In a week that has seen the lives of some, and the dreams of many, strewn in tatters across the internet I thought it’d be nice to bring something wonderful to the screens of the loyal readers of LovingTheBike.com.

Martyn Ashton is apparently very well known in the MTB and trials scene and has been a pro for almost 20 years. The skill and finesse that the spot of trials needs can be seen in beautiful detail in the films below. It’s clear it’s not all about the bike… and has a considerable amount to do with the fleshy humanoid atop the steed.

It’s awesome seeing someone able to do these tricks on a £10,000 carbon road bike and also goes to show just how robust a modern road bike it. These videos have been making their way around via social media in the last week, but feast your eyes again on the pure, unadulterated skill of Mr Ashton… just please don’t try this at home!

Following on from Darryl’s great ‘Do It Now’ post featured here yesterday, I wondered what things it would spark people into doing. This might not be as thought provoking as Darryl’s post or so centred in distant grey memories, but we’d like to help kick start some people into new challenges as the seasons change.

Over the last few years cyclo cross has been gaining a massive following in this country. It’s seems to have taken much longer to grow into a legitimate cycling/sporting option over here than it has in North America, but it has gripped many with the muddy bug. I’ve wanted to give cyclo cross a go for a long time but I think the start up costs have held me back as at first it seemed like I’d have to buy a whole new bike, kit and mud resistant mouth guard. But I’ve decided to stop worrying about things like that.

Please don’t snitch on me to my fiance, I’m not off to the LBS to purchase a new bike light enough to shoulder, I’m just going to try to borrow my friends bike as much as I can! I’m also going to investigate ways to adapt my winter bike into something a bit more mud friendly. (BTW Joey is OK).

Photo courtesy of epicfail.net

I’m a roadie through and through. If you sliced me open you’d see I’m lined with pure white MicroTex bar tape. But I can’t deny that the lure of the woods and trails does try to grab me from time to time. I’m going to say it… sometimes, I want to be a mountain biker (Jeez I can’t believe I just said that out loud!) When the weather turns nasty and the clouds go grey, the wonderful terrain we cycle through all year doesn’t seem so exciting, so why not change up the view and go down to the woods? Again, I don’t have the specific equipment but I know how to handle a bike and don’t mind getting muddy, what’s been holding me back!? I guess I’ll be asking my other buddy if I can take his MTB into the woods this winter!

Photo courtesy of bigshotbikes.com

Bike polo has also been tempting me over the summer. To break a winning format, I do have the correct equipment for this sport (if you don’t mention the giant wooden mallet) but I have been honing my fixie skills. After using all of my Bart Simpson Band Aids I can track stand, I can ride backwards (a bit) and I generally look pretty cool on my fixie, even if I do say so myself. But even I could win a game of bike polo if I’m the only player, I need more fixie friends!  Well Hallelujah! I’ve found that a neighbouring town has an open league! It seems I have one less excuse to get my hockey mask on and start swinging that mallet!

Photo courtesy of… oh I can’t remember, but thanks!

I don’t need to have a go at road riding, I do it an awful lot and love it. But what if you have never been on a road bike before and want to start… what have you been missing?  The escapism as you leave the city and smell the fresh country air, the sights you see when travelling a little slower, the interaction with other cyclists and pedestrians and the feeling of speed in your face. Road riding seems to have a little more of a stigma about it as it’s seen as ‘the Lycra sport’ and thus some are not as open to trying it. But it’s not necessary to zip your flabby bits into skin-tight clothing to enjoy the delights of a road bike. Get out there, climb some hills and enjoy the downhill bits. Screw what your colleagues say about push bikes, you know they are wrong. Road bikes are the new mid-life crisis purchase… just get one now and buy a Porsche when you’re 50!

There are lots of new experiences out there, and I now have a few more to try, and then conquer over the coming months. I hope you have fun trying something new.  Whatever you do… Do It Now.

