Summer Memories

We’ve been having spring-like weather all over B.C. for the past few weeks and it feels like the season is getting an early start. So there is no real need to look back on last summer and dream of sunny rides gone by. Most of the photos your going to see in this post were shot in a rain storm anyway. But do you ever see photos of yourself that take you back to a moment with so much intensity that you can almost feel the raindrops hitting your skin, hear the puddles splashing under your tires and smell the sage brush soaking in the rain?





Allan Mcvicar has been a friend of mine since the day I moved to Kamloops. I still remember the first time I met him. I sat in the middle of his little pick up and awkwardly had the hand of an almost complete stranger touch my bum several times while shifting gears on the way to the bike park. Although we got to know each other fairly personally and quickly, it wasn’t untill we had known each other for a while that we discovered a common love for rainstorms.




Allan and I have been on countless photo missions on the sunniest of sunshine shred days and we’ve bagged a lot of amazing photos. Regardless of how gold the sun sets shine, the stormy days and photos are the ones that always stand out in my memory. There is something I find truly unique about being out in the crashing thunder and pouring rain. No matter how far you look, there is no one else around. Everyone is hiding in-doors where it’s warm and dry. And if they were outside during those moments they would probably be cowering under umbrellas and trying to run away with long faces. But Allan and I are always laughing and trying to squeeze as many shots out of the storm as we can before it passes over.




We had a few of the nastiest stormy days last summer and they were some of my favourite moments on my bike. Allan just let me have few of the photos we had shot in those storms and they take me back to those moments like nothing else. I figured I needed to share a few of Al’s amazing nuggets with everyone. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Last ride of the season, first photos with the 7d!

merry christmas!

this picture is the best.

merry christmas everyone at the shop

thanks for everything year in and year out, you guys are unreal

jeeea

BUY SOME CALENDERS! lukes vid was siiiiiiick and so is dis! http://nsmb.com/3428-killing-it-in-kamloops/ thats 4 reasons to buy some calenders bra

Bicycle Cafe 2010 Calendar

Check out these sick calendars we put together at the shop. 13 killer photos of Graham Agassiz, Matt Hunter and myself. Shots By Bike Magazine staff photographer John Gibson, Matt Miles and Brock Anderson. For $19.99, who doesn't want one?

fun in the..rain?

rain is my favorite stuff to ride in, everthing gets super tacky and lips smooth themselves out and all your have to do is ride. heres a little summary of my fall, on my favorite jumps with some nice tacky dirt. matt shot it all, good kid huh?


cant seem to get embedding to work.. so heres the link

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/112986/

Octopus's garden

So last week I embarked on another trip to Vancity, scoring another 3 days of riding out of my poor body. On arrival we headed out to Fromme for some monsoon drenched fun. As well as being very wet, it was also pretty cold and windy, but the pedal up did well to warm us up. We rode pipeline, a rocky blue trail 5 switchbacks up Fromme that was pretty much underwater. There wasn’t much mud as most of it had washed away, so the traction remained pretty decent. The ride wasn’t too long, but it was a nice North Shore warm up to get dialed in for what lay ahead. We ended up getting completely soaked and pretty much chilled to the bone, so the apre ride coffee was probably the most enjoyable in memory.
Wednesday we rode Seymour with a large crew of Banshee riders and other locals. We had a U-haul moving van from helping a friend move in the morning, so we packed it full and shredded a bunch of epic runs. The first run we hit a pingu-pangor and it was SUPER FUN to get to ride with a pack of racers pushing local lines and pinning the trails as hard as we could. We started in snow and a majority of the trails below remained under water but I was starting to get the hang of Van waterbiking so it didn’t bother me too much. I was feeling on and super focused, and with some adjustments to body position my increasing comfort level allowed me to pick it up quite a bit. The second run we hit pingu to severed dick and I had an epic time following Mr. Bryson. Had some interesting moments with a severely fading rear brake forcing me into commitment moves, but in the end it was all good and smiles were held all round. After the second run Jen McMillan and I decided to trust Bryson and go searching for an old trail he thought he had figured out the location on. We took a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ended up following some old overgrown skidder trail through the rainforest, spending as much time cyclocrossing over fallen logs as actually riding. It was all good though, I was just happy to be riding.

Techy Goodness

At one point I rode fast onto a green rock slab and realized too late that green means stop in rainforest, not go. Another lesson for the desert invader, green means not only beware but be very, very slippery. After we made it back down to Ned’s we decided to ride out to Bryson’s instead of back to the car. Another mistake. By that point in the evening it was getting very cold, and over the long trek back up through the slush from the bottom of Seymour to the other side of Fromme all our heat was given away to the damp night and my back decided that it was going to start rejecting all the punishment. We made it back in varying stages of hypothermia yet holding high spirits, and when we got back to the coffee shop after retrieving it was love once again. No hard feelings Mr. Bryson, all in the spirit of adventure.
Thursday the trio of myself, Jen and Bryson met up again for some Cypress laps and I was excited. So far in my North Shore adventures Cypress had offered up the steepest, gnarliest and most tech runs, and Mother Cypress was not keen to disappoint. I was also in for a surprise. The first run we hit Chery Bomb to Pilsener. They were right what I was looking for, serving up Cypress’ grittiest offerings. I was hot on Bryson’s tail and despite some trail diversions the wrong way around trees and scary blind root complications I remained in tact. Our fearless leader again had to pioneer some lines for me to understand how to they were possible to ride, but this time I was up to the challenge. I had a ton of fun and learned a lot by watching and pushing my limits. My body began to protest again, especially when we hit a lower trail with lots of NS style roll drops to short flattish landings. Further down I came off one a bit awkwardly, jarring my already stiff back, and it was the beginning of the end for me. For the second run we hit Mystery DH, and it was bloody good. The first half was like a sped up version of what we had been riding earlier in the morning and the bottom part was, dare I say, Kamloops-esque? The trail became super high speed with constantly flowing drifty turns, but by that point I had to take in the reigns as my seizing back decided enough was enough.
My trip was a ton of fun. I got to explore a bunch of new trails, dial in my riding, increase my confidence, learn a lot and get to see a ton of friends. I most likely won’t get to go back for a good while, but whenever that happens I am sure it will be good. All the best.
J

Kinda kool

thought this was pretty tweet

http://www.lifecyclesfilm.com/blog/loops-getting-aggy

Budget Stretchin' Love

So lately we have been making the absolute most of the skinny piggy bank, stretching every last half-penny to the max and loving every section of trail I can find. Last week I had a couple shreds down Rio that were mindblowing. With all the rain the dirt was moist but had dried up just enough to be superman tacky. That trail puts a grin on your face in the moon dust, but on tacky soil it is euphoric. Gets a little scary how fast you can go actually.
Last weekend I spent down in Van and got to ride a bunch of Mt. Seymour, which was muddy and delightful. Coming from the desert, it is hard to fathom how much the trails are shaped by water, and just how gnarly they can get once the majority of the dirt is gone leaving just rock and crazy roots. My speed arrived with me before my full focus did, and being that I was on new trails the results involved three pretty heavy crashes. On one I was leading, putting down a solid pace, and just after I thought to myself that I was pushing pretty hard I came around a corner and there was a downed tree sticking off the side of the trail on my line at ankle height. I cut hard to avoid the tree but my pedal caught it and I was sent over hard. These sorts of things just don’t seem to happen in Kamloops where you can look further ahead and be fairly confident that there aren’t going to be rogue dead heads unheeded around the next bend. Or maybe I should just slow the pace until my I have my full focus on new trails…