The Inbred 29er's done over 4,000 miles now, and it's amost falling apart again, especially the BB which sounds a few miles away from the balls escaping from the collapsed drive-side bearing.

Summer's properly here now, 3 days of rain, ends a run of 1,300 mostly dry miles, more rain to come, strong winds still present... shopping for running shoes.

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I've put 200 miles into the 29er now, and, I can't say I can find any differences from 26er, apart from they don't like riding into roaring wind over bumpy paths, but that's more likely to be the rigid forks.

My arms are still bloody sore every ride, too, something that's never happened using rigid forks before, but, then again, compared to this year's 200 miles rigid last years 4,000 were soft. I'm very much considering some suspension forks for the bike, as frankly, I'm coming very close to a big crash each time I go out as the front wheel pogos off the ground off the millions of exposed rocks.

Oh, the wind was back in full effect today, and in the worst possible direction for a good ride, amazingly I did a 13mph avg which is stupid fast, considering I have to back off about 20% on downhills at the moment.

30.4mls (13.0avg) | Dry, V Windy, 5°c, Cold, Sun

And if you don't know - I have a new site www.cyclove.co.uk bike news and stuff, go there and erm, read stuff... or check back as I've not got much on there yet!

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What the hell's happened to the weather? currently it's blowing at over 50mph here, with a full on lightning and hail storm!

It's rained every day so far in 2008, so, if you figure the icy days back in Dec were bloody windy, the weather's been full on nasty for over two-and-a-half months.

If I'd chosen 2008 to ride a full year I'd have probably given up today... I stand by my prediction that Winter 08 is going to he horrific.. just wait 'til Feb and March when the blizzards come.

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I couldn't decide if my bike rode any better with the fixed SC32's today as the wind was so strong I spent most of the time being pushed around or grinding hard to just move forwards.

There does seem to be far too much air in them, though, and looking at the instructions I think I need to crack them open to drop the internal pressure, but that's a last resort.

I have found another potential new fork, a Marzocchi XC 700 ATABCDEFG, slight less complex than the Rock Shox Revelation, but more expensive, but not made by SRAM, who are in my bad books for their GXP bearings and useless-in-the-UK Avid Brakes.

so, in a nutshell: bike maybe crap, weather crap, couldn't give a crap.

And for those who are interested, Helvetica, The Movie is on BBC ONE at 10.35 tonight (thx matt), it's in the listings as "Imagine" so you might not have noticed.

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