· I figured this was worth writing about because of the sheer beauty of the area I had to travel through on the shuttle ride from Vancouver to Whistler.
From the moment we left Vancouver International Airport it was impossible to deny that Canada is a stunningly beautiful country. Vancouver City itself is absolutely pristine, due largely in part to the fact that the 2010 Winter Olympics start there on Feb 10th 2010. It's clean, efficient and even from the bus seemed to have a friendly and welcoming feel to it.
On the way up we went through Squamish, an area very well known for adventure sports, including a whole bunch of rock climbing ... something I've dabbled in for a few years now. My favourite YouTube video of all time is made there and is a video of probably the world's best technical climber, Chris Sharma, completing the first ascent of a route called Dreamcatcher - it's rated 5.14d for those of you that know something about climbing. If you want to check it out have a look at this link ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlcQ3mxlNfs.
Once again I was really lucky to be seated to a really friendly Canadian guy. Ryan was his name and he lives in way out in the wops about 75km north of Whistler; he's an agricultural farmer, growing berries and garlic etc (his girlfriend is a chef). He's a total wealth of knowledge too and obviously a proud Canadian. Usually I'd get a bit bored with a travel companion that talks the whole time but close to 3 hours flew by with us chatting away about Canada, Europe, New Zealand (where he's never been but wants to go) and about what the west coast of Canada has to offer in terms of skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking etc. He told me that the chances of seeing bears this time of year are almost guaranteed - scary! Apparently all I need to do, though, is hold my bike above my head so I'm taller than them. Now I'm wishing I still had that 10kg bike ... Anyway, Ryan gave me the name of a friend of his that owns one of the local bike shops and said that if I want to go riding where tourists don't get to go all I need to do is mention his name in the shop - SCORE!
Another guy on the shuttle was a dude from Adelaide whose name I didn't get but who ended up to be staying in the same resort/condo complex as me. We made a loose agreement to go for a couple drinks which should be pretty cool.
Naturally the first order of business after arriving at my condo (I'll go into detail about that later) was to get the bike together. I can't really describe the situation any other way than to say the LAX baggage people are a bunch of uncaring WANKERS. They completely destroyed my bike box to the point where it's impossible to carry now and won't be any use on my trip back, transported it upside down when the box clearly says to keep it up a certain way and, by the looks of things, bent my front brake disc and possibly the rear derailleur too. Not impressed ... not impressed at all.
The rest of the bike went together fine though so I went for a quick jaunt up the road in the zero degree temperature to make sure I know where I'm going tomorrow when I head for the trails for real. Seeing the trails with my own eyes instead of just watching them on YouTube is soooooooooooooo cool!
I'll put up another quick post tomorrow about the place I'm staying as I'm doing what I always do and making this post far too long ... don't want y'all to get bored reading this stuff.
Bring on tomorrow! :)
P.S. Sorry I don't have many photos yet - they're coming I assure you.
