In case you’d missed my napalm style marketing techniques Sunday was TickerTape, and a special one at that!
To celebrate the fact that Transition Bikes are now sponsoring Longleats favourite DH jam, we thought we’d try and make it a bumper event.
We had hot food on offer, thanks entirely to Maria’s sausage marathon (Malco’s words not mine) and some pretty spectacular cakes to demolish thanks again to Maria, and Helen and Simon’s oven skills, oh and some jelly sweets to keep everyone else happy.
The turnout was great with over 20 people posting a time, plenty of riders blasting about on the other trails and a healthy spectator turnout to add to the atmosphere.
Spoons saw it’s first event since being joined with ”moron’ (well, it lets us add more on!) and was immediately better for it, the previous fastest time was 29.14 (C.Smith) but with the additional length times ranged from 50+ seconds from the start meaning that we are almost ready to hold the world championships, so long as Boin can get hold of that inflatable lion hot seat and we can find an uphill finish.
Members were able to invite friends to take part, making the first few hours especially interesting as everyone worked out just how good everyone else was. Some peoples reputations preceded them, notably Chris Smith, Steve Geall and Sam Burkhardt so all eyes were certainly on them from the very beginning.
The day saw plenty of epic mini battles, such as Stacey’s refusal to eat until he beat the 60 second barrier, Josh’s many attempts at clearing the double without looking like he was trying a front flip, Simon’s attempts to get faster rather than gradually worse, Ian’s desire to push himself until he crashed and Rob who seemed hellbent on keeping every run within 0.2 seconds of his first.
The American contingent seemed stoked to be riding real grassroots DH in the UK, and everyone else was chuffed to be able to meet the guys behind the company and thank them in person for providing the prizes.
As for the times, well the weather certainly played its part with steady drizzle making the very top and bottom corners just that little bit harder from 1pm onwards, but with some careful balance and intelligent line choice fast times were possible all day.
Other than an early ‘log hop’ debate, times were pretty close at the top with a number of riders looking like they were capable of taking all that kudos on offer. After just over 4 hours in the non existent hot seat I was pretty gutted to learn that another 0.18 seconds was needed if I wanted a third sticker. The bookies favourite, Neil Cousins, managed a sub 48 sec run in the closing stages but a few last gasp efforts by the rest of us did nothing to change the makeup of the top few leaving Zak Hurrell to take the honours, followed by me then Neil not far behind. Chris was too busy crashing, Steve was too confused by Chris’s rubbish bike set-up and Sam was too distracted by the delights of 143 to present much of a threat on this occasion.
We wrapped up the day by giving out the Transition goodies to some of our junior riders, doing cigar impressions with the last of the sausages (malco again) and a big family photo.
Thanks loads to Kyle, Kevin, Sam and Keith from Transition Bikes for supporting us. And to Ian, Maria and Stacey for helping set up so early and finally everyone else who came to watch, ride or helped us pack away. I literally can’t wait for the next TickerTape: BBMS + Moron, on Sat 26th of September.
p.s. Full TickerTape photo gallery to follow soon!
