Crank-Worx 2009 had arrived! The big banger bike festival of the year was here and I was ready to give’er!. That being said I had just gotten home from New Jersey and I was a little bit under the weather. So instead of heading up to whistler immediately I decided to stay home for the weekend and work on my health. Tuesday rolled around and I decided it was time to head up which worked out well because my buddy Kyle Ebbet needed a lift from the airport and I always like having company on the drive to Whistler.

The first day was registration and riding. After I got my race plate for the A-line dh I went to rock out on the mountain and grab a few training laps. I quickly realized that an A-line race is not going to be the same as ripping with buddies. To actually try and go fast on the race course it was going to require a lot of scrubbing, pre-jumping, and pedalling. I usually NEVER pedal on A-line so this was giving me some trouble because I couldn’t get used of pedaling and I had several over-shooting close calls. After a day of practice I felt I was getting the hand of it. Usually Crank-Worx is a ride all day party all night kind of deal for a lot of the athletes but I couldn’t pull that off this year; I was exceptionally run down and tired.

The big day of my first ever downhill race was about to go down! I have never raced a DH in my life so I figured I would try the a-line DH because it wasn’t too difficult of a track. I did a quick practice lap with Andrew Cho from GT and it was pretty much race time. Okay. so I was hoping that things would go right for my first downhill race but of course it didn’t. The very first jump on A-line my visor fell down into my eyes and it stayed that way a good way down upper A-Line. Basically the first quarter of the course was blown, but I managed to jam my visor up and pin the rest of the course for a time of 5.01! This kind of sucked because my goal was to just be under 5 minutes… oh well next year!

Wednesday night was supposed to be the Chase White party but I was just feeling too sick so I went to bed at around 10pm to get ready to work the Norco booth for the next day. Thursday and Friday were awesome days I got to do laps on the mountain with Norco fans and related people and sign a load of posters at the booth. One part of Crank-Worx that is really fun for me is signing posters and chatting to all the people that come by. I get to hear their stories, what bike they ride, their favourite trails or just what they are into. My position as a rider definitely allows me to meet many individuals and hear about their lives, which is cool.

Saturday was the trials contest for me which is always a good time. This year the sections were HARD.  Granted I still ride trials at a high level but I ride more street trials than competition specific trials these days. This year the sections kicked my butt. There were a few that I got close to even cleaning but I could not get through them in time. Overall this was probably the worst score card I ever have had! Oh well I was not the only one in that boat though and I still managed to have an awesome time at the competition.

Mike Bia had definitely out did himself; the competition was very well organized, had great sections and tons of spectators. Of course true to my style I still rode the big-nasty-risky sections, because that’s what the crowd loves to see! That evening I watched the slopestyle from the Pan Pacific at the camelbak/fox gear suite which was awesome. It was a dope slopestyle even though it was a little anti-climatic I still enjoyed it especially to see my buddy Mitch Chueby in the super finals!

Sunday was a Chill day riding the mountain and working the Norco booth. The best part about Sunday is the Longhorn’s local’s night! Finally a Crank Worx party with girls because most of the riders have gone home. I stuck around until Monday but took a nasty crash on Crank it Up! Stupid me, and what a way to end it ha!

-Dylan

Providence Rhode Island was a pretty cool city. Not only do they have some pretty great universities but they also have some pretty good urban riding. Some of which happens to be on the university campuses. We decided to check out the campus at Brown and we definitely found some pretty cool stuff to ride but security was on our butt’s faster than you can snap your fingers.

So we carried on to the downtown core of Providence where we found more cool stuff. I suppose one of the coolest features about Providence is that it is a very old city for the US so actually get a bit of culture and architecture that can really add to a shoot. Downtown we found some old stuff to ride on, like from the 1800′s, but one of the coolest and funniest things is that one of the newer buildings is the Dunkin Doughnuts Center. I tried to come up with a line that could integrate their big Dunkin Doughnuts sign with something trialsy and cool but I couldn’t quite put it together.

On our way home from Providence possibly the best thing that had ever happened to me in my life happened. We went to a deli called Panera to grab a sandwich for dinner. I had essentially been waiting for this moment my whole life. At Panera there was a super cute girl that I had noticed. While I was in the washroom the guys decided that they should give her my laptop to take care of throwing me into some sort of awkward situation with her when I came back. When I got back to our table I was astonished to see my laptop gone with all the guys smirking. I went to go get my laptop back which ended up being quite the interlude and lead to this girl and I talking for awhile. Now here is where the kicker comes in. She had a bracelet that said, and I quote, “I Love Redheads”. WOW it was my lucky day because by deductive reasoning if she loves redheads and I am a readhead she therefore must love me! Right? Well, that remains to be seen but she was still a really cool girl.

The idea was once we were done with Providence we could head back down to Jersey and hit up Newark and New York for the final day of the trip. We decided to start our day in Newark at Sussex College. Little did we know that the start of our day was going to be the end of our day.

Both Jeff and I had found some pretty killer lines. We were getting warmed up to shred them, when no sooner than I did one practice drop there was security right there. Now security did not mess around here and they immediately called the police, resulting in us being taken to the Police station and detained.

I was trying not to lose it… we were detained in a police custody for BARELY riding on a campus where there was no signage telling us not to either.  The irony of this situation was that no more than a block away there were people shelling out crack; but two bikers and two photogs were a much larger threat. I would like to point out that during our interlude in custody the words ‘911’ and ‘threat’ were used quite regularly. The police business pretty much wrapped up the day and we never even made it into New York… oh well.

