Mcblog part 4
copenhagen fixation

James Mcknight continues his rants and raves on anything and everything this time from the saddle of a new steed The Vinyl.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I have to say I couldn’t agree more. It’s been two long weeks without my Vendetta hardtail now and I have to say, life without her just isn’t the same.

You see, Morzine is in France, Sweden is a hell of a big place, and for a pip squeak under 14 days I have been on the road, well to be more precise – on the road, in the air and on the water – to the MaxiAvalanche race up yonder in mid Swedens wilds.

The Vendetta is a great bike, don’t get me wrong, but the race track in Are is rough and tough and perhaps I’m simply not. So I begrudgingly left the ‘old girl’ at home, waving a teary farewell as I pulled away, and set off north.

To cut a long story short, we toured Sweden in a very special van, 5 of us in total crammed in there bikes and all, raced with varying degrees of success and on the 12th day we returned to Kingdom bikes foreign office/holiday residence in Copenhagen, Denmark.
12 days with no Vendetta was long enough for me, by then I was starting to get more than a bit ratty, desperate for my fill of Kingdom Titanium. Desperation can have some strange effects, and in this instance I was turned down a dark path that I never thought I would encounter..

I have to admit that I’m not a Fixie fan; I don’t wear my sisters jeans, I don’t have a moustache and I’d never normally succumb to slick tyres.. BUT, Copenhagen is a liberal city full of cycles of the smooth rubbered drop handle variety, and so for two short days I dropped my guard and let my fixed affiliation commence.

A city sight-seeing tour isn’t a notion that particularly tickles my fancy on a normal day – I’m not a town person and buildings and traffic just don’t cut it when you are used to fierce mountains, green meadows and clear, fresh air. For that reason, my fixed tour of the streets had to be spiced up a little. So a pub tour of Denmarks famous city commenced.

Alex Stock is another member of the Kingdom family. Enduro racer (5th at the Maxi this time around), pinner and all round badman. Not a good influence. Christiania is Copenhagen’s lawless tax haven – an ex army barracks squatted and eventually conquered by hippies in the late 70’s, a blind eye turned by the city’s law enforcers for the majority of those years, and after a brief clamp down, the district is now restored to its status as a hidey-hole for all those who wish to do something otherwise illegal.

Slightly numb headed we started on a wild goose chase on board Kingdom Vinyls.
The group of Japanese tourists couldn’t help us to find Christ’s Insania, the haggard looking local couldn’t point us in the direction of Christian Mania, eventually a fellow Fixie tipped us off with instructions to Christiania and words of wisdom “are you really sure you want to go there?"

Well who knows what we were thinking –Christiania wasn’t quite as welcoming as we had expected, I suspect it is a shadow of its former self. Now, to be honest, a bit of a ghetto. The ground was mud though and this provided an impromptu fixed drift session. I suddenly found myself smiling, and ashamedly realised that I was enjoying one of life’s biggest sins.
Ahh what the hell – just look at the clean lines of the Vinyl – what a beauty. I had fun on a fixie and I’m not scared to admit that I’m only slightly ashamed of it.

Some of the kind people that support James McKnight with food, clothing and bikes: