Congrats Sarah!

The only thing a mountain biker likes to do more than ride bikes is shop for them. A distance issue kept me away from being there for the arrival of the new addition to the family after a labored ride back to town.
(EDIT: Ian, don't those XT brakes look nice on that bike?)

I think she made exactly the right call on this one. A nice, light versatile bike I think is a perfect fit for her. An awesome bike for the area where she lives and one she can bring to the shore. I'd definitely be more relaxed taking this bike to a bike park than some of the other options she was looking at.

Looking forward to Prevost sometime soon, Sarah. Good Job!

I know one of these dogs. (cryptic, I know, but I just wanted to post the pic.)

Survivormen

Finally. Someone puts together a Comfortably Numb ride and I can go. Good Job Trevor! And thanks. Having said that, that's the last nice thing I have to say to you, you used trail salesman. LOL.

The sign at the entrance sells the drama nicely. Please read.
I learned a thing or 2 about about translating messages in Japan. Nice ways of saying things maybe not so nice. Here, let me show you what I mean.

"Demanding Trail" actually means that the laws of physics don't actually apply here. What goes up doesn't actually have to come down.

"...can be ridden as 8.5 km loop via Young Lust..." translates into "Get out while you can, fatty."

"Average riding time for fit riders is 4-7 hours". What they really wanna say is "If you think you are fit but aren't, welcome to your reality check..........fatty."

We all saw the sign. We all started on our way. 10 of us in all. What day we would have. An awesome ride. Good times, good laughs and good people. But what doesn't kill you only makes you a better rider. A good sense of humour helps too.

But don't start the day talking about who can fix a bike if there is a mechanical.

Dale had his first about 15 meters into the trail. I think he hates me now and the blog post isn't even done yet.

These 2 pics were take right after a group of joggers passed us. The first of many dips in the trail.

Comfortably Numb is about 19 km of up and 4 km of down. This is about as nice as the up got for us. CN is a very technical trail. The pictures in this post will be deceiving for anyone passing by, but believe me the roots, 18" rock hoppers and tight switch backs are still there. I opted not to photograph them, instead I just put my head down and pushed up grumbling and cursing under my breath.
Definitely some nice views along the trail though.
I don't know what it is with and wood work. On the way home after looking through the pictures on my camera I realized I didn't get a very good representation of the full trail.

That's Trevor checking out the valley below. Hi Trevor. Ooops! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Squish!
Ahh. Just had to get that out of my system.

The continuing woes of a blogger. You try to take pictures of everyone so they can enjoy them later. But people just wanna ride. The caption below reads...

"Ted, put the camera back in your pocket and get the fuck out of the way."
Sigh...

We motored on up. And Up. and up some more. Occaisionally we were teased with a bit of down.

CN has a really nice mix of rock faces and wood work.
That's Tom.
Todd

And Trevor... having survived his fall.
We reached the bottom of a small valley. There was a really nice bridge going across it.

But after the nice short decent it was time to get back up the hill again.

We rode on. Passing over the woodwork and up the technical switchbacks. Our pace was good. 2.5 hours or so in we came to around the 8km mark of the trail and had our first real food break.

I had (I think we all had) packed around 3 liters of water and some Gatorade. I ran out with about an hour to go in the ride. But that's notso bad really. I escaped the trail with a minor headache that would be easily fixed by a few pints.
After this I motored on ahead to try and get a vantage point for some more epic photos. Got some good self shots (mercifully omitted) and these.

I think the hardest part about this trail is the flow. When you finally get to a part with some nice flowy bits you suddenly have to start climbing again. I heard a few people say that as soon as they dropped their seat posts they would suddenly start up again. Then there would be some steep technical down out of nowhere and they would have to walk becuase they weren't ready.

I likened it to dating some crazy chick. One minute everything is going smooth, the next she is dating other guys. I just couldn't tell if Comfortably Numb liked me or not.

We all peddled on just hoping she would come around.

Soon we hit the 12km mark. Half way!!!
Trevor rides into the rest area. He would tell us" there is now more down than up!"

YAY! we thought. Trevor sorta embellished that I think.

Ran across an English dude who took this pic for us. One of the best group shots I've even been in.
And a good time to make some introductions. Right to left are: Me, Dale, Todd, Ian, Sasha, Aaron(why was I thinking Andrew?), Trevor, Brian, Christie and Tom.
Ian. Good friend and F#&$in prick. A short time after this shot, buddy here would start doing the trail at his own pace. He's one of the best XC riders I know. He prolly weighs 90lbs soaking wet(bike included) . Don't think we saw him again for 2-3 hours. Got a little worried that a hungry bear wrapped him in bacon and made an appy out of him. We caught up with him. He had this smug little grin on his face as if to say "Did you guys get lost or something?". Next time we do this trail I think I'll sneak bear pheromones into his pack.
This is Dale again. I really should just leave him alone but .... well you know me. Dale is also a good rider but every time I got behind him he would wipe out. Not sure what it was about. Maybe I'm back luck, make he was getting fatigued from the ride. Last time I saw him do it I said "Wow Dale, that's three." He didn't say anything but I could read what he was thinking. "Ted, if you count one more of my crashes I'm going to pick up my bike and hit you in the head with it.

