Steve-A

My first car was a Skoda Felicia. The Felicias are big enough for 3 people and 3 bikes if you get one with split rear seats. And they are cheap. Although group 4 insurance as a young male with 0 no claims it was one of the cheapest to insure cars I could find. I picked my up for £800, but it was a '99 with 44k on the clocks, full service history and generally in really good nick. The slightly ratty ones go for peanuts. The little 1.3 went alright, considering, and it was quite a pleasant driving experience really. If i needed a cheap hack I'd certainly consider getting another.

I'm not selling, I'm buying mine back. I sold it last year and no regret doing so. so I'm buying back off Sam.

Looking good! I cant wait! I'm loving how the old bright colours are coming through the clean black and chrome where its scratched. That poor frames had many paint jobs. It started life as : Then got one silver and one black side to the down tube: Then it went silver and red, opposite colour on each side: Then it stripped it all back and it was raw front and blakc back with red front wheel: Then this slowly evolved into: Then it got painted over with dark red and glow in the dark forks: Over time that paint job also got extra bits added to cover the scratches, untill it was time for a fresh new paint job onces more: And then finally sparkley black for sale:

I love my 5.10s I'm on my second pair. The first pair lasted a year then I thought I deserved a new pair! I've got the impact 2s They are quite big and reasonably heavy and stiff, but the grip they give is like nothing else. I got pointed towards them from my climbing shoes (5.10 anisazis, THE climbing shoe of the last 10 years and 5.10 dragons). They use the same rubber on their freeride/mtb shoes, they developed for rock climbing. I'm running 5 year old v8s with basically no pins left and they are gripping really well.

Maybe Matt, this is the calm before the storm. A few years ago trials took a leap where frame geometry stepped forwards and everything happened really fast. People spent the next couple of years trying different lengths and BB heights to find the balance. Most people have found that balance now, and vaguely know what they want from a frame. Maybe 2009 will bring the next big step. The next new component that revolutionises the sport. The next new riding style/approach that changes how we all look at riding. Maybe it wont. Maybe this is it. What we are currently riding are give or take the best trials bikes ever made, with the most optimum geometry possible, and we are using the best techniques and approaches to our riding. I doubt it though.... The forum is bigger than it ever has been, and trials seems to be a growing sport so the forum will continue to grow with it. Growing awareness of the sport means more exposure, means a bigger mix of personalities. Tensions will rise, especially with hormonal teenage boys, and new members will follow the established members lead. The forum is very different to the one I joined many years ago, but I'm very different to the 15 year old kid I was back then. As far as I can tell simply the best thing to do is to carry on posting how you like, and others will follow. Lead by example. All these people posting in this thread who talk of a decline and a lack of trials chat posts, why not do something about it. If you see a tech questions thread with no answer, answer it and maybe someone will do the same when you post a tech question. If someone starts a discussion in chit chat and an argument begins, don't join in and add fuel to the fire, post a reply to pull the thread back on topic. Finally I think you should ride some natural Matt. You might surprise yourself. I rather enjoyed it when I tried it a couple of weeks ago....

Man, old skool. I remember seeing that Morley Wilkins section for the first time, and it blew me away.

Ah thats fair enough then. It looked to me that it was been shot at the same time as the earlier shots then brightened, but if it was shot as the sun set then thats fair enough As I said at the start sometimes compromises are made because of filming conditions and other factors the viewer will never know about, and sometimes critiquing of videos cant take these into account.

I'm glad you found the comments useful. I tend to edit following the rule that if I'm feeling not sure about a clip, or effect, then its wrong. Its very easy to get sucked into the video, and its really good to try and take a step back and watch it with fresh eyes as it were. AFX is short for After Effects, which is made by Adobe. Its a video composition and effects program, sitting halfway between photoshop and premiere. Its really useful, and allows for some very impressive video graphics and effects work. I've never used sony vegas but it doesn't look to have hindered you. The night shots i was talking about were that at 2:07 you have a shot of you falling off a tailwhip, this looks relaly nice, and I presumed you have colour corrected the shot to bring up the brightness from the original night shot. At 1:52 to 2mins you have the same shot at night but without the brightening. I thin kit would have been nicer to bring those shots up to the same level as the 2:07 clip, then if you wanted to distinguish the shots from each other do a different type of effect.

