This weekend in review

First in the news, Blogger is 10! Happy Birthday! To be honest, blogger's birthday doesn't really mean much to me, but there's this little birthday cake in my face every time I log on, so I may as well acknowledge it, and who knows, maybe one day I'll be the "Blog of Note" like this dude.


Second, I finished painting the nursery! (That was actually last weekend, but hey, gotta get my props) We've been building furniture and getting the room ready! Under 3 weeks till the due date....CRAZY!!!!!

Third, I got in some riding this weekend (duh, really?!?!?!). Did the usual Saturday morning Cyclelogik loop...the legs felt good and I spent some time up front, putting in some pulls. Average speed for 65km was 37.2km/hr. Oddly enough, the same as last week.

Sunday, I did a mountain bike ride up in the park, more of a training ride, I suppose, to get ready for next weekend, and Paul's Dirty Enduro. Today's ride was a "usual" route, starting with trail 15, all the way up to Kingsmere, up 30, then down 1 (Penguin) to Chelsea. Turned around and climbed back up 1. This part of the trail always gets me thinking that it would be cool to do a trail 1 time trial, downhill, hill climb or something along those lines. It could be an affair that combines the times of descending and climbing trail 1 (or vice versa). It's something that would have to be done on the D-L, at a time when the park isn't very busy to avoid hiker traffic. Oh, and speaking of hikers, there were a bunch of of people doing orientation (would that make them orienteers?) from Kingsmere parking lot. Problem is, they had their heads down looking at their maps, and not paying attention to traffic on the trail. It's times like these that I wish mountain biking was a video game where you get points for taking out clueless hikers.

I call this section of trail 1 the "unride-able" part...no problem going down (pretty gnarly), but I've never made it up. This picture doesn't really do it justice, though.

Back to my ride. I continued up 1, then down 4 into Fortune, and played around in there for a bit. I did like Tanya said, and I got mineself to the pump track. It works much better with the suspension locked out!

Crummy picture of the pump track. Really! That's a pump track! I swear!

Rode the race course, which I havn't done in a while. It seems to me that parts of it are wider than before and there are more lines to take, 'cause it seemed easier to ride than usual. I could be totally mistaken, though, and maybe I was just picking the right lines for once. Jumped across the valley and played around on the trails there...super tight, technical switch back stuff that forces you to perfect cornering skills (aka: good training for Paul's).


Made the downhill trip back home (one of the best parts about doing this ride is that it finishes with A LOT of downhill sections!), and cracked open a bottle of Greene King IPA. This is one kick ass beer! Compared to a lot IPA's (India Pale Ale), it's not overly hoppy (aka bitter), but it still packs a flavour punch. There's definitely some caramel flavour going on there...you'd almost swear you were having a Wurthers. Flavourful beer with no bitter aftertaste...Booya!