Black and White is the new colour.

Hmmm, Black and White. There was a time when that meant commitment… to changing film, to making sure you scribbled in indelible pen on the cannister if you pushed the films speed and if so, by how much, to spending hours in the basement darkroom printing the results just how you want them. Not anymore though eh.

My latest cover has landed, and it’s on the UK’s Document Snowboard magazine, and it’s B&W I’m glad to say. Glad, I mean because it IS black and white: the editors didn’t ask for the colour version of the digi RAW file, but instead saw the potential that B&W has always held in many images.

I’ve always been a lover of B&W work. Years ago (2001?), when Onboard snowboard mag wanted to run my portfolio, they wanted it to feature in their B&W issue, and for many years I spent hours squirreled away in my darkroom and making split-contrast prints (where you expose with light contrast filter to add detail to the highlights and then expose through heavy contrast filter to add depth to the blacks), split toning the finals (to add blue tone for deeper blacks for example) and just generally using up a lot of time I seemed to have back then. So B&W has played a pretty big part in my photography, and lack of social skill development.

As I’ve droned on in previous blog posts, shooting a B&W image really means choosing to shoot it in B&W right at the time you shoot it. Yep, its colour RGB data of course, and is rendered into B&W at the time of  ’RAW data processing’, but it’s important to decide it’s going to be B&W right from the start. That decision affects composition and lighting and exposure. When I shot this cover of Animal rider Johno Verity at Super St Bernard area in Switzerland last winter, I could see the line he was going to ride. so I got myself in a spot that was going to throw the backdrop into shade and backlight the roostertail he was going to throw up. Great B&W potential. The result: clean lines and an element of power, and a shot I’m glad wasn’t buried under cover lines.

Once this would have meant swapping to some Kodak Tri-X film and maybe dropping an orange or red filter on the front of the lens, pushing it a stop maybe, developing it when you got home and then spending a morning getting that print just right. Easier now of course. Sometimes us B&W photographers even get time to go out and see what daylight looks like.

It’s all about the page count.

The January 010 issue of the UK’s What Mountain Bike magazine landed in my postbox with a hefty plonk. I’ve been quite keen to see it as it is a bit of a Milner issue this one.

With a cover, my Back to Blighty feature on returning to ride in the UK after ten years living away, a DPS gallery shot and the whole all-mountain bike test feature we shot in Chamonix in September all wrapped up in one issue, I felt pretty chuffed when I finally got it in my mitts. My work added up to a wholesome 22 pages of work… not bad for a “freelance contributor”. 

Freelancing, in case you’re wondering, requires constant effort, especially in the field of editorial. You’ve got to keep “in” with editors, keep track when they come and go,  make sure your name is on their list, constantly conjure up original features and pitch them in the right way and show them you are actually up to the job.

And then nag them about raising a commission.

It’s times like this though, that I feel that relocating to the Alps was a worthwhile move…. having all that glorious terrain and scenery (oh, and riding) on your doorstep and finding ways to make it pay.

Another shot from the cover shoot session.. the one I thought would be staring down from the newsagents' shelves. It actually got used in the bike test feature instead. Canon EOS 1Dmk2N, Nikon 14-24/2.8

 

Of course the scenery only works if you can persuade an editor/art editor/marketing manager to send a bunch of product your way to shoot for them, and that isn’t always easy. Product samples have a habit of becoming elusive just when a shoot needs doing, bikes don’t turn up in time (one only arrived just in time for the last day) and weather, well it does what it wants. It involves time and organisation.

The WMB 4-dayer in September took Rob and Justin a day to drive 14 hours here in a large van with 8 bikes inside, and then a day to drive back afterwards. We ended up with perhaps the worst 4 days of weather in the whole summer, with fog and even snow. But I think with the WMB page count already hefty and lots more from the shoots still to be published in future issues I think the editor, or rather the WMB accounts dept will find that it paid off after all.

