Sometimes when you least expect it, the little crashes turn into the not so little injuries. Like the other day I went for a famed last lap and things went wrong… It always seems that when you are just going out for a 50 percent day, you get taken out. Last week I went for a chill day in Whistler Bike Park, with my sister and two non-freeride friends. I was just trying to get out from behind the books and wanted a chill day in whistler and I almost got it too.  The day was mostly great! We rode trails like B-line and Crank-it-up all day, and took a long lunch with friends. Good times.

After the day I decided to take one chill solo lap down A-Line. Long of the short of it, I was about 200 feet from the bottom in the biker-cross and slid out in a dry loose berm. I was going quite slow and thought I was fine, so I jumped back on my bike and continued on my way. I actually thought it was pretty stupid and was laughing to myself. Maybe a small amount of road rash I thought to myself, until I noticed blood all over my pants and frame. Turns out I must have clipped a sharp rock. There was actually very little road rash but a deep cut, with blood streaming out of it.

That was a bad way to end a day, but the worst part was yet to come. The emergency in Whistler is pretty much always a wait, so I decided to clean the wound out myself and drive back to Port Moody. It turns out the cut was deeper than I thought and was through all my layers of skin down to the muscle. I rinsed it all out with distilled water and then realized that I was not going to be fixing it with a couple butterflies when I could pull the layers of skin away from part of the muscle. All my friends were ridiculously grossed out. I poured a bunch of peroxide on the wound which hurt!! Rinsed it wrapped it and got my butt to the hospital.

The aftermath was 15 stitches and getting put on the bench for 10 days. Great… more time to study my Economics books! It has been healing well thought and the doctor was worried about infection but I think I’m off scott-free on that one! With the weather nice and the season ramping up I can’t wait for it to heal!

For me one of the most fun things to do in mountain biking is photo shoots. I think that most riders would agree that every shoot, has its own adventure. The purpose of this little photo session was to grab some photographs for the upcoming Norco catalogue. The idea was to get some street shots. Well, we definitely got a few pretty banging shots, but as always we have to keep the best ones under wraps for the actual catalogue. None the less here is a little re-cap of how the adventure went down.

Meet photographer Margus Riga at around 8:30pm so we can get some evening shots. I met Margus up at my university campus and was stuffing some Chinese food down my face because I had yet to eat that day. I knew of a few cool lines that might bear some fruits: banks, rails, stair sets and that kind of thing.

We decided to warm it up on one of the bank lines; it offered some cool framing options and a cool view of the sun setting. We shot as much as we could on the bank line and then moved on to a cool arch to get some manual shots and a few life styles, but at this point we were confronted by security. The security guard did his best job to shut us down… kind of. He said, when we were done, if we could stop riding on campus, it would be appreciated. Well I figured that meant when we were done shooting which could definitely be a little while.

We proceeded to go get a sick shot with this hand rail and staircase -that was awesome! I was super stoked because we were having a little trouble getting what I saw in my mind initially. It was a night shot though so it had to be flashed of course. But every time I did it, when the flash would go off I was basically blinded. So I was bunny hopping a full sized hand rail, of a full flight of stairs at night and blind. It was definitely sketchy for me and I kept hoping and praying (even though I wouldn’t consider myself a religious man) that I did not hang up my back tire on the railing. After around 20 tries we got the shot! I felt so good; nothing feels better than when I tee up a line and have the photo to prove it.

We decided to try and shoot one more shot, an underground wall ride, but it was getting late. Margus has a great eye, and found a super cool artistic shot, using the underground lighting. We were giving it on this one with a bit of an audience of the cleaning staff at the university and they were super cool with us throwing down. The funniest thing of the evening though, is we were busted by the same security guard. It was about 2.5 hours since we were initially busted so I kind of expected him to get a little ticked off with us, but all he said was “Not done quite yet?”, and cruised on. Shoot successful!

The other weekend the Norco crew went over to the sunshine Coast to help out with a skills weekend for the Sprockids. The Sprockids is an organization that gets kids out  mountain biking, how great is that! I can’t really think of anything better. The weekend started with a little ferry ride over to an area of B.C. called the Sunshine coast. I jumped aboard the Jay Hoots mobile and had some good old fashion catch up time with Hooty. Even though I had been in school all winter we didn’t miss a beat and we were back laughing and joking around like nothing else, I knew it would be a good weekend. On the ferry my new team mate Sam was eating sausage wrapped in ham and bacon…. all three food groups?

We arrived at the Sprockids skills park and they were waiting for us, kids of all varieties, just pumped to ride their bikes. My part was to take them on a little trail ride and teach them how to corner through a berm. All the kids were excited, and I have to say that they  have some great trails in their park. One trail called Mr. Smiley was a super sick little freeride trail – I only wish it had been longer! This is where I got the kids railing a berm and rocking a few skinnies. Now that being said the skill level was diverse but some of these kids were on fire! I mean doing pretty big drops, a foot or two, but on pretty simplistic steel rigid bikes, no suspension there!

