DR ◣◢

It really is broke back mountain(bike) in here.

I remember the pain being so bad. I was awake at 3:00 every morning. Basically fell out of bed and crawled until I could muster up the courage to stand. I would drag myself downstairs and walked around my garden for a few hours to keep the muscles from spasming. Movement helped. Being single meant I had to drive to physio. Manual car. Spasms. I sat bent over towards the passenger seat so I could use my left leg on the clutch. I will rather break my ribs every weekend for six months straight before going through that again.

I don’t think so. I’m not a doctor and I don’t know how badly herniated your disc is but I thought the same. “Oh it’s just sciatic pain, I’ve had this before, some meds, rest and and and” This was February. I had booked and paid in full for my trip to Morzine France that year. Even bought a downhill bike to make sure I would have the best possible trip. Two weeks in the alps doing laps in a bike park. Yeah... I lost my ass on that. I couldn’t even start my training. Surgeon said “No”.

Left leg went lame ???? How did your op go? I also did a stupid thing. Forgot about it actually. My pain was a lot better and my doctor gave the green light that I could ride that weekend. What did I do? I hurled myself down Helderkruin downhill track on my downhill bike. Ended up at the ER at Millpark and they wanted to admit me. At that time I was very much single post divorce with no support structure in place. I declined and went home with a box of Tramadol. I was an idiot.

I was off the bike for weeks at a time with my L4/L5. Excruciating sciatica in my left leg. It would heal up and never mind how easy I took it getting back into riding I would just get injured again. The final straw that broke my back was misjudging a drop and landing from shoulder height to flat. Not good. I felt ok but I knew something was wrong. Rested. A couple of days later I was hit by a car which just made it worse. That was it. Discectomy at age 33 after the disc basically burst pushing the against the nerve so bad that the MRI showed a black spot where it completely cut the nerve off The process of treatment to operation took 4 months. 4 months of my life I can’t remember because of the amount of drugs I took. Drugs that kept the pain tolerable for 4 hours at a time before it hit me again. Imagine sleeping for 4 hours a night before getting trapped in a world of hurt between 3:00 and 8:00 before you can “shoot up” again. The op was a huge success. I woke up in ICU and I was pain free. Morphine yes but even when it wore off I could just feel the wound and no longer my leg pain. The removed most of the disc between L4/L5 and decompressed L5/S1 and L3/L4. On day two I walked again without pain. Bliss. Then the catheter came out. We don’t talk about that. 3 days later I was released from hospital and recovery took 6 weeks. The detox from the previous 4 months of opiates and **** hit me hard. I was really sick from withdrawal. I was confined to resting for 6 weeks with bio kinetics and physio. Op was in April and I was back on the bike in September doing just slow miles on the road bike and IDT. I think my first mtb ride was in November. Slow and easy with no jumps and bumps. Here I am +- 7 years later with zero issues. I’m riding harder than ever on the trails and loving it. I have permanent nerve damage in my left leg but it’s manageable. Take really good care of yourself. Try some sessions with a biokineticist to build up your core and also try getting some sessions on an inversion table. Paracetamol is your friend. Avoid a chiro at all costs. It properly ****** me up. Good luck you. I don’t wish sciatic pain on anyone.

My info was leaked a while back to these JSE scammers. The guy had everything down to my address and ID number. Granted the address was about 12 years old.

I really hope they can recover in the future. Always wanted to go there for some r&r&r

Was there a compounding bad vibe with corona being the final straw that broke the camels back or was it solely to blame on corona?

I meant the guys trying to phone with their scam stories.

Looking forward to their attempts

I badly wanted to run the 180mm. Insertion depth of my frame was limited by the internal cable routing tube. Solution was to chisel away at it but no. Not happening. It was just not going to work. The 150mm still drops far enough for me.

I got the V2 tool. I really liked the green on the V1 but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The addition of the small storage capsule is nice even though I don’t think I’ll use it ever. The purpose is for people running shorter or internally tapered steering tubes to be able to attach the plug kit.

For the weight watchers. The bar and stem weighs 390g as a combo.

Looks really clean. All I need now is a set of black aluminum spacers below the stem. Carbon is so 2010 and nothing else on the bike is raw carbon. I won’t lie. Installation took about 3 hours in total. Trimming 3mm off the fork steerer was a pain but it’s perfect now and the stem sits 100% flush with the top lip of the stem. The preloading and aligning the stem at the same time is tricky. I found that removing the front wheel while on the work stand is the easiest to do the initial compression of the bearings. Then nip the stem tight and install the wheel. Once off the stand you can loosen the bolts slightly to straighten the stem. Tighten up and preload the bearings. Then lock the bolts at 3nm. Interesting part was torquing the stem bolts to 9nm. Felt weird.

Careful with ordering tools. I got hammered bad for two torque wrenches and a socket & bit set.

“Piets” is iets wat mamma eerder moet sê

New bars and EDC system installed not the most difficult install but I had to shave 3mm off the top of my steerer tube to get the fit pixel perfect while avoiding the use of the plastic spacers. Will post photos later.

I can’t be bothered to take my seat off now ????

Maybe around R100 and hour of that. R150 if he is really good. Again why I don’t trust bike shops. A passionate mechanic will become a disgruntled one if the pay isn’t great but work is scarce.

V2 dropper. Great so far. Has the standard side-to-side play. Same as what my old KS had. It can be a little faster on the return but I should check the pressure. Easy fix.

Can’t find the tap or cap system locally. Only the new preload system. Based on past experiences with similar systems they don’t work when the wheels leave the ground often

As soon as the new bars are on ????

No guarantee that the mechanic tightened that bolt either. Don’t trust anyone but myself with my bike. I built it from the frame up to the cable tie. I know every single bolt is tightened with a torque wrench to spec and every component has the correct grease, thread lock, fibre paste etc applied.

Only the EDC ones. Check out Trailtech Cycles.

Did you tap the steerer?