Haha, nice! Reminded of the time in, what... maybe 2005, 2006?-ish... few years after I' had moved down from Whistler, didn't have a bike and hadn't ridden in a number of years. Some of my buddies who were all on the best of the day wanted to get me back out. "Just find a bike and meet us up there!". Ok... girlfriend's brother had an old Rocky Mountain Hammer sitting around... grabbed that and headed up. Met the boys at the bottom and they all basically looked at me like I was insane... this was about to be my first ride on the Shore... I had no idea. We rode up Fromme... which I called "Grouse" multiple times during the ride. "So, how far are we from the top of Grouse?" "Could you just ski down here?" "Does Grouse mind us riding on their mountain?" haha... so much cringe thinking about it now..
So we ride up and we get to... I don't even remember which trail it was, but it was either Expresso, Ladies or Pipeline. We're about to drop in and everyone turns to me and is like "You ready? You going to be ok?" with what seemed like quite a bit of worry in their eyes and voices. I'm like "Ya, why? Lets just go!"
I don't remember a lot about that ride, except... it scared the fuck out of me!! But I kept riding... I was having fun and I think I held my own... I rode what felt like quite a bit, I know I walked some... and I specifically remember passing a couple groups of riders parked on the side of the trail staring at me and my bike in what seemed like disbelief as I rode by... another couple of guys cheered hard as I rode by. It was all very strange and surreal to me... I was just riding my bike. Rode out the bottom and my group of friends was high-fiving me, hugging me and cheering. I was sort of confused... it was hard, I walked some section and some sections that I rolled into scared the shit out of me and maybe I was lucky to be alive... but it didn't seem that bad.
It did scare/excite me enough to go get a bike... bought a Brodie Hoodlum (arguably a pretty good all-mountain enduro bike... kind of ahead of it's time). I actually took it out for a couple rides a few years ago before selling it (why did I do that?) and that 160mm Rockshox Domain coil with the U-turn travel adjust feature... was butter. That was an awesome fork! And seemed to still work so well after like 7 or 8 years of no use and had never been serviced?! Beauty of coil I guess?
Nov. 13, 2019, 1:07 p.m. - IslandLife
Haha, nice! Reminded of the time in, what... maybe 2005, 2006?-ish... few years after I' had moved down from Whistler, didn't have a bike and hadn't ridden in a number of years. Some of my buddies who were all on the best of the day wanted to get me back out. "Just find a bike and meet us up there!". Ok... girlfriend's brother had an old Rocky Mountain Hammer sitting around... grabbed that and headed up. Met the boys at the bottom and they all basically looked at me like I was insane... this was about to be my first ride on the Shore... I had no idea. We rode up Fromme... which I called "Grouse" multiple times during the ride. "So, how far are we from the top of Grouse?" "Could you just ski down here?" "Does Grouse mind us riding on their mountain?" haha... so much cringe thinking about it now.. So we ride up and we get to... I don't even remember which trail it was, but it was either Expresso, Ladies or Pipeline. We're about to drop in and everyone turns to me and is like "You ready? You going to be ok?" with what seemed like quite a bit of worry in their eyes and voices. I'm like "Ya, why? Lets just go!" I don't remember a lot about that ride, except... it scared the fuck out of me!! But I kept riding... I was having fun and I think I held my own... I rode what felt like quite a bit, I know I walked some... and I specifically remember passing a couple groups of riders parked on the side of the trail staring at me and my bike in what seemed like disbelief as I rode by... another couple of guys cheered hard as I rode by. It was all very strange and surreal to me... I was just riding my bike. Rode out the bottom and my group of friends was high-fiving me, hugging me and cheering. I was sort of confused... it was hard, I walked some section and some sections that I rolled into scared the shit out of me and maybe I was lucky to be alive... but it didn't seem that bad. It did scare/excite me enough to go get a bike... bought a Brodie Hoodlum (arguably a pretty good all-mountain enduro bike... kind of ahead of it's time). I actually took it out for a couple rides a few years ago before selling it (why did I do that?) and that 160mm Rockshox Domain coil with the U-turn travel adjust feature... was butter. That was an awesome fork! And seemed to still work so well after like 7 or 8 years of no use and had never been serviced?! Beauty of coil I guess?