Broken bikes and fingers

Well, it's been an action-packed few days. This week I have managed to break my bike and dislocate my right ring finger (for the second time). As I type this there is a small cardboard box full of the remains of my bike sitting by the front door and I have the two middle fingers of my right hand strapped together. (So go easy on me if my typing is lousy).

R.I.P. BELOVED GREEN MACHINE!
I went for a ride with two friends on Sawpit Gully Track in Arrowtown a few days ago. On a gentle rolling downhill I hit a bit of a depression in the trail and as the rear suspension compressed there was a loud metallic clunk and the chain slipped. I thought I had snapped a chain-ring tooth off so I just hopped off, fed the chain back on and kept riding.
But the bike was feeling strange - every rotation of the cranks it would do this weird shimmy, I had never felt anything quite like it on a bike before. I even inspected the teeth on the rear cassette, thinking I might have broken one off. Next I checked the free-hub as I knew it was on it's last legs and thought it might be the culprit. But I couldn't find anything wrong.
So I kept riding. A little further on the bike started making graunching metal-on-metal noises whenever I pedaled so it was time to hop off and take another look. Initially I couldn't figure out what was wrong but when I pushed down on the seat to compress the suspension the entire bottom bracket moved independently of the rest of the frame!
The down-tube had completely snapped in half just on the bottom of the rear-suspension pivot point welds. I actually managed to roll back to the car on the bike like this and that was certainly an interesting experience - you could feel the wheel-base lengthening when the bike's suspension bobbed, and if you looked down while pedalling you could see the cranks and bottom bracket moving around, up and down and backwards and forwards, independent of the rest of the frame. Maybe this is what it's like to ride a GT i-drive bike? I have named this new suspension design the VPP - ie "Virtual Patrick Pivot".

So now my bike is dead - I'm bikeless! (Apart from a 20" BMX, which doesn't help me much in winter). At least I'm bikeless until I hear about the warranty/insurance situation on my broken mountain bike. But luckily I have since managed to injure myself riding my girlfriend's bike and so, rather conveniently, I couldn't ride my mountain bike even if I had one at the moment. How lucky is that!?


THE CLAW
Yesterday the weather was beautiful and so I borrowed my girlfriend Jada's mountain bike, packed my camera gear and headed up Coronet Peak Ski Area with a bunch of mates to ride and shoot. (Coronet Peak has abandoned it's summer chair-lift accessed mountain biking operation but the riding trails survived a winter under snow and no grooming and have been super fun riding this summer).
There was snow and ice on the upper part of the Brakeburner track, and super slick dirt on the rest - it was amazing fun to ride!
Unfortunately I washed out the front wheel in a super slick tight corner and hit the dirt. It was a nothing crash but unfortunately my right ring finger (otherwise known as The Claw) is crooked and not very flexible as a result of dislocating it and having surgery to re-attach the tendon the previous summer. So sure enough, The Claw dislocated again - but luckily this time it dislocated at the MCP (bottom knuckle) joint and the tendon survived and there were no fractures. So now I have the two middle fingers on my right hand strapped together and I am icing my hand every couple of hours to reduce the swelling.

So all in all it's been a pretty exciting couple of days!
But I'm sure good things will come of all this - I will be getting a new bike soon, which is just as well because the Heckler and it's rag-tag collection of components was on it's last legs.
And re-injuring The Claw has made me realise I need to start working full-on on the flexibility of this finger again so it's less likely to re-injure in the future.

In the meantime it's a beautiful day here in Queenstown and Jada and I are going to go for a walk/run in the sun. I hope life is treating you all well!
Patrick
http://www.fallon.co.nz

Autumn mountain biking photography madness

The rain was bucketing down this morning and Lake Wakatipu, which was already on the verge of flooding many downtown businesses, will be getting even fuller...but now the sun has come out and I'm planning an afternoon of shooting mountain bikers sliding around amongst the mud and roots of Fernhill Loop (my favourite Queenstown trail in the wet or dry but especially in the wet).


In the meantime here's the first Fallon Photography blog and a very brief update on what I've been up to recently...

For the past month or two I have been shooting mountain biking all over the south island. It's been full on but a lot of fun. I've been able to ride some great trails, spend time with my girlfriend Jada and good friends while I'm "working" (shooting mountain biking hardly feels like "work"), and capture some great mountain biking images all at the same time.
The highlights of these two months for me would have to be riding the Croesus and Wharfedale Tracks and staying at the Blackball Hilton (actually called "formerly The Blackball Hilton" to avoid lawsuits from you-know-who).

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure yet the Croesus (6km from Blackball, West Coast) is basically the world's biggest rock garden and is a hell of a lot of fun. The Wharfedale (Oxford, 20km or so north-east of Springfield, Arthur's Pass) is a completely different track, less technical but just super fun, fast and flowy singletrack...a good gradient, loads of roots and you can ride almost all of it flat out. In short a wicked trail that is an insane amount of fun to ride!

I will be shooting a lot more mountain biking over the coming month, then once the snow is here I will be concentrating on shooting skiing and winter biking.
This winter I will be spending less time on the ski resorts and will be doing most of my shooting in the back-country. The goal is to shoot great skiers on beautiful natural terrain in a landscape that is untouched by humans. The other side of this goal is just to get away from the resorts and spend more time in the mountains. Here's hoping we have an epic snow season this winter!!

Anyway, that's it for now - the sun is shining and it's time for me to get to work. Have a great autumn!