MRG Mystic Crumble

I have a dream. It’s not likely to end racial inequality and discrimination but it’s a dream none-the-less. The cyclists among us have all looked around bike shops or through catalogues, tongues slackened, drooling like a 15 year old boy over a picture of Jordan with her baps out, at the vast array of bike pornography on offer. Sweating feverishly over carbon cage derailleurs at prices you’d have sell a kidney to afford these places offer only glimpse of the potential titillation the more perverted of us desire. It is for this reason, I come here today to give you a peep (pun fully intended) at the future, the oily, sweaty, sordid, mechanical future. My dream, the bicycle strip club!

Picture this: the lights dim, dry ice drifts across a stage, the club shudders to the sound of some monstrous bass music. Then, out of the darkness comes a piercing blaze of LED light and a beautiful mud splattered girl riding the latest, fully tricked out La Pierre pedals her way to the stage. It’d be like a slightly less gay version of Judas Priest’s famous stage intro. She steps off the bike, takes off her helmet and proceeds to gyrate against a Park Tool work stand. Beautiful isn’t it?

In the interest of gender and sexual equality Saturdays could be ladies’ night, where lycra clad men lunge their padded crotches forth whilst gaggles of excited women stuff money up the skin tight shorts.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my gift to the world; I give you “Buns of (Reynolds 853) Steel.” You can thank me later. Investors welcome.

In January my girlfriend is heading to the city of Rovaniemi in northern Finland, Lapland to be exact, where she’ll be on the first of her third year nursing student placements. How ace is that! Though, sadly, I can’t join her for the whole three months I do get to visit her in the dark – only an hour of light a day – and frozen wonderland. Besides not freezing to death, I’m hoping I’ll get to go dog sledding, maybe see some ice hockey. Perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to witness one of nature’s most amazing shows, the Northern Lights.

The thing I’m most looking forward to though is possibly meeting some Inuits. These guys have an imagination that dwarfs even the Beatles in their psychedelic heyday. While the Fab Four were rambling on about brightly coloured aquatic vessels, our friends in the great white north were looking up at colours in the sky and coming to the conclusion that this must be spirits, playing a game of celestial football, with the skull of a walrus. If there’s a better explanation of anything, ever, by anyone, I’ve yet to read it. I doubt I ever will.

Sadly summer doesn’t last forever and even the cushion of autumn barely seems to delay the onset of daylight-savings and the grim realities of a British winter. For those of us who are nine-to-five office drones, slavishly chained to a desk pushing paper and printing reports that no one will read for a (barely earned) crust, daylight-saving time spells an untimely end to weekday riding in the light. Thank the beardy human construct in the sky then for those good people at Exposure (or USE if you prefer) for their rather magnificent range of lights; more specifically the Joystick Mk 5 (I await my bundle of goodies in the post if you’re reading this and work for USE). Yes, after years of winters feeling as unfit as John Prescott at a pie-eating competition, I’ve finally taken the plunge and bought something that’ll light up the trials better than a candle in the wind (yeah, that’s right, an Elton John quote; I thought it was topical with the up-coming royal wedding and all).

Having trialled the new light on my commute to work, including a proper ‘rabbit in headlights’ moment when a startled pedestrian stumbled into the cycle lane I was riding down (she’s probably still seeing spots when her eyes are closed) I headed up to Ashton Court for my first proper night ride. Having shelled out what to me is a small fortune for the light I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough to light up a pitch black trail. Thankfully my worries were short-lived as the trail lit up like the face of a chav whose just been told that McDonalds are giving away Lambert & Butler’s with every Big Mac. Charging onto the trail, joy rapidly turned to gloop; lots and lots of gloop! My racy hard-tail rapidly became a two-tonne clunker, my 2.1” tyres became 5” slicks, 26” wheels into 29ers. It was riding at a walking pace. There was more chance of Boris Johnson getting a sponsorship deal with Brylcreem than getting any sort of speed or flow and Joseph Fritzl would be winning father of the year awards before any sort of grip became available.