So if you missed WMB 104, here’s a sneak at some of its Milner content:

The cover. Cover shoots for product-focussed magazines like WMB go something like this: Find a good location (something that already caused you a week of sleepless nights) with good trail foreground and stunning backdrop and get the riders to ride, re-ride and ride again the same bit of trail until you’re happy with the result. ‘Happy’ means you get the flashes balanced, you compose the shot so the designer has ample space of a million coverlines and boxes, you can see the product well (in this case one of the grouptest bikes) and the rider has a smidgen of style and isnt gurning. Then you move onto the next spot. Repeat.

The Feature. Features are split into 2 types: The stock commission and the day-rate commission. Stock features are what comes from the photographer/writer’s creative mindset, in this issue the Back To Blighty feature. You come up with a good excuse to go and ride somewhere interesting, make it sound to the editor like the magazine needs to run it

Just an excuse for a two week romp around british trails really.

 

, and secure a commission for it. You get paid a package for the words and pics, which isn’t as solid as a nice day rate, but you get to ride some damn good trails in the process, and you had the freedom to shoot them how you felt. The day-rate commission, such as the all-mountain bike test,  is something the magazine’s editor has in mind and commissions you as photographer to shoot for them. This runs something like this: they have a certain set of images in mind and you fill in the blanks, usually by setting up flashes and shooting the same bits of trail several times and not actually riding at all, or if you do, it’s with a 15Kg back pack laden with lightstands… and that doesnt count.

Right, where did  I put my list of story ideas…?

Don’t leave home without: adventure biking’s top 12 essentials

As part of the profession I’ve carved out for myself, I get to haul my bike around adventure destinations and shoot photos along the way. Of course my bike is my pride and joy and I have it spec’d just how I like it. The only problem with that is ‘how I like it‘ means it’s adorned with a lot of pricey kit. It’s funny how today’s trail bikes can deal with damn good drubbing trailside but are actually pretty fragile when it comes to hauling them about. In my experiences over the last few years -in Morocco, Argentina, New Zealand and most recently Nepal to name a few- I’ve learnt a lot about what you can do to make sure your bike gets to B from A in some kind of working order and how you and bike can survive in one piece. Well, two pieces I suppose.

Polaris Bike Pod

 

Usually my adventure trips in remote locations involve lugging the bike by any one of a dozen possible different means.. on taxi or bus roofs (with or without roof racks), bus cargo holds, plane holds (anything from 20 seaters to 747’s), hitched rides in pick up trucks… the list goes on. Most of these are essentially the only option for covering ground in “developing countries”. So here’s my top ten essentials for surviving the adventure biking challenge: and riding beautiful remote singletrack with wheels that actually still go around.

1. A good bike bag. If you’re starting and finishing in the same place, then you’ll always find a budget hotel to store your bag while you’re out and about. I just used the Polaris Bike Pod, which with the right packing has been the best bag I’ve tried to date. At 6Kg its way light enough not to eat into your luggage allowance and its semi-hard outer has withstood the knocks of a month of Nepalese bag hauling. Big enough for a decent full susser (eg,Yeti 575) yet small enough to get in the back of a very small suzuki taxi. Nice.

2. Cheap foam sleeping mat. Pad out your bike in the bike bag, and then take it with you on rides. It weighs nothing and is the essential portable packing for protecting your bike’s frame when they’re carried on the bus or jeep roof. Stick one between the bikes when they’re laid on top of each other (take the pedals off too for this).

3. Ditch the lock on grips. Rubber ended grips like the Yeti logo grips give a good rubber end to your handlebars. This helps avoid damaging metal roofs of taxis (you dont want to p*ss off a taxi driver in morocco), and generally helps avoid damage to otehr biks when they’re stacked.

4. Centre lock disc brakes. Discs are great on bikes, but they are a pain in the *rse when you’re hauling your bike on buses and jeeps. A bent disc stops play, simple. So you’ll often need to whip them off before you pass your bike up to the lad on the bus or jeep roof so eager to put a 56 lb sack of potatoes on top of them. Centre lock discs are fast to take off and put on, at least way faster than 6-bolt.

strip off your layers to protect your pride and joy.

 

5. Drybags. So the Mustang region of Nepal doesnt get any rain, but it has rivers. Lots of them. Often bridges over rivers in places like this are temporary, seasonal affairs, and can be a challenge  to negotiate in themselves. The knowledge that yourr camera and passport are safe and DRY inside your day pack goes a long way when you’re teetering over a wobbly bridge or wading through a river, feet numb from the icy water and about to take a swim. Try Sea to Summit.

