Aston Hill DH

Last Sunday we decided it was time to abandon riding up hills and have a day of solid downhill action. Dave, Rich and Daryl met up at Aston Hill to have a dabble on the DH courses and a go on the 4X. There was no messing about and we got straight into the DH3 black run, with the unanimous verdict at the bottom that it was pretty steep and bloomin rooty. Poor old Rich on his hardtail felt the worst of it and even loaded up with 6" at either end, Dave and I were feeling it on our hands half-way down each run. We then had a few runs on the red run where Dave took great delight in hugging the floor (wear your elbow guards next time, fool...), followed by a breather on the 4X where Dave used his crash as an excuse for being lame ;), and I got angry with some youths.....Next time we need some form of lift, cos the 8 or 10 x 20 minute walks back up are a killer!


not us...

or here...

Pitch Hill Ride.

Wow, one of the best rides in absolutely ages. Adam, Chris and Dave headed to Pitch Hill in Surrey for some actioned packed trails in the beutiful sun of Saturday just gone. Very fast and engaging trails they were too, with me onsighting the first few trails directly behind Adam and with Chris snapping at heels, it felt like I was flying over all sorts of stuff at break neck speed! Much better than the Leith trails it must be said and Barry Knows Best, yog pots and the numerous other trails we ran all felt amazing. Thoroughly knackered after a good 4 and a bit hours riding, all I could do was drive home, not fall asleep doing so, and not stop smiling. More please!

Lost your Mojo?

Here at IBFC, we pride ourselves on our skills of international rescue... Here Captain Slow himself, Mike, is found searching for Juan-Hulio's Mojo, deep in a spanish grotto, with only a helmet and torso for protection. His legs, meanwhile are sunning it up on the costa. No, I'm being silly, he's really involved in land-diving for wine, which by all account flows readily under the spanish seirras for several months of the year and is harvested in thimbles by the locals who sell it at 6 Euros for 5 litres...

Working hard then, Mikey? No thought not.

Pompey Privateers Raid Leith Hill

With most of the IBFC contingent on the continent or moving house it was left to the 3 amigos from the sunny Isle of Portsmouth to ensure some extreme action took place over the Easter bank holiday. So Gareth, Aaron and I (Daryl) set off nursing slight hangovers from the previous evening's barbecue at the Finter-Sayers residence, for a little mission at Leith Hill.

Sadly, due to the absence of our trusty photographer, we have had to make do with some shoddy camera-phone artwork to adorn the site. No photos of Aaron and Gareth in action either I am afraid as the camera didn't seem to be able to capture these rare beasts in action. I'll put it down to their lightening pace and the camera's slow shutter speed so as not to offend!!!!

Anyway a good day was had by all at the usual spots and a nice early finish to get back in time to relax on the final evening of the bank holiday...

Cock lovers

Well here she is with her rightful owners, and what a beauty....
Firstly we'd like to thank Dave and Steffi for hosting such a wonderful event, but most of all we'd like to thank all those of you who attended with substandard wings and allowed such an easy victory to be clinched. Special mention should go out to Rich & Anna for making what were the most ridiculously hot wings of the night, shame about the fact they imparted chemical burns on the whole digestive tract!

Anyone who fancies a pop at the title next year had better be prepared, as we will have the added advantage of being on our manor.

Viva la' Wingstock......

Chicksands weekend

Daryl and I sneaked in a quick blast at Chicksands on Sat before Wingstock. I wasn't feeling that confident,t having not been on my bike so much of late, but we still had a good blat around and Daryl enjoyed it. The 4X comp was on and so quite busy with people doing time trialling. The Dual was rideablr though and still one of the best things there. Cheers to all those who came to Wingstock/house party on sat, had a wicked time and good to see everyone. Well done to Daryl and Gemma who clinched the Cock D'or and in the true spirit of the event, got really competetive about it! I think we need a pic of said Cock, Daryl...

Wingstock 07

Wingstock is on the Horison and I hope y'all are making some sauce so hot that i melts the bowl... Sat is gonna be fun!

Snowboarding!

Well late on the post, sos.




Dave indicates where the top is


Internation bob of mistery dips into the big bag of sketch and commences lift off


Slash dog J the 'Alright boy WAS' ON' Newton.


It's a fresh bit but not really powder as we know it!


er, what can I say

Crew plus random Frenchie.

Finter not talking!!!!!!!!


