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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
M and D and K are ready to rip! However, due to injuries sustained yesterday, D is just doing a trail run beside us (which in itself is pretty impressive!). He is hoping his parts heal for tomorrow.
So, after riding up Mountain Highway, the hardest part of the day, they wanted to run down Natural High and all the stunts. K walks up a board and promptly falls on his head. Oops! Who is the supervisor of this trip? He now knows what a swivel teeter feels like.
Same as yesterday, we did Bobsled, then Floppy the out King of the shore. K was a great bike handler, not even any near misses that I caught. D ran his heart out, claiming he wasn't tired at any time (right?). M rolled and bumped his way having fun with his buddies.
After a quick slurpie fuelup we headed back to Lynn Canyon to jump the cliffs. Well, they jumped the cliffs. That water is too freakin' cold for me. A little jumping on the rocks and the requisite falling in the raging river rounded out another beautiful day of bike camp.
This is a 10 week bundle of fun, hanging out with Daddy. Thank goodness he is a teacher.
The day begins with K and C on their way to Mac for a daycamp. Woohoo! Just hangin' with her friends.
M and D grab the mountain bikes and off we go to the North Shore. Hoping for no blood and no broken bones to start the summer. A half hour is spent checking over the bikes, lube the chain, check the brakes and learn to remove the front wheel (and more importantly, putting it back on tight) for the bike rack.
D gets a pair of loaner gloves for the inevitable spills that occur.
I offer to drop them at the gate. This has no meaning for D as he has never been there and has no concept of parking tickets. Perhaps he is spoiled by Whistler ski in/out ? Anyways, we assemble the bikes and start the climb up from Coleman. 20min later we hit the gate. Now he gets it. Perhaps tomorrow a drop at the gate? We'll see how awake he is...
I should say that another soccer friend was to join us, but he was playing soccer with a bees nest and so his foot would not fit into a shoe. Hopeful that the doctor will let him come and play tomorrow.
Turns out that they climbed so well and climbed back on after crashing that we did Bobsled, Floppy Bunny and then King of the Shore. Great Ride GUYS! No blood, no broken bikes, (maybe a few tears due to 'sackage').... but all in all a great first ride.
We spent lunch at Lynn Canyon watching the crazy teenagers jump from the rocks into the ice water. M and D want to bring bathing suits to do that tomorrow. May need parents to sign a waiver for that.
We are hoping that the next two days we will ride Leopard (about half way up the mountain) and the final day's challenge will be to ride to the very top and have lunch at the CrowsNest then cruise back down some of the trails for the afternoon. Lofty Goals.
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.