Nice vid, obvious effort put into both the riding and post. You were after some feedback, these are my immediate thoughts, feel free to ignore them! I know its very easy to criticise over the net, and having not been there when shooting or knowing what problems you may be working around. Anyway... Music worked well, good pace for you riding, and you tied it into the riding well with the visual effects. Might be cool to see more of a build up to the riding, or maybe a break down in the middle of the vid? Generally a change of pace of riding at some point during the vid helps it stay interesting for the duration. I can see you've worked very hard to sync your visual effects to the riding, would possibly also be a nice idea to sync more of the riding to the music, landing gaps on beats maybe, or more obvious time bending exaggerate moves synced to music. The visual effects looked very 'slick', lots of motion blur and diffusion helping this along. I especially liked the pull through a yellow cast to black and white you did, and I think you did the same through blue, timed with music well and looked great. I wasn't so keen on the blurring with the beats you did in the 2nd half of the video, just felt a bit too harsh. Maybe worth blurring on just the first of the 3 beats then adjusting it, rather than three separate blurs you applied. I wasn't too keen on the black flashes, I think with the rest of your video style a jump cut would have worked better. I liked the shots at night, on the little slope by fence. At one stage you'd colour corrected the shot to enhance yourself, and it looked much better than the others, much clearer and with better 'feel', why didn't you do this for all the shots in the location? Intro graphics were nice, and very well executed. I'm presuming you've used afx for most of the heavy video effects work in this vid? Overall the level of video effects work was great, but the video felt a bit disjointed. It almost had a feel of 'I've learnt how to do all these fantastic slick effects, now I'll put them ALL on this video'. I personally feel if you'd stuck to a few concept effects, possibly changing pace and effect style in the middle the video would have hung together better. An example being your into, the first graphic came out of the falling water, and I feel it would have looked better to have the second graphic do the same, maybe out of a different stream of water. The clouds thing looked great, but maybe keep that for the end, or next video? The colour changes and speed changes were lovely, so why not use them for most of the video, save the flashes and blur for another video, or maybe save them for a middle section of video, maybe for a key change in the song, or a change of pace of riding. In reference to the intro and on a similar theme, it would have been great if the video had started with riding in the rain after that intro, otherwise what did the intro really bring to the video? It didn't relate to anything else about the riding. It didn't tell you anything about the video. If it was simply a shot to hold your first graphic, then it needn't have been more than a single raining shot with the graphic coming out of the water. I know there's a lot of waffling there. I hope some of its useful, and received in the way it was intended, in order to help you with the next video and to make it even better

I'm sorry but 18:12 and 24:16 are absolutely identical. Possibly you had different length cranks for the different ratios and that made the riding difference. A 3:2 ratio (be that in the form of 18:12 and 24:16) has been considered THE gear ratio to run on a mod for trials for many years. People have experimented with other ratios but with little success. If you wanted to run 16t front then you'd need either 11t or 10t rear sproket. There are people on the forum who've done this, but I think they all went back to 18:12 after a bit.

Sweet. I love how effortless he makes it look. Video was a bit long and drawn out for my taste, the riding was inspiring though.

Mods don't really ride streety becasue of their stem set-ups. I've ridden a mod with a short stem set-up on it, and it pretty much felt like a BMX. There was a thread in chit chat recently about adapting a mod for street, and a couple of other riders had the same experience. As a general rule the further forward your weight is, and this is often down to stem length and bar height, the more 'trialsy' the bike will feel. The further back your weight is the more it will feel like a bmx or mtb, depending on your wheel size. 24" wheels do make the bike have that flickier feel that street riders like. Set up with a trials style bar and stem, wide rims, soft tyres and a traditional trials geometry frame it is still going to be very much a trials bike. But it will not just feel like a 26". Its mostly pulling up onto backwheel, and doing techy stuff like roll downs and natural stuff where you're gonna feel the big difference if you're intending to ride true trials, rather than the streety trials mix most 24" are set-up for. Effectivly, when set-up for proper trials, it feels like a stock/mod hybrid.