Captain Slow looking very slick.

Off Boarding

Well the time is upon us and we are off to Les Arcs tomorrow. Can't wait!! Snow seems good, with hopefully some more falling during the week for some off piste powder! Piccies when we get back...

How Rad?

Posh sent me this on e-mail and it was so good, I though I'd share it with the world... Is it me or does that dude on the left look well like really like Jason Donavan trying to squeeze out a poo, whilt doing something quite rad and early nineties on his sweet ride? Also, on a Neighbours theme, that looks a bit like Stingray on the right, too!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IBFC

Well, its one year to the day since we launched the IBFC collective. So a little thank you to all the contributors, our readers, friends, girlfriends, families and all that jazz. Maybe one day soon I will fix the posting issue so we can receive all those comments that never show!

Particular thanks go to Dave and Chris for they continued dedication to the cause, constant posting etc for whom without this site would have little content to make this wee venture worthwhile.



This message comes from Gav, coder, designer and general geek, sat in his hotel room all on his tod in France currently reading the snow report for the Les Arc IBFC boarding trip/stag do for monsieur Branfield who is shortly to get married to the very wonderful Steffi!

AS you can see tis party time here, pizza, beers and work, god i know how to live! (To anyone reading this at work - yes i am actually working, but thought i would take a little break!)

So here’s to another year, hopefully a little bit more active than the winter now that the summer months are coming. More walks, climbs, riding, kiting, surfing, boarding(read skiing for Gav, Mike and Fiddi - it is the new cool i tell thee!).

Happy birthday IBFC!

Y-M-C-A, its fun to stay in the...

Thats right, Village People beware, Mike and Dave have formed a kick-ass homo singing club of their own (pictured below, pouting for publicity material) and they can knock your buildings around for free!! In short, the massive in-activity of some members of IBFC has been down to DIY. How boring. It should be noted, however, that I (Dave) have no clue what I'm doing, so I'm learning on the job, running on the premis that I have a degree and this building lark can't be that hard! See my house held up with wood... Oh well, it hasn't fallen down yet. Big thanks to Mike and Mum and Dad for their help during half term, its coming on a treat.

Yawn stretch, is it spring yet?

IBFC seem to hibernated well and truly through the winter, hopefully we'll be kicking this behaviour in the guts with the impending boarding trip to Les Arcs. The general lack of excursions hasn't been helped by having NO money after the rally, Davros moving and my impending shift up to Telscombe Cliffs which was looking pretty sweet on Sat evening as the sun went down over Brighton.


Kate definatley took this photo on Friday afternoon, Warren


and this one

as soon as we get a bit more light in the evenings and the South Downs cease to look like an overworked mud wrestling arena IBFC will cease to be a lifestyle blog and get back to where we started.

Need to check the exact date but we're also coming up for our 1st birthday!!!

Christof 'the overfed from Sunday lunch but quite content' Lawler

Brrrrr

This weekend saw a nearly full strength IBFC crew including the girls head to Sheffield and Dr Jens house for a spot of sherry.

Friday nights drive required a fair display of ice and snow driving which meant we didn't get there till about 9.30 but was quite amusing and also meant we were probably in for snow the next day.

We've hit Kinder Scout before but with the weather the way it was we headed back to Edale and headed up past the station up the waterfall to be greated by a serious amount of cold white stuff.

Bits of the waterfall were just frozen enough to allow you stand on it briefly before cracking under the snow and delivering a cold water/boot slam dunk

Scrambling was a bit more interesting as you couldn't see most of the floor or grip much



Our lunch spot compared to the girls sauna and spa day!

Sat nights queue spanking got even better when the Arctic Monkeys rocked up inducing mosh related injuries and property loss (except if Gav's mum is reading this then Gav definately did NOT mosh at anytime, at all)

Back to Normality

Well, after all thats been going on I think that Chris and I are still reeling from the P2B thingy and enjoying time with our mrs's whilst generally everyone has had their heads down a bit over Jan. I for one have bitten off well more than I (or Steffi) can chew with our new building 'project' and I'm learning all about underpinning and other stupid stuff that I've claimed I can do - read, have no money to pay a professional so I'm going to have to bodge it and 'learn on the job'! I'm sure some hysterical pictures of me surrounded by the rubble that was once my house will follow.

