Daddy Day – 2012

LOTS of pics and stuff to get through today.  Father’s Day around here means we ditch the kids for the most part, and shred some big vert in the South Okanagan.  We did manage to freak out mom here, by treeing her and her two cubs.

Quite a few dads came out for this one.  It’s always fun to open a beer, say “Here ya go Dad”, and see how many hands reach for it.  Oh, and our pal Chris from Merritt came along too.  He’s not a dad…yet…  That’s him on the left, and Jason is on the right riding one of my bikes. 

He looks pretty good on that rig.

Halfway down, and much hilarity has ensued.  We wrecked a chainsaw (watch for an upcoming vid with a chainsaw in manual mode), I had a wicked wreck, and conditions really could NOT be better.

I want you to note that strange material hanging in the air behind the riders.  Yes, in spite of the wettest June ever recorded, and overnight rain, there is dust on the trail.

Gotta love the desert in the springtime.

Oh, almost forgot…  Darcy finally brought Jordan up, and as he’s not a little kid anymore we thought we’d try him out on Cawston Creek.  He had a couple of small crashes, but overall he killed it.

Beer break with Dad…s.

Darcy and Jordan.  Probably the raddest Father/Son day ever.

Yeah dude.  I’d be smiling too.

Foote of course never stops smiling.  Just about the most stoked guy I’ve ever met.

A couple of heavily edited shots on the hoodoos.  Just playing with some camera settings.  I’ve taken so many pics here, I’m almost (but not quite) bored with it.

OK, that was just the warmup.  Time for round 2.  DING!

As is the usual when shredding with the crew, the pace has picked up as some riders dropped out for TKO.  Therefore I got relatively few shots.  We smashed off the first half of the trail, with no breaks until the big log ride.

Even at that, I barely had time to run back to get these few shots.

Hang it out, buddy! You’ll make it!

Halfway down, time to reset the brain.  The second half is way steep, so you gotta take it a lot less aggro than the 1st half.  Plus, it’s a nice view.

Not that it looks very steep here, but the colours are sure nice.

Whoa!  Who’s that handsome devil?

This next shot is special.  Not so much because it’s of me, or that Jason took it, but because it’s shot #10 000!  Yes that’s right.  There is now over 10k images on this site.  That should keep ya busy for a while.

OW!

Yeah, wettest spring ever.  I hear it stays pretty cloudy when it rains in Vancouver.  Here…not so much.

And another lame pic of scenery on the drive home.

Batty in Peachland

Cute, isn’t he?

However, it’s not a good idea to pick these guys up.  After all, they do carry rabies.  Super unlikely that you’d contract it, but given that rabies tends to be nearly universally fatal, it’s not really worth the risk.

Nice to have lots of them around though.  You can thank bats for the Okanagan’s relatively mosquito free environment.

Girls Got Skills – 2

Yay!  Time to rebuild the ladies after yesterday’s humbling.  We’ll start by making everyone fall down.  Barb, show ‘em…

We did a shorter skills session in the park this morning so we could hit the trails a bit fresher.  It was all about dynamic riding today.

Very dynamic riding.

This is what the 2 day format is all about.  It seems that human beings respond very well when they are offered a chance to rest, recuperate, and absorb new information.

So after taking things right back to basics on the first day, we can build back up to new heights on the second day.

And we do mean heights. 

Plus, just having the chance to session a trail with riders of similar abilities rather than playing catchup with guys that hit that stuff all the time makes success more likely.

Once you get into the flow of things, rollover moves like this become easy.

Right, Rowena?

OK, time for a candid group shot.

More advanced rollovers are still no problem for this crew.

Hanna even threw in some dance moves for us.

Tova has it dialled, so she put on a couple of demo’s for the group.

That made it easy for Denise, who is my new hero. She is proof positive about the old adage “you’re only as old as you feel.”  I’m not gonna spill any secrets here, but suffice to say that our most mature client this weekend was also one of our strongest.

Beth is just a shredder.  ‘Nuff said.

And Pauline is sort of just plain nuts, but it’s probably just the Irish accent.  Here’s a shot of her nearly getting bucked off, but she never panicked and is well on her way to the next skill plateau in her riding.

A bit further down the trail we did hear a scream, but it seemed more like an “eeek!” than an “owww!”  Sure enough…

I love rattlers.  This one is a beauty.  Not the largest I’ve seen around here, but from the looks of the tail around 10 years old.

Look out!  She’s gonna git ya!

Casey, having a gas shredding with the gals.

Just like yesterday, it was the Williams Lake girls on the beach at the end.  Nothing like cold bevvies on the beach to make you forget about the wounds.

..and that’s a wrap.  Time to pack up the stunts.  We’ll do this again next spring.