The Wragg Chronicles – Do you shred?

It’s official, I shred. I’ve been told by a pro Canadian freerider who competes in Crankworx and those kind of head banging events, so you can’t fuck with the credentials. If I wasn’t supposed to meet the boss in five minutes to go and clear trails I’d wheel out some facts and figures on the guy to prove how goddamned hardcore his blessing makes me. Shit, I might even get gnarly some point soon at this rate.

There’s only one problem… It’s not on my bike. Nope, it was in a six year old Fiat Ducato van. I was driving the 2.3 diesel with a minibus conversion and a bike carrying trailer on the back, in case you were wondering. They aren’t exactly cluttering up the circuits at track days and, if I’m honest, I wasn’t driving very fast at all (you just don’t with guests in the van or a trailer hitched to the back). What I was doing was driving round corners. Rad.

Apparently if you grew up in Canada these are a novelty. For a young fella who grew up in a country designed around oversized pickup trucks it was all rather exciting and I wasn’t really sure what to say when he told me I’d been “shredding” the van. I thought I’d just been driving down the mountain roads in a line of traffic.

I’d like to tell you that I also smashed the cliff hucking youngsters down the downhill runs too, but it wasn’t meant to be. On my first trail with them I popped a bunny hop off a root on the trail before the first corner. There was an expensive noise as my wheel touched back down on the floor. At first it looked like I’d just managed to rip my mech clean in two and ruin a few spokes, but when I popped the wheel out to get the chain off the freehub fell off. I’d snapped clean through the axle in my hub (if anyone from Hope is reading this, hi, your hub died).

For a bit more honesty, they seemed pretty damned rapid, which surprised me, and they were nice lads and good fun to hang around with. So there goes a load of my preconceptions about that kind of rider from that end of the world. Still, next time I’m watching one of them huck some insane gap, at least I know I can scare the crap out of him in a battered, old van.

I’m living, working and riding out on the Italian Riviera for now, so I’ll be doing a few more of these for the site. You should check out the company I’m working for www.rivierabike.co.uk as they’re ace and the riding is incredible out here. And thanks to Simon at Saracen (www.saracen.co.uk) and Steve at Fishers (www.fisheroutdoor.co.uk) for helping me out.

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