However, and yes I know its been an age comming (technical blogger type things aparently) here are the pics from the other weekend when Richey P and Pete, Mike and I headed to Bracknell for a cruise around and a good laugh dropping off some stuff. Nice one all concerned and a great ride! Wicked to get Rich out on his new steed.

May I also point out that his helmet WAS as bad as it looked and he had matching neon gloves... Looking forward to the weekend as we're heading up to see doctor Jenny to be prescribed some booze and walking.

changing times

Well as Christoph indicates below things have changed and we have moved all of our blogs over to the new version of blogger.

So how does this affect you, does it mean that you have comments that work again.

unfortunatly the only real change is the fact that you can see the blogger header bar on some pages, i'm working on this and hope to have it removed soon. I'm on the comments thing too and will do my best to get this fixed cos i know it would be rather useful!

Maybe its about time for a design change too! we'll see!

Testing Testing

Our blog is changing slightly, I've posted the guidance on the new rules. If anyone understands this complete waffling load of utter shite explanation please explain it to me. Gav I think you 'own' the original IBFC site under 'thewince' and need to move it over. I've migrated the rest of them.

A team blog will only switch to the new version of Blogger when the original owner moves his or her account over.

Team members who have not yet switched to the new version will still see the blog on their dashboards, but it will be grayed out and inaccessible. Once those members move their own accounts to the new version of Blogger, they will be able to access the blog as before. If they can't yet switch, or don't wish to, they can ask the owner of the blog for a new invitation to join the blog on the new version. They can then accept that invitation by logging in to or creating a Google Account to post to that blog. (Later on, when they do switch their Blogger account to the new version, they'll have an option to merge it with this account.)

If a team member of a blog switches their account to the new version of Blogger before the blog owner does, then the team blog is not converted. It will appear on the team member's converted dashboard, but clicking on it will lead back to the old version of Blogger. Thus, the blog will still be usable, but without the new features of Blogger (e.g. Labels, Layouts, etc.).

Special case for blogs that have been moved to different accounts: In the previous version of Blogger, the team member who originally created a blog could be removed from the team. This is not possible in the new version of Blogger, where each blog must have an owner who cannot be removed. Thus, a new owner is assigned to these blogs.

Where there is only one admin member on the blog, that person becomes the new owner of the blog after they switch to the new version of Blogger. If there are multiple admins, then the last person to switch becomes the new owner. The other members will still have admin rights, but the new owner will be the permanent member and owner of the blog. So if you have a team blog that fits this description (i.e. the original creator is no longer part of the blog) you can coordinate among your members to decide who will take ownership of it.

IBFC Boarding

After so much deliberation my head hurts we finally have boarding booked. Les Arcs 1800.


























Keep checking and perform snow dance(s) as and when required!

Christoph 'the snowman' Lawler

Extreme Tricycling

You heard it here first and the pictures prove that the members of IBFC are willing to go to new lengths to see what excitement we can have. On a small visit to Mike's folks on Saturday we decided to capture the excitement of "Extreme Tricycling"!

TO put you in the picture the Tricycle picture has a brake drum on the rear left wheel while the chain drives the right. After Mike had ridden over my foot "sorry mate i forgot it was so wide at the back", he showed me the advantage and excitement of this system, through your weight to the left get the rear right wheel up and you can puddle furiously with no effect on traction or throw your weight right get the rear right up and throw some freestyle moves and some gurn like expressions...Sweeeeeet!

Video to follow but for now heres some pics of Captain Cohen in action.

Girl alert!

Right, I know that all you boys will be frowning at a post done by a girl, but let me finish!

On the 29th on December, Steffi, yes I Steffi walked up a hill, not any old hill either. Mont St Victoire near Aix en Provence, it's 964 metres! We started around 300 metres and went all the way to the top (we being my brother Peter, his girlfirend Pippa and me).

I have to add that Peter did have to check my pulse on several occasions as I thought I was having a heart attack, but after the initial shock of physical exertion and wanting to cry I was fine!

Look at a picture of it here:
Or if you ask me nicely I'll show you a picture on my phone.

Steffi

BURK!!!

As can be seen by my best effort at giving a thumbs up I have broken my hand not just once but twice!! I will not divulge the cause of this terrible accident on the portal as I feel the radical nature may scare some of you away from extreme pursuits!!!

At least 8 weeks off my bike may give some of you other cake eaters a chance to catch the mighty Finter on the downhill's.

Daryl