After doing a bunch of laps with the kids, it was BBQ time so I stuffed myself with 3 hot dogs Mhhhhm… After the BBQ Sam and Hoots put on a little jump show, of which I was a spectator, due to early season jitters. Then we did a little group ride through the upper Sprockids area. Wow what a climb, not to mention we may or may have not ended up on the wrong trail that kept going up! The funny thing was the “wrong trail” was so clean and nice, like freshly raked. My theory is that bears were raking it at night and it lead straight to a den were we would immediately become bear food… Animals are smart. We eventually turned around and had some wicked fast and fun downhill!

After this there was another BBQ at Doug Detwiller’s house, the founder of the Sprockids program, where I may or may not have been rumored to have mistakenly picked up dog poo with my bare hands… It was an awesome BBQ though and I was stuffed. Thanks Petra! We then headed off for a good night’s sleep at the Up The Creek bed and breakfast in Roberts Creek to save up our energy for the next day of riding. No partying of any sort with the Norco crew happened that night.

Sunday we ripped Robert’s Creek, and for those of you that don’t know, it’s amazing like super, super, super amazing. This is the area where the Coastal Crew filmed their Kranked segment. There are so many awesome trails over there, you will just have to go over and see it yourself, but don’t tell too many people . After a day of shuttle laps I was totally done. It was so much fun to ride with Hooty and Sam, as well as the rest of the Norco crew. We jumped back on a ferry and headed from the coast back to the mainland. I love the ferry and there was an incident with soft serve ice cream that will never be spoken about again…. I always keep it classy.

DK

Recently we rounded up all of our athletes and put together a little video of their awesomeness, and added some of our new gear as well. Being that they help us develop and test all of our products it only seemed fitting. Enjoy.

First off let me start out by describing the the brutal Whistler mountain course. Coming from a trials background we don’t have 16 minute gut wrenching races, but in epic downhill they do. The Qualifier course Started at the top of Garbanzo Chair on Whistler and was as epic as you could imagine down to the finish line. The course was diverse and had everything from steep technical lines like In Deep to wide open speed and airs like Freight Train. What really made the going difficult was how slick the course was. With a mix of rain at night and decent weather in the day the course was in the transition from super wet to dry resulting in a slick mess. Everything had a layer of grease on it. To top it off I was going to be bounced around on a 5.5” travel bike… things could have turned out bad.

My goal was to not ride super fast but to be consistent and not crash. During qualification I stuck plan and had a clean run.  My biggest problem was other people; passing in a downhill race was new to me and I got caught behind 3 slower riders! Before the race I had pictures floating threw my head of being passed by people on full DH rigs, while struggling to keep up on my SlopeStyle bike. But that never happened and I finished 45th out of approximately 130 riders. It would have been nice the be a little higher in the standings but starting in 4-5th line out of 13-14 lines seemed like it would be okay for the next day.

I awoke on the race morning to rain, rain and more rain! The thought “OH MY GOD” what have a got myself into, crossed my mind! I was committed though, and after a few minutes of reasoning with myself I realized the worst case scenario was severe injury or death –acceptable- and then I suited up. That day was not a denim day but rather a real ridding gear day; jersey’s, riding pants and even a pre-race garbage bag were in order. The peak was cold and windy and the visibility was low to say the least, aka the perfect recipe for a crazy RedBull race.

After standing around for 30 minutes, being deep frozen it was finally time to race. The gun went off sending a fury of racers down the course. The 5th row, my row, lurched off the start line racing to catch the first rows of riders before the course narrowed. One thing to note is that alpine fire roads are generally comprised of stones 5-7 inches in diameter, which 5 inch slope style bikes do not handle all that well… I was being passed.

Thankfully the course designers threw in some uphill which allowed me to grab back a few places; but, once back on the downhill fire road it was basically a death bull ride with rain and fog ganging up with my fogged goggles to reduce visibility to virtually nothing. As soon as I broke free of the alpine I took my goggles off, this stop cost me a few places. But, once I could see again I started passing people on tight corners, slick roots and anywhere else I could make up for my lack of travel with skill.

Unfortunately skill was not always enough and my tires gave way on an inside corner pass and I went for a slider. I quickly shook myself out while trying not to be run over by one of the passing riders, and got back on the gas. By riding some of the more risky lines at bottle necks I was able to make up quite a few spots and was not passed again as I reeled other riders in one by one. My race ended with a balls out 3 rider sprint through the giant dual slalom course, cold and wet I crossed the line safe and sound. This race was so much fun it was ridiculous… and at times scary. Finishing the course in 26 and some odd minutes, about 5 minutes behind the leaders was respectable… for a ss bike. After the racer there was nothing left but the after party and to put a check mark in the box beside “repeat next season”.