Valiantly we (my exceptionally tall (his bike is a climbing frame for me) friend Oli and I) plugged on through the quagmire of Ashton Court and 50 Acre woods and, bar many foot-downs and a comical slow-speed superman into a pit of filth (me sadly), both of us survived our night ride experience unscathed. Sadly that’s more than can be said for my beautiful bike, which now sits shedding dry mud in the hall way with an as yet undiagnosed problem with cassette. For all the fun of riding, I bet I’ll be spending more time getting Ashton Court out of my drive train than I’ll have spent actually in said Court. Safe to say, I like cleaning bikes as much as George Osborne likes poor people! Still, same time next week?

Have you ever noticed that time accelerates as soon as you step into a giant Scandinavian furniture outlet? Seriously I just spent 3 years in a very big blue box full of ex nordic pine trees. I aged, I really did. I’m pretty certain I gained a little weight, gathered a few extra grey’s and experienced some weird longing for a zip up cardigan….

Eventually we reached the end of the Yellow tape road and were spat out back into reality and the safety of the Ray Gun chariot. And you’ll never guess what; the time elapsed was less than 2 hours. So here goes to the thinking: a big building with a large and challenging trail looping through it, encompassing a multitude of potential obstacles and trials tests. Refreshment stand built in with no risk of inclement weather, all teamed with the ability to train for 2 hours in the space of 1……

Ikea, retail death or best potential race venue ever? You decide……

There are moments in life where you almost have to stop and pinch yourself. I see amazing technology All the time, I work with it. But watching my daughter play with a virtualized monkey-dog-cat-toddler via a playstation camera has really set me to thinking (not to mention freaking me out mildly). We at the MRG have a Bit of a vendetta going on around false proclamations of adventure. We’re getting kinda bored of telling people you can’t free ride a couch, but where should we stand on virtualisation?

This is a toughie, a brief trawl through your local games/electronics/geek emporium will uncover a virtual option for most if not all the things we at the hall hold dear. We uncovered surfing, skating, driving, boarding, skiing, hula-hooping, a million ways to murder and perhaps weirdest of all; cooking and baby sitting (?) and it’s these last two that really set me to thinking.

We gunners hold false declarations of excitement against our pudgy pale T-shirt heros. But what if they are mearly victims of our digital age? What if ‘World wide free ride’ dude really has hacked every gully at Whistler, ridden every break on Venice beach? Does it really matter if it all happened in his lounge, held captive by the evils of modern soft furnishings?

The answer categorically is yes. And no not because he doesn’t get the ‘vibe’ or doesn’t have ‘soul’. It’s because it’s all to easy. Have you noticed that they never virtualize vomit properly, at least not where it counts? Oh sure you can see some gore in the epic quantities of slasher/shooter/hacker/electricutor/threshing accident games out there, but I bet that at no point in ‘imagine baby’ do you get a full face of barf. I’d hang my hat on the game never making you sniff to see if that’s chocolate or something dreadful on the back of your hand…….

And this is why surfing on a wii doesn’t make you a board hero, why skating with a virtual Tony Hawk in PS3-ville won’t ever make you a skater. They don’t virtualize the shit bits. Crashing don’t hurt on a playstation. You’re Xbox is very unlikely to leave you with broken bones. I for one have never completed run down playstaion mountain in the pissing rain. But it’s these parts of the out doors that make the fun funner. Would climbing Everest be quite so cool of a brag if you took a lift?

It’s not that the virtual world isn’t clever, after all I’m still convinced the virtual dog-monkey-toddler drew on my floor. Its not even that it isn’t fun, it undeniably is. It’s that it’s not got any shit bits. The next time I turn on the console and it pukes on me before punching me in the face and pouring a bucket of liquid mud down my trousers I will be converted. Until then it’s still the easy way out and should be banned from all unless they have a photograph of them trying the real thing.

