Again. Haven't had time to ride... I fitted the Saint 810 lever to my Zee caliper and put it on my bike though. :D

Since I didn't feel all too well on the Marino, I bought a trials frame and transferred almost all parts to this one. It feels much better than the old one and has a real trials geometry. Here's what I did today. It's also the first time that I've tried sidehops.

Today went pretty well. I finally got up that friggin' wall and back down. Unfortunately, I went down on my arse as well as I forgot to pull the rear break. Now that I got that wall done, I will concentrate on all the other fun things that trials has to offer.

Yesterday I set up the Racing Line lever but haven't had time to test it yet and since there's nothing new to report I would like to mention the online shop I got my parts from. It's www.trialmarkt.de.

Now there are many shops on the internet but I have never experienced such a good customer service. As I got into trials I bought a new HS33R there and after one week or so I realized, that there was air in the system or it might have been leaking. I don't know... Anyways, I wrote an email to Jan (the owner) and after having sent in my brake, I got a new one right away. By that time I had already ordered the Tensile Tocco lever, which, put together with my HS11 slaves, was supposed to be my brake from then on. The Magura I was going to sell.

Now as I wrote some posts earlier, the Tocco lever wasn't functioning either and as I got the new one from Tensile, I asked Jan if I could swap it for a Racing Line one (with the additional cost paid of course). He agreed right away.

Yesterday I asked him if I could send in my new Magura (for which I hadn't found a buyer) and get my money back or rather invest it in some other parts. Again he agreed.... 

Emails were answered right away as well as my annoying questions (as a beginner). Now that's good customer service! Thumbs up.

Since I didn't like the Tocco:

Today went pretty well. I did, as expected, Pedal Ups and felt that there was a little improvement. After around 300 tries I managed to do what you can see in the video but was too tired to improve on my technique. Only in the end did I realize, that I wasn't jumping enough and that, once my rear wheel was on the wall, I should lean forward do get a proper pedal kick done. After a "little" warmup next practice it should hopefully work better. I really want to get this over with as I can't think of anything else...

Some days ago I wrote about the faulty Tensile Tocco lever. Well, I contacted Tensile and they send me a new one to be able to have a look at mine. I wrote an e-mail on Sunday and got a response on Sunday. Wow!

As I got the new lever I decided to send it back though* and put a little more money on a Racing Line one. I just hope it's worth the extra cash.

Today's riding was a little frustrating as I still couldn't manage to get up the wall AND do some BWHs there. I don't know what happened but I kinda lost my technique and am struggling to perform a clean Pedal Up. The good thing was that I only hit my rock ring a couple of times rather than the 100 times last practice.

The beginning of the video shows that even without doing anything else than Pedal Ups I perform better at BWHs which is rather surprising.

Another thing I have to mention is that I am not very happy with my bike. It feels too unbalanced, slow and heavy. Now you could say that it's not the bike but the rider, and that may very well be but I'm thinking of getting a new frame with a more trialish geometry. Either a 24'' or a 26''. The latter being the preferred option.

*Not to Tensile but to the dealer I got it from.