Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; I’ve not been consistently riding for 11 years. The do-it-all weapon I’d custom built 14 years ago is now as irrelevant as a Rheineck at a barbecue. The carefully specced bike, once the pride of the garage, is now covered in dust and cobwebs, occasionally reminding me of a time when my priorities were different. When I couldn’t imagine that I’d not be riding.
It wasn’t always like this. Like many in their 40s, my first bike was a BMX. Growing up, I tooled around with my brothers on dirt jumps and did a lot of racing during the height of the BMX era in the 1980s. At one stage
