It’s been a while ! 10 years at least since I put the cycle trials bike in the garage and tried to forget about it ..
Every so often i’d get the urge to have a hop out on the drive, and a couple of years ago riding mate Francisco bought a mod and came down for a ride but he found it a bit hard and gave up straight away 🙂 So the biketrial again took a back seat to the moto stuff.
2 years later and look where we are now!! Covid 19 has had us locked down for the best part of a year with just a couple of rides possible in the late summer. So I thought i’d dig the old Echo out and try again … problem is i’m now 55 and weigh a good couple of stone more than i should! I’m also still carrying the knee injury that stopped everything for me for 6 months around 9 years ago … doesn’t really add up to an ideal person to do biketrial again.
One thing i’m not aiming on doing is actually getting any good at it, if i was to try anything more than a 1 metre drop or gap I think i’d be out of action again for some time. But I can still try and get rid of some weight by hopping around on easy bits and trying to move the bike around in awkward places.
With this in mind i loaded the bike into the van and went to a place we last rode at probably 12 years ago … just by the side of the M5 junction up the road from home. Nothing special, just a drainage lake and a few sets of steps but its out the way so not many will see when i feck it all up … which will be often!
Looks like no one had used it since we last went there, most of the steps have overgrown and the decking around the edge of the lake has started to fall apart, and as i discovered today is like riding on ice in the winter!
As you can see from the video above I’m very lacking in not only skill, but fitness! After this 40 second effort i had to have a 10 minute rest 🙂 But it was good to try again, and find an old spot i can hide away and keep trying at. So far we have old mate Tony on board with a bike, Lee over in Wales with his lad Mason and possibly Francisco again if he can buy something and keep it for longer than 5 minutes … plus a few more old mates and web friends. The r2w old gits biketrial team is reformed !!!