After all we can’t ban the games, we’d have nothing to do whilst recovering from the broken noses, dysentery and hypothermia the real thing will leave us with. In the mean time post our message on your chest. If you ain’t done it, don’t wear it……

OK its happened sale time on MRG branded t-shirts, we only have the large sizes left now, lots of medium people out there and not so many large?. A new range is on the way (and may I say a very good range)  so these need to go to make way for the new lines. Just click on the images and save some of your English pounds.

Hoodies are on the way to, winter is coming after all so keep checking back to the MRG store to be the first to be seen on the street in a MRG quality hoodie……

NOT ALL RAY GUNS ARE CREATED EQUAL!

I recently went to Wales. On purpose. Because despite what some may say the place has some pretty serious benefits. Second hand four wheel drives are (for some unknown reason) cheaper, property is cheaper and most important of all, trail centers. The place is full of them, and due to a large helping of large hill/mountain type things they are all pretty cool.

Anyone who follows MRG history (may as well start it’s only a matter of time before it’s a legal requirement) will know that our tentative first steps into mountain bike photography happened at Cwm Carn, and even now the fearsome downhill trail is a firm weekend favorite. And no, not only because of the wonderful Cwm Down up-lift service, although it does definitely play a part.

This particular trip was pointed at the brilliant Glyncorwwg trail center near Afan. Home to The infamous Drop Off cafe, run and powered by the unstoppable Ian Luff (Luffy we love you….), the awesome Wall, Whites Level, Skyline and other superb trails. For sentimental reasons this is my favorite trail center. I’ve experienced pretty much every mountain bike experience on these hills. I’ve camped in -8 with my sleeping bag frozen to my tent, I’ve gotten as close to throwing up from climbing as can be done without mess, I’ve descended as fast and loose as anywhere else I’ve ever ridden, I’ve watched the ‘breeze’ distroy my brand new family tent, I’ve been bitten so badly by knats I suffered toxic shock and had to sleep with cold damp towels on my legs for a week, and most deeply etched in my memory; I’ve been colder, wetter, grittier and more knackered than anywhere else I know. Which leads me to the core question of this outpouring

What is it that makes us capable of enjoying severe unpleasantness? Now i don’t want to be too graphic but we did a morning ride and an afternoon ride, and both sessions resulted in me being as wet as it’s possible to be, freezing cold and with large and detailed collections of Welsh mountain grit in places not ideally suited to the storage of such aggregates. I also loved it. Huge grins included at no extra charge.

How is that as I floundered soaked and chaffing up the last climb (and no it’s not all to do with the wrong clothing, the worm was there demonstrating a model wardrobe and he was piss wet through as well) and it never crossed my mind that I’d rather be doing something else. A sofa and widescreen TV wouldn’t have cut it.

I’ve thought it through and come to the conclusion that it’s all about competition. Not against the others but with myself. I learned years ago I will never be the fastest or best on my bike. I’m pretty good at going downhill and bouncing about, but I won’t ever be a world champion. But I also know that my biggest competition is me. In a tough world it feels good to win occasionally and as I was grinding slowly uphill begging myself to stop I experienced the superb feeling of victory as I realized i wasn’t going to.

I may have spent my day swimming up hill in a river of itchy grit, but as I sat in the corporate management meeting the following day I could ask myself how many of my fellow paychecks could have completed that climb. Truth is they may have done it better than me, but they didn’t and I didn’t stop. For that brief moment I was victorious, I beat the elements, the technology (even Leroy isn’t impervious to grit and grime at that scale….) and all because I beat myself, if you’ll excuse the image…

why do we use paypal?

Frankly speaking we are simple folk here at the MRG. We’re great with shirts, and bikes and having fun. Not bad with all this web stuff. Very good at processing your orders and making sure you get great value for money etc. But we are no super-dooper-computer-genius-types. So we had options: We could pay shed loads to some super dooper computer genius types, and pass the costs on to our loyal fans. Give up and only except magic beans from customers over the age of 80, (but only if accompanied by both sets of grandparents) or we could use what we knew would keep us and you safe. So PayPal it is.

