We seem to have a friendly mouse who’s moved in. We keep finding half nibbled things around which is ok although the mouse droppings aren’t so nice. I saw it the other day, it was pretty cute like you expect mice to be. Kind of like the one in the picture.

We used to have two of them hiding out somewhere in here but I found one under 3 inches of water in the bottom of the washing up bowl on Monday morning, that gave me a fright I can tell you.

Steve Peat shows you how. I just found a top quality movie on his website with him and Nathan Rennie telling you “How To Win”, at least I think they are, people keep phoning and I haven’t had a chance to watch much of it yet.

http://www.stevepeat.com/?page_id=110

After seeing the preview (post below somewhere) of the new Collective movie in Wharncliffe we thought we should go and check the trail out. One word: awesome. Big drops, big berms and massive piles of rocks, it must have taken months to build and a lot of heaving materials around. It looks nowhere near finished yet either, the main line kind of finishes half way down and there are a few more in progress. I think we’ll be going back there.

The picture’s Wharncliffe, from a couple of weeks ago, but not the new stuff.

20 per box, 12 boxes of spokes don’t sound too expensive but this little lot which just arrived would set you back a surprising £540. They are DT Aerolite bladed spokes in case you were wondering. I just hope I ordered the right lengths….

Looking around the t’interweb today I came across an article on the MBUK site about The Collective filming Steve Peat in Wharncliffe, we like Wharncliffe but it’s almost getting boring now with articles in any magazine owned by Future Publishing having regular “Pro Rider Simon Richardson in Wharncliffe” features or “Pro Rider Will Longden in Wharncliffe” features.

Now it seems even The Collective want a piece of Wharncliffe action, which unfortunately means us having to buy yet another movie so we can see how our local trails are meant to be ridden. Hopefully it’s a bit more exciting than the samples on the MBUK site (click here) – 40mb each of a cameraman standing around and Steve Peat riding past in the background, not very exciting and I don’t recommend spending any significant amount of your life downloading them. I do feel the need for a quick Phreeride session to check them out in real life though…

This might turn into a bit of a rant, sorry. As you might have noticed we do some wheelbuilds based around American Classic hubs with the NoTubes Olympic rims, very nice wheels and as an aside you might want to buy some here. We’ve been trying to get hold of more hubs from the UK “importer” for well over a month now and I keep getting the longest string of feeble excuses you could ever imagine. First I tried to order in early February and was told that it would be fine, someone would call back next day, no call, then the snow was blamed for the delay getting back to me, then it was chinese new year which meant they couldn’t order for 10 days (?), then they had been ordered and were on their way, then they weren’t as they’d been held up at customs, then no-one has got back to me again another week later.

Anyway I have now discovered that the importer has gone into compulsory liquidation yet no-one told me this despite there only being two people there. I am pretty sure there never were any hubs and it’s all been a string of lies for the last 5 weeks but why? If they can’t get them then why mess me around? Shower of charlatans.

Luckily for me there’s a happy ending which is that I have now sorted out a supply directly with American Classic who are a very helpful lot, and I can start building those wheels again, as well as getting any other AC components, at last. Grrr.

when riding out with your mates do not spontaneously break into song.

*all these recommendations are based on real and actual events, (we couldn’t make these up if we wanted to).

Fitting some nice new Magura Louises to Bec’s flow last night I noticed a strange line on the side of one the bits where the bolt screws in, oh and another, and another… In all there were 5 cracked on the rear and all 6 on the front, must have been like that for a while and I can’t believe they didn’t all just snap off. Anyway we sent the hubs back to Hope to see what they think, they’ve had a good long life though so we’ll see what they say.

Update: they did replace the hub body even though they were ‘quite’ old.