6. Fleeces and jackets. Even with your foam mat padding out your bikes frame, other extremities like handlebars, gear shifters or fork legs inevitably end up resting against the solid, component-chewing metal bar of the roof rack. Tie your bike down and then knot any fleeces or jackets around the part of the bike and wedge the material firmly between metal and component. You’ll get a very dusty fleece, but at least your carbon bars will still be one piece.

 

 

magic air glue holds bikes in place on Nepalese taxi roof racks

 

7. Water filter. The developing world’s tourist spots are becoming buried under mountains of plastic bottles. Without recycling facilities this is a real problem. Taking your own water filter, such as those by Katadyn makes any tap water safe to drink. Pump it straight into your pack’s reservoir.

 

8. Luggage straps. Hard to believe but taxis in many countries dont have suitable rope to tie your bike onto the roof. Carry your own web lock-down straps (and even a couple old toe-straps) and you’ve got it dialled, worry free.

9. Double chainset with bash-guard. OK, so it might not be the component of choice for the cycle tourist hitting the Karakoram Highway, but if you’re heading somewhere to only ride singletrack, then consider an all-mountain style double chainset with bash-guard. Whatever happens and however your bike is transported, your chainring will still be round. (On one trip, the big chainring on a regular triple got bent to 90 degrees, and that was while it was still inside a padded bike bag). 

10. Protect your forks. Oversize chainstay protectors such as from Lizard Skins can be velcro’d on and off your for stanchions in a jiffy.. the one bit of the bike you REALLY don’t want to scratch. Carry ‘em in your day pack for any jeep-transport eventuality that may come up.

11. Legwarmers. Lycra leg warmers are not just for the roadies. They make a perfect packable layer for warding off the morning cold of the mountains, while leaving you to enjoy bare legged freedom when the subtropical sun returns mid morning. Try Endura.

12. Hanger. A replacement rear-mech hanger almost goes without saying. Impossible to find in any remote corner of the globe, although Sonorom’s shop, Dawn to Dusk in Kathmandu did have a supply of replacement hangers for all sorts of bikes, and all of them milled out of brass billet by Sonorom himself.

Slides for Life: the annual Year of Bike get together

As my home valley becomes undeniably buried under several feet of snow for the foreseeable months, I’m forced to relinquish my now futile grip on the idea of charging epic singletrack trails on my bike. This time of year is a funny one, all riled up by months of intense trail riding, it’s hard to accept that this addiction will have to go cold (literally) turkey for a few months, and facing forwards will be replaced by a sideways stance. In the meantime, my postbox fills weekly with a mix of magazines whose pages are blessed by my creative lenswork, but it’s an odd mix too… snowboard and mountain bike magazines are evenly matched at this time of year, going tete a tete in an even match. 

So, to cap off what has been a pretty amazing mountain bike season, last night I pulled together what has become an annual event: the Milner’s Year of the Bike slideshow -a get together in Chamonix of any bikey types who like to *sit quietly/heckle from the back/spot themselves in the pictures (*delete as appropriate) while I project bigger-than-life size images of various trail-orienated exploits before them, and ramble profusely and often inanaely on the story behind the photo. This years show included our 4-day traverse of the GR221 in Mallorca, a 3 day lift-poaching exercise in Chamonix where we hid our bikes in bags and smuggled them up “no bike” policy lifts,  an epic roadtrip around Britain’s best riding spots, an exploration of some of Switzerlands smallest lifts to access the trails beneath them and finishing off with a charge around Nepal. Phew what a year. You’ll catch all these trips as they are published in What Mountain Bike or MBUK magazines.

With help from the Vert Hotel providing a great space and a little shout out via the Chamonix Insider we pulled in several hundred people (OK< so the offical police estimate is 70). It being the norm with any of the bike related activities I do, a whip-around for Hans Rey’s charity Wheels For Life was done, collectingthe gransd sum of 180.30 Euros to help provide bikes as a social aid to villages in developing countries. If you don’t already know abou this scheme, check out their site. Great work indeed.