The next two days were pretty chill and consisted of one day chillin at the Lenosky pad and the next day a sick little speed trials event at the New Jersey State Fair. I nabbed third place and then Jumped on the plane to head home.

On the road again, this time I was heading to uncharted territory… the eastern United States. The plan was to put together a trials road trip with Jeff Lenosky and shoot it for a little article in Decline and to top it off make a little segment for DH productions upcoming movie. So I packed my bags and set off once again.

The flight to New Jersey was long and unsettled for numerous reasons but I had my earplugs and was able to sleep a lot of the flight. Once I arrived Jeff picked me up and brought me back to the Lenosky crib. After a good night’s sleep I was still a little jet lagged, but it was time to get things done. Day one, we headed out to one of the local universities and shredded the campus. This campus was super fun and we had absolutely no problems with security, which I wish I could say for all of the universities on this trip. We shredded some gnarly lines, some right in front of classrooms full of students and still we had no trouble.

Jeff found this one cool line where he got to manual a bike rack, super cool. I found some hucker trials lines with some big drops and mini-kickers. I also found this one line that I had to drop onto a round down rail and then manual down it. The rail drop manual line was super sick and I was super stoked to get the line down.

At the next stop we hit up some eastern seaboard riding on Rhode Island. So we hooked up with Rhode Island local Mike Stiedly and headed out to the beach. This was a phenomenal spot; there were rocks upon rocks upon rocks. They were in a cool formation with boulders on big slabs of flat rock, so you always had great run ups to obstacles. I had quite a bit of fun riding here and found some pretty exposed, risky Korba style lines as well.

Jeff was pulling double duty here as well because he was trying to bag some photos for a fox ad. The kicker was that the ad had to be done at night. So we had a late night of shooting. As we were shooting this crazy fog and storm started rolling in and it made for some pretty unique lifestyle shots. Next we would move onto Providence Rhode Island to shred some urban steeze again.

Lake Louise would be my final stop on this trip through the Rocky Mountains. I had once been rock climbing in Lake Louise many years ago and all I could remember was massive glaciated peaks that stood tall above the luminous mountain lakes. Turns out my memories of Lake Louise were indeed quite accurate.

Our ride in Lake Louise consisted of an all mountain adventure ride. We only did about half the ride as we took the opportunity to enter the trail at a high point that skipped about 10 km of climbing. With filming there is a lot of gear that has to be packed in and out so accessibility and distance become important concerns when trying to maximize footage. Regardless of missing some of the trail we definitely got some of the good stuff. In fact I could not get enough of the trail. It was on a mellow grade but it was so technical twisty and turney that it was endless amounts of fun. The trail was definitely a gem and possibly my favourite of the trip.

The trail lead us to a picturesque lake called Moraine Lake which is just a short trip from Lake Louise. Moraine Lake is surrounded by the Ten Peaks which provided an awe inspiring landscape. In fact a little bit of trivia for you is that the Ten Peaks and Moraine Lake used to be the picture on the Canadian 20 dollar bill. There was this one chute between two of the peaks that looked like it would have been the coolest ski mountaineering line ever. It looked like a 5000ft chute that starts at vertical and goes all the way down to the lake; my imagination started to churn as I thought of how amazing it would be to snowboard the line one day.  Once we finished Moraine Lake it was time to pack up and pin it back to Calgary.

In Calgary I met up with some university friends for the evening and went out on the town. Of course I couldn’t go too hard because I had a flight out early the next morning but good times were still had. The funny thing about the evening was that a completely random encounter in the club lead me to meet Giant team rider, Kurt Sorge’s childhood neighbour! HA what a small world it is indeed!

About 15 minutes up the road from Canmore there is another mountain town named Banff.  A world renowned tourist destination, Banff features scenic vistas and is loaded with Canadian heritage, situated in one of our national parks. The national parks are generally more focused on sports that have a historical significance, such as skiing, horseback riding or hiking; however, in Banff they are staring to recognize mountain biking as well. Currently there are several multi-use trails for bikes but the National Park has set aside some land in the Banff area for a XC and DH trail network.

We did a DH multi-use shuttle trail that was accessible from the Mount Norquay parking lot. The trail itself was not terribly difficult but it was still a fun, fast and flowing. In addition to the trail being pretty fun, the shuttle was so accessible it just made the trail that much more worthwhile to go shred. We were guided by a local named Stavros who coincidentally owned a Greek Restaurant in Banff, and invited us back for lunch after the ride.

The lunch was hands down the best food I had all trip. This was an unexpected gem and Banff is lucky to have the Balcan Greek restaurant. I had a chicken souvlaki which was deadly good. We started things off with some calamari and fried goat cheese which was amazing. The presentation of the goat cheese was super cool because they actually set it on fire in front of you!

After the awesome lunch we did a bit of sightseeing and checked out the famous Banff Springs Hotel, the Bow River falls and of course gathered some scenic’s of the town of Banff. The Banff Springs is pretty cool because it is a historical hotel that I think was built in conjunction with the rail way many many years ago. The hotel is so old that the whole massive structure is constructed of stone from the surrounding area. Although the Bow falls were a bit more like a rapid that would have been fun to go down in a tube it was still kind of cool.

Later that evening I eat some elk. I am unsure if I will repeat…. it was tasty but possibly a little too gamey for me. Possibly I will try it again one day but probably not in burger form. None the less Banff was a true Canadian Rocky Mountain Experience and I can see why so many tourists frequent this place every year.