Danger

Pronunciation: Oh Sheeeeeeet

noun [mass noun] the possibility of suffering harm or injury: his life was in danger
[count noun] a cause or likely cause of harm or injury: the dangers of mountain biking
the possibility of something unwelcome or unpleasant happening: he was in danger of exploding his underwear from the Revised Kingdom Oxford Dictionary

Danger is a funny thing; Danger is all around us, staring us in the face, sometimes in the form of a set of stairs, a hot coffee or an enticing looking dance floor (EXTREME DANGER).

Danger can be avoided – take your time on the stairs, wait for the coffee to cool down, save yourself the crippling embarrassment of the ‘robot’. The Alps are dangerous mountains; danger is in abundance in the valleys, near the rock slopes and on the cliff like faces. The Alps can be avoided. But that would be no fun, would it. We love danger, danger is our middle name (they call us Kingdom ‘Danger’ Bikes, Laayydies..).

This past October, to celebrate making it through another dangerous season of bike riding, partying and coffee drinking, we made the journey to the Zillertal Valley in Austria to sample one of the Alps’ most dangerous of trails.

It took us a serious man sized effort to push our way to the top of the trail somewhere around 3,000 metres, only to be greeted by a trail that can only be called “50:50″ as falling either side was 50% chance of instant death. We passed a few French hikers on the way down, who could be heard screaming ‘Le Lunatics’ as we dropped by..

Zig-zagging, clinging and sliding our way down and across this vicious mountain somewhere around 3,000 metres, (read more in upcoming issues of DIRT) we made it out alive once again, underwear quite thoroughly soiled.

Going up ‘Le Pain’

Coming down ‘Le Lunatics’

Alex, ‘One Dab’ Astonator and ‘The Shorts’

Alex from Seasonality showed us the hike to the trail, how to ride down the trail, and how to find a nerve calming beer at the end. Thanks Alex, we love danger, but you are absolutely mental! A ride to remember, RIP my undies.

Grubby, penniless, evasive, possibly uncouth, happy, smiling, talented and commited.

The BikeTard has for a long time been a rare character amongst mountain bikers; a sport born to hippies, yet somehow shockingly kidnapped for over a decade by The Spandex Crew, who brought in hideous and unacceptable laws making such crimes as SPD’s, skinny tyres and clear glasses LEGAL..!

Pedro

Riding bikes on hillsides is only just regaining its status as a sport of long haired, unwashed, fun lovers. Littering the streets of mountain resorts and huddling around camp fires at mountain bike races you can now find groups known as ‘BikeTards’ exchanging riding stories, swapping tyres and trading food.

Jamie

These guys positively live for bikes, mountains and adventure. They love life, hate fashion and long for a free meal. Work doesn’t come easily for a BikeTard – who would employ a twenty-something year old who cares about nothing more than railing turns, floating jumps and beating down the race track every weekend? But who cares, as long as the ‘Tard has a bike and a few bucks in their back pocket they will be happy. Work can always wait. I for one always save my best work for the following day.

Alex Stock (also in main choclate cake picture)

As the sport grows and becomes less niche, more affordable to the masses and less plagued by lycra, the Alps are going to see an increasing number of ‘Tards inhabiting the mountains and looking a lot like they are enjoying every second of their unwashed, poor, struggle through life. They are.

No animals were hurt in the making of this blog!

Want to know more James McKnight and his life of leisure, click here… Howies Blog.
Want to know more about my current ride… The Vendetta?

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.

Want to know more James McKnight and his life of leisure, click here… Howies Blog.
Want to know more about my current ride… The Vendetta?

So to Blog Numero trois. I am currently residing in Morzine, residing unfortunately being an exaggeration of my actual presence in the town that I have loved to grace now for somewhere near 9 years (christ!).

This has so far been a summer of travels, races and hard work (well I like to tell myself that) and my actual riding time in Morzine has been down on that of previous years. Not to worry though, as each and every moment on the bike has had me thrashing the pedals, crunching the gears and smashing each and every turn. I was doing some thinking just a couple of days ago (I surprise even myself sometimes) and realised that I haven’t in the slightest explained my role in the development of the Vendetta hardtail. Sure, I’ve been on some jollies and lapped the pump track in Finale, but how, exactly, is that supposed to suffice as testing, you may ask..

Where are the white coats and lab rats?

WELL, the answer, friend, is that I am taking a statistic that is of course made up but that is probably not far from the truth, that: ’98.5 percent of Vendetta users will not be racing World Cup 4X events.’