So if you missed this show last night, then February will be the next opportunity to be titillated by the adventure-laden world around you, when I will be delivering another show, this time on the Deeper Alaska-camping/splitboard trip I did last winter with jeremy Jones and Travis Rice. 

And as this blog is really about photography and the life that exists around it, here’s a shot from last night’s show.

Getting from A to B with your bike in Nepal is easy, you just have to go via X. Leica M8, Voigtlander 15/4.5

Lateral thinking: photo opportunities on the hoof

Four weeks in Nepal wasn’t enough.

When you’re out and about in some far-flung foreign country armed with a camera and a magazine commission some of the best things that come up are the unexpected and unforeseen opportunities that present themselves to nail other photos. And of course, come up they will.

There’s the odd shot, the random travel image that tells a story, but what’s always more meaty than these often spontaneous-snaps is a chance for a little photo study: a set of shots of a subject that gets behind the scenes, and gets the photographer all hot and excited in an orgy of creativity. For the pro-photographer experience helps in spotting potential photo stories on location, and while we pro photographers like to think we’re on holiday, it’s rare for us to actually disengage from seeing potential image sales; often a call or email to an editor will find a home for the holiday-disrupting commission.. damn this digital, speed of light planet). Hmm, maybe that makes us sound a little mercenary, when if truth be told, the potential commission just gives us the excuse to get stuck in with the subject in hand, to try to capture the subject in its true light. And we just love that.

A few years back in Alaska, while bad weather raged,  I saw the potential of a B&W feature on the “real heroes” of the AK big mountain ski scene. the people without whom the whole extreme media thing couldn’t happen. A call to The Snowboard Journal found the feature a home so I arranged portrait sessions with a skiplane pilot, a boss of the heli ski operation and a ski guide, and shot each of them in their “office environments” (in this case a plane hanger, a diner’s payphone, and in front of a beaten old pick up truck waiting, respectively). You’ll see these portraits on my website in the people gallery (www.danmilner.com). More recently I shot a series of  images capturing street scenes in various towns in Argentina after nightfall (a time when the real Argentina usually comes alive). Of course, the Nepal trip I did last month to shoot a feature for MBUK mountain bike mag was no different. 

Travelling with a bike usually breaks down a lot of barriers; Kids want to ride with you, old men want you to pull wheelies. Everyone wants to pull on your brakes and squeeze your tyres. Stopping to chat with people opens up scores of opportunities, not just in being able to photograph the essential elements of what makes a country tick, but also, more importantly, in starting to understand a country and its people, to open up an exhange of information and experiences. Somehow you manage it, despite only having a few words of a common language.

So, on our way through Pokhara, a city whose tourist area is festooned with trigger-happy camera wielding tourists, we passed by a half dozen bike-repair shops, where grimy-handed men wrestle ageing bikes in an attempt to return them to the road. As a bikey person, these are fascinating places -a million miles from the colourful bike shops of Europe that are piled high with expensive state of the art kit. Stopping by one to see what the owner/mechanic, a man named Shree dal Subedi was doing and to try to understand a small slice of life in Nepal. I said hello, watched as he rubbed down a frame for repainting and asked if it was OK to capture it all in images. He looked over our bikes and showed me how the Nepalese fix punctures. He spoke only a couple of words of English and me the same in Nepali, but we exchanged smiles and an appreciation of the bike as a means of travel.

Puncture repair Nepal-style. Leica M8, Voigtlander 40/1.4 and 12/5.6

 

For me it’s moments like this that are the most rewarding. Of course riding epic trails is a blinding buzz as is photographing them, and travelling to fabulous places makes me rarely want to swap my job for anything else, but these are the photos that end up being the most satisfying. They’re just small photo studies, shot on the hoof, that may one day find themselves a home in a mag.. or not as the case may be. But sometimes it isn’t only about paying the mortgage.

Shree dal Subedi's workshop... making bikes feel like bikes again

Deeper.. 9 out of 10 gnarl-monkeys prefer it.

So the great thing about being away for a month in a place where internet access is tricky (like Nepal), is coming home to a stack of updates on the progress of features arising from shoots already done and dusted. Of course the fact that the publication of such features puts the editorial photographer one step closer to getting paid (what? you didn’t know we only get paid a couple of months after publication?) is by the by (we do it for the lifestyle you know). But complimenting the stack of mags in my post box sporting features from our Alaska Deeper trip back in March/April is the posting on Transworld’s website ranking Jeremy Jones‘ brainchild of a trip as THE No. 1 Transworld’s Top Five adventures and my words and pictures package feature from the trip as “the most epic adventure story and images of the year”. 

http://snowboarding.transworld.net/featuresobf/2009-top-five-transworld-adventures/5/

Of course when I accepted Jeremy’s invitation and signed up for this trip, and was sent the suggested kit list that included “Personal Locator Beacon” (no, I didnt know where to find one of them) I knew we were on for an epic that would tickle editors’ fancies worldwide. All I had to do was make sure I captured the real essence of camping on a glacier for two weeks while hiking lines between crevasses and trying to keep camera batteries alive in minus 15 temperatures and learn to love wet-wipe baths… Easy stuff.

Right now the count is still on, for what is the biggest selling story I have ever done. Transworld Snowboarding (the biggest snowboard publication in the US) gave it a whopping 14 pages. White Lines in the UK ran 12, MBM in Germany gave it a healthy 9. Snowsurf (France) 9, FriFlyt (Norway) 6 pages and Australia and NZ Snowboarder 6 pages. When I hit 100 pages I might be able to afford to get the frostbite treated.

Jeremy Jones halfway through Transworld's no.1 adventure. Canon EOS 1D M2N, 70-200 2.8L.

Dusty sensors and big mountains.. very big mountains: Nepal.

Dust.. anybody? I just spent most of today editing and processing the one thousand images that fill the memory cards from my latest trip.. well, processing is more of a diplomatic way of saying “spotting out dust” on the images. A couple of days ago I got back from Nepal, one of the windiest and dustiest locations I have ever shot, and as you guess, wind and dust and interchangeable camera lenses don’t make the best bed fellows. 

For a small country (about the size of the UK), Nepal packs some big punches in terms of scenery. It’s a place that has been on my hot list for riding bikes, shooting pictures and eating curries for years, and so with the country now at (relative) peace again after several years of civil conflict, this November-December seemed a good moment to go and see what this Himalayan country is all about.

With a feature commission from MBUK in hand and a couple of vaccinations in the arm, we landed in Nepal with a Yeti 575 and a Trek Ex 8.5 but very little plan of what to do next. Well, at least “wing it” seemed like as good a plan as any, after all the whole country is cross-hatched by trails. Of course many are perilous, vertical helter-skelters of stone steps, both up and down, with drops of several hundred metres straight down to certain death in raging torrents below, so ideally in Nepal you need at least a little heads up on where to find good trails. The beauty of the global bike culture though means if you have a bike in tow, you’re not left out in the cold for long. Meeting up (and riding) with local riders like Santaram at the Nirvana Cafe (and Commencal bike centre) in Pokhara soon set us straight and before long we were immersed in the incredible scenery of the Mustang region, an area that sits West of the 7000m Annapurnas and stretches North to the Tibetan border. Mule and yak trails score the landscape here, making for epic singletrack riding if you can handle the altitude… the secret of that is to hitch a bumpy ride in one of the local jeeps to cover the climb up to places like Muktinath at 3800m.  High and dry, Mustang is treeless, making for one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen (and thats coming from someone who likes trees a lot) but the absence of trees  however means little protection from the wind and dust storms that rage daily, and inevitably many hours to be spent spotting out dust that has found its way onto my Leica M8’s sensor (you’d think for the price, the M8 would have some kind of dust removal device on its sensor, but no… why make it easy. In fact there was so much dust-spot healing going on in my Adobe Camera Raw program today, the images had adopted a very “snowy” seasonal look).

Tibetan culture, buddhist monasteries and stupas and great autumn light made off-bike shooting as rewarding as the riding, while on the bike, we found that the more trails we rode, the more we saw sitting just out of reach to be ridden another time. Damn there are a lot of trails there; a revisit is on the cards for sure. But the riding in Nepal is changing, albeit slowly. While the tourism industry of Nepal gathers momentum once more, new 4×4 roads are being forged through much of the country, replacing many of the age-old singletrack mule trails that connect remote villages. While this is a spanner in the works for many of the trail-trekking-tourists (most of whom seem to welcome the hot showers that the jeep-transported gas cylinders supply) and mountain bikers, it comes as a blessing for the locals, tired of lugging provisions for days up vertiginous mountainsides. And while our own experiences included many sections of broken 4×4 tracks, we were never short of epic rides with a huge helping of adventure to boot. The MBUK story is penned to come out around April, but in the meantime here’s a taster…

Nepal: great trails, great people.

Flashgun ettiquette

I never thought I’d see the day. My Canon flash guns are almost burnt out with exhaustion.

Back in September I was commissioned by What Mountain Bike magazine to shoot two different features, both spread over several days and both quite different briefs. What held them in common ground was the use of my flashes. Now those who know my work will probably be aware of my hunger for using natural light whenever I can, and an erring towards for dark, moody shots. I’m no Sam Abell, but when you look at his work in reportage, you get the idea that flash can be a little overrated. While his long insistance on using only natural light has played a good part in molding my own ideas of what can work, of course Mr Abell didnt shoot for contemporary mountain bike magazines, for which the use of flash (or strobes as photog’s like to call them) is almost an essential requisite for fill-lighting product and adding some pop to the image on an otherwise dull day. 

Of course not using flash is quicker, with no set up times, so on multi day epics when you don’t know how long a ride waits ahead of you, or if you’re going to make the next village before nightfall, this can avoid unwanted delays when documenting an adventure. Natural light often looks, well… more natural, while flash can sometimes appear a little too artificial, at least to me, especially in the natural, mountain environment. 

So I sold out. Well, not exactly sold out, but I hammered those little flash guns to near death. At Eurobike, the World’s largest bike expo, I squeezed between the 45,000 trade visitors to capture the required images of next years product to provide the mainstay of an 18-page feature that has just emerged in WMB issue 102 this month. The second shoot was an on-mountain, action 4-dayer, that coincided with perhaps the only cloudy -nay foggy- week we had all summer and autumn. 

Now flash is nothing new to me really: I got sucked into the current (and overdone) trend for flash images in snowboarding a couple of years ago now, mostly using my Lumedyne studio set up, so I realise the potential for flash, even if my ‘mountain eye’ doesn’t usually welcome it. I see flash as a useful tool, especially for controlling the light rather than replacing it… it’s there to add effect and if used well, can stylise a photo. But I am still a fan of nice chunky shadows, adding a ton of depth and power to an image.

So here’s a sample of what came out.. the opener to the Eurobike feature in WMB mag. The brief for this shot was to capture the “bigest trend” apparent at Eurobike, something that had me and the Tech ed scratching our heads about. Finally on the last day, after he had left I decided the advent of the double chainset was the “trend” this year and pulled a Giant bike complete with Sram XX kit from Giant’s stand and asked one of the Giant’s German guys to help me shoot it outside. Afte it p*ssing down with rain all day, I scored a brief lull in the storm and I set the bike (German hand holding back wheel upright just out of shot) to have the dark, moody storm clouds parting behind and a glimmer of an old shipping container to the side (to give it that “just landed look”) and dialled in my Canon Speedlights to highlight the chainset. I lay in the rainy tarmac and made the little babies light up.

Dark, moody pics, me?

 

How to make a wet carpark and a shiny bike look.. well, moody.

 

 

The Reason.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes… well that’s a little how it seems to me. Readers of this spirited blog and many UK snowboarders alike will no doubt be aware of the demise of Snowboard UK magazine earlier this year, something that as long-standing senior photographer of said publication came as a small blow. The bitter taste left by a publisher suddenly pulling the plug (and leaving photographer’s invoices unpaid) is of course one that takes several pints of good ale to dissipate, but somehow, inside I knew something would come along before too long, something that would make for a positive way forward.

And it comes in the form of The Reason magazine: a definite fresh direction for the UK snowboard magazine. And the first issue gets the Milner treatment on the cover, with the sort of shot many mags would struggle to find a home for.

