Blues Snowman

Chris James - awesome blues player from Carlisle.
Dressed as a snowman.

Hmmm...

Buster

The infamous Buster Bloodvessel (of Bad Manners fame) joins The Grit on stage to do 'Pressure Drop'. Bad Manners had played earlier in the night, and completely rocked.

Little Man Kurt

Bass

Little Man Kurt (from The Grit) 's double bass, just before their set in the Bar tent

Tea Tent

Wierdigans, the 24hr Tea Tent.
They do rather nice hot chocolates, with an assortment of flavoured syrups.
I can highly recommend the chilli one.

Roisin

Roisin Murphy takes the Main Stage by storm

KMB Girls take the win

The Keswick Mountain Bikes girls- Cheryl, Emily, Nic and Angela - take the podium, winners of the Enthusiast Women's category.

Pretty in pink.

Middle of the night, and even with a jet wash there are some things you can't completely get clean. Pink Yeti courtesy of Chez Frost, clinging mud courtesy of SiTS 2008.

The real damage

Eponine, my trusty Top Fuel, at the end of the weekend. Badly in need of a clean and, if you look closely, a new rear mech.

Sleepless in the tent

This was the image of the weekend for me. Midnight, sitting awake, waiting for someone to get back to the tent and tell us what the conditions were like. Surrounded by boxes of gear, sitting with a brew, trying just to survive the night.

The big pink machine

Okay, so my taste in racing gear isn't great, but I was happy and I was flying. Bringing it home at the end of the last lap, to bag us 26th place out of 84 mixed teams.

The beginning of the end

The end is nigh - Jimbo hands the baton over to Stuart, who would hand it over to me an hour or so later to ride the final lap. The fact Jim's smiling tells you the course was improving by that point.

Ghost rider

Playing around with rear-curtain flash, I shot this 'ghost rider' as he came through towards the last little 'out-and-back' by the campsite.
A friend asked what I'd done in Photoshop to get this effect, and the answer is 'nothing'.

The way it goes

Just after 4am. I'd got in from a somewhat disasterous night lap, having broken my rear mech and run the second half of the course, and decided I needed to chill out by taking some nice long-exposure shots of other racers. I'm glad I did.

The time of the lost and found

Prepping for my night lap, making sure the lights had been charged and getting my head together.

Nice legs

Emily from the KMB team after one of the night laps. As you can see, it was a little muddy in places.

Surprise!

Chez from the Keswick Mountain Bikes team. They won the Enthusiast Womens category.
I think she was a bit surprised to see me.

Nice rack

A selection of clean shiny bikes. None of which are mine...

Unicycle

Sleepless in the Saddle 2008
This man is a soloist. On a Unicycle. He is therefore officially hardcore.

Cake or Death?

Sleepless in the Saddle 2008
Team 'Cake or Death?'- Jimbo, Suzie, Pyro, Jon, Stuart.
Just before the start - you can tell that because no-one's muddy.

Lighthouse

"I'll always be your lighthouse in these trying times" - The Bushburys
This is the Butt of Lewis lighthouse when a bank of sea fret rolled in. The light shining through the glass is the sun. Kind of spooky, but also quite cool, I thought.

Col de la Seigne (pt 2)

Bizarrely (and probably for the only time on this blog) that's me. The stone next to me is a marker of the border between France and Italy, the big stony white thing in the background is Mont Blanc.

I thought you should see the face behind the name. Feel free to erase that from your memory banks now.

Col de la Seigne

Even Adventure Racers play at aeroplanes sometimes. Add your own 'bwaaaaaaaarrrrp' noises.

Les Chapieux.

Les Chapieux. A beautiful little place in a hanging valley up in the Alps, where the first night camp of the Mountain X Race was held.

I'm going back, sometime.

Checkpoint Zero

(apologies to www.checkpointzero.com for the title)

Here's the start of a new photoblog, from Pyro's Yard Productions. In the absence of any coherent thinking, I'm going to paste pictures in here and ramble a little about them.

Sit back, enjoy the show, and please don't spill too much popcorn.

Pyro