{"id":433,"date":"2007-11-05T16:57:33","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T02:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/05\/whistler-mtb-day-2\/"},"modified":"2007-11-05T16:57:33","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T02:57:33","slug":"whistler-mtb-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/11\/05\/whistler-mtb-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistler MTB – Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 28 July 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sunny, 20-24C slight breeze<\/p>\n

The in-flight movie was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the Land of Women\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or something to that effect. Huh? What? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. I put on the MP3 player headphones and let the Sleeman put me to sleep. I awoke to the change in sounds as the plane began its descent onto YVR. There was a dull rusty glow at the horizon outside the right windows, while the nighttime sky was still indigo out the left. The cloud tops began to glow as crescents of burning orange, then the sky split at the horizon with the fire of sunrise. Even with the late start, favorable conditions got us into Vancouver actually a little early. The pilot put the plane down gently and evenly with no bounce. The runway was long enough for him to use only wheel brakes and not rip the morning silence with thrust reversers. <\/p>\n

Arriving before 06:00, nothing was open in the arrival lobby, so I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get money changed. I had about $70 CAD on hand, so I had enough for incidental expenses and tip for the taxi driver. The taxi driver found us with no problem, but his little sign had Jeff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name misspelled \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like the submarine Captain. I had $2 for a soda from the vending machine, but it was a Doonie<\/em>, and the machine only takes Loonies<\/em> and below, so I was screwed. We were led out to a well-worn (worn-out?) Chrysler minivan with a wheelchair loading conversion in back. The cargo area took the three bike cases and suitcases with no problem. The hand-carry bags fit up front. It was no worse than a Perimeter<\/em> van or bus. If Doctor Kenny had come along, things would have been a lot tighter. Jeff said the fourth bike ends up on the roof rack. Still, his famed voluminous luggage would have been an issue, as would have three people in the middle-row seat instead of two.<\/p>\n

The Taxi was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whistler Taxi\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the driver was a long-time Whistler resident. He was an older French-Canadian dude, and was pretty cool. I grabbed a business card from the headliner of the van, but forgot it in the condo when we left to return to Hawaii. Bill was $208 CAD including taxes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tip was $40 CAD.<\/p>\n

After a quick stop at Blendz<\/em> coffee in Vancouver for some Belgian dark chocolate mochas, we were through Stanley park, across the St. James Gate bridge and onto the 99 headed for Whistler. There was a surprising amount of snow still visible on the mountaintops \u00e2\u20ac\u201c heck, even the Whistler webcams showed snow lingering around Roundhouse! There was more peak snow than during early season two years ago (the suck season). The highway widening construction was going well. Only some of the difficult contour cut section closer to Vancouver and the area just before Whistler have yet to be completed.<\/p>\n

We stopped briefly at the Bayshores to get the room key from the management agency before heading in to the village. The unit was in the Tyndalstone Lodge<\/em> just uphill from Marketplace. It was a 2-bedroom\/2-bath with a loft. 6-persons would fit comfortably. The terrace overlooked the rear entry portico and the village walkway that goes down past the Olympic hut toward the playground.<\/p>\n

\"Assembling<\/a>Reassembled the bikes. The Moment<\/em> went back together much easier than it packed, but mostly because of having to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153invent the wheel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and fabricate all the packing sheets and figure out where everything fits in the case while packing it up for the first time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c next time should be painless. Everything came through without damage, but the packing sheets showed the effects of pressure from the sides. Threadless cartridge bearing headsets and Hollowtech II<\/em> cranksets make for easy packing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m almost thinking I could leave the pedals on the cranks since I pull the crankset anyway \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to see if it fits in the case that way. Put on the computer and took it out of sleep mode so I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget to turn it on in the morning and lose the cumulative mileage record.<\/p>\n

\"Pie!\"<\/a>Lunch was a steak\/potato\/cheese pie and a bottle of Coke from Four and Twenty<\/em>. They moved from the corner space above RBC to the middle of the strip, next to the greasy pizza place. I needed the bottle to make a funnel since I forgot to get one at the 100-yen store before I left home. After lunch, we visited the bike stores for stoke and advice, hit some of the vendor booths that were there for Crankworx<\/em>, and returned to the condo for a nap. Darned old farts! The shop next to the food store gave us the best XC advice. We got a bottle of Pedro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Super Dry<\/em> lube at Snowcovers<\/em>. I was looking all over for a 16g CO2, but at $5 CAD, I would use the minipump! How much for a pack of 4-AA batteries?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Crankworx\"<\/a>We dragged our sorry asses out of bed and walked up to the lift base to watch the finals of the slopestyle competition. It was 18:00, but still full daylight out. After all the big air, backflips, and tailwhips had decided a winner, it was just after sunset. Unfortunately, that meant it was after 21:00, and there were crazy lines for dinner at every place that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already closed. We tried Earls<\/em>, Avalanche Pizza<\/em>, and Lupino<\/em> (the new pasta place downstairs from Tandoori Grill) to no avail. Thankfully, Tandoori Grill<\/em> was still open and far enough from the event venue and the event demographic to be crowded, so we had a good pre-effort reward dinner. Nan<\/em>, Chana Masala<\/em>, Eggplant Bharta<\/em>, Lamb Curry<\/em>, Chicken Biryani<\/em>, and a pitcher of Sleeman honey brown ale<\/em> left no room for Mango Lassi<\/em>. Including tax and tip, everything came out to around $100 CAD. After a night of lost sleep and a long day of travel, I was out fast. Tomorrow would be the first ride day, so I needed the rest.<\/p>\n

Pictures here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 28 July 2007 Sunny, 20-24C slight breeze The in-flight movie was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the Land of Women\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or something to that effect. Huh? What? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. I put on the MP3 player headphones and let the Sleeman put me to sleep. I awoke to the change in sounds as the plane began its descent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5,8,13,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-6Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}