Category Archives: travel

Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, roadtrip, travel

No rain in Vancouver

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For a whole week I was in Vancouver & I didn’t see it rain once. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. With mild summer temperatures it was quite pleasant. Valerie & I spent a bit of time Wednesday & Thursday on the North Shore doing pleasant little walks & enjoying the sun. Karin & I caught the final installment of Harry Potter one evening in the city – it really is a very good conclusion to the series & the 3D adds something extra.

Thursday night I said goodbye to my traveling buddy as Valerie flew off back to Sydney. It’ll be a huge shock for her to go back to work after thirteen weeks. It was great to have someone to share the such a large trip with & we really did see a lot & have some great memories – plus having a shuttle driver for my MTB rides was a huge bonus.

Karin took Friday off work for an extra long long-weekend & we tossed around various ideas for a hike close to town. The forecast was good, but the morning started off with a shroud of cloud covering the city. We eventually decided on walking to Eagle Bluffs from the Cypress ski area to hopefully get a good view of the city & out to Vancouver Island. The trail started by climbing steeply up to the top of the ridge & Black Mountain. There was a lot of snow to cross as we approached the ridge, walked along it & then went down the west side for forty minutes before reaching the bluffs. There were a few small ponds around doing their job of looking pretty well.

We did get out on the bluffs for a good view of the surrounds. It was still a little hazy, so the photos don’t show nearly as much as we actually saw. The clouds came & went & were replaced by various others, but it was worth the walk as most of the time on the top of the ridge we had clear blue skies.

From a bit further down the hill on the drive home

We took a slightly different route back to the car & were down after about four hours in total. After resting for a little while we pulled bikes out & went off in to the city to meet a couple of Karin’s friends to watch the sunset from Kits beach. The skytrain took us half way there & we had a very pleasant forty minute ride around the waterfront to the beach where we grabbed some sushi. After sitting & chatting on the beach for too long, it was rather dark for our return trip but we managed not to knock anyone over of get hit ourselves. A very fun little outing to cap the day off.

bikes, Canada, MTB, roadtrip, travel

Whistler Riding!

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If Moab is the most famous overseas MTB destination when you live in NZ, Whistler is definitely a close second.  So it was great to get back up there yesterday with (what’s left of) my bike & get some cross-country & downhill rides in.  It was a slightly later start to the day after finding my car had been towed from the Visitor Garage in Karin’s building; but with that sorted I was in Whistler & riding by 11.30.

I started from the village & followed the Whistler Valley Single Track route that ended up being just over twenty kilometres. Mid-week, the trails close to town were still insanely popular – especially with large family groups. There were plenty of small kids out there & they were doing well as the rocky trails weren’t exactly a cake-walk. Mind you, I was climbing & they were mostly going downhill so maybe it was a little easier that way. The quick-fix of the dogbone on my bike only lasted three kilometres before the stresses of me pedalling uphill bent it, most annoying. The trails were good, but the names were even better – I rode Peaches, en Regalia, Dinah Moe Humm, The Torture Never Stops (it wasn’t that bad), Fountain of Love, Pinocchio’s Furniture (lots of wooden bridges & so on), & Gee I Like Your Pants among others.

With a little time on the road & cyclepath I was riding Cut Yer Bars & then A River Runs Through It. ARRTI was rated a black & had a lot of structures to balance on, jump over & so on. With my bottom bracket wobbling around & being worn out after three months of traveling I wasn’t really in the mood for what is quite a boring trail if you’re going slowly. There were a few see-saws/teeter-totters, this was the most interesting one & I managed to ride over this quite OK. I think it was the first one I’ve seen on a bike trail with industrial bearings for pivot.

I wonder what the lubrication schedule is for this, I could probably put it in Maximo if required

I spent an hour or so going around bike stores in town trying to make my bike more rideable so that it was worth going on some lift-assisted rides. Eventually I found the side of a long-cage derailleur in a crate of old ruined parts & after some filing I got it to fit. I was a little confused by the accent of the girl I bought my ticket off – turned out she was from Auckland, NZ; I’m disturbed by that. Off I went to join the DH set, feeling completely out of place as usual with my open-face helmet, clipless pedals, only four inches of travel & a 27lb bike.

