Wise Words is our new interview series talking to some of mountain biking’s most switched on people.
We’ll ask our short list of questions to a heap of influential, inspiring and outspoken people that we feel are driving the direct of mountain biking today. Some will make you think, some will make you laugh, some will be plain dumb, some will inspire you to better yourself and your riding. We hope!
This week’s Wise Words come from a man of many adventures, Mr. Dan Milner.
The Dan Milner is a creature that is often found in the lesser-cycled regions of Planet Earth. Specialising in taking bikes where some may they think they shouldn’t, Dan has documented his trips in glorious stills from Ethiopia, Afghanistan and more recently, the Andes.
Dan’s tall tales are, as a result, some of the best. From losing people in the night in the high mountains, to working out if a guide’s AK-47 is there for show or for real, to hacking down cliffs covered in thorn bushes in the Ethiopian mountains, Dan has some of the best stories going.
Luckily, he’s also pretty good at documenting all of this.
How would your closest riding buddies describe you to someone who has never met you?
“Grumpy, elitist, odd”. Personally I think I’m easily misread, I don’t suffer fools lightly (i.e. “grumpy”) and I don’t like riding in groups larger than 4 if I can help it (i.e. “elitist”). But yes, I agree, I am odd.
What thing or things have you bought in the last year that had the biggest effect on your life as a mountain biker / cyclist / person that works in the bike industry?
Well in the last year, I’d say a plane ticket to Lesotho, Africa.
My job as a bike photographer takes me to a lot of amazing places, but one trip last year to ride and shoot a 6-day, point-to-point ride in Lesotho is one of the most grounding trips I’ve ever done. Visiting this southern African country and talking with people there will have a long-lasting impression on me. I can’t think of another country I’ve visited that radiates so much hope and pride (in a good way, not a nationalistic nonsense sort of way) despite it having a pretty tough set of challenges to overcome. The people are amazing. The riding is incredible. Go there.
What unusual habits do you have as a bike rider?
Questioning all the latest ‘need-to-have’s’ the industry tells us we need to have.
What piece of advice do you think every mountain bike rider should hear? And what piece should they ignore?
I’d say going outside and riding any wheel size is better than sitting inside pouring over the internet trying to decide what wheel size you need to ride. I really don’t know what they should ignore. Maybe advice from ex-XC racers that always bang on about how good rigid mountain bikes and Hite-rites and elastomer suspension was that have since become pro-photographers?
If you could go back and re-ride one day from your life so far, where/what/when/who would it be? Would you change anything?
Upper Mustang, Nepal, during a 10-day out-and-back ride to the Tibet border in 2010 with two mates.
We planned to ride back to one village and feeling surprisingly energetic, then pushed on to reach the next one, arriving totally knackered, at dusk. A truly mind-altering day, but the only thing I’d change would be that our porters were at the village teahouse when we got there, instead of heading on themselves as they did.
A change of clothes and sleeping bag would have been nice after such a big day, especially finishing in sub zero temperatures. But then again, that wouldn’t have left us to the challenge of communicating with our ageing non-English peaking host that we needed food through the art of reciting common dishes from a British curry house menu. “Aloo-Sag, Aloo-Gobi, Chana-Masala..” It was one of fate’s priceless experiences that can never be repeated.
What have you wasted the most time on in your life as a rider or bike industry career that you wished you’d given up years ago?
I don’t think I’ve wasted any time and I’m not a person that has regrets. It’s all been a learning curve, and has brought me to where I am now. Of course it’s not always been easy, but that’s life isn’t it? Maybe I could have learned the economics of commercial photography earlier, but then I wouldn’t have done all that dirtbag sofa surfing and met and worked with the people I did in the snowboarding world early on in my career.
And who knows, maybe I’d be a cutthroat arsehole now too. You make your choices and go with them. The thing is if you don’t like it, do something about it; that’s my thinking, and always has been. Maybe that’s the old punk in me saying that. We all have responsibility for our own lives.
How do you motivate yourself when you’re struggling or lacking inspiration?
I’m a morning person, definitely. Once darkness draws in, I retreat. I even hate arriving somewhere in the dark (not a great trait to have as a travel photographer). So I try to do as much as I can early morning, especially if it needs to tap into my creativity. A cup of tea and a biscuit (or 4) helps a lot. You have to take a breather, and it’s easy to forget that and push through. On photoshoots, I start to lose creative inspiration by mid afternoon if we’ve been on a roll. You have to sit down and take a rest and let the creative energies rebuild.
What single and specific thing about riding bicycles do you gain the most happiness from?
The universal language of the bicycle. You can go (almost) anywhere and the fact you have a bike with you quickly breaks down social and language barriers that would otherwise take ages to overcome.
What single thing would you like to erase from cycling history from the last year?
I’m not very good at following the big events or the race scene, and the industry hasn’t done anything as daft as the cable-downtube Slingshot design, so on a personal level (and because it is all about talking about myself) then tearing my calf muscle during a shoot for Red Bull in August. All I did was jump up on a rock for a better angle: 8 weeks off the bike. Healing takes longer as you get older.
What single thing would you like to make happen in the cycling world in the next year?
That the bike industry develops a real environmental consciousness (and conscience?). It’s part way there but we have so much further to go, and can do, if we want it to. It’s up to us all.
Who else should we ask these questions to?
Martyn Ashton.