I used Plaz Spanish Fly pads when I had a chrome rim. I had problems with some of the very soft compound pads, such as coust pads, ripping them selves to bits. The key to making the brake work seemed to be having an immaculately clean rim, degreased, with clean pads. As dust built up on the rim, its performance faded quickly (whatever pads). A bit of damp seemed to make it feel fantastic, but I think this was mostly as it meant there was less dust in the air. Water on the other hand was a no go. The brake worked so poorly that it felt like you sped up when you pulled it! I would brace my arms for the pressure of slowing down, as you always do subconsciously, and then because nothing happened at all, it really did feel like you sped up. My first chrome rim worn through the chrome to copper coating underneath in 4 or 5 months of regular riding. The copper surface was no better than normal smooth rim, so I took a grinder to it. The grind the rim took was super sharp and stayed that way for a long time, much like a 521. These were the Odyessey pro factor 24" bmx rims.

It does. I'm telling you that from experience. As far as I can work out, the way a bike feels to ride is a factor of the geometry, and the wheel is effectively a part of that. If you imagine a bike on two wheels, just rolling along, then 24 and 26 wheels aren't going to feel very different. Just a bit lower to the floor as you say. As soon as you turn a corner then the 24" wheels will make the bike turn quicker. Just like how a few years ago motogp bikes would have different sized wheels to put in the same bike to effect handling. Then you pull up to manual/bunnyhop/tap/backhop. If you think of the compound arc that your feet must go in for the bike to tilt up, this is affected by the bb rise, the chain stay length AND the wheel diameter, especially if your moving. The wheel size is as much a part of the geometry as wheelbase, or head angle. In the same way that bar set and fork length/rake are also equally as important.

Whilst my 609 was broken, I rode a Pashley 26GHz ( one of the old short ones) with 24" wheels in. It felt a little odd, but really not too bad. Obviously I wasn't running a rear disk, so I had a maggie part bolted and part jubilee clipped on. I found it great for skate park stuff, having less BB rise than my 609 meant good for spins and bunny hops. Was more awkward on rear wheel but not by much. If you check here: Youtube Link FRom 10secs to 25secs was riding the GHz, and there one or two clips dotted later in the vid. Black and white pic by FatMike There were lines I did on that Pashley that I've not done since!

When I learnt bar spins on my 24" I went to the skate park. I was running a 80 mm stem and bars about 23/24" wide. I cant imagine doing bar spins on a trials bike with anything much longer/wider. Firstly I learnt them on a BMX, I cant recommend this enough. I set the seat up a bit, and learnt to bar spin rolling along slowly, just lifting the front wheel. As other have said, spin with one catch with the other, its not quite as simple as that, but its not too different and you'll pick it up easy enough. Even if you haven't got a bmx, most trials riders would pick this up in a matter of minutes really. Once you've got the idea, then transfer to trials bike, and learn to do the same thing without a seat. Things I remember being important were to keep weight central and lift bars reasonably high before spinning. To begin with I kept my weight too far forward as I was scared of coming off back. Once I had this down, I went to the skate park on a quiet time when there was no-one to get in my way and basically had a go at doing them out of a quarter onto the deck/jump box take off onto top of box. This felt easier to me than going straight for bunny hop, as your body does a more similar movement to the just lifting front wheel style spins. From there the next step is to just get out and do it, well have a go anyway! Side point: Trampoline bikes are soo much fun!

I hate to break it to you, but this ride was on the 15th, so thats saturday just gone. Was awesome to see so many old friends, and lots of new people too. Shame about the drizzle, but it didn't seem to dampen the ride too much

Hmmm, I'm not sure what to think of that. Some moments of brilliance, but lots of bit that just didn't work for me. One thing consistently nice was the lighting. The night ride stuff looked great visually. I'm presuming it was filmed on a broadcast quality camera, with a decent lens, to get that level of detail and light from a night shoot. Every now and then there was a fantastic camera angle coupled with the light to make an awesome shot. I loved the shot of the riders reflection as he rode round the fountain, panning upto him. And the shot of him picking up his chain at the end was great. That said there were lots of shots that I didn't like, messy camera moves, some of the super close up shots just didn't work for me. Editing wise that transition soon got on my nerves. Fair enough to use something like that once in a while, but they used it on what felt like every cut! The interview section included one of my pet hates that is instead of using a cutaway, or coming into a close up shot, they just did a transition and audio effect between his words. It always just feels a bit cheap TV to me, sorta thing they do on programs that are made to go on men and motors in the daytime at super cheap prices. I'm probs being harsh. Compared to many internet bike vids it was nice, had a good flow, and nice cinematography. Compared to a professional DVD, the likes of the earthed series, or broadcast TV, sortta stuff extreme channel might show, it was a bit of a let down.

I'm glad people are enjoying the video. I finished the video where it is becasue I personlly felt the singular concept of basically limited vision and pretty colours wouldn't hold up for any longer before it began to feel a bit boring. I've not seen the ryan leech vid you mention Walker, but I'll have a scan for it. As for better quality, the problem is getting enough light to do anything with. Each shot takes a fair bit of setting up to get the lights right, and even then my little sony was really stuggling. Any quality I got out of the camera was pretty much destroyed by the amount of post colour work I had to do to make it look nice. There is the possibility of a follow up night vid, but not for a while yet. Jonny I used car head lights, Matt's super expensive posh light of his XC bike, a camera monuted camera and a selection of gels. Rough cut in FCP then into after effects to work on the colours. Wobbly camera wise, I shot off a tripod what I felt I could, but I wanted to try and put a sence of speed back inro the video throug hthe camera work as the music would be slow and at the end of the day trials moves quite fast sometimes. This obviously didn't quite work aswell as I'd hopped, but its all a learning curve. Finally, as you say Inur, the idea was to see only climpses of the riding. Prety much all the riding, save maybe the last move on the stairs, is VERY mediorce for what Tim and Matt can do.

I could well see you guys there. Gotta find out what else might be going on, but its probs 60 I'll be in 40 I wont.

A bike trials video, made by me, featuring Matt Burrows and Tim Stedman. Filmed over a few autumn evenings in Worcester and Malvern. The video hopes to capture both the contrasts of tranquility and action and of darkness and glorious colour, that you find riding at night. At the end of the day it was cold and damp when we were filming, so the ridings not quite upto the usual standard for these guys, but I think the video feel makes up for it. It was all about the feel.For that reason, if you can, play it full screen with the music up to a fair volume (the track does start very quietly and get louder). I appreciate that it wont suit all tastes, but it was just a little experiment. http://www.vimeo.com/2237172 < VIMEO link

Woah, don't bring me into this! The last vid i put up was a very quick simple edit. Straight cuts (pretty much anyway) on a regular beat. Its clear to see Danny has spent a long time doing the 'edit' on this vid. Riding, is big as usual, and impressive, but as others said lacked a little diversity. Music was a little too dramatic for my taste. Trails can cope with electronic jumpy dirty sounds but I just felt the music made it sound like you were doing something heroic almost. You said these weren't your best clips so maybe should have toned it down a bit? Still good to see a different style of music being applied to riding. Now I put edit in quotation marks up there, because I wanted to split it into two parts. What most people are calling the edit consists, in this case, of a video edit and of video effects work (VFX). The edit it self was fairly basic, but technically alright. Clips cut concistly, but there was little change of pace, or building up. It was all go from clip one. Still not a huge problem, because of the VFX is doing the work of making it interesting:) The VFX work was interesting. I like what you tried to do, its nice that as the music ads more melody you drop some of the flicker and move to a more black a white look. Going back to the edit, this is where the change of pace up a gear would have worked, I think. Now the downsides, I wasn't keen on the white flashes, surely black or white noise would have been better? Adding grain and even like some picture break up like a poorly tuned TV, would have worked much better with the sounds you were timing your effects to. Rather than the white flashes and saturation changes you used. Last point, I'd have a look at your brightness and contrast for you black and white clips as they were all pretty much grey and white, which lets the look down a lot for me. Overall I thought it was a good idea, but all the little things came together and it didn't quite work for me. Keep trying

The way I read the article, the BBC weren't apologising, they were saying it was a joke, quoted from that article and others on the bbc site: So I figure the BBC are happy to quote it all over the place as they don' see it as a problem. Also:

I was gonna say that, infact the bbc stood up for JC in that article. I do think its very silly, and people are just jumping on a band wagon, it happens with everything.

Aside from all the points raised by others, there's one other factor I can see being a huge stumbling block for using a shaft drive system for trials. According to that article, and I had heard this before the shaft drive system isn't as efficient as a chain, so you would loose more power through the shaft system, and compared to a chain bike wouldn't be able to do any moves involving pedal power as well. Also on the note thats its pulled over from motorbike tech.... have a look at moto trials bikes, motor cross bikes, road racing bikes, how many of them use shaft drive? none. Its used on touring bikes and cruisers (and BMWs but they just like to be weird) not high performance bikes.