The Mountain Bike Birthday

The Mountain Bike Birthday started out normally enough, with a few pressies from Tanya…

And the birthday boy also got some much-needed coffee replenishment from Tanya’s family up north… thanks guys!

There wasn’t much time to sit around sipping a cup of the new joe and watching new dvd’s. It was RACE TIME! We headed out to Hartland for one of the first mountain bike races of the season. The skies were foreboding with their cloak of clouds, but the rain held off for the entire race. (birthday luck, I surmise)


As we drove up the winding road towards Hartland, it was rather intimidating seeing cars lining the sides well before the parking lot… apparently other people intended to race. But Cam wasn’t afraid. This was going to be a good race – or so he hoped.


There were some familiar faces testing out the trail before the Expert race…

Catharine Pendrel

Craig Richey

No big deal. Cam wasn’t nervous (ha).



I entrenched myself deep in the woods alongside the course and Cam headed off to the start line. I waited… and waited… but no one came.

The Trail

An hour and a half later, the Expert men appeared! Or rather, a stampede of wildebeest stormed over the rocky outcrop where I was posted. Every rider that whipped past was splattered with a thick paste of mud… although it wasn’t raining, the forest never really dries out around here. (MUCH different from the dry sandy trails in the Yukon!)

There's Cameron in the red!

Bleeeeccchhhkkk

 

Cam looked great on the first lap – he was in about tenth or eleventh position, with a huge pack of twenty-five riders hot on his heels. By the second lap, things were more spread out, but he was still in the top fifteen.

Our race leader, second lap, a good three or four minutes out front:

I waited crouched on rocks, leaning against tree stumps, and flat on my belly in the moss for the riders to reappear each lap. The clatter of a bike hurtling through the trees, coupled with huffing, grunting and snorting always signalled the approach of a rider, well before I could see them.

Do I hear something?

 

Oh, it's just the leader, well out in front...

People were beat by this point...

But some people were still having fun!!

Cam on the third and final lap; but sadly, he flatted not long after this picture and was forced to throw in the towel:

Ah, but it was a good race. At one point, Catharine Pendrel flew past him on an uphill, as if he were standing still. If anything, this race was inspiration to train harder.


We capped things off with a three-dimensional movie experience – Alice in Wonderland.  I give it 3.5/5 stars.

we have tickets to what now??

YA!! Lion King is coming to Vancouver in July and yours truly scored us some awesome front row tickets! Can't hardly wait.

A Wee Project

I have a fantastic sewing book of projects for using just one yard of fabric:

I've made a few projects already, but last night I was taken with the simplicity of this towel revamping project...

All you need are:

A set of towels (hand, body, and face cloth).

One yard of funky fabric (in fact, you could probably make this with just half a yard).

Measure the amount of fabric you would like to dress up your towels. Mark the measurements onto the wrong side of the fabric. I decided to do a band across the bottom portion of each towel; two bands per towel. Cut the fabric into strips, leaving a half inch seam allowance on all four sides of each strip.

Iron the half inch sections under to the wrong side of the fabric.

Now for the fun part.... top stitch the pieces onto the towels!

Voila! A hip, trendy towel set. So easy.

Jersey, on the other hand, spent the evening tucked inside a shopping bag. In fact, he slept the whole night and all of the next morning in there. Apparently the bag is more comfortable than our bed!

Mining for Gold

So there was this little hockey game on today...

And we decided to watch it in true Canadian style...

It was like we were really there!

When the nail-biting game ended, we hopped on our bikes and headed downtown to see what revelry we could see... and of course I wore my Olympic mittens (thanks, Ma!).

As we neared downtown, the honking car horns grew louder and louder until we couldn't even hear eachother! The real heart of it all was Government Street. The crowds grew so thick, and the traffic was at a standstill that we had to hop off our bikes and walk them through the craziness.

The crowd even whipped out a cardboard Crosby. He was a popular guy!

Dinner Out

Saturday started out with a ridiculous amount of dishes waiting to be done. This is what happens when we stay up cheering on our Canadian hockey teams, speedskaters, ski jumpers, and, yes, curlers... the dishes are neglected.

But at least I had some help. Jersey was my dish dryer.

Once Cam got home from work, we headed over to Blighty's Bistro for dinner. And to gaze at the lovely artwork... hmm... looks familiar!

Of course, the paintings were the very fine work of Cam's dad, John Maysmith, and were on display at Blighty's. We thought they fit in great with the atmosphere!

On a side note, Cam raced a cyclocross race last Sunday. He was leading for some of the race until he suffered a flat and was forced to do the fastest flat change in his life. But he hopped back on and came in fourth! Check out the photos below!

The Blubber Burn cyclocross race (PS: Cam's the one in the green & grey top with solid black shorts)

One of the best shots:

Cam's next race is a mountain bike race, Sunday March 14th on his birthday... might make for a great photo-op!

Mandeep the Sheep

This is a little story I made for Eva, who is in hospital with cystic fibrosis, and who LOVES getting mail.