Bec went for a ride around Rivelin and Stanage with her new camera phone and came back with some decent pictures, technology seems to be moving on faster than I can blink. I wasn’t there as I’ve hurt my back and picked up a cold, at the same time, bah.

A bit of a public service announcement, the entries for the Avalanche Enduro in Innerleithen seems to have opened without any fanfare at all, so if you feel like throwing yourself down a mountain 6 times over two days (and ride back up again under your own steam) then go sign yourself up over at the Avalance cup website (there is an English button at the top, as I realised after a while): click here, we’ve entered.

Look what just turned up, all 160mm (6.3 inches!) of travel and just 5.5lb of German Wotan efficiency. Do I need these forks? Err, no. But do I want them and are they guranteed to make me much, much faster? Ohhh yes. There are a few problems remaining of course, firstly I didn’t realise you need a MINIMUM 203mm disk rotor and my poxy LX 160mm one just doesn’t come close to reaching the caliper, oh and I need to remember to bring the spacers home for my front hub to fit the 20mm Maxle (sorry Charlie/Nick, I would fit a Hartlett but they didn’t come with the option).

Well we’ve been meaning to launch a new version of the site since probably about this time last year, but loads of trivial stuff kept getting the way (like trying to earn a living, stuff like that). So finally it is here, and now I just have to think of something to write.

Maybe I’ll start with bus drivers, a strange subject to start with but I have just been all but run off the road yet again by one of these morons. Most people in Sheffield seem to drive pretty considerately compared to the hordes of BMW X5 owners we used to get down in Surrey, maybe it’s something to do with Sheffield having more uninsured drivers than anywhere else and they don’t want to get caught, but anyway… bus drivers. The worst ones drive the huge double-decker school buses marked BRIGHT BUS and painted, yes, bright colours and presumably they think that this means you can see them coming a mile off and leap out of the road, and leap you must, because they are not stopping, not for anything, and certainly not for anything so trivial as avoiding crushing me beneath their mighty wheels.

I’ve even managed to catch up with bus drivers for a bug-eyed, out-of-breath rant a few times. Yes they may be specially fitted with Rolls Royce engines to churn their way up the steep hills but no-one, not even the bus drivers, can escape the traffic lights in Sheffield specially timed to turn red, well, all the time (more on this another day I think). Most of the time they feign ignorance, “Sorry mate didn’t realise you were still there” as if they’ve forgotten they’re driving a 40-ft turbo-charged lump of metal around, maybe it’s true, I mean surely they are not deliberately trying to run me off the road?

I don’t think there’s much hope for me though. They even managed to smash head on into each other a couple of weeks back, what hope is there for a mere cyclist if they can’t spot a double decker at 10 yards? I think I’ll just keep leaping.