I got one good run down B-Line that was great fun before the derailleur cage broke & my bottom bracket started thwacking around. The next two runs were good too, just I was a little distracted. More good trail names: I rode Ninja Cougar, Karate Monkey Samurai Pizza Cat, Heart of Darkness & Crank It Up. A mildly frustrating day all up with the bike, but the riding was good (if not completely my cup of tea) & I rode Whistler! I do hope I can find some solution to the dogbone issue back in Canmore as I’ve been so looking forward to doing all my favourite rides back there for the last few months – I still think Jumpingpound Ridge/Cox Hill rates as highly as any I’ve done on this trip (but just might be a nostalgically distorted view of what was a really good ride).

Canada, city, family, roadtrip, travel

Vancouver walkabout

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Three days in a row the weather was good in Vancouver – sensational! The SkyTrain is not far from Karin & Adam’s place, so we took that into the city on Monday morning. When I say the weather was good, I mean it wasn’t raining – the day alternated between sun, overcast & wind of varying degrees. There’s a good walk around the waterfront with informative historical information boards – we took this towards the marina & Stanely Park. This area is also home to many seaplanes, it was neat to see so many landing & taking-off – something I haven’t seen much of for quite some time.

All that Albertan sulphur provides a bit of brightness

Vancouver is really nice, especially with a bit of sun, but there is a proliferation of glass apartment buildings & I think these are awful. There are all very samey & lack any sort of character. While the metro system is great, the roads system shows a complete lack of forethought when you try to drive through what is quite a small city – no/few highways, how was that a good idea?

Stanley Park was well worth a big walk around. We followed the seawall counter-clockwise for a few kilometres taking in the Nine O’Clock Gun, a lighthouse & the Girl in Wetsuit statue (the grumpy Danes wouldn’t let them call it a mermaid, so the tail became flippers) before heading in to the center of the park.

Just as we were leaving the park, much to Valerie’s delight, we came across a family of very docile racoons. I’d seen a couple on earlier rides, but racoons were one of the animals Valerie was still hoping to see in the wild.

We didn’t see any beavers at Beaver Lake, just water-lillies.

We walked alongside the very pleasant & popular English Bay towards another purported GT dealer in search of a dogbone for my bike. That was fruitless once again – but Valerie did manage to get a coffee-cup holder for Karin’s bike. Not sure they would be a good idea on a mountain-bike, but apparently it’s the thing to have on your Vancouver city bike.

bikes, Canada, event, family, friends, roadtrip, travel

Whistler visit

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Karin had a Sunday daytrip to Whistler planned for us & a couple of her friends, Mark & Elise.  It was a rare wonderfully sunny day in this part of the world & the slow drive up Highway 99 through Squamish had great views of the bay & mountains.  It was the last day of Crankworx (a ten day freeride MTB event), so the village was pretty busy; but not nearly as crazy as Saturday apparently.  We wandered around the village (nice to have no roads through it) a bit, had lunch & then Karin, Mark & Elise went off to go zip-lining.  Valerie & I pottered around a bit more, managing to catch Ryan Leech’s trials riding demonstration.  A thoroughly likeable guy (the couple of times I’ve seen him at events at least), he has a very good little show demonstrating what trials riding is all about.  Basically it’s on a special small framed MTB & consists of insane feats of balance, hopping on to things at height from a standstill & so on.  Impressive to say the least.

We filled in a bit more time with wandering around the Olympic Village & then getting a little lost walking to Lost Lake. I was expecting a nice quiet little lake surrounded by trees, & it was, but there were also hundreds of people on the grass around the shore enjoying the sun.

Blackcomb ski runs

The bottom of the main Crankworx course off Whistler Mountain & straight into the village

As far as I remember, we met the others & then returned to Vancouver, with a lot of other slow-moving traffic. It doesn’t seem as though we actually did that much, but it was a great day out & fantastic that neither Valerie or I had to drive. It didn’t take much of this beautiful sunny mountainous environment to have me dreaming wistfully of being able to stay in Canada longer – I’d put off thoughts of my departure with excited thoughts of the USA roadtrip.