Dale (everyone actually) rode up more of the hill than I did. I usually like to take it easy but for sure I was out with some motivated riders. I guess anyone who does this trail deserves respect.
This is Todd. He likes to eat potatoes on his bikes rides. Neal Todd!! From now you will be known as Sir Potato Biking dude!.
I didn't get to know Sasha very well. But from what I saw I'd say she is very organized and very good with her time. Spent her resting time taking power naps. Seemed to pay off cause she spent her time in the saddle peddling up the hill. That girl is one good rider for sure!

We motored on. I did my best to manage my energy, not wanting to over extend myself. I know my limits and am glad I took that approach. We would hit the decent soon and thats not where you want to start bonking.

Finally after 19 or 20 km of climbing we got into the real decent. Some woodwork and truly awesome rock faces would take us out to the bottom.

This is Brian in sport capture mode heading down a nice ladder rockface combo.





Aaron.

Dale.





Trevor the man.



Always nice to include a little video clip. Todd and Trevor on the way down a nice rock face.

Christie was nice enough to get this one of me. Nice to actually be in my own blog for once.

The bottom was shortly after that shot. We got the cars sorted out and headered to Squamish for a 'Discussion Group' at the pub.

So my final thoughts?

Epic Adventure riding. For sure. Am I lining up to do it again? Not really. I'd like to go one more time but only when absent friends can join with us. I sorta knew what I was getting into when I signed up for the ride. But having done it I'd say that it's not the sort of riding I really enjoy. I like going up for the cardio training, but this was just off the map of what I am used to. I love flowy downs too, but there wasn't enough here it seemed to justify the grueling push up.

That being said, Ian loved it. He is a much better rider tho with a greater love of technical riding than myself.
The ride home. We are a lucky bunch here. I sometimes feel bad for the people who never get to try mountain biking. B.C. imho is one big bike park of which I have barely scratched the surface. Nice to have Comfortably Numb checked off the list tho.

Thanks Trevor and to everyone who came out. A great day and challenging day for all. Otsukare sama deshta! (Job well done)

The Spice of Life

Work, sleep, eat, school, ride. Not enough ride. I've been easy to rattle at work lately so I took a week off. Starting off at Whistler is never the wrong thing to do.
Except when it rains. Those clouds would glower ominously over us until about 3 when started letting loose with a few warning shots. 2 rips later we were dashing for the truck and heading home, that was around 4.
At least the bikes got washed.
Good enough right? Sunday was spent in a Javascript workshop, the first of 2. I started disparaging over the thought of a 4 day window wasted at home. So I packed up and went for a solo exploratory of Cumberland.

The ferry was very merry. Our flag was taking a beating in the wind.

Stoping at my bro's on the way up to Cumberland. I showed him my new bike. He showed me his new surf shuttle, which I didnt think to take a picture of.




The Riding Fool is a Hostel the Cumberland. It sits above a bike shop. Below are the store hours. Ride Hostel. What a good idea. There are so many places in B.C. that could benefit from a Hostel. After dumping all your coin into a bike, it's not like you got a lot left for hotels.

30 seconds after getting signed up in the hostel I met Trudy. We would go out on a couple of trips together. She was kind enough to Navigate.

Below is the Trudy show.

One of my gripes about blogging is you can never get any decent shots of you. It turns out I was there on a good day. Innis and his gf Mary, were having a social and were good enough to cook for us. Innis was an awesome host.

This is the group. Good times, good peeps.

A shot with me in it so you know I'm not making this shit up.
Trudy and I rode once Tuesday morning. Then she had to go. So after lunch I bought a map and went for one more ride on my own.

All the way at the top is Bear buns.
Obligatory self shot #1.
All together, Cumberland is a great ride destination. The Hostel is the best part of that. The only knock I have against Cumberland is the hack job TimberWest did in the hills around. The trains are nicely tucked in the tree line, but you gotta push through a lot of clearbut wasteland to get to them.
Anyways, Bear buns feeds nicely into Off Broadway. Both were great flowy trails, ending in Bronco's Perseverance, a nice no thinking no skill required rip to the road outside Cumberland.

I got booted out of the Hostel cause they had no room for tuesday night. Fuck you B.C. bike race!

So tuesday I headered to the hostel on Denman Island, whiched sucked, no pics taken. Wednesday Morning I went to the rest of the way to Hornby Island to ride in Mt. Geoffrey 'something bla bla' park.

A shot of tribune bay.
While my breakfast settled.....


No wait. While my $15 breakfast settled. Yeah, travelling amongst the hippies ain't cheap.

Finally getting started. I parked at the end of Slade road and started up. On the way up I ran into the these guys. They showed me some stuff, like the edge of the cliff. This is Chris, Juan and Graham in the back.


Rode down with them for a short while. Then went off on my own. I had me a nice little rip down 'Test Tube', then 'Chris and Brad's' and out 'No Horses'. Nicely worked single track, but with all things good, they come to an end. I wanted to be off the Island by 2 so I motored on.

Obligatory self shot #2.


Spent a few days at my Mom's. Was too tired to ride Thursday but got out once on Friday before I had to head home for School. Lame. Our Java teacher is really cranking up the intensity too. Spend friday night being pissed off and frustrated. Thanks BCIT.

Saturday I woke up Ian for some Fromme'n. I was pretty surprised when he showed up at my place with his XC bike. He told me he didn't like that bike on Fromme but I guess he forgot.

This is about as good as his day would get. Thats him doin a walk around on Pipeline.

He was nice enough to take a few pics for me though. And a short clip of me and my noisy brakes.

Good day with minimal gore. Thats what I get for leaving my armor in the truck.

Awesome week. Can't believe I cant ride again until next week.