Rides and Such

The temperature is rising, although we’ve been very lucky compared to many places so far. Today was quite warm, though the heat wave doesn’t fully kick in until tomorrow – and isn’t expected to last more than a couple days. Nonetheless I figured I’d get out today so I can stay in tomorrow and keep cool. My ride started with an…

An out-of-town friend who used to race CX was visiting for a few days, and we arranged a couple evening rides. In an effort to best fit in with his lightweight single speed cyclocross bike, I pulled the fenders off of Sam and put some Terra Trail tires from the bin on. We rode out to a bit of a hidden…

Okay it was a little over 24 hours, but given the ferries required I believe a few hours’ grace is warranted. I booked Site 1 at Pender back in January for this past Sunday night, already being unable to secure it on the weekend for the season. It went super fast for good reason – it’s the end site, closest to…

This marked the third year of the bike show out front of Main St Brewing, a show originally organized by the former head brewer Azlan (yes, like the lion, which coincidentally is his IG handle) but kept going through volunteer efforts since he left the tank wrangling for a different beer industry gig. The morning was very wet, but the forecast…

Day three was my travels home; I chose to take the mid-morning ‘milk run’ ferry to the main island rather than wait until well into the afternoon for the direct ferry to Tsawwassen because I’d be getting home after dark on the latter. Besides, being carried around on ferries all day isn’t so bad! First off, here’s a view of camp…

I recently got home from a three day trip to Saturna Island, one of the most secluded of the southern gulf islands of BC and a personal favourite of mine. I am making a separate post for each day because I’ve got a lot of content! This was my one full day on the island, and I had really just one…

I recently got home from a three day trip to Saturna Island, one of the most secluded of the southern gulf islands of BC and a personal favourite of mine. I am making a separate post for each day because I’ve got a lot of content! Being one of the least populated of the southern gulf islands among those with ferry…

This one’s out of order because it was the day before the Caulfield loop I’ve already posted, but oh well. This ride was up the Seymour Valley once again, this time with a tape measure in hand and a plan to measure the big Sitka spruce trees I was familiar with in the valley. Most notably this includes the pair of…

I have a bunch of routes set to public on RWGPS which can be readily found by searching by anyone. I tend to set my routes to private if they are WIP or not really something that I’d recommend someone try – ie, maybe they are just a means to get to somewhere that is only interesting to me. I’m not…

A friend Sam, whom I met a couple years ago when I bought a pair of tires from him, has an Instagram account Hotdogzonwheels which has gained a lot of momentum over the past couple years. We share a lot of friends in common, and the ‘Hotdogz’ crew is largely millennial skaters who have taken to the alt-cycling scene. This growing…

My latest iteration of the Burnabop route series is a single ~57km loop that uses a couple sections of particularly low-traffic trail, and one short section has been quite brutal – its maybe 150m long but features several creek crossings, steep and muddy slopes, and can be so overgrown it virtually disappears. So I’d purchased some hedge trimmer shears for the…

Today I had the whole afternoon and a focused goal to put my new-to-me 50′ tape measure to use by measuring as many of my favourite old growth Douglas Firs as I could manage with the time and energy I had available. The biggest of which would be the Temple Giant I had only recently been able to see with my…

Apparently Saturday, May 9th was branded global ‘big day’ by eBird, a day for birders to all try to record some birding activity. I decided to make that a theme of the ride, and link up a couple good spots for birds aboard the Bombadil. I’ve been riding almost exclusively the Bombadil lately as it’s set up both as my commuter…

This post will be a longer one, because I just got back from two nights and three trail-filled days of riding to, on, and from Gabriola Island. Gabriola is a part of the southern gulf island range, but located at the north end of the range and just a short hop from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Coming from the mainland, it’s…

I didn’t take a lot of photos this past week, but I rode every day and the weather’s been bright and sunny without being too warm. I’m trying to soak up every moment of this before the heat, draught, and wildfires become the reality. Just about all my riding was on the Bombadil, except a 50km day on the Evasion and…

It’s Wednesday, and I took the rest of the week off work. I wasn’t planning to ride today, but while I had my coffee this morning, I started to think about going out into the woods. Specifically, I started thinking about the ‘Temple of Time’ grove mid-way up the Seymour valley that Tay and I failed to find a few weeks…

Another week flown by, a few good rides and lots of time outside with the dogs as the weather’s been quite nice. Well, Tuesday was pretty wet, but by the early evening it had stopped and I got out for a little outing with Sunny while running a car errand: That was a new spot for me, in Renfrew Ravine. If…

I type this Sunday evening after a full day of birding, which followed a day of birding yesterday too. I took the weekend off riding because I was coming down with something, though feel largely better now. However, the week otherwise was rather full of bikes – I rode every day Monday thru Thursday to a total of 113km, so despite…

The second of back-to-back 55km rides, this time a flatter and more pavement-heavy ride out to Iona island near the airport. This place is basically Disneyworld for birders, and given my recent uptick in birding interest, felt it was time to revisit while the spring action is taking place. On the road in, a few kilometres long, there is a new…

Every year on the holiday Friday of the Easter weekend for the past ten years now, our coffee outside club Camp Coffee Club has a ‘field trip’ to the mid-valley lookout in the Seymour valley. We do coffee and snacks for an hour or two, then groups set off on further rides at their discretion. I rode up Fishermans with Tay…

This post is for the week of March 30 to April 2nd, but on April Fool’s I did get out for a nice forest walk with the dogs which is included in the mix here. Starting with Monday, I biked up to the bike shop to grab some Newbaums and cables for the Hillborne, which has been sitting mostly-rebuilt for about…

