Its Part of the Learning Curve - As Long As You Don't Lose Any Teeth!

It was a bright and sunny Sunday - the perfect day for a mountain bike ride. My dad went riding with his friends in the morning and I met him over on the North Shore. I got a ride from some friends : G, C and their dad Jeff.

After riding up the hill to Bobsled, we took off. It was a bit slower than normal (which may be a contributing factor?) but as I came around a corner a root grabbed my front wheel and I gave it a kiss. The front wheel, that is. I believe Uncle Pete would call it a "Kiss of Death".

No hospital trip required but it was a ride ender.

Live to ride another day...

Deck Refresh

Well, it is time for the kids to do some hard labour and earn a bit of cash. To "refresh" the deck, we are going to replace the rail with a different design, put a 2x6 cedar surface (darkly stained) and replace any of the 20 year old rotting joists.

Here are the before shots.

 

After a few hours of work, it looks like this...gotta get it ready for the new wood to be delivered in a couple of days:

Here is the real reason to "refresh". Better do something before it falls apart.

Gastown GrandPrix

We love bike racing!

Hold on to your HAT!

Swim camp - week 2 of the summer

Two weeks long. Every day at the pool. Crazy fun!

Where is my comb?

Mommy's away ... Let's renovate!

So Lara takes off for the weekend and the long-anticipated move of K to the basement is moving forward. The side effect of this? We have to move Lara's office upstairs.

Bike Camp-The Final Challenge-Day 4

We made it! No trips to repair bikes. No hospital visits!

Today is a much easier technical day but a long day in the saddle. We are riding from Mountain highway all the way up to the Grouse Cafeteria for some poutine. Mmmmm, yummy...

Passing the gate around first switchback and past Floppy-Bobsled: Dylan's comment was "this is not so far! How did I think it was so far on the first day?"

Up, up, up we went. Past Leopard. Now we were into unchartered territory. Explorers.



Pink Starfish, OilCan, Executioner, Finally round the 6th switchback and up past Pile of Rocks, Upper Oilcan, and Seventh Secret (dad's favorite trail).

Round the corner and onto the flat. Time to leave the mountain and go over to the next one : Grouse Mountain! We can see it. But Wowowwowowowow still more climbing.







Up up up and we must be close to the top of Everest.









We are out of water, out of gas and need to walk a bit. This is farther than anyone planned. Three hours and counting...

But we persevered on and after some emotional moments and self reflection. We arrived at the top of Grouse Mountain. 3:20 ride time.

Check out that pound of poutine. Well deserved! Great job guys.

Time down: 45 min.

Bike Camp Day 3 - Leopard

Well, they say Leopard is a blue and we set out to find out. Also, this climb up the fireroad is a bit boring and this day serves as a nice transition to the monster challenge tomorrow which is to have lunch at the peak.

D has recovered and is back on his bike but K has headed off to the Kootenays. M is ready to rock.

I dropped them at the gate today but to be honest, they did not really need it. They are fine with the climb as a warmup.

We took breaks at 3 and 5 and shortly after, checked out the entrances to Ladies and to Pipeline (some guy died about a month ago on this one)

We entered Leopard and the boys rocked the first bit. A little walking, it is, after all, pretty tight and twisty. I was pleased with their progress and risk taking (not too much! - that can wait until they are teenagers).

And then it happened. Inevitable really. It is the North Shore. D did a little drop - woohoo'd - then slowed too much on a bridge and topsided off the 4' drop. Sounded like a transport truck parked on his foot. I guess he's too young to learn the language of Ted, because if that happened to Ted, it would've been much more colourful.

Walking a bit of the trail with M riding then he, too smashes his shin with his pedal. Yikes! Now two walking. I guess the plan of Crink'em Crank'em is off. We bailed out and took the road back down. M and I rode Floppy (he almost cleaned it!) while D met us at the gate.

D already has his chiro appointment booked, but two hours later and both boys are bad in good spirits.

Can't wait for tomorrow.