Things I have learnt from riding in Whistler

1) The Canadian word 'intermediate' roughly translates into England English as: 'WOAH! Holy f**k! Are you insane?!'
2) Being able to clear jumps on Crank It Up, does not automatically mean you can clear jumps on A Line, unless landing on your face counts as an official landing.
3) Elbow pads look rubbish but tucking and rolling without them stings a bit.
4) Whiskey Jack accommodation at Whistler Creek is pretty freakin amazing value for money. Book through Hotels.com and get an entire house for $80 a night.
5) The Evil Revolt is one of the only times when day-glo looks awesome. Pretty awesome.
6) It is not necessary to try and show off in front of Thomas Vanderham. He is better than you.
7) The Lift Coffee Company does the best sausage rolls on the entire planet. I know this to be fact as I have relatives in Scunthorpe and they live for sausage rolls up there. 4369 Main Street, Whistler.
8) Kona Stinky's are absolute pish. Norco A Line's are actually pretty damn good.
9) Spreading my knees could finally be the key to getting on in life. On the bike people! Jeez.
10) Large black crash pads around cable car poles are not actually black bears, despite their resemblance when going mach 10. Either way, it's best to continue with the turn as initiated rather than lose concentration for a split second. I refer you back to number 3.

I actually think Whistler is the best place on earth. Maybe. Bit expensive.

p.s. that's not me in the photo. Yet.

Ups and downs

Gosh what a roller coaster of a weekend. Firstly Tom, photographer extraordinaire and I went down to Devon to go on a ghost hunt in Ilfracombe. I've noticed that now I'm off the bike for a few weeks my ed is giving me stranger and stanger assignments. Still. Makes a change and Tom loved getting pics of the spooky house. And I looked like a ghost after a five hour drive down on Friday night. One thing: 24 hour Tescos in Barnstaple - like an oasis of weird joy in the midst of something really quite baffling.

Then on the way back - oh and no we didn't find any ghosts although someone threw some stones and we all jumped - we saw this little baby:



Seriously - how good?! Like so good. It's my dream car although we worked out it would cost at least four times more than our Ford Transit Connect. Sigh.

So that was the up part. And the down part was finding out that the Drop Off cafe at Glyncorrwg will be closing on Christmas Eve! WTF?! I don't know the ins and outs and there's probably some massively scandalous reason but frankly it doesn't make sense to me. So instead of having a great cafe selling fantastic food really cheap, they are going to have a mountain of passed out MTBers who couldn't make it into Glyncorrwg before they collapsed of hunger. A great big pile of MTBers. A pyramid of twitching riders, all desperate for a chunky ham sandwich and carrot cake but no. Denied the only joy after Skyline by the Glyncorrwg Ponds Committee (he he) for some reason which clearly isn't the right one. Freaks. Anyway Ian is hosting a closing party of 5 December to coincide with the Kona Mash-up. Brilliant reason to get mashed.