You don’t need a PayPal account to pay with paypal!

Its true, and not everyone knows it! When you proceed to pay for your super amazing value purchases from the MRG, you will be directed to the ever reliable PayPal payments page. You will note that the address bar at the top of your browser will gain an S in the HTTP header to indicate that the page is secure. This is a good thing, and one we could do, but maybe not as well. So we let them do it for us…….

You will also see the usual log in to PayPal option. However if like us you like the safety of buying on a Credit Card you’ll note that on the left side of the page there is a ‘Don’t have PayPal’ header. Its on the left, (yes that left, the one on the other hand to your right….) just above all the pretty credit card logo’s. Simply click where it says ‘continue’…. From there on in its like any other payment option. Safe, secure and supported by a higher level of security then we could offer you at this time…..

Check out the picture to see what we mean. Red circles around the good bits…..

you can use your paypal account too though….

We’re not snobs, if you want to use some ‘virtual money’ (funds resulting to recycled bike parts being a favourite way of underwriting new purchases here at the hall…..) please feel free. As you may have gathered here at MRG so long as its paid for we’re happy for you to enjoy it. We do limit ourselves to proper, ‘scratch a window with it’ money though, Jatoboy is still in therapy after the ‘camels as cash’ fiasco after all. Oh and we ask that you try to gather your spendables ethically, legally, and with as little pain to the planet as you can manage.

We had a birthday party for our 5 year old son on Saturday. The previous day I retrieved the big marquee from my sister and erected it in the garden *just* in case it was going to rain.
Rain isn’t the word I would have used – it’s like the Eskimos (Inuits), they have like 50 words for snow – we just don’t have the right words for the kind of rain over the weekend.
The wheelie bin at the back of the garden was in a foot-swallowing amount of water and every hour we had to poke the roof and get rid of the lakes.
The party went very well – Pizza & hotdogs for the kids, pot of chilli and kogi (google ‘kogi receipe’ I promise you, you’ll thank me) for the grownups.
Then the best part of the evening – we placed the chimenea (hence forth known as the ‘chim’ due to adverse spell check issues) just outside the marquee, several chairs, lots of red wine and created a warming fire and laughed like children.
I live for those moments.

Ok so here goes, Mate, Chap, Business partner all round good egg say hey its my birthday lets ride Afan… Woop Woop we all go. So an early start begins with a Costa stop a trip to sunny Bristol (and it is sunny at this point) to pick MRG A team rider Leon up. M5 – M4 next part of the trip, along the way we need more caffeine so we pulled of the motorway and somehow we end up in the welsh life museum ???????? That aside more coffee is consumed. We get close to the 40 junction and its raining, then the road is closed but by following our nose we get there and its RAINING…..

Rain dont stop MRG so we ride and the climb shows itself, Bye Leon see you at the top we say and pedal off he does……. Jato and myself plod on at may I say a comfortable pace. The top we reach and Jetlag is conquered all be it slower by myself. Back to the car and the Drop Off calls, 2 lasagnes and beans on a brick please. During our lunch some fool allows his camelbak to leak 2 litres of water all over drop offs floor……….. but lets not mention that part.

Now Marcus arrives off he runs to the toilet to somehow squeeze into some Lycra… time to run Whites, that means the climb again and as usual Leon and Marcus disappear into the distance but we all appear at the top at some point. the descent down looks more like the Lake District than the welsh mountains but an all round good ride as always with the MRG crew….

Did I mention Marcus (in his Lycra boxers) washing his feet in the sink, a vision that will probably stay in our minds for to long to mention…….

Happy Birthday mate and thanks for good entertaining day……. as always

Do I need new pads ????????????????????

Aarvark