In my experience, the vast majority of hardtail sinners use their weapon to tear around their local woods, do a few jumps, a skid or two and the odd wheelie – data read outs and World cup testing alone are not going to shape the Vendetta into ‘The Ultimate’. Plenty of riding time, poor mechanics skills and a lot of crashing are how I have been and will continue to be putting the Vendetta through it’s paces. My ‘good bike’ equation is something along the lines of:

Sod technology, I know a good bike when I ride it and the Vendetta falls safely into the ‘good’ category. I don’t need a data read out to tell me that the thrashability is right up there. If I can have fun lighting her up down the river path, so too can you beating your mates by a country mile round your favourite evening loop, ripping your local DH to shreds or even just pinning it to last orders. Long term testing will reveal any faults in the Vendettas armory – perhaps tweaks will be made, wrinkles ironed out and features added. But that, of course is the beauty of the Kingdom Bike Project – it isn’t just down to me to do the R+D, you the viewer can submit your thoughts, ideas, rants and even life stories if you so wish.

I’m one part of a collective putting thoughts into a great big virtual melting pot, so why not join me?

Want to know more James McKnight and his life of leisure, click here… Howies Blog.
Want to know more about my current ride… The Vendetta?

James Mcknight continues his rants on anything and everything from the saddle of his Euro ‘access all areas’ Vendetta.

Current Vendetta ‘testing’ Location: Here there and everywhere between Finale Ligure [Italy] and Morzine [France].

My time in Finale Ligure soon came to an end for Spring 2010, having resided there in my little caravan – from snowy blizzards and trench foot in March through to sweltering early morning sweat baths in May, my contract was finished and now it was time to up and leave. Bye bye Betty Swolloks.

Fortunately, being a homeless traveller (stumbler that should probably be – in that ‘traveller’ sounds far too planned and romantic; I would describe my method of travel as more of a club footed hop, skip and jump ) – I am blessed with the ability to up and leave without too many qualms. I find the best way to deal with the trauma of moving house every 2 or three months is to try to leave a little reminder of your presence for the locals, so that they will remember you and welcome you back with a warm smile when you undoubtedly stumble back into town somewhere down the line. This time my parting gift for my friends at Finale Freeride came in the form of an all important wheel spacer for the Vendetta and several hours later I would find myself hastily sawing the end off my handlebars for a homegrown ‘upgrade’ so as to be able to sample some of Chamonix’s finest trails – a half way pit-stop on my drive north to one of mountain bikings meccas, Morzine.

Chamonix, I have to admit, is no place for a hard tail bike. I mean, obviously the Vendetta handled the perilously steep, rooty and rock infested singletracks as well as any bike could, but a matter of seconds after leaving the Brevent Telecabine, straight into a sharp and dangerous rock field and positioned some 2500metres above Cham’s and I was, to coin a phrase, sh***ing bricks. Not the best test location for a hardtail, but The Vendetta held up and made as little fuss as possible for a bike of its kind. Even more so in its favour, I was the talk of town when sitting outside ‘Poco Loco’ (Chamonix’s finest sandwich bar) – presumably for the bikes sexy shaping and impeccably tidy welds. The gazes from passers by were clearly nothing to do with the blood streaming from my arm or my ripped shorts, oh, no no no.

My Chamonix visit was topped off with a short trip to the pump track and trails (next to the river as you exit town in the Swiss direction, or look for the Gendarmerie heli pad – they are usually kept busy by climbers in distress so just follow the chopper), and I sent a few runs through the trails, as well as sending myself once or twice (perhaps the chopper doesn’t just service the climbers around town).
Unfortunately and in true alpine style, a storm soon moved in, and I moved out and continued on my way to my summer home and The Vendetta testing base for the next few months – Morzine.

Want to know more James McKnight and his life of leisure, click here… Howies Blog.
Want to know more about my current ride… The Vendetta?

James Mcknight series of updates and rants about anything and everything from the saddle of his Euro ‘access all areas’ Vendetta. Don’t expect to find gear ratios, sprockets and spoke tension here, this is a glimpse into the life of the professional bike bum, pump tracks, brioche and beer.

Current Vendetta ‘testing’ Location: Finale Ligure, Italy

Right then, where to start..? Well I’ll introduce myself: James Mcknight, born in the mid eighties, bred on travel and sport and obsessed with bikes since day 1.

In 2009 I took a step that I never thought I’d take – to stop messing around and get serious; starting my own business, (mcSkills.com) getting qualified and knuckling down to some hard graft. WELL, that didn’t last long, and for the first half of 2010 I have been based in Finale Ligure on the Italian Riviera – guiding mountain bikers for a living, riding for fun in the evenings, eating ice creams and being not at all serious. Clothing company howies preach that “Life is complicated, Sport is simple.” I have to say I couldn’t agree more.

Go where your heart takes you, follow your instincts and most importantly, never, ever get serious – I’ve learnt my lesson now and during my travels in 2010 I’ll be updating this Vendatta blog any time I’m not up a mountain, on the road or busy working out where my next meal is coming from.

Some shots taken from the ‘compound’ in The Finale Freeride Bike Town and on some of Finale’s fine trails.

Want to know more about riding in Finale Ligure? Then contact Finale Freeride here.
Want to know more James McKnight and his life of leisure, click here… Howies Blog.
Want to know more about my current ride… The Vendetta?