Spearheaded by the unblinkered visions of Ian Sansom, the guy who brings you tight-jeans wearing london-types Fixed (a rather natty print mag for fixie bike riders), The Reason will be ditributed free in snow-orientated outlets. Free of course is nice, but not as nice as the fact it will be printed on FSC-certified sustainable forest paper stock using vegetable-based (ie, non toxic) inks.

After bumping into Ian at the recent Eurobike expo in Germany, he asked me if I’d contribute to next winter’s new Reason mag. Certainly old chap, I said simply for the above eco-minded reasons alone. I’ve known Ian for many years, he being the first editor I worked with at SUK many years ago, a time when baseless bindings and enormously-cuffed mitts were the rage. I like his direction and style and I can only assume he likes mine: I make this assumption as I’ve landed the cover shot on the inaugural issue: The reason, issue 1. Why wait until next winter to start working again together. So, of course I’m chuffed to be a small contributing part of a new project, one that is looking outside the usual “sell it” priorities of many publishers.

From the ashes…

reasons to be cheerful, part one

Thirty Four. Just a number?

It’s just a number: thirty-four. Just a number, but it holds a legacy. It’s become the dividing line between them and me. It’s not age, it’s not time, and it’s not miles per hour. It’s teeth on a sprocket, the number of teeth on my largest rear sprocket that has pushed me further and further out on a limb. Who would have thought the humble thirty-four would reap so much havoc?

Years ago I used to ride with an XT rear cassette. It ran 8 sprockets from 11 to 28 teeth. Then came 30. By the time I fitted a 32-tooth cassette I told myself that was it, that was enough. I’d never need a lower gear than that, not with a 22-tooth chainring up front. After all 19 gear-inches is a lung-pityingly low ratio. At least that’s how I saw it, even for the first couple of years after moving to the French Alps, a place where ‘hills’ are formidable and men smell of… well, just smell. As an XC rider training for the Cristalp marathon I had the legs to push a beefy gear up hill and I was loving it. And anyway I had no other option, 32 was a lot of teeth on an 8-speed cassette.

And then Shimano threw a spanner in the works. The 11-34 cassette spanner to be precise.

Suddenly there was a lower gear, so low, with so much torque in fact that pedalling up the hour-long climbs that decorate my adopted home valley became nigh-on hour long wheelies (unfortunately the only time I can really wheelie very well). With 34 came an incredulously low 16.8 gear inches. Climbs became more bearable, lungs could relax a little. All worship the crawler gear!

But from the 34 a legacy was born.

I adopted a more leisurely pace up hill. After all what’s the rush? My priorities changed. Quad size paled in the shadow of simple stamina. My rides became more about simply getting out there, about riding with mates who also spin low gears, about getting to the top no matter how long it took and riding back down again.

Several years later I find myself chasing the back wheel of Tom Ritchey, pedalling the fast and swooping singletrack that is his back yard. His Scott Spark has no 34-tooth sprocket. He rides fast, rarely dropping from his middle chainring to power up the short climbs in the rolling hills south of San Francisco. Tom has big legs. The terrain he pedals is different to the Alps. He has no hour-long climbs to test his mettle. He has no need for a 34-tooth sprocket. And with the difference in terrain, comes a difference in muscle build. While I am rarely beaten by the big climbs of the Alps, I am now a nobody when it comes to ‘normal’ mountain biking. My legs and my lungs cant deliver that kind of unadulterated power, at least for more than a minute. The 34 has pushed me into a corner, and like an addict I have lapped up its easy-to-digest rewards. Only after a week of chasing riders in California do I feel like my legs are starting to build, that muscles are remembering what it was like before The 34.

Now I see double chainsets are sweeping aside the triples of old, even in the OE market, creating the kind of stir that has echoes of the 34 tooth cassette. I’m worried. It’s us and them again: those mashing huge gear inches with big, bulging thighs and those with the spindly, twiggy legs spinning away in crawler gears. So do I go Sram XX-style big and middle chainrings, or SLX all-mountain middle and granny? I guess there only one-way to find out: I’d best go for a ride.

Little trouble maker