Riding Updates

I've been meaning to update for over two weeks now.
I can't even remember what about. I always have loads of blog posts being written in my head, but don't find the time (ie. am too lazy) to type them up.

On Saturday 15th Aug I went for a ride on Tzouhalem. The weather was grey and cloudy, but warmer than expected. Since I hadn't yet got around to taking any decent bike photos I took my camera and spent several hours climbing into the bush and propping by bike up with sticks.




I also managed to attach my SD770 onto my helmet for some of the ride down:
The first is the bridge on M-One, then a bridge on Skywalker, and the last clip is then end of Fluid, end of Emma's Express, and the beginnning of Resurection:

This camera seems to do really well as a helmet cam. (Quality directly from the camera is a lot better - bighter, higher frame rate, less jaggy), except for the mounting issue (I used elastic bands and my helmet light mount).
This one picks up at the end of Resurection, and the there's a bit of the Providence Farm trail:

You can hear my brake catching at 0:56. I'm fell off on T-Bone and smacked it against a rock. It was VERY bent. The wheel wouldn't spin freely with the backend off the ground at all. It was catching on the pads for 180º.


I went to Cobble Hill the next day. I was going to take the bus, but missed it, so rode there. I messed about on the dirt jump park for a while, then headed up the mountain. The trails up (and even the fireroads) are quite steep. The dragging brake didn't exactly help me get up.
I don't know the trails on Cobble Hill very well, and ended up in someone's front garden, and then had to ride on the road along the bottom of the mountain. Has anyone got a map or suggested route down? I can always find my way up, but can never find a way down that takes me to the bottom.
(that's the wet tip of Shawnigan lake you can see in the photo - I think)

On Saturday 22nd, I went around to Carole's house to install her new printer. She made me a tuna melt and we watched some tennis, then I went riding on Tzouhalem (big suprise there...). Having had Adam at the bike shop straighten my rotor ("wow - that really is bent!"), I rode to the top on singletrack and fireroad, and then sat at the top and ate my sandwiches with my legs dangling over Cow Bay.
I rode along the ridge, and I usually turn right immediately before Arbutus Drop, because it used to look really scary, but I haven't even looked at it in the last year, and today it looked completely do-able (not the drop to the right of the tree, but the rock to the left). I didn't ride it (I'm going to have to get some armor, because there's rock everywhere), but I did ride the ride-around, which is a steep rooty drop, and if you don't make the 90º corner immediately after it you'll end up in Cow Bay. I carried on along Boogie Man, which I hadn't been along since my second time on the mountain, when Willy showed me some trails. It all seems ridable - nothing I couldn't do. I walked a lot of things, but I'm confident that after seeing them, that I'd be able to ride them next time (and when I find some leg armor that fits - damn my short, fat legs!). The problem with Boogie Man is that it doesn't fit into a ride very well. It takes you to the trail that goes to the cross. Your options from there are to the cross and then down some steep slick rock that goes straight to the Providence Farm trail (meaning you miss out on a whole load on singletrack), along the the fireroad to Chicken Run 2 which leaves you on the wrong side of the mountain for the nice trails, or along thge fireroad a tiny bit to the top of Danilizer, which I don't really like. I rode it that day. It's very rooty and rocky, steep climbs, up and down, bumpy, NO flow what so ever. Annoying, in a way. It was so much easier on the new bike though - rather than trying to climb over every root and trying to control the deflection, this bike just rolls over them without my momentum being damaged at all.

On Sunday I went for a road ride around Shawnigan Lake. For some reason I thought it was going to be a 100 km ride, so I was a little suprised when I got back two and a half hours after I left! Turns out it's only 60 km. It's a really nice loop around the lake though - smooth(ish) roads, nice rolling hills, well sheltered, lots of trees and green stuff, not a lot of traffic, and because you're riding around a lake there's no temptation to change the route while riding (which I do a lot).

This last weekend I did the same loop again on Saturday (except took the road from Cobble Hill to Rona back to the highway.
It was Cobble Hill Fall Fair. I've been avoiding the thought for the last few weeks - it feels like Autumn already. Summer is ending. I don't want it too. It's gone by so fast. Last year, summer seemed to last forever - probably because I had a lot of time off work. There were loads of things I wanted to do over the summer. I haven't done any of them - not even the island-hopping trip, or a single mountain bike ride somewhere other than the Cowichan Valley. After spending the whole week angry at work (and working 2 12 hour days, and 3 10 hours), I spent the whole ride on Saturday pissed off. Mainly because I'd been invited to ride the North Shore and Whistler with Ted and his friend Ian, and I couldn't go. I had to be on the last ferry on Friday (10:45 pm) to go, and I knew I wouldn't be done work early enought. In fact, I was at work until 10 pm that day.
I really hate my job. It gets in the way of everything. My hours are horrible - 9:30 to 6, but I never leave on time, so no time in the morning to do anything, but no time after wrk to do anything. And no one gets a shouting at. It's all backwards - the more you do, the more work gets dumped on you, whereas the less work the lazy ones do, the less work they get given, because the don't do it properly or don't get it done at all. So I've got three people waiting to talk to me after the one I'm dealing with, and one of the guys passes his customer onto me while he stands around doing nothing, and I've got a whole load of tech work to do and issue that need resolving. I could be employed full time just doing paperwork and shipping and dealing with warranty issues and phone calls and speaking to customers. I don't have time to actually fix computers. I've still got stuff on the bench from seven days ago. We took in three times more money in tech last week than average, which means my work load was three times as much, and I haven't been able to get caught up or get to the non-essential work since March, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.
Quit, I guess. Anyone looking for a cheap techie?
Anyway, I was talking about the riding. I didn't go mountain biking at all all weekend. I phoned Hilary to see if she wanted to go riding, but she was doing a craft fair in Ladysmith, so I rode up to see her, then rode back.

Look, it is autumn!: