Greetings!

[gareth]

Hi guys!
Mountain biking used to consume every spare minute of my life, dirt jumping/street riding on week days and Downhilling/Freeride at Nannerch or Nantmawr Quarry every weekend. Unfortunately the death of my father when I was 16 meant that this lifestyle quickly petered out, and my Santa Cruz Bullit ended up being sold on ebay as I just wasnt riding regularly.
Now I am 22, and for the last two years I have slowly been coming back around to the idea of mountain biking, especially as now I can drive. As a student I have a few months off to make the most of my two bikes, a trials bike and Stumpy FSR.
I have long lost contact with riding buddies and am hoping that through this website I can find some people to go riding with, and build up my skills and fitness which seem to have disappeared!
Llandegla is probably the closest decent trail to me (I am based near Mold), and I have been around the black run once which I found really tiring but technically not too bad (although I was taking my time as I was riding alone)

Cheers,
Gareth

[ftasb]

Greetings Gareth ;D

[Doug]

Welcome. 'Degla is my local so I'm pretty sure I'll bump into you up there sometime.

[ftasb]

Got any pics of your bikes that you can stick on here?

[gareth]

Hiya :-)
Indeed, I will post some up in a few minutes!
Gareth

[martinw]

Hi Gareth, Welcome to the forum, good to have you here.

There are a few members here that are local to llandegla and I'm sure they will be up there at some point riding. Join us on the 1st MBNW ride in August if you can make it.

northwalesmtb.proboards85.com/index.cgi?board=forumrides&action=display&thread=181

Where did you hear about us?

Any probs or questions give us a shout.

Martin

[gareth]

I guess I was around 9 or 10 in this picture, taken up Minera mountain I think:

My first "proper" bike was a Cannondale F600 bought from Alf Jones cycles when I was 10 or 11 (it took me two years or so to save up for this - my parents helped out a lot also!) By the time I had finished with it literally only the frame was original (I had the bike for a few years by this photo)

And an action shot at Nantmawr Quarry (age 14 perhaps?)


I then moved onto a Santa Cruz Bullit as I was downhilling every weekend (or more). It took 2 months to arrive and I had to do my first and only dowhhill race at Nantmawr on the Cannondale.

And some action shots (I am perhaps 17 in these shots, just before I quit biking)


Finally my two current bikes that I intend to give a lot of stick this summer:



And an action shot from the trials bike (which I keep straining my back and knee on so it is not seeing as much use as I would like!)

[xybadog]

Hi Gareth. Welcome to the forum.

Don't worry about acquiring some new riding buddies, you'll definitely find some here, though having met some of them myself already, you might find it better riding by yourself ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

(wonder whose gonna bite first???)

[ftasb]

Jul 24, 2008 12:07:30 GMT @xybadog said:

Hi Gareth. Welcome to the forum.

Don't worry about acquiring some new riding buddies, you'll definitely find some here, though having met some of them myself already, you might find it better riding by yourself ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

(wonder whose gonna bite first???)

And just what exactly do you mean by that little remark? Eh?

Nice pics by the way mate. I wish i had a big pair of steel gonads to do jumps like that. I must be getting old or summat because stuff like that looks scary now!