this just in!!! someone commented on my blog!!!

wow. its my first official confirmed reading of my blog. thanks andrea!!! also, thanks to midori, who is my first (and so far only) follower!! i love you guys!

weddings, canoeing and snakes. lots of snakes. and deer.

last weekend i was in pinawa for my sister andrea's wedding. despite the fact that her new husband carl was mucho sicko the day of the wedding and following, everything went off without a noticeable hitch. i guess you could say they got hitched without a hitch. The wedding was at an old hydro electric dam just outside of pinawa. it was built in the early 1900s, decommissioned 20something years later, and became a artillery practice sight for the military for some war, and has since become a provincial park. tres cool i think. most of the structures are still in tact. also, since no people live there anymore, it has become home to millions of snakes. i really do mean millions. i lost count at 37 563 732. i hate snakes, so it was a source of minor anxiety for me. the dam is about 15km downstream from new pinawa (actually just called pinawa, as opposed to the dam, which is old pinawa) so my brother and i took the opportunity on friday to canoe to the rehersal. it was cool. we say a few turtles with shells the size of garbage can lids. really. we also had a very close incounter with a deer (not so impressive when you consider that we saw more deer in pinawa than snakes in old pinawa). My camera battery died before i could take any pictures of the canoeing, but it was cool. now im back in kelowna, my sister is married and im ready for my next adventure, which i hope is a 4x4 and hiking adventure into graystokes provincial park. a kinda remote park in the kootaneys. further updates as adventures warrant.

gillard today, vapour again tomorrow, but first beer tonight.

so yesterday we (my buddy kevin from bike shop work, some other guy and I) went to gillard to ride. Gillard was the first DH freeride action I ever really checked out, and I checked it out on foot, not on rubber. But yesterday I finally got a chance to ride it. It was also my first mission with our new truck (a 91 4runner). What a sweet ride. there was lots of ridable built up log rides, ramps and jumps, as well as tons of sweet singletrack. Not too rocky either, which was a surprise. the ride down was just short of an hour, and while i was waiting for the vehicle retrieval, i drank a beer with some cool older doods from vancouver. overall, a very good day. tonight we were at aaron's birthday party, and im on a drinking mission. but tomorrow, hopefully kevin, patrick, me and some other dood will be hitting vapour trail again in the morning for a few runs. vapour is the trail i made that girl cry on (see 2 posts ago or so). Then a pig roast!! woohoo. don't you wish you had my life?

7 summits, oh yea, i forgot the best part

so, back to the rossland riding story for a second...

on the way back, after the rain had stopped and we had bbq'd once again, we were headed towards beaverdell, which has a population of about 200 or so and DOES have a sign for a gas station. this was important because the fuel guage was on "e" although the gas light wasn't on yet. We searched the town for said gas station, but found only what might be a gas station, but apparently wasn't. what could we do but drive and cross our fingers? just on the outskirts of this non-thriving non-metropolis, a big blue sign reminded us to check our fuel, next service 79 km. after checking it, it was still low. very low. unless "e" means enough, but i don't think it does. The gas light came on about 15km past the sign. i remembered watching a show about gas mileage testing, and they said they lancer had traveled 70km with the gas light on. i hoped my car was the one used in the test, but i don't remember anyone borrowing it. also, we were in the mountains, and figured that would change the result. if we could make it to big white turn off, it was 95%downhill from there. driving 90 for the next 45 minutes in the silent glow of the small orange light of the gas meter, we planned what we could do. i figured my caa membership might come in handy, until i realized that we were out of cell phone range. We didn't really want to have to ride our bikes away from an abandoned car, but that would have been our best option. it turns out... we made it. lots of coasting in neutral might have helped. sorry for the quick wrap up, but thats the end


our camp spot near rossland

a valuable lesson

This post is not in chronological order. it's unstuck in time like the infamous billy pilgrim.

Vapour trail in the Crawford trail network is not for beginners. A few of us were ready to ride one late august evening. A few guys from work and someone who had never ridden in the okanagan before. They assured me that they had worked in bike shops before, and i guess i understood this to mean more than it did. It was my first time down the trail, but i thought that since it was in crawford, how hard could it be?? The trail that takes pros about 15 minutes, and joes about 45, took us just over 2 hours. we finished the trail in the dark, and it involved me coaxing our friend to ride and, after that failed miserably, a walk down the remaining 3 kms of the 7km trail. i'm excited to go back and finish the trail in the daylight, but i learned a valuable lesson.... i dont' really know what it was, but i learned it. the hard and slow way. so... if anyone wants to ride vapour with me, lets go, and we'll meet up at the bottom. bring bear spray if you are walking alone though the woods at night, because you might be able to outrun a bear on a bike, but not pushing one.

7 summits, or lack there of

So after not enough planning but a sense of adventure to compensate, Kris and I headed to Rossland BC on Sunday night of Labour Day long weekend. We drove through pouring rain with a yellow lancer loaded with bikes gear and an indespensible bbq. We arrived for the last day of the Fat Tire Festival, set up the tent in a no camping- rest stop and bbq'd pop tarts for diner. We had a meeting with the shuttle guy the next morning to take us up to the epic 40km 7 summits trail. The next morning, after bbqing corn for breakfast (i know the corn should have been diner and the pop tarts for breakfast, but whatever) we went to meet the shuttle guy. He said that we were now the only ones who wanted to ride the trail, and due to the small crowd, rides were now 45$ each. That seemed like way too much to pay to ride through the blizzard and landslide that were reported at the top, and the driver decided that we were not going. So, up and ready to ride at 8:00 am, we went in search of some other epic rides that didn't involve parkas or sketchy shuttle drivers. We ended up on some of the wettest rootiest rockiest single track ever. After the 2 km push to the top of the mountain that is. Every intersection choice was answered with "keep descending!" and we rode miles of forested trails that kept the tires sliding off the wet roots. After 10 or so km so, the trail opened into some of the fastest open singletrack through a sweet grassy meadow. Then the climbing began. We pedaled and pushed our way across a golf course, up some gravel roads and then pedaled aross town to where we had parked, stopping at a grocery store to get something else to bbq for lunch. Then we did it again. this time the trail took us around and up a different mountain, along still wet and loamy rooted trails through what felt like a rain forest. After another 10 or so kms, we returned to the car again, with just enough time to pack up the bikes before another torrential downpour hit us. Thus began the return trip home, in the rain, with the bbq.