Thanksgiving

I was invited to Brian's, Julia's and Mallory's for dinner on Friday night. Their friends from Victoria, Bill, Michele and Eric, and their friends from Vancouver, Shane and Amy were visiting for the weekend. Julia had cooked a turkey dinner for everyone, including Brad, Patricia and Ellie, and Sean and Amy. And, of course, there were many types of pie for desert. Thanks Julia, it was wonderful.
I was invited to go riding the next morning. Brian and Bill stayed home with Mallory and Eric while Julia, Michele, Amy, Amy, Shane and I went up Mount Tzouhalem for a ride. The weather was perfect - sunny, and not cold, but there was a slightly chilly autumn feeling (crisp air?). Everyone was on their game and rode really well. Amy (Shane's Amy, not Sean's) got some air on Toxic Tea Cup/Resurrection, her favourite trail. There weren't as many riders and hikers on the mountain as I expected (or would have liked) to see. They don't know what they missed.


After lunch at the Dog House, Julia and Michele hung out with Mallory and Eric while the rest of us headed to Nanaimo to ride "The Abyss", one of Bill's favourites. The trail was awsome. It had rained a bit the day before, but had been dry overnight and all day, so the ground was nice and grippy, and the rocks that were everywhere were very rough and grippy, and I don't remember sliding on any roots. Brian and Bill were on the game and rode up all the steep rock step-ups they came to. The trail was very rocky with lots of "floopy" bits thrown in for good measure, with little climbing.

When we got back to Julia's and Brian's, the power was out. Apparently Victoria, Saltspring, Ggabriola and possibly part of Nanaimo was out. I'd like to know what happened there, as it doesn't sound like a tree fell on a line! Did someone trip over a cord and pull out the plug? The power came back on shortly, but by that time Brian had already got the barbecue going, with leftover turkey and ham heating up. And, of course, there was more pie for afters!

More photos over at my Flikr account.

I've been trying to get the photos geotagged and inserted into an interactive Google Earth map with the GPS track log, but I keep running into obstacles. Firstly, the time on my camera was set wrong, so the photo time stamps didn't match with the GPS data. After I got that sorted, I did a batch resize, which apparently stripped the EXIF data. It's still not working for some reason. I'll get it working eventually.

Distance: 7.3 km
Time: 1:35

Distance: 10.5 km
Time: 2:17