MORNE

Nope. I call it how it is and stomp away. i don’t care who’s toes are in the way. I don't regret anything i ever post on here. And I am genuinely disgusted by just the general disregard for fellow riders - for the sake of a fast time in the fun ride world champs. Abd then when you ask an involved party if they are not going to stop for a crash they had a role in..you get told to “f@ck off”

Its not just you. Im here to call out every person who have said in the past the riding etiquette sucks in 4 down. I found myself in the upper 1’s and 2’s today for the first time and i was shocked at how bad the riding was. I witnessed 4!!!! brutal crashes around me…people in puddles if their own blood, two idiots came together at 50kph+ too after suikerbos. And not in one of those instances did the involved parties who didn't fall stop to help. Did you get thst sub 3:30? You twats. What f@&$cking boxes. Is it because they all think they are the next Armstrong? Why are people such a$$holes? At misty cliffs i also just decided ill sacrifice trying to go fast in the group and just ride on my own on the left. EVEN then the od poephol will come and pass you on the left. If this is how it goes in the upper groups i wont be riding here again.

Ill take early donations for next years prediction. Psychic’ing is hard work…especially in CT re weather things. 😝

Ek oorweeg dit om laf te wees en die beast vir n spin te vat. Sal more oggend besluit hoeveel pyn sal aanvaarbaar wees vir 109km 🤣

More ry ek niks… 😅

Yesterday we got a bag of simba chilli cheese curls. Id prefer the lentils and rice to be honest 🤣

21* sunny ~ no wind (relatively) Thank me Monday.😅

Theres the top 10. shout out to mr @Lyne Componentsin p3, and a mr Morewood-Pyga loitering around the top as well! also, spent a while riding and chatting with Cole. Nice to meet you. He soon after dropped me like a bag of potato's after the liaison to stage 2🤣 also nice to catch up with Mrs Nixon again. Proper aunty shredder.

And 11kg 100mm bikes lol i followed a guy down stage 4, he was on a hardtail. He destroyed me on the pedally bits , and not from a lack of trying from my side. Probably tried too hard to catch up and tgats why I fell haha. This was not an event friendly towards 160mm Amish bikes. hell, my cruiseliner couldnt even make it around some the switchbacks on the way UP to pinecone. Its just too long and has the turning circle of a interlink truck. Like I said already, i swear i would have gone faster on my old rigid mtb. Nothing there needed suspension. It was a hindrance . The ebikes for the most part made up for the the bits that went uphill mid stage. An extra 600W helps when gravity doesnt.

Biltong… 😅

5. Skydive, pipeline, pinecone, superbowl, stiflers mom. You should check. A rigid hardtail or ebike was the bike to have on these lol. Especially stage 4. Soooo pedally. Stage 1 was also the proof. Not quite steep enough to build speed on these squishy things. As soon as jou have to get up and pedal on an enduro bike, you are going too slow. But some of these sendy kids are fast hey, pretty sure they’ll beat even the pro’s DOWN a trail, like they proved at jonkers against johan van zyl. But that was more of a feat for him holding his own there against 160mm bikes on a xc bike.

It’s a stylus, unless you employ a hairdresser to do your markups?😅

I get that. But if the enduro was for arguments sake, 30km, the first 2 stages and the liaison to 3 covered 20-25km lol. I Carried 1.5L. Wasn't enough. And not everyone is an endurance biltong like you😅

Pretty much😅. Maybe you lot making a week of it brought the weather along with you. We need it though, so no complaints.

Thanks. yea I was probably due one haha. When I finally got to take all my kit off last night at around 9pm, it was 100% clear from the bruising that I took some handlebars in the ribs. Guess thats what knocked the wind out of me. it was good fun in the end.. at around d 1pm when people were scattering to find any form of shelter from the rain, I must say i almost decided to go home. Im not keen on messing up my bikes in the mud. Also, was convinced my tyre selection was going to be a disaster. As it turned out, the soil was so dry, that amount of rain just ended up making it all super tacky. Loved the minion SS on the back, it was amazing…like a slick on a rubbered in racetrack. The event was not without its flaws though. Biggest one being imo the single water table….and only on the way to stage 4. This was such a lazy box-move from the organisers imo. Cleary did not feel like going to the owloon side of the mountain to have a much needed point there. They could have put it at the start of pinecone even after that monstrous climb ub the valley if access was an issue. The trail markings on the way to stage 1 were a mess. The whole group ended up doing the start of the xc/marathon route before they realised we were going the wrong way haha. So we just aimed for the tower and took whatever tracks led there. What happened to warning of impending stage finish around 20m to go? You’ll come around a corner and overshoot the timing computer at mach 3, just to throw your bike down and run back to tag out. I think these niggles made it clear that the enduro was a last minute addition to the event. Mostly minor ones though, unless you ran out of water before the climb up to stage 3. There were plenty of kids resorting to picking unripened fruit off trees to get some sort of moisture in their bodies on that side of the mountain.

