My Cannondale MX400: Something smells like it’s melting….

My favourite track facility is Greenfield Dirt Track in Lincolnshire (link in sidebar), and this weekend, they had their motocross, stubble and dirt tracks open. This track is a two hour drive away for me and requires pre-on-line-booking for an event. This is normal, except when you live on a small island in the North Sea, the weather can make a last minute event cancellation not just possible, but quite likely due to rain etc. I have previously been 20 minutes from the track and the event, only to get the text saying ‘event cancelled due to being too wet’. This must be a nightmare for all event organisers, because even though the track might be in good condition, the vans can all get stuck in the parking field, which is chaos and requires big tractors to pull them out. However, the forecast for this weekend was ‘big blue sky’, so I entered a couple of days before, and I signed up for the stubble track as I wanted to finish running in the black bike.

So, the sky is blue, the track is in great condition, and whilst the MX track was booked to the limit, the stubble track wasn’t, and rather than having set 15 minute sessions per groups, the stubble riders could just go on and off as they wanted, or in my case, actually had the energy for. I parked next to some other vans and when I rolled out the bike from the van, a man came over to see it, take some photographs, and ask a few questions. This is normal when I take either Cannondale to an event. The man started to walk back to his bike when I suddenly realised who he was. I think to myself “bloody hell! It’s bike racer, Chris Walker the Stalker”. What I actually said politely was, “Are you Chris Walker?”. He confirms my question and I bashfully thank him for all of the entertaining racing that he’s provided me and many others with over the years. I’ll put a Wiki-link to Chris’s racing life and his bike shop at the end of this post and you’ll see why I think he fits into biking-hero status. I obviously have a photo with Chris and my bike (below) and when we’re out on the track, he laps me several times, which I’m not surprised about.

A photo with a hero; Me and Chris Walker the Stalker

The black bike hadn’t been run since December, so in the two days leading up to the event, I pulled it out, checked it over, fired it up and rode it down the lane to make sure all was well. It was, as it turns out. I did my first track session of about 8 laps and went back to the van for a drink, peel off some of the mud from the bike and oil the chain. A man walks by me and says “nice bike, but why does it smell like something is melting?”. I point out the plastic shock guard and it’s snug fit in relation to the well wrapped exhaust pipe. I tell him that it’ll be fine in another couple of sessions as it will have neatly melted itself into shape around the pipe, and then it won’t smell anymore. I tell him that some people will cut the flap so that it doesn’t melt, and if you’re really unlucky, the battery tray can get melted as well. He laughs and tells me about his KTM and its weird things.

I’m using some different riding gloves on this day, and they’re from a company based in Phoenix, Arizona called TAKK Adventurewear. I’ve written about my chance meeting with the founder of TAKK on my cycling site (link at bottom), and I wanted to try the gloves on an MX bike. Firstly, they matched my Cannondale riding kit, and crucially, they were great to wear, being light, grippy and didn’t feel wet when sweaty, which is how they’ve been designed. Anyway, the TAKK link is at the end of this post.

TAKK Adventurewear gloves. You should really try a pair. They do special and bespoke custom prints as well.

I think I did 5 sessions on the stubble track and on the last one, I started to make some mistakes like getting corners wrong and stuff like that. This is the time I need to stop, otherwise I end up ‘endo-ing’ and that isn’t what I do these sessions for. I won’t ever be able to fill the van with diesel using my winnings cos’ there aren’t any winnings, so self and bike preservation are the priorities. I could tell I was a bit tired because when I got back to the van, I lifted the bike onto it’s stand in a very clumsy way and burnt the Cannondale ‘C’ log on my pants on the exhaust, which was a bit inconvenient, and that’ll be two plastic things that the exhaust has melted in one day! This day was definitely an ‘On Any Sunday’ Sunday, because after packing up, I went to watch everyone else at the flat track and MX tracks having fun before heading home, and onto the next phase of the day, cleaning the bike etc etc.