Tiger, North Shore, Whistler, Harriet...

Found out on my way to Vancouver this weekend that Harriet died. For those that do not know, Harriet was a turtle which Cheryl and I met in the Brisbane Zoo on our 2001 trip to Australia. Harriet was known as the oldest animal in captivity at 175, and it was even said that Harriet might have ridden with Darwin to London while he was working on evolution. Cheryl has a good write-up here.

This week's Tiger Mountain Tuesday was great! The weather has been so dry lately that the trails were not the least bit muddy. Amazing conditions for Tiger Mt. Shawn just bought an Enduro, and this was his first ride up on Tiger with it. We made pretty good time even though my chain broke on the climb.

When in Vancouver this past weekend I put together my bike, new rear triangle and shock, so I could ride Seymour in the afternoon. Cheryl came with Glade, Jen, and I, and we did a run down CBC, and Neds. The picture here is Cheryl and her new bike:

Sunday we went to Whistler, for the first weekend Garbanzo was open this year. It was great! A bit hot, but we ripped up A-Line, Dirt Merchant, Freight Train, and the other notables. Glade, James, Derek, Ray, and I rode all day, and we met up with Matt and Armando later on for one run. I collided with another rider, but luckily there were no injuries.

That's it for this past weekend.

Resting the wrist

This weekend my bike and my wrist were both still on the mend. I didn't bike, play v-ball, or do much exciting at all. Somehow there's always a story though...

My v-ball team won our league this past weekend. That was cool.

Cheryl's car was egged while we were having a BBQ at Henry's. We later realized it was $6 to get a hand carwash from Chevron. The guy really did a great job for the price... We scrambled to find enough money to tip him after seeing what a pain that egg was to get off.

On Sunday Cheryl swapped cars with me so I could bring hers in to get a rack hooked up. This morning at 12:30AM I got a call from Cheryl saying she had been told she could not cross the border in my car... That was bad news. So I woke up to go swap cars with her halfway to the border. As a result she didn't get home until after 3AM, and I didn't really get to sleep until after 2:30, so that detour was somewhat painful.

On the plus side I bought a camera... I will no longer have to steal Cheryl's every time I want to take a picture :)

North Shore Ripper 2006 – CBC Time Trial

This weekend Matt, Dan, and I went up to Vancouver to race in the 3rd North Shore Ripper of the season – the CBC Time Trial.

Basically you go down Seymour’s flagship trail as fast as you can, getting time bonuses for stunts, skinnies, and style as you go.

Since Dan had never ridden the trail before we decided to go up early Friday with Glade and a few others to do a late night run. We wanted to do two, but we had too many mechanicals… There were 3 popped tubes, a broken crank/pedal, a broken front brake line, a blown shoe, and I broke my rear shock rendering my bike useless for the race.

So we called it a night…

The next day we raced. I took Cheryl’s bike because mine was out of commission. Here is the race write-up and results, that’s Matt in the spidey suit… As you can tell from the results I didn’t get a lot of style points. I actually went over the handlebars, and wiped out two other times on the structures while racing, and that probably didn’t help my time too much. Seems they don’t give style points for stylish wipeouts. I injured my wrist, but it’s not broken, so I hope to be back in action in a couple of weeks.

Couple of things to keep in mind while racing DH:
1) Pace yourself.
2) Stunts are harder when you’re tired.
3) A race is not a good time to try new tricks.

Until next time…

Whistler and more North Shore

Two weeks ago I went to Whistler to check out the bike park for the first time this year. Some great improvements can be seen already... They've added some zing to the Heart of Darkness trail in the form of a couple of solid table tops, and also made A-Line a bit bigger by adding some vertical to the jumps within.

The next day I went over to ride Fromme with Cheryl on her new bike's inaugural ride... Cheryl linked to some pics of the ride within her latest post.

This weekend I raced in the third North Shore Ripper event this year - The CBC Ripper. I haven't seen the results, or pics posted yet, so I'll wait a few days before posting the summary. Until next time...

Folk festival and more...

Found a better link to pics for the Rat Pack trail. We actually met the guy who posted these pics while we were out there.

After coming back from the Rat Pack trail we hiked Rattlesnake Ledge, a pretty short hike with a great view, just over 30 mins from Seattle.

The next day I went to the folk festival. It was free (with a suggested $5 tip.) The acts themselves weren't much to talk about, but it was fun to walk around and listen to everyone jamming anyhow.