A couple of days in the life of team Huckmonkey / RAM

Published on March 9, 2009

What a random day. I woke up Sunday 8th March, to one of the most sun drenched mornings I’ve seen in a long time; the sky was blue and hardly a cloud in sight. It was a totally different story the night before.

Tom Grundy (film-maker and photographer extraordinaire), Rory and Tim from the Ram/Huckmonkey dirt Jump team arrived at my house around 9PM. We hit my workshop and fitted all their new sparkly Marzocchi DJ1’s, Saint cranks and SLX rear brakes to their RAM 4130’s.

After three and a half hours of listening to Tim waffle on about sod all the catchphrase of the evening some how turned to ‘Tim shut the f**k up’. With all the bikes sorted we went to the house to dicuss the day ahead. The plan was to meet up with Jim Davage and Chris Smith and the guys seemed nervous, but excited at prospect. I went to bed and left the guys in my front room with the Ambipureasauras to chat about the next day and get some shut eye.

After seeing that amazing sunshine when I woke on Sunday morning I went downstairs to wake the guys up. After a hearty breakfast of fried eggs on toast we loaded up the motors and headed for Davage town.

We meet up with Jim and followed him to Yeovil, where after a brief wait in Lidls car park, we had to go search for Ryan (Ram/Huckmonkey.com dirt jump team) and Sam Ren (D Bikes).

After finding the crew we headed off for the first riding spot of the day; The Hollow (Jim’s spot). With all the crew ready to ride, the guys sessioned the trails for a good hour before the weather took a real turn for the worst. The wind just seemed to come from nowhere and it was kicking up a storm big time. Tim hit the deck two or three times before a big stack, resulting in his knee popping out of place after being blown off track. Rory had a get down on his hip, which pretty much put him out for the day and Big Jim D ended up with a face full of dirt after getting a bit of kite syndrome whilst airborne.

The weather changed again, the heavens opened up, and hit out with a almighty downpour. We all started grabbing flashes, cameras, video equipment and heading forthe car and as fast as the rain started it stopped.

We set all the kit back up and continued our session, only for the weather to do the same thing about 20 minutes later. Enough was enough so we packed up and headed for lunch. After stuffing our faces with junk food there was talk of sacking the day off due to the weather.

We decided to give Chris Smiths dirt Jumps a miss, as they would most probably have been to wet to ride so we headed for the famous wallride that has graced a few covers of MBUK, and has been featured in most of Chris Smiths video sections on various DVDs.

We arrived at the wall to find a humongous lake in front of the run up to the wall. Determined to make the wall ridable me and Big Jim Davage went to work on draining the pool. The guys seemed a bit relieved when they saw the run-in flooded, as they were a bit nervous as none of them had hit a wallride before.

It was looking doubtful for a while, but eventually we managed to dig some drainage a clear it. Once the run was dry Big Jim headed flat out at the wall and roosted straight across it. Rory disappeared out of sight and the next thing we know he’s hurtling towards the wall at Mach-10 and bang straight up and down first time. Nailed it perfect!

Not wanting to be out done, Tim and Ryan both headed up and both nailed perfect first time. After a few runs the game was stepped up a bit, with Tim popping a table out the top of the wall and Ryan following up with the same. Tim just took it straight on the chin, and followed up with a no-footer then a very close no footed can attempt landing groin to top-tube ending the trick session.

All three lads were planning to try and get on the wall at the same time, but due to a mechanical failure on Rory’s chain ring it was down to Tim and Ryan. After a few runs and getting their timing down both guys ripped across the wall a few feet apart, which made for some excellent photos and video footage.

We decided to call it a day around 5pm. Just as we got back to the cars the heavens opened up and we had what I can only explain as the weirdest half an hour of weather ever. Rain was beating down really hard, as we were packing the cars up and preparing for our journeys home.

Just as we pulled off from where we were parked, everything just went white and it was like a Siberian snowstorm.

The road disappeared under a blanket of snow in seconds, and everywhere looked like it had been snowed on for months. As I came down out of the hills the snow seemed to disappear and then out popped the sun again.

Talk about global warming.

Words: Cliff Barbeary/Huckmonkey.com Photos: Tom Grundy/ tomgrundy.blogspot.com/Huckmonkey.com