You may recall I mentioned that Mr Toast was keeping his eye out on an Orange 5 on Ebay. Well, it kind of played out like this:

1) Mr Toast bid on the bike. He then went on a bike ride, thinking he’d be able to keep check on the auction with his snazzy 3g phone. Sadly, there’s no signal in Cannock Chase, so he couldn’t.

2) Mr Toast found out he’d been out bid…by £1. He was a bit put out.

3) Mr Toast put a thread up on Bike Radar, to see if anyone was flogging an Orange 5. Someone responded – they were selling their Orange 5 to fund an upgrade to a Nomad. The spec was remarkably similar to the one Mr Toast had missed out on, but a 2006 instead of a 2004, and a slightly worse headset. They were also asking £450 more than the bike Mr Toast had missed out on.

4) Mr Toast asked questions, and started to get suspicious. As it turned out…IT WAS THE SAME BIKE! The cheeky sod had outbid Mr Toast on Ebay, removed the Chris King headset, then tried to flog the bike as a newer model at a much higher cost!

Mr Toast was distinctly unimpressed and told him where to go. He still doesn’t have an Orange 5. 🙁

OK, so the BBC were right this time. Woke up Sunday morning to find everywhere under a blanket of snow. But we decided to go biking anyway!

Needless to say, it was again ‘a bit nippy’, but it was also a lot of fun. I actually did a full lap of FTD, including the new section at the top of the fire road hill. Most of the sections I really enjoyed, and felt I put in a passable performance.

Unfortunately on the new section my confidence took a bit of a knock – I took the first two jumps fine, mainly because I wasn’t expecting them. However, I bottled it on the following jumps (as I was looking out them). It’s something I’ve noticed a lot – there are obstacles that I have trouble with mentally (berms, jumps), but if I don’t think about them too much I can do them. Weird.

I also started to panic that I was holding people up…and I didn’t much fancy someone’s front wheel parking itself in my arsecrack. It’s quite difficult to get up much speed when you’re looking out for people behind rather than at the track ahead! That said, I had a great time on all the other sections, and everything’s a learning experience – I remember last year that I felt pretty similar on most of the sections!

Ride: Cannock Chase

Trail: Follow the Dog

Highlights: Doing all of Follow the Dog for the first time this year. Biking in ze mud! My Camelbak not tasting like a swimming pool. And section 13, oh how I’ve missed thee!

Bad bits: Losing my bottle on the new section.

Post ride food snaffled: Bacon sandwich, chocolate shortbread.

Good dogs seen: Er, none. Think they were all curled up by the fire, nice and cosy.