more natural and fun, still working on the tweaks but just being able to line the bike up for a landing is confidence inspiring. Before long I was happily nailing the first jump of the course which requires a committed pedal burst down the start ramp stopping literally at the foot of the take off, dial that jump and speed for the rest of the course just flows.

Had a bit of a high speed blast at Leith Hill down Summer Lighting but I’m still to see what its like when you press on a bit rather than trying to get permanently airborne but so far I’m dead chuffed.
Things to do, refit grips as they’re a bit slidy, correctly seat front hub bearings, re-tune gears, get wheel checked for spoke tension, unfortunately all a result of selling my soul to the Devil and buying from Evans, still can’t grumble about the price.

Laters

Mmmmm, Bouncy...

Sorry, Steph, but I think I might actually be in Love!!! With you of course, but I really like my new DHX 5.0 too! I've only just put this puppy on, after the demise of my 5th Element (it just couldn't hack my pace and gut probably, too!) and first impressions, other than that the manual is completely useless, are very good. I will review it properly for anyone thats interested, after we get back from France and I've had a good play. The manual wasn't very clear on setup of the boost valve and I was struggling to work out what the deal with that was, only to be told by my helpful LBS (Phil Corleys MK - they must think I'm some sort of retard as I'm forever going in asking dumd shock questions), that the Boost runs at appx 1/3 main chamber pressure and is no longer seperate, even though the setup guide tells you to pump it up! Never mind. Some more product reviews on various new purchases will bee forthcomming from the IBFC massive.

Nicely juxtaposed against the Volvo, don't you think? no? Oh well, you don't know art when it hits you...

It wasn't me Guv...

Our second home.

Quite a bits happened on the biking front in the last few weeks, all leading to some sort of climax in the Alps next week, hopefully. Chris has managed to replace his nicked GT with a sparkly new Kona Scrap, which he couldn't stop looking at the other day in my lounge! We've all been there. Or maybe not! Looks like a really solid trail bike and seemed to ride like a dream today at Chicksands...

I have sorted out my quite woefull situation of not having the Enduro for a week, as the Evans boys in Crawley sorted me out with a new 2007 Fox DHX 5.0 just in the nick of time for me to ride this weekend. Saturday was consumed with an early evening ride at Woburn, with some really fast and dry trail (comlete with bloodied forarms from the Gausse bushes) and a bit of a muck about on the 'downhill' routes and jumps. Not really rating Woburn very much, as the trails have really fallen into dis-repair and it now mostly seems to be a jump spot and not much else...

Chris arrived after our blast and on Sunday we headed over to Rowney Warren to play in the freeride area. We've all been buying a fair bit of kit recently, so in the misguided tought that other people look at this site, we'll start to review a few of the bits and bobs in the next few weeks or so. Stop Press. No really.

Anyway, it was raining when we got there and I thought it could be all over, but it soon stopped and we had a brilliant ride, running the dual course and trails with Phil and his mates that we'd met there before. Best trail of the day being the bomb hole run into the little road gap trail. Mike had a nice crash on one of the jumps, which seemed to affect me, just by watching it and I soon packed in the jumping. Chris was on form as usual and had some nice ladder stuff before breaking his saddle clasp which had us all looking in the twiggs like a bunch of dicks! Some poeple just ride too damn hard, eh Christoph?! Nicely rounded off with the larger of the two drops into the bomb hole and then a jaw slackening roll down the 4X course. Will be building up to that, methinks!!! Very impressed with the DHX and new Brand X stem. Will attempt to review like I know what I'm talking about.


Next stop Morzine!

Mum it's fine, it's not Dangerous at all

but just in case.

Omars induction to IBFC

Omar has now left the UK and headed back to the Gambia, the next time me and Dave see him will hopefully be in Banjul sometime in January.

I’ve posted this on the IBFC main page rather than the rally page as Omar was officially inducted into the brake for cake brotherhood when he came climbing with the Brighton Explorers to K2 in Crawley last week. Despite being slightly bemused by the fact that someone had gone to the trouble of building a fake wall inside he seemed to really enjoy it.

Considering he’d never seen anyone rock climb before he despatch a couple of 4a and b’s fairly quickly, helped by the fact that he’s basically really, really tall!

