Thursday, July 9, 2015

BCBR the ultimate road trip!

 Dan, Aaron, Sean and I piled in the Victory Vello van to make the ultimate mountain bike road trip. Our first stop was here at the Ape Canyon trail head to ride the Planes of Abraham trail on Mt. St. Hellens.
 I think there are more pictures of this ride than there are of the whole rest of the trip combined.
 Dan saw a UFO
 Sean's weapon of choice.
 So amazing riding on a volcano
 Dan lead us to the worst hike a bike ever. We had to walk down the other side too.
I didn't Take a picture of the next day in North Vancouver, but it was amazing. We pre rode part of stage 5. That proved to be very helpful later in the week.
 Day one start Cumberland. The Brewery is one block behind me.
 One day we got to ride on these little water taxi's instead of the big slow ferry.
 The aid stations were beacons of hope in the crazy heat we were suffering through. 
 I think this is the only picture of a view I took during the whole race.
 Sea Schelt totum pole

 This was the pre race meeting. Very organized, in fact the whole event was one of the most organized and well executed things I have ever seen. If you pay attention to the logistics of this thing it's really kind of mind boggling. They have to get 622 racers and their bikes to 7 different race locations with 4 ferry rides and god only knows how many bus rides. That doesn't even take into account all the people working the event. Then they have to keep everybody fed and housed in tents. They also bring masseuses and chiropractors along with a fleet of medical personnel.
 How do you move 622 bikes?

 These little stickers kid of spell out your suffering. By the end of the week we broke 30,000 ft of climbing.
 Random shit we saw. Until now I thought the toilet paper hanging out of your shorts only happened in movies.
 I think all the ferries and buses were as tiring as the riding.
 Canadian beer, on a Canadian beach.
 Go find your bike, quick.
 Tent city in Squamish. I think Squamish was the best day. I think I could spend a month just riding here.
 Stole this photo from BCBR. Sean getting cooled off by Wade Simmons at the top of Expresso. This year they changed the format by eliminating the enduro timed stages. Instead the had featured trails. I didn't understand until I rode the first one. They wanted to eliminate some aggression problems and show racers more of what it's like to ride in BC. You knew when you hit the featured trail for the day you were in for a ripin good time, Disneyland has nothing that can compare.
 I snagged this from BCBR as well. I think it's day6
 Day 4? They all start running together. Get up, eat, ride, shower, eat, set up camp,eat, sleep, repeat for 7 days
 Beer garden in Squamish!
Got the Buckle. Man was that hard. Probably the coolest trip you'll ever take though. This was the first race that was actually geared towards the type of riding I do. Also the best finnish I've had. It really paid to have good technical skills. 80% of my passes were in the technical down hills that BC is famous for. I couldn't even tell you how many hard core XC racers walked the best parts of the week. 16th out of 42 teams. I am very happy with our results. Overall we were 297 and 298 out of 622. This was probably the most fit group I have ever seen. They came from 26 countries. 

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