Whistler, awwwwwwwwesome dude!

We pulled into Whistlers jolly expensive campsite after the office had shut, so had no idea how much it was going to be. We figured it wouldn't be too bad as the only space they had left was in a car-park, so thats where we stayed.
I like Whistler :-) It's a nice town... and it has the most AWESOME bike park, dude!

And you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d just walked off the set for “Dude, where’s my Car?” (a classic American teen film!). The town is vibrant and full of people from all age groups doing 2 things… biking and having fun! And they really do call each other “dude” all the time, even old people (like Dan - Jen).
So anyway, we spent a couple of completely cool days in Whistler. Our first day there we had a wander around the town itself. There are loads of "outdoor" type shops there all selling seriously overpriced skiing, snowboarding and biking stuff, buts its cool nonetheless! Then in the afternoon I decided to check out the extreme downhill stupid bike trails. I took an instructor led afternoons biking together with 4 other people (all English!!) and was shown the basics of downhill mountain biking. Dave and Terry, my bikin' buddies... get yourselves over here, its brilliant! You get a ski lift up to the top of the mountain with your bike and then you hurtle back down again. The new bike gave me so much more confidence and on the second or third trip down the mountain I was getting some serious airtime :-) And I only went over the handlebars once!

That evening we went into town with our new buddies who I’d spent the day biking with for a bite to eat and far too much beer.
The following morning we decided to do some more biking, but this time a little less “extreme, dude”, although still a respecttable 'blue' classification. We followed some of the volunteer maintained trails in and around the Lost Lake valley, each trail having a somewhat imaginative name.


Jen managed to fall off and draw blood a couple of times which she thought made her look like an extreme biker chick! (it did, if you're not bleeding you're not trying hard enough! Bruise count: 5, including all of both knees, Cut count: 1, 5 inches, Graze count: 3. I fell off a boardwalk once and the second time was after a huge (almost vertical) smooth rock drop, not problem with the drop, but I was so shocked I made it, the bike dug into some sand on the next corner and I went flying! It was great! - Jen
We pushed the boat out again and spent the evening in the village centre, it was handy as it was only a 10 minute bike ride from the campsite and if you're going into Whistler you need to take the bikes anyway! We had a nice meal sat out on the patio of a nice grill watching the world go by and then went to the square to watch the premier of some ski films, the atmosphere in that town is addictive, shame we couldn't afford (literally!) to stay more than a few days. Highly recommended :-)
We got up this morning, grey clouds everywhere and packed up. We are now in Vancouver, a couple of hours down the road and will be spending a few days here as there’s soooooo much to see!