The Capilano University, Mountain Bike Operations course has gone through some changes and now Jay Hoots is the lead instructor! What!!!!!
True story, this last semester saw yours truly set down the assistant instructor role and step up into a position of responsibility!

Dan Scott from IMBA Canada and past student in the MBO program is my assistant instructor and with his help we have transformed the traditional course into a Dreaded jam packed Giv’R sorta gig that serves to give real experience and provide a huge range of skills…

The program now going into its 5th year continues to grow in so many cool ways. Great feedback from students and the open minded attitude of the school means that the program is getting better…

2010 is the first year a municipal partner has come on board to offer a large land area to be developed for future school trail building projects, Sechelt rocks!

The advanced trail building course runs for the month of April and it is ‘full on’ with multiple projects, massive amounts of information and of course project design and construction in the field. The students all rose to the occasion and designed and built “Brown Sugar” a multi level bike trail that is soo much fun.  It was great to work with all the students and I appreciate the time spent in and out of class with such a wide variety of characters.

During the month I lived on the coast and in between marking exams and assignments I did manage to get some solid riding in both on moto and mountain bike.

That’s it for now huge stuff for May!!! Hope the weather continues to hold…

Ride ON!

Hoots

Jersey reviews don’t come around everyday but Feedthehabit.com recently review our Perimeter Jeresy. Here is a bit of what they had to say:

“Heading out this Spring, I’ve been wearing a couple of pieces from Mace Gear: the Perimeter Jersey and Mirage Glove. I’ve been impressed with the overall quality of these products and know they come from rider-influenced designs. I mean, how could Ryan Leech lead anyone astray, right?”  Read the full review

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

Hmm lets see, March, what happened…

Wow! Olympics! The impact of the Olympics in February hit me in March! Man was that cool… Can’t believe I was such a wiener!  I tried to ditch town in order to cruise through the whole Olympic affair and ended up right in the thick of it! Thank goodness, what an amazing experience!  Heck I even got to see some of the coolest events rocking!

Got the fever so I even tried it out…

Had a wicked Birthday in March and went for a week to Death Valley with the boys to grow another year older with a bunch of motor heads that are many years wiser : )

Check this out…
http://www.dualsportbc.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=10082&forum_id=11

I did get some great pre season bike riding in. The proto type bike is still railing and I can’t wait to see what happens for production.

Along the way I convinced Ash and Aaron (aka the Powder Chef) help dig out a sk8 park from snow so I could catch some concrete waves

Pic: Hoots in sk8 park

Waiting with baited breath for my Mace gear… 2010 promises to have some sic stuff…..

Hoots

It’s Friday morning, last weekend is now fading into the back of my memory as a new weekend sits right in front of me –only hours away, begin countdown.  This is probably a perfect time to reminisce about last weekend.

Day 2

Light splashed through the curtain waking me up much to early, I tried to sleep through it but to no avail.  By the time I awkwardly crawled down from the bunk bed, I could already smell the sweet aroma of bacon -everyone loves bacon. PJ and Jon had prepared a feast of eggs, bacon, sausages and toast. My only gripe was that the coffee was gone by the time I got to the kitchen, my fault. We ate breakfast loaded the trucks and headed out to the race; it was the cross-country day and four members of our crew were riding in the race.

We drove the Norco truck right into the finish area and set up our tent, pit stands and comfortable folding chairs. – I would like to note that the other truck went into town where they managed to track down coffee, I missed it twice in one day.

Everyone took turns tuning up their bikes and when we were almost ready to go we realized that the Norco truck would be staying right where it was; the entrance to the staging area had been closed off. Bummed for no more than a second we realized that Dustan was still not in riding shape so he agreed to be our morning shuttle driver –most excellent.  Bikes over the tailgate, a glorious 6 Norco team Dh’s we headed up to shuttle.

Our first run was filled with wooden stunts and then led to a wicked jump run or two and a fast berm filled ride out.  It should be noted that riding on the Coast is awesome. Our  second run was a blazing decent on the Downhill course, the third run was similar to the first. At high noon the XC race started. The Thursday before we left the smack talk had started; one of our Crew had sent a menacing email to the other riders stating that we were the grass and he was the lawnmower. I can only assume he was referring to a strange fetish to be a ride-em lawnmower of some type. Regardless he didn’t mow anybody’s grass in the XC race and looked nothing short of shattered when he finished.

I admit I didn’t actually see him finish because by this time we were all very hungry from a wicked morning of shuttle. It was time for lunch and the Gumboot Café was just down the street. If you are on the coast definitely stoop by the Gumboot for a meal. The food is made from fresh, organic ingredients which they lovingly turn into delicious meals. I also made up for my lack of morning caffeine at this point by consuming 5 cups with lunch: an excellent chicken burger with bacon and aged cheddar, I could go for one right now actually.

With full stomachs we headed back for some more afternoon shuttle action. As we were pulling past the staging area, Dustan was leaving in the Norco truck and we realized that we had left one-armed Dustan all by himself to clean up the tent etc… Ooops. To be fair he had disappeared up the course to take pictures and we had no idea where he was and we were hungry. Sorry Dustan, you were a rock star all weekend long.

It was four o’clock and we shuttled up to take photos. A couple of runs and some pictures later, the sun was setting and it was time to go make dinner. With only half the grill working PJ orchestrated a magnificent  bit of cookery, serving up 8 big steaks and a pack of Italian sausages. With beers in hand we ate a huge meal that even included salad. By 11:00 everyone was beat and we all crashed. Another great day was in the bag.