Exams are but a few weeks away, which means revision is looming and encroaching on riding time. However mother nature is being kind at the moment and giving us ridable light until late in the evenings. So I have been riding quite regually mainly with Jeff. We sessioned the brinks road DH track on Sunday & Monday (yes we pulled our fingers out of our arses and got out riding).

On Tuesday I headed up Pindale with Jeff, Shane & Ben. We had a pretty good time playing on rollers and a tricky rock section some where halfway up the quarry face, only Shane made it through and he did so by endowing on slippy jagged rocks, nice. We sessioned a small drop and scouted a maybe doable gap jump which would look awesome on film. With all the playing we only had time for a couple of runs. On the last run Jeff took some photos. It was about 8.30 and pretty much dark. Jeff kindly got his flash out and blinded us leaving us to blindly hold on for dear life down the rock track.

Yesterday (Wednesday) me and johnny headed up to the quarry above the millstone. We didn’t ride but did some digging. The old hip is rebuilt some roller drops have been rebuilt and we built a gap drop which is quite big. Should be good for a session some time soon (maybe after exams or one evening).

On other news, there are rumors of some spangly monkeyspoon.com jerseys! (talk to Irwin if you are interested in one, the current idea is to base them around sombrio jerseys).

Nicky

08-04-03 Black Rabbit, 13 Pictures

The showing of Seasons at the Showroom has been confirmed as:

Seasons – The Showroom, Sheffield
Tuesday the 10th of June (2008) at 8.30pm

Tickets are now on sale, so you can phone up and get them through the box
office: 0114 275 7727 (Open from 1pm each day)

Adult/Normal tickets are £7.50 when booked over the phone and available for collection on the night or before (don’t forget the card you paid with).
As of last night (16/4/08) they had 257 tickets left.

For more info see our Seasons @ Sheffield page.

Brought to us in association with:

The Collective’s new film, the highly anticipated ‘Seasons’, is to be shown in Sheffield at The Showroom, as part of the Tour of a number of cinemas across the UK before the film’s DVD release.

The Showroom is a great venue, it recently hosted ShAFF and is the largest independent cinema outside of London. The date for the showing is to be announced, so we’ll keep you updated. I expect it to will be sometime in May or possibly June. But if you can’t wait that long the UK Premier is to be held at Prince Charles Cinema, London, on the 30th of April.

It is hoped the film will include some of the footage The Collective shot of (HRH) Steve Peat on the No Human Course at Wharncliffe.

We (at Monkeyspoon) are very proud to have been asked to help promote the event, and are also very excited to have been given access to the Seasons website’s Press/Media section, which amongst other things features some amazing high quality stills by photographer Sterling Lorence.

We’ve set up a page with some of beautiful promotion images and more information about the film and venue. So check out the Seasons @ Sheffield page in the Videos section.

As you will have hopefully known, ShaFF took place last weekend. With Monkeyspoon having a short film being shown, entitled “Downhill Mountain Biking In The Peak District“. The film showcased some of our best downhill riding in the Peak District. It was shown as part of three compilations, shown twice on Saturday and once on Sunday. In the “Bike” compilation, which we went to see, it was shown alongside such classic mountain bike movies as “Between The Tape” and “NWD 8″. It was a funny thing seeing our riding being shown on such a large screen, alongside other movies that I really respect and have inspired me to ride my bike. I can only hope that our movie will have inspired others to get out and ride there bikes in the Peak District.

James Irwin – Main Rider and Owner of Monkeyspoon

I very pleased to have our film shown on a massive cinema screen in front of what was quite a few people. I was amazed how good quality it looked on the huge screen, considering it (and the other films, as far as I know) were only DVD quality. I though the editors did a good job with choosing what to sections of the longer films to show. In particular Between The Tape, its quite long if you’ve seen it once or twice, but the edit keep the best sections, mainly the WC rounds, it was a comfortable length, and there was also quite a lot of Peaty in it, which added a local connection and relevance.

The one film I hadn’t seen before was “Vicious Circle” was interesting. It didn’t seem to have such a big budget or be as well equipped as some the big names on shown, but there were some good sections made more interesting by the choice of music. It was quite different from most MTB films with older but well known tracks like “Jolene” by Dolley Parton and “Poison” by Alice Cooper, they worked surprisingly well (for me) with the footage and made for something a little different from the norm.

It was great to see the trailer for the new Collective film, Seasons, it looks even better on a cinema screen. It would also have been nice to see the Virtuous (in HD) and F1rst (new from Clay Porter) trailers, perhaps in between the longer features.

Anyway, well worth going to see it and I’ll try and do something even better for next years one. I’ll leave you with a piece of advice in case you ever find yourself having your film shown at a big event, don’t drink a pint of coke before you go in…

Jeff R King – Cameraman, Editor and Film Producer.

Also worth mentioning are the guys from DHP, Joe and Sam, who also contributed to the film but couldn’t be there as they were at a race. And thanks to the other riders involved.

If you went to ShAFF don’t forget to fill out a feedback form, you might win something. It will be available to the end of the month (31/3/08).

See you there next year!

A medium quality version of the film is now available for download, it is 90MB and you may need the 3ivX codec do view it.

The 11th-16th of august is the date. Current riders are: Nicky, James & Jonny. Annie Last is interested and we would be interested in making the numbers up to about 5 if anyone else is interested?