The most important question from 1995 - what’s your favourite Burt sticker?

2manyoranges

Old School Grand Master
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Trivial really - but feels very serious sometimes. They are emphemeral things...but vested with huge memories and emotional content. And they are going...they don’t last. They get stuck on, peel off, fall onto trail and mountain and decay. Gone.

My ProFlex last year went to France, to Les Deux Alps, Mint Sauce stickers applied on it. Gosh it tugged at my heart strings to leave the stickers on, since that year was the first one without my wife, taken by cancer at the age of 30. But once applied, that’s it really - so they stayed on and went to France, hopefully to stay on the frame.

It’s a bit weird that stickers are invested with stuff, but I remember carefully thinking about where they should go, then carefully applying them: ‘I ride therefore I am...’ ‘...ride slow for fear of riding past dreams...’. A one-minute stop on a tough ride, and it’s great to see the words. Makes you think. And that was the idea, well done Jo.

And of course Harrison.

He’s my favourite really. But Summer comes a close second. When you have verglas on your handlebars, it’s good to see Summer on the top tube. She’ll be back soon enough.

All my new builds have a Burt sticker somewhere. My son’s 2108 Sender has a banana on the top tube. He loves it. My friend Yves has one on his helmet, so it goes around the Alps. Each of my numerous 2020 and 2021 model hardtail builds has Harrison or a ‘planet’, as do the Transitions. I thought it was only me, but then a friend said...looking at the sticker just applied to a Ragley....’wow that brings it all back....’

(Shout out to Kaz whose generosity last year meant a great deal..)

But of course they are being ‘used up’ - keep them? Use them? Leave them pristine in a packet or ride with them. What does it matter? Actually...quite a lot...

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I had the Bleat! sticker on my D-lock for a long time. And it slowly wore away until there was no mint sauce left. I had some of the other stickers on the frame of my first MTB, but that frame broke, and was returned on a lifetime warranty claim.

I think I might have the second, unused Bleat! sticker somewhere. It would take a monumental effort to try and find it. I wouldn't even know where to start looking. Some day I'll stumble on it, and say 'Ahhh! That's where it was all these years'.
 
I had clean forgotten 'bleat' - but I sure recall 'This is why....'

And....sitting in the setting sun with my sixteen-year old son, on the roots of a huge beech, looking over the greensward and into a Sussex valley which undoubtedly Jo B has ridden...'This is why....' felt like just the thing......

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Haven’t got them anymore but…

“Never lose faith in the colour of the sky”

and

”You can wear shorts all the time if it’s summer in your soul”
 
'....the temptation to take the precious things we have apart to see how they work must be resisted for they never fit together again...'
 
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