Stevie

Today’s post is courtesy of Sonny from Jeep Gorilla, who just happens to be a mountain bike loving dude. Get set for a great read as to why he is Loving the Mountain Bike.

How I became a Mountain Bike Lover

by Sonny Williams

It was an orange Schwinn Roadrunner with a glittery white banana seat.  If that doesn’t give you an idea of the time period, then let’s say circa 1977.  Star Wars was just released and K.C. and the Sunshine Band had us boogeying the night away.  That Schwinn was a trusty steed, a true companion, one that enabled me to venture far from the confines of my suburban home in Texas and my ever-bothersome younger siblings.  I loved that bike so much, that while jumping ramps in a cleared field, I snapped the sissy bars right off at the head tube, and I cried right there, not caring what the other boy thought.  I slowly toted the broken rig back home in a friend’s wagon.  Fortunately, my dad knew someone who could weld it back together.  Not the fancy welds you see today on top-end bikes, but charred black like a scar.  It was awesome.

Probably my first real encounter with the off-road scene came as a 10-year-old or thereabouts at a homemade motocross track.  It was built by some dads and kids in the middle of a wooded area next to Duck Creek, the sylvan hideout and utopia for all the local hoodlums in my neighborhood.  Under a canopy of post oaks and pecan trees, the motor bikes had blazed wicked-smooth paths through the brush, and there were jumps and double jumps, and all the tracks led back to a large, open, sandy area that was like a large pit.  All the kids would gather on the higher plateau that looked out over the pit and the track, and the only way in was to take the steep drop.

We younger kids would watch in awe as the older ones, some with thin mustaches, rode shirtless in jeans on low-slung BMX-style bikes, like the Mongoose, some with those cool motomag wheels, and bunny pegs front and back.  These guys were fast as lightning and would spin in midair when they hit the jumps, their stringy hair whipping from their momentum, until they cruised back to the top of the plateau and frogged one of us in the arm.

Now I’m not sure if any of that led to my love of bicycles or if it remains some vestigial seed that continues to feed my current fondness for the mountain bike, but the memories are etched in my mind, clearer than any holiday or family outing.  I have always ridden bicycles, as a 7-year-old on vacation riding in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico, to the hilly paths around my grandparents home in northern Georgia.

I was given a 10 speed when I got older, but I confess my love for it never matched that for the Schwinn.  Perhaps I was a bit daunted by the multiple gears and missed the simplicity and durability of the never-failing single-speed.  Later, however, I raced road bikes in college and even after, once again finding that sweet bond between boy and bike.  I became lost in the exotic world of Campagnolo bicycle parts, and I pulled my hair back into a pony tail to emulate my favorite rider, Laurent Fignon.  I even had the spectacles to boot!

But then somewhere down the line, I gave up the road for the trails.  Flowy singletrack, muddy creek crossings, rock gardens, steep drops — these must indeed harken back to those days upon the Schwinn on that old motocross track.  I’m all about coasting the berms, bunny hopping logs, barely holding a line (and sometimes losing it!) as I scorch a downhill, and my favorite, cranking up and grinding on tough, rocky climbs.

I do not have to worry about stop signs or stop lights.  There are neither pick-ups pushing me off the road nor passers-by hurling vulgarities or Coke cans. Instead, the more remote I get the better, lost in the forests, mountains, canyons and deserts, surprised by darting deer, otters swimming in a river or the adrenaline-pumping spotting of a black bear.  Now that will get the heart racing!  Perhaps mountain biking is after all, as it was in my youth, an escape, my adult sylvan utopia, where the only thing in the world is just me, my bike, the trail, and the occasional coyote.

Sonny Williams loves Jeeps, loves to build Jeeps, and loves being on the trail.  He’s a mountain biking, barbecue grilling, Texan who spends a lot of time being outdoors and enjoying his own Jeep lifestyle.  Be sure to visit his blog at www.jeepgorilla.com.