I spent a bit of time convincing him it was all safe as houses when Sarah fell of the lead I’d just climbed whilst holding half the slack she needed for the next clip in her teeth, she tensed up with the fall and clamped down on the rope resulting in her front teeth being dislodged and one coming out, ouch!!!

Omar if your reading this in an internet café somewhere it was good to meet you and we’ll have an ibrakeforcake T-shirt ready with your name on it when (if?!?!) me and Dave see you in The Gambia
Pics to come when I get the site working

Harrisons Rocks II

Having been up to Stone Farm and Harrison’s quite a few times with the Brighton Explorers I’m starting to get to know my way round the area and some of the climbs. Really starting to see some progression with my technique and climbing strength and quite frankly the ‘semi pro crew from Bucks’ wouldn’t stand a ‘snow balls’ faced with the awesome collective power of the sandstone massive. Not only that in the true spirit of IBFC, Lucy did indeed bake the cake, Hooyah.

The pic of the empty, roped up climb on the corner has got the mother of all leg jams about a third of the way up. It took Matt ages to convince me it would work and three or four attempts to suss out cantilevering most of my weight through a horizontal jammed leg while pulling off a dyno to characteristically smooth round sandstone and a softly, softly catchee monkey move over the remainder of the section. All followed by a crack further left that needs a fisted hand jam about 2/3rds of the way up to get any where near pulling it off. Seriously pumped arms after the crack left me 1 move from the top unable to finish the bugger off!! Now I’ve got it sussed I’ll stop tw&*ing about and have it first go next time (maybe).

Patrick's hanging about trying 'Niblick'. Tricky little blighter with quite an amusing end requiring a body jam through a really small hole!

Unfortunately the evenings are already noticeably shorter so I’m just gonna enjoy getting outside after work for as long as possible.
Later Y’all

Mad rushabout!

Lots of things needed sorting on Friday arvo, and I was looking down the barrel of a very scarry gun, as I'd blown my 5th Elephant shock in Wales last weekend (rebound damping? What rebound damping?) and was desperately trying to sort out getting a replacement under warrenty before next week and our Apline adventures! Spesh warrantees department were really helpful, saying they'd replace the 5th with a DHX 5 straight away, but on ringing Mojo, I found that they only had one left! Not good. Anyway, after a little BBQ action on Friday at Rich and Anna's and getting shouted at by the neighbours for playing on the swings at 12:30 (!) and a bit of light shed demolition at my parent's house on Sat, I hooked up with Gav, Chris and Adam MJ at Leith Hill, for a spot of trail action. Chris was trialling a Kona Stuff and doing his best to destroy it (given the reaction of the staff member who took it back and noticed the peeled up sticker, he'd have had kittens if he'd seen Chris actually riding it!), as you should with any test bike! Very quick trail day, Chris seems to up the pace on every single outing and as Adam pointed out, can just ride through corners without any apparent change of direction! Gav was hot on the pace after his last sickly show at Leith, and we all had a good cruise in general. Loving that little jump at the bombholes area. After a good little session where Adam, the forgotten member of ELO, shone a light on our lives (!) with some nice x-ups and Chris and I sarted to learn tabletops, we reaced back to Crawley to sort bikes and for the helpful guys at Crwaley Evans to sort my shock nightmare out. Cheers to them as it should all be sorted by Friday!

Cwm Carn and Afan

Helloo all and sundry! Well after a very unsuccesful posting which rendered my mac completely useless! - Virus?!, We're back!

Bad week, last week as Chris had his bike stolen by some absolute ****, whislt swimming in the sea. They bolt crimped the lock in broad daylight on a busy seafront in Brighton!

