Fixed Gear Wales Does No Gears Bristol

Yesterday a few of us went up to Bristol for the 2nd No Gears event, we missed the first one because we are complete idiots. Luckily the weather was good so we had a couple of short rides around the city (turns out that Park Street is actually a piece of piss to go up!). We managed to worry some of those English drivers with our Welsh "any side of the road will do" steez. Owen managed to run into a parked car when one of his straps failed and just came apart then later on went straight into a wall, he was on form :-D

Amy, Kerry, JT, Evs, Ty, Owen
Round the corner from The Cube Cinema was a nice short but steep hill which we enjoyed going up and then skidding down to the detriment of mine and JT's formerly rubber coated tyres. There was a BBQ at the venue which catered for all, except me, I say all vegan BBQ's need to have vegan sausages not just "burgers" made of peas and sweetcorn cause that is just peas and sweetcorn in a circle in a bap. I ate a packet of biscuits instead. We put up shit loads of posters and flyers for our alleycat, hopefully people noticed them. In an ideal world I would have dished them out to people and had a chat and stuff but chatting to 3 or 4 people in a day is plenty for me, 80 is too many.

They had loads of awesome t-shirts for sale by Death Pedal, No Gears, Hell Yeah! and the, frankly, incredible Death Before Derailleurs one below. I tell you I couldn't get that 15 squids out of my pocket fast enough when I saw the opportunity to be a genuine fixed gear fascist...

Click the picture for more info on the design and why it was created.

The films kicked off with the trailer for a Bristol documentary about the fixie culture called BÖIKZMÖIND. It looks like a banger, check out the trailer then go and 'like' and comment on it over on Vimeo.

BOIKZMOIND Trailer from Xynthetic on Vimeo.

Second up was Death Pedal which was ok but pretty much entirely trick based, there was no good hill bombing or anything which left us (The Swansea lot) all a bit deflated. The locals seemed to love it, there is clearly a strong trick based culture in Bristol, something which is missing from here, although we do try some tricks we are all about the riding in traffic with some trick practice at the end.

The last film was Macaframa which kicks some serious ass, JT had bought it the week before so 3 of us knew it already but seeing it on the big screen was great. If you haven't seen it yet it's like Mash but shot really well with colour grading and proper editing.

After the films there was a skid comp outside where a few of the locals blew us away, one dude (on the Nelson frame with Zipp front wheel) took a pretty nasty slam which I half missed luckily. The longest skid went to a guy in a yellow t-shirt, he hammered it and his skid went on, for, like, foreverrrrrrrrr!!! There was also a girl from Oxford there who was terrifying to watch bombing the hill in hotpants and a boob tube, she was proper mental. All in all it was a great day out and I think I speak for us all when I say I can't wait for the next one.