Sunday 4th February 2007 and a rare afternoon start due to Terry being tied up at home 'til lunch time saw him team up with Jason and John to make up the regular trio of old bods, and be joined by a surprise visitor, our slightly younger "old" cycle speedway mucker, Gavin. This was Gavin's first foray off-road with MidAirCrisis and he rode Gollum's Barracuda for his initiation ceremony in Chopwell Woods.

Jason and Gavin rode together for a couple of years in both team and individual competition for the Newcastle Cycle Speedway Club and represented the new wave of riders we hoped would take the club right to the top. That was in their late teens and they haven't ridden together since. Unfortunately there were too many other things going on and sadly it didn't last. Gavin went on to lead England to victory in a Test Series against Australia and become one of the country's best riders. Jason went on to lead England in Darts but without the dart board. You can read a bit about that crazy sport which damaged all four of today's buddies more than we would have liked here.

ABOVE: Jason, John and Gavin discuss the baby mountain biker poking out of Jay's chest.

Whenever we get a guest rider (dare not call Gavin "novice" with the bike-handling skills he had as a youngster) we tend to take things easy to start with. So we headed up to the top of the woods to do the Root Route (see other Chopwell reports for area identification). Ominously, our guest for the day was the only one not gasping for breath at the top of the fireroad up to the farm. Golly led off down the trail, followed by John and Gavin with Jason at the back. At last the place is drying out decently, and apart from a slight hiccup as we crossed the ditch half way down, it was a nice opening to the day without incident, and we met up at the bottom to grab a second rest. Once again there was no sound of breath being drawn by Gavin.

We cruised past a couple of very young horse riders, out to rip up every piece of flat turf in the area with their heavy metal shoes, and dropped to the forest drive and the start of the Red Trail. This includes a couple of small berms and switchbacks then a timber ramp to a narrow log, and then onto a seesaw. That livened things up a bit as we were all too close together and the seesaw needs to be timed properly after someone drops it. We survived and paused again at the top of the Downhill run. It was here I think I heard our guest breathe. Could be wrong. Anyway, we all followed Jason down the twists, turns and drops of the Yellow Brick Road and gathered our forces again at the top of the section through the trees. This is pretty tricky at speed, and by now we'd forgotten all about having a new rider with us, so it was business as usual as Jay led Golly, John and Gavin down the chutes. However, we all got to the bottom more or less together so it was obvious we weren't gonna shake off the determined newcomer, who at least showed some loss of breath at last. It looked like he was enjoying the ride. Down the final section, Golly dropped to the back to watch Gavin on the berms and dodgy doubles. And what a treat that was, if only the helmet cam hadn't met it's maker some time ago I may have been able to show him almost losing it big-time on a tricky double hump!

Through all of this I must mention that ace mechanic Jay still hadn't put brake pads in the front of his Coiler Deluxe, so he was steaming along at 8 or 9 tenths with only a back brake for comfort. I remember doing this myself at Chopwell and not feeling too comfortable. Well done Jay. John is really getting to grips with his Kikapu Deluxe now and although he has reservations about it's skinny tyres (skinnier than his Saracen's tractor tyres, at least!) he's almost wearing the bike now. Gollum was on his ReCoil which has had a few more weight-shedding mods, and is now down to 32 pounds. He's scrapped the Crank Brothers 5050X pedals. They were dead pretty, but the pins are rubbish and offer very little grip in wet conditions. They've been replaced by fantastic cheapo Wellgo flatties with pins that go right through the soles of your shoes into your metatarsals. You can't slip off these little devils, even with flat soled brogues (because you forgot to bring your riding shoes, fool).

It was time to climb now, back to the car for a striptease (it was cold but it was hot) and a water top-up. We then cruised down to the top of our "Four Stages" run and it was Golly's turn to lead off, Jay pointing to his sawn-off front brake lever and shaking his head. First came a warning to the guest to be careful crossing the fireroads and to take it easy for the next three minutes. Did he listen to that last part? We set off and pretty much thrashed stage1 with the fallen tree causing a few cries of surprise behind. Into stage2 very fast with more of the same. Half way through stage3 Jay forced the Gollum offline almost impaling him on a six inch tree branch and took over the lead for the final section. So much for having no front brake. This was taken at what I thought was warp speed, but on reaching the final, gluey left hand berm into the log filled ditch, the poor old man was somewhat shocked when he heard a loud cry extremely close behind and realised he was millimetres from being speared broadside-on by Gavin, who was travelling quite a bit faster than humanly possible, and a lot faster than Yours Truly just when he should have been following nicely in line behind! With nowhere to go, Gav made the choice to save me rather than himself (should be in our rules!) and managed to avoid contact by jumping over the grounding Barracuda, staying on his feet as he ran into the trees off to the right. Lucky escape Number One for the MidAirCrisis crew, or half of it.

This put us at the lowest part of the stages, just below the Eagle sculpture so we climbed up the other side of the hill and got ready to tackle the last descent to the river and a desperately needed nosh break. Last time the Gollum rode here a few weeks ago, Andy witnessed him almost slide to his death off the edge of "The Edge" trail. So he made sure that the other three knew what lay ahead - an increasingly diminishing (does that make sense?) strip of steeply-angled singletrack that was just waiting to tip you down the hillside. I think I heard moans of "yeah, yeah..." as I took the lead again with some trepidation.

We approached the point where Golly had literally come unstuck and he shouted a friendly warning back to the other three - "careful, this is where I lost it". Just managing to one-leg it past the danger point, he was on his way to the next dip in the trail when that familiar cry went up. "Aiieeyahh!". Stopping immediately and turning, he was just in time to see Jason bashing into a tree 12 feet from the trail edge. Screaming madly for Jay to stay where he was he scrambled back along the edge groping for his camera. Clicking got these:

He needn't have worried about missing the shot, as Jay wasn't really ready to get straight back to his feet anyway. He was mumbling something about "falls", "halls", "walls" or something. I did notice he couldn't walk properly after the rescue. That tree saved his pork but may have prevented him makin' any more bacon. After taping Jay's seat together (nowt to do with the crash, he's just too fat) we managed to finish the trail down to the river. Before we left it, Gavin watched Golly and Jay do the steep drop at the end and proceeded to copy them. No problem. Pretty brave first time out on a strange bike. We snacked down by the river for 15 minutes. then hauled ourselves back upwards. On the way we stopped to get a short snippet of movie, haven't had any for ages.

The youngsters drop to the river                 One (4.5MB .wmv vid)        Two (3.5MB .mpg vid)

Just after the Eagle Gavin managed to snap the Barracuda's brand spanking SRAM PC991 chain, but it was quickly fettled with one of their superb Powerlinks. Too much leg power, he has. That was the only mechanical of the day. Great to see new faces, even better to see old ones! Let's hope Gavin gets a chance to ride with us again.

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