Last weekend saw Rich, Dave (me), Chris and the boy wonder (Daryl) head off to south Wales for a spot of proper trail riding with the loose excuse of 'preparing' for the Alps trip later in the month... It all started as it was set to finish, with Rich having a crash. I rung Chris en route only to find him helping The Posh at the side of the road after a biker undertook him, then brake-tested his Citroen AX in some kind of Kamakaze manouvere! The AX is good, but not that good and Rich created a trike style skid pattern and was pretty lucky not to have seriously injured this **** at 60mph! More on that. After this drama, we were a little late hitting the road and caught all the worst traffic, so were thoroughly imprressed when we rocked up at our campsite to see Daryl, Gem and Amy rocking a proper woodburning fire and brandishing a chilled beer! Daryl was sporting his spangly new Giant Reign which apparently he got for supa-cheap-dolla, having charmed the shop keeper with his soothing tones... Next day we all headed to the Afan valley in the quite torrential rain whilst the girls headed off on one of the forest walks, the real men left the car unlocked, forgot to pay for parking, had a bottom bracket replaced for quite litteraly daylight-robbery prices (Drayl's quote for the day - 'talk to him, get freindly and try and get a discount' was scuppered by the fact that they heard it. Don't bother.) and wheezed and puffed up to the top of the Whytes Level and new 'Downhill' routes. Having arrived at the top, we buggered around trying to get Bob's borrowed RF helmet cam to work (to no avail.) and then headed down the "Downhill" route, which started promissingly with a nice air to berm affair and then turned into flat fireroad. Then wet ladder trail (which, has also been put into the WL trail to grat effect - that boggy section after the fast Forest run half way through is now planked and much better for it!) was good, but very slippery and I had a wheelspin off which caused Daryl to knacker his ankle and cause all sorts of drama. The rest was a little better overall, but the layout for the dirt bassed run was somewhere between great and absolutely appaling. Some of what could have been really good steep sections with little rock drops were awful, with no clean line anywhere and absolutely no flow in the wet (and probably dry, too.) Rich had a bit of a spill, bending his rear brake lever blade into an interesting shape and I showed some boyos the way to do it, airing a double into 90 degree berm and taking no speed into it, thus stopping on the up ramp of the second double in the 90 degree position. Nice, pure flow. WL taril was good too, causing some whoops and an angry Chris on my tail ( he too fast on a full susser) and lots of mud in the eye. We all retuned to find everything in the car (!) and headed back off to dry our kit, by lighting a petrol fuelled wood fire in torrential rain and steaming everything dry against all odds, with beer in hand. You should have seen the faces of the Flanders family that had pitched next to us!


It should be noted at this point never, ever listen to an 'engineer'. Trying to fix Rich's brake blade, someone of the three engineers present (not me, I'm a photographer) decided that the remedy was to put said blade into the fire to 're-shape it'. Ten minutes later we had a completely melted pile of aluminium and a quite pissed off Rich. Next morining, to our almost hysterical laughter, Rich went into the only thing resembling a bike shop in Risca - a chopper and Hrley type place advertising tatooing, net to Risca Indian (!)- wearing a body fitting Helly Hansen and shorts to ask for help. We didn't know how long to leave it before going in to get him, but he eventually came out, surprisingly empty handed. However, we got a BMX lever at a car spares place (only in Wales) and bodged the ultimate BMX bandit Hayes hydraulic bodge! The trail was perfect and dry and very much fun. The downhill looked fun and scary at the same time and we had a great time hiking the last downhill run of the loop a few times, which we were going pretty flat out on. Then on the last run, I binned it (again) and Rich ran past me. I then went hell for leather and caught him up in a pile next to a tree, which he'd hit face first after the bodged lever gave way! Nasty is all I'm going to say. Lots nof blood being spat out and from nose area.




All in all, though a stunning weekend and I can't wait to get back and have a crack at the downhill course with my full face and armour as it looked ace!

Chicks in sand

Bit of a week really. Chris had his bike stolen last week by an absolute scumbag who bolt-clipped his reinforced lock in broad daylight in a busy spot in front of the beach. I on the other hand, snapped my dropout clean in two after getting the jockey wheels completely stuck with grass, whilst going off piste up the side of a field... Nice 2 mile push home. However, after a bit of a search and waiting for Phil Corleys to open, I finally had a new hanger and Mike, Rich and Myself were motoring off for some freeride action.

Master at work

Glad to see that all of Daryl's engineering prowess can be displayed in one simple bar construction... Good work. With skills such as these, Britain can only grow stronger!

