Robbing Peter, Paying Paul

We all know that getting the work/life balance right is important, but I seem to be having problems with my work/work balance at the moment too. I was meant to be attending the Silverfish/Lapierre/Extra Demo Day at Dalby this weekend, but young James Crazylegs has volunteered for the post leaving me free. Well, free to come into the office and work over the weekend. Yep, it’s deadline time again.

This next issue’s looking good though – lots of good stuff from all the usual characters and some good gadgets to drool over too.

Once the magazine’s off to the printers, I’m off to a Trek 2010 launch in Austria. Unfortunately it means a 6am flight out of Stansted, but once there it should be good to see all the new stuff from Trek, who’ve really got their bikes looking and riding well. Seems to have paid off in sales too, with nearly all of their bikes sold out of the warehouse. This can often be a tricky time of year to get bikes in for test as next year’s bikes aren’t out yet and this year’s bikes are all sold. Somehow we managed to crowbar enough bikes for the bike test though 🙂

Once I’m back from Austria, I’m going to be taking an issue off. I’ll be handing the reins of the magazine to Sim and Ben and I’m taking off for six weeks. My plan is to ride my Salsa Fargo across the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean over as many Tour de France cols as I can find, then turn around and head back to Biarritz on the Spanish side of the hills. It’ll either kill me with the effort (I’m camping and carrying my own gear), or inspire me and turn me into a rock hard cycling god. I’m hoping it’s the latter. I’ll have a blog going, so tune in for updates – gofargo.blogspot.com

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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