The last few spins in Clare, Limerick and Tipperary have all been interrupted and delayed by fallen trees. It’s not normally a big deal, we just get past them and keep going .. but when there’s a group of 5 or 6 riders it delays the whole group till we’ve all gotten past and it just disturbs the whole flow of the ride.
Add to this that we’re approaching the summer and a few ‘roadbook’ events are lined up – now there’s the added danger of hitting a fallen tree at speed because the riders head might be looking at the nav gear to see how far the next turn is. So we have to start clearing it up a bit.
I don’t have a spare €200+ just lying around to buy a ‘proper’ chainsaw mount but I have some waste timber from old floorboards and a few old ratchet straps, so I made a very basic mount and tried it out.
And it worked. I wasn’t going fast or taking any big hits or tackling singletrack or anything gnarly, but the saw was secure and stable and there were no issues at all.
It came off quick, made short work of the few trees it had to cut, and went back on the bike with no fuss. Result :o)
Now that the prototype hack has worked, I’m going to have to build a stronger version for the longer spins when I may have to keep pace with some other guys.