More Fun Stuff

The last time I left off on my adventures was back in September. On the 23rd of that month, LeAnne & I signed up for and completed a 50 mile bike ride through Whidbey Island, called the Tour de Whidbey. It was great that it wasn't a race, and there were break stations where people were set up with water, fruit, and a smile nearly every 15 miles. I had never ridden that far before on a bicycle, so it was definitely a challenge. We were nearly the only goobers out there with mountain bikes with slicks, but we managed to make it by that afternoon. I didn't really have any problems until the last 3 or 4 miles, when I just wanted it to be over. For the most part, though, we had a great time. The weather held up for us, too.

The next weekend I got together with LeAnne again, and we took off for Whistler in British Columbia to do some downhill mountain biking. We left as soon as I got off of work on Friday, and pulled into Whistler around 10 p.m. We decided to have a makeshift campsite in the back of her Suburu, which afforded plenty of room and best of all was free. Early the next morning, we got up and hit the slopes, sans snow. With an all-day ticket, you can take the gondolas up the mountain and ride down all day long. We both crashed a couple of times, but we got back up and kept going. The bruises stayed with us for weeks; I had a deep gash in my shin from hitting a hill too fast and flipping off of my bike. Next time I'll be wearing shin guards. Once again, we were the least equipped fools up there, but I've got to say we probably had the most fun. Everyone up there had these sick downhill bikes with mad travel, and here we came up with our regular mtn bikes. The guy I took my bike to for repairs after going to Whistler said my back shock pin looked as if it was going to fall out because it had seen so much wear up there! That made me proud. I rode hard and enjoyed every minute. Here's a picture of some of the trails from the gondola. Check out the crazy jump in the background, too:
We were beat by the end of the day, so we decided to get a room to relax, rather than try to camp out again. The next morning, we headed back towards Vancouver along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, which is renowned for its beautiful vistas and lookout points. I was amazed, because it was completely dark when we had driven up on Friday night. We stopped at a few places, one being Shannon Falls, which is BC's 3rd tallest waterfall. The flow was pretty sparse, but there was enough water to wash my hair:

We pulled into Vancouver around 2 p.m., and headed for an all-you-can-eat sushi joint. Unfortunately, we had just missed the all-you-can-eat part, so we ordered some general dishes, which still ended up being pretty cheap. After this, we headed over to Granville Island, a small area connected to Vancouver with an indoor market, arts, crafts, pottery studios, art schools, and the like.
After we had made the rounds through the market, we came outside to hear a Peruvian flutist who was perfoming. It was pretty funny because LeAnne had purchased the same guy's CD the last time she had heard him, a few years before. It had been relegated to her 'bad' CD pile, and of course, I poked fun at her for having it. As we watched, an Oriental lady began dancing around on the square, doing all kinds of eye-closed moved, swaying this way and that. It was a mixture of ballet and spinning. She was really getting into it, so we wondered if she was part of the act. Come to find out, she was just there watching the performance with her husband, and I guess she just got moved.