If there is a puncture up for grabs, I’ll be the one to claim it. I’ve had punctures several times just riding on the roads, pinch punctures on the trail and of course the nasty thorn induced punctures. Paul, however, skytes that he never gets punctures! Having gone tubeless and using beefy Knobby Niks tyres probably has a lot to do with his having little opportunity to try out his CO2 dispenser. Ah, but when it comes to breaking chains, thats a different story ….

On a 73 k journey in the Dubbo Gully along the Old Great North Road trails yesterday Paul was feeling confident he would have a chain-incident-free ride. He has suffered several broken chains lately and was very disgruntled with the reliability of so called quality brands. Having trawled the net for a more robust solution, he finally settled on a heavy duty German manufactured one! Yesterday it was initiated.

And, you guessed, it! On this rather innocuous section of most pleasant fire trail, one moment Paul was buzzing along right next to me and next I was eating up the trail on my own. German engineering just aint what it used to be!

(Just so happens, earlier in the ride we came across a couple of other riders. One of them was repairing a puncture. He remarked that it was a good quality tube too at which I quipped “Ah, there’s your problem. You can’t rely on quality brands any more”. That comment was re cycled as Paul removed the damaged link from his chain.)

While Paul was repairing, I munched on an AntiOx bar and took this photo of the track. What a fantastic environment to ride in! Love the moody sky.