About

So what’s with the VeloFello moniker?

Well, the VeloFello is a reluctantly reclusive webcrawler, preferring anonymity on-line in lieu of his name and job being very distinctive. It’s not some great state secret, you could probably search him out pretty easily – but the point of VeloFello is not to hide behind a moniker and pretend he is something he is not. It’s to be unseen behind a moniker that allows him to be who he is. Which is mostly a second degree idiot, father and MTB fanatic like you.

All opinions expressed on this website are personal and do not reflect in any way, shape, form or ethereal mass the views, opinions, dreams, hopes, aspirations or drunken rambling of his current, previous, past, or future employers, their staff, vendors, associates, friends, riding-buddies, drinking-buddies, fuck-buddies or enemies in any state, or in any state of intoxication under any means natural or chemically enhanced and delivered via any means of transferral, including but not limited to e.mail, blog, facebook, in a cheeky roll-up or just plain old hand-written and posted.

So what’s this site about then?

It’s a question I ask myself (in the 2/3rd person) pretty often, and I think it includes some of the following: Alpine Mountain Biking, Life, Skiing, one-day building the ultimate EuroVan, Airbrushing, Mac computers and myriad assorted other things that I feel like posting up here.

So just who is the VeloFello?

VeloFello is an Englishman, born in Holland and part-raised in France and the UK. For the past five years he has been living and working in the Isere region of France (think Grenoble, Alpe d’Huez) in the heart of the Alpes, in easy reach of riding areas such as Portes du Soleil, 2Alpes or the Chartreuse mountains.

Since the age of 18 he has worked in the bicycle industry as Saturday sales assistant, mechanic, store manager, telesales, road-sales / rep, product manager, brand manager, and now general manager.

His latest job means that he does everything, from make the tea, sell bikes, liase with vendors in the Far East, handle Marketing, Sales, Warranty, Accounting, Budgeting, run a business, Logistics, Warehousing, Transport, Agents Liason, Idea Finder and coffee maker extraordinare.

Away from work he likes to ride bikes, ski, play/work/live on his modified MacBook (200gb / 3Gb) as well as listen to music, try his hand at airbrushing and sleep.

Sleep is held back by the long list above, and also the pride of his life, a little girl who just takes his breath away every time she does something new. Fatherly love being what it is – even even when she does something old she takes his breath away also….

He is happy. but doesn’t much like Mondays.

Riding Tales

I’m a MTB freak, and have been since about 1986, at which time I was nary a boy and rode my 20″ wheeled Raleigh Marauder (I so wanted the Mustang…) up and down the Ridgeway and Cotswolds in the UK. Malverns, Wight Festival, the Gorricks and tentative trips up to the firts UK trail centre at Coed y Brenin (then nothing more official than a hut in the forest and a “head up that hill and you’ll find some tracks we’ve dug out”) on my Raleigh M-Trax Ti2000 followed.

Racing followed, with the (in)famous NEXT series in South Wales. At one point I ranked 10th in XC Sport… not bad for a un-fit bugger like me. I’d moved on from the Raleigh by this time, first to a Cannondale gartail with Headshock (shocking) then to Pro-Flex number 1, an 856 with Girvin forks. A friend welded a disc mount onto it so I could fit one of the first disc brakes – the Magura lasted about four rides before the fork folded in the Forest of Dean.

Pro Flex 2 was to follow a few years later, but in the meantime I rode Bontragers (Race, Racelight and Comp), Klein (Attitude, Adroit and Mantra), and another Cann of ale, this time a Super V. That then got swapped out for another Snap ‘n Fail, this time a F series HT with -then all new – Lefty fork. After that went (there is a warranty theme here somewhere..) there was a Marin Mount Vision Pro, then a brace of Rocky Mountain’s – ESX and Reynolds 853 steel Blizzard (which I still have and love).

Riding wise; I’d decided to stop racing, and take more time ‘just riding for fun’ – trips all over the UK (many to the emerging trail centres such as Afan & 7Staines) led to my taking my MTB Mountain Leaders qualification.  I got into 24 hour racing with the Red Bull events in the UK, later also was heavily involved with the Shimano Sleepless in the Saddle events. I rode about a dozen 24′s, in Solo, pairs and quad Team formats – superb fun and a real sense of achievement.

About this time I started ‘having to’ ride bikes for work, so numerous proto’s and production versions of Vario’s followed; Diablo, Oxyd, Oxyd LT, Harissa, Kaktus. More recently the bikes have been Zen, Fury, Sin, Shockwave, Rumble, as well a a series of different prototypes including V-Boxx bikes.

Riding wise, things moved on for me in about 2002 when I tasted riding in the Alpes for the first time. I’d been ‘freeriding’ for a while – a especially memorable day was riding with a big group of trade and pro-racers after the World Champs at Les Gets in ’04. While I am still a Singletrack fetishist, and I still don’t jump – I do really love the whole “Freeride” scene in the Alps; Ski lifts to take the brunt out of the climbs (the Germans logically call these “upmeters”), the superb vistas, great gravity-assisted descents. The big travel bikes, body armour and full-face lid are not aggressive or excessive – just the right tools for the job at hand.

Nowadays, I seem to have less and less time to ride; so logically most of my miles are still XC – though I prefer to consider it “Agrgessive XC” (A-XC) (c) Velofello. You maybe know what I mean; it’s still XC but with a little more Gnarr…