Paddle Round the Pier 2006

Pictures remain copyright of Sean Clark and paddleroundthepier.com

http://www.paddleroundthepier.com

http://www.zen31943.zen.co.uk/paddle/index.html

30 odd Degrees in Brighton, best place to be, in the water. Me and some of the boys from Hove Lagoon, Khi, John boy and Craig, joined in the 2006 paddle round the pier. Just a good excuse to drink beer and listen to bands on a Sunday really all in the name of 'charity mate'. Mr and Mrs Slimboy Fat put in an appearance to get proceedings underway. Pic above is not so high res but we're in there somewhere (left hand side couple rows back from the front). Free beer was obtained thanks to Johnn boy and the magicVIP pass and we spent the rest of the evening on the beach working on hangover potential for Monday morning with the occasional swim thrown in for good luck. See the sharkbait site in our links for more details and a link to ITV local coverage of the whole days events.

Move to Brighton losers

How to climb rock when you live in Bucks!

The now alomst professional standard, Wednesday night climbing crew of 'Hard Start Steve', 'Travis Crimpenhorn' and 'Vertigo Dave' have reached the limits of all known indoor climbing facilities, so with this in mind and a two and a half hour drive to Sheffield or Bowles, the granite-warriors tapped the underground and came up with a stunning little Gem. Where do you climb outdoors when you live in Bucks? Answer, you go and play on the disused railway bridges near Olney! I must admit that I was a little sceptical before we left, but as it turned out, there were some really good routes to be had on the bridges. The brick slabs are rough-cut Grasandnite Stone (Jelouse, geology boy? The IBFC's rock knowledge is encyclopedic, really obscure stuff that, shipped over from Chad especially for disused railways.) with all sorts of holds appearing, crimpers, undercuts and slopers - all there. You can climb all variety of routes and take some as high as the bridge sides (appx 30ft), but we hadn't got a bouldering mat with us, so settled for a few techy crimp routes, with Hard-Start setting a few beuties. Thoroughly good. We'll be back when the new spandex sponsor comes up with the goods.

Likely lads raid Bracknell...

With Alpine preparations kicking and spluttering into action, a wheezing and coughing (Shisha seems like such a cosmopolitan idea until you've got to do exercise!) collective of IBFC members headed down to Swinley for what can only be described as some scorchingly medium-paced trail action. The mood for the ride was set with the presence of the recently aquired "Thunder Chariot", the team IBFC P-D Isuzu Trooper, in all its dented and rusting glory. Loud mouth southern rep, 'Thats-the-kiddy!' Finter was gloriously late which allowed me to fit a shorter stem on my enduro, whilst Mike attempted to make his old Kona, pedal, brake and change gear - all fundamentals of biking, I've been told... I have to add that Mike was riding said bike, because he broke his £700 fox forks by overtightening the thru axle retainer bolts. Muppet.

Daryl finally arrived and produced the most Sh*t-kickingly old, hobbled together GT the world has ever seen. "s'got gears though!" he beamed, having proudly undersold his P1 for £200 to a mate, "whilst a bit drunk".
What followed was lots of fireroad pedalling whilst Mike pretended that he knew where he was and then some really bad berm riding near the dirt-jumps, before hitting the trails and some synchronised (or not) drops where captain slow rode straight into a tree. See pictures! Always good to have Daryl on any mission, just for the gawping stupid faces he pulls, also see picture. Nice one boys, hopefully we can get the whole Alps crew together next time...

NEW SITE!!

Welcome to our new site.

As you can see we've grown a little and now have a dedicated Rally and Motorsport section.

Check them out for more info and back here for more of the antics of the ibrakeforcake team.

Enjoy

**UPDATE**

As to be expected our new site is having problems in some versions of IE for PC. Our Web Monkey is working on this and will be updating the site as soon as possible!

Mike's Thought for the Day

I think therefore I am

I'm pink therefore I'm spam

-anon

Gowertastic!!

Hello One and all!

Everyone turned out in style for the glorious weather of the Gower in South Wales and had a smashing time celebrating Mike getting old!! Great to see everybody and I for one had brilliant fun. Climbing, relaxing, sun, Shisha, full on beach party (with responsible, adult tidying up as we're all getting ona bit!), frisbee and knacker squashingly cold swimming! What more could one ask. I've posted a few pics of the bouldering as I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was at that scary height of 'just above safe'. Other highlights included watching a very drunk Gav try and get into the boot of a rover, exploding stuff and Linzee's unquenchable desire for cookies at breakfast. Brilliant! My sunburn still hurts and I can't wait to do it all over again soon. Viva La Gower!