That was fun, but also super tough. This was way harder than Paarl imo. This was a day for the e-bikes for sure. That huge amount of rain just before the start made the trails so grippy. Pinecone was so much fun. Unlimited grip, that was the closest I think ive ever come to forgetting about my brake levers. You could just turn and hold on. My attempts to place somewhere around the middle got thwarted though when I ran out of talent around mid stage 4 in that fast section through the rocks and trees. I knew I was going down 10m before it happened haha. Connected with my bar/grip at speed and went OTB down the hill. Got winded real bad and spent the next few minutes heaving like a 2 year old in the bushes. When i finally caught my breath i got up and saw both my watch as well as the timing tag were missing from my bloody forearm. Im assuming my watch strap/pin is what cut me open. Started looking for them down the embankment. Found the tag since it’s red. Watch was gifted to the trail fairies i think. Couldn't find it. Thanks to the peeps asking if I was ok. Had to manhandle my bars back into place and limped home. Managed to finish in the end. All in all, thanks for a fun day!

the @Jewbacca, myself and a few of his real mates (im a internet friend🤣) are also around 2E. Since the mrs wont be joining, I can start up front(ish) to help stoke the 2E party train🤘 now to decide what steed and flanel colour to use for this party run…

Bump

Weather not looking great for this…. Edit: scratch that, that rain just got blown to witfontein. now we are probably in for hot and humid instead😅 The day I rode there it was also relative calm in terms of wind. Paarl is just a pizza oven though.

On a scale of 0 - Gnar, how accessible will these be for us blind folk?😅

When I fell my face off in 2020 (yes needed some plastic surgery to get my lip in the right place again 🤣) I pushed my shoulder out the back, my collar bones are obviously made of adamantium, was literally a bloody mess. - bike was ok. Im still not sure where and what my face hit, but the funny part is, my helmet did not have a single scratch on it, not even the visor came off. So sometimes not even a helmet helps haha. A full face might have.

Don't know everyone’s back story but I can tell you that I did this for a while after a got a knife in the face and relieved of my bicycle a few years back. You go though all the stages of depression and especially if you have a young family, weigh up the pro’s and cons of risking your life riding out and about, wether thats getting stabbed or run over by a car. It’s different if you only ride in closed parks. But thats not everyones cup of tea either. I love just riding in a direction for hours on end, but you just cant anymore on your own in this country. If you do you are taking a risk, and you need to be fine with tge possible consequences. Some people choose to mitigate risk by enjoying their hobby in different ways. If it works for them thats fine too.

Sorry, not clear what you are asking? On hope hubs the freebody just pulls off/out of the hub to reveal the pawls/ratchet. If you are asking if the cassette just pulls off like the old ones instead of having to fix it on like a Sram XD cassette, then the answer is that the 12s shimano stuff works exactly like the older HG stuff…the new freebody is just smaller. The cogs still slide over and get fixed in place with a locking.

Karl… i think you know what i’m going to say. But i’ll echo most of what everyone here has said. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, especially not to people half your age who still need to experience things you have already forgotten about. I stopped riding a mtb for a few years and you know full well that i’m a calculated risk person because of it now. Some days i can gooi it down the rougher stuff, other days my head tells me not to because I have responsibilities. Real ones. And then I walk the feature instead. I’ve also fallen my face off…quite literally. If I have to choose between the consequences of that vs. being told or perceived as having no skills or that I am a “xc-duro-bro” who cant gnar at mach 3 to save his life, or that clipped pedals are dumb….then so be it. I don’t care and you shouldn't have to either. I’ve never played well with others in this regard because I’ve never in my whole 39/40 years been a sheep. I’m immune to peer pressure. I do what I want, not what i’m expected to do. Take it easy, you don't want to be doing things that will affect the quality of your life in the not too distant future. Especially since you also have a small kid. Imagine not being able to take her somewhere or do things because you were trying to do things on a bike that don't matter AT ALL. If that means enjoying more mellow trails or just plain going slower and just riding to be outside and have fun, then so be it.

Only problem is @Meezo told me how he almost died haha. But blind it will have to be, george isnt exactly 30min away. Might make a weekend of it.