I keep a checklist of rides I want to do so that I can draw upon it for inspiration when it comes time to go for a ride, if I need help with deciding where to go. Two items on that list were riding out to an area about 20km east to try out some pathways I’d seen on google maps,…

It’s still pretty cold, but the days are getting longer and I rode every day except Monday this week. Monday was pretty wet, and Tuesday started rainy also but by the evening it looked like this: Which was a great excuse to go pick up dog food and beer with the Twenty. On Wednesday I just did a short ride, also…

So, for a little while now I’ve been seeking out the oldest and biggest trees that are accessible from town via bike plus hike. I have some favourites in the Seymour valley and a few that I’m aware of but require a longer hike than I’ve been willing to make yet. A little while ago I found out about a grove…

Back when the pandemic still had most regular social situations still shut down, Rob took on a project to try to find a way to get to the top of each of the three local mountains by staying off pavement as much as possible. He eventually decided it simply was not possible to do in a way that he could send…

Last week was a series of vet visits while getting Leia’s health issues back under control (she’s OK, just old dog stuff) and this week was a mix of long working hours, recovery from last week, and poor sleep due to Leia needing to go out to pee more often now with the new meds. Here she is zonked out having…

Today’s ride was a plan with pals Dave and Rob with two goals in mind: visit the site of the first skate park in Canada (maybe North America?) and also to find the hidden statue a few blocks away I had been tipped off by an Instagram follower. Both were exceptionally anti-climatic. I was meeting said friends at noon, but decided…

I’ve been working on a fresh version of my Burnaby route dubbed the Burnabop XL; the 2025 version was 76 km long but I’ve whittled it down to 56 km now – though it’s mostly the easier sections that have been removed, so it’s hardly any quicker to ride. The new starting location (complete with a bathroom!) is Confederation Park, specifically…

Another evening ride in the last week of Standard Time here. This time I popped over the bridge to Harbourview Park, a linear waterfront park near the Second Narrows bridge. It’s 15 km round trip, so a good length for an after-work ride. The blossom trees are waking up: This is a good sunset spot but today was grey and it…

This is it, the last week before Daylight Savings kicks in. To make it sweeter still, our province announced that this will be the last time we have a time change, and we’re sticking with Daylight Savings – so never again will the sun set before 5pm here! I rode out to this pier near Railtown, about 5 km from home,…

I’ve been telling people Leia is 13 years old for almost two months now, but today it’s officially true. As we’ve been doing for a bunch of years now, Aimée made dog cake (in cupcake form this time) and we went to Pandora park and invited dog friends out to join. About a dozen folks were able to make it out,…

I couldn’t join this edition of parkbagging on my bike, but the finish park was only three blocks from my place so I walked over with the dogs. Leia has been having some health stuff but is still spry and enjoys being outside. This weekend I decided I’d finally do a full tear-down and rebuild on the two Rivendells in my…

The high proportion of bird photos recently are more to do with me being sick and unable to go for proper rides than the increased interest in birding, though the latter is certainly a factor as well. In order to prevent my remarkably long activity streak on Strava from lapsing (306 weeks! Only missed a week during lockdown!) I drove down…

I’m currently too under the weather to ride, so instead I went for a walk around Maplewood Flats in North Vancouver with my old DSLR and photographed some birds. As you come into the nature preserve, there are these scale models of the now-gone squatter shacks that used to exist along the mudflats. Pretty cute. I mostly saw pretty ordinary birds,…

After a reasonably challenging ride yesterday, I managed to get out for a bit bigger one today (albeit flatter) to see off the Patullo bridge, whose decommissioning work begins in two days. A few friends were also interested so we met there, and apparently many others had the same idea – it was packed! They had a big line to get…

Valentine’s Day was a sunny Saturday this year, and with plans made for late afternoon I was free to get some daytime exploring in solo. I set off to ride the latest iteration of the north loop of my route the Burnabop XL. Some of the most recent changes I had only ridden in the opposite direction so I wanted to…

It’s been alternating wet and dry days lately. On Monday I commuted in the rain to work (though got home in a dry window), of which I’ve no complaints as it was a balmy 6 or 7 degrees Celsius. Today was sunny and cool, and I started work (from home) a bit early so I could get out on the bike…

Caulfield is one of the most west, and most expensive, neighbourhoods in the already very affluent West Vancouver. It’s along the steep rocky bluffs near Lighthouse Park; so steep and rocky it’s quite a feat that roads were able to be carved into the hillside, let alone the impressive mansions dotted between the trees. A lot of the most notable architect-designed…

Today, Saturday, was forecasted to be what we call an atmospheric river these days. Tomorrow is looking more or less dry. Yet I don’t sit still very well, so I put on the poncho and headed out with my camera to try to get some more bird photos. The photo below is from my phone though, overlooking Beaver Lake in Stanley…

February carries more optimism than January. The days are becoming longer, bit by bit. Winter’s far from over, but we’ve experienced our first taste of spring promise the past couple days with warmer, dry weather. Another thing that’s happened to me the past week or so is that my interest in birds abruptly jumped up a level. I went from noticing…

After putting together monthly recap posts at the end of 2025, I realized this could be a good way to post up random photos or moments from the month that don’t warrant their own post, so figured I would try to keep that habit going. January felt pretty quiet, so I had only made two posts (both in the last week…

The last day of January was quite mild, starting around 6 degrees C and climbing to 11C at one point. It did, however, begin very rainy – but models showed a dry patch in the early afternoon, so I prepared the Bombadil for a ride – two water bottles, checked the tire pressure (aka gave them a squeeze and they still…

A few days ago I was habitually checking vacant lot sales on realtor dot com, not because I’m in the market but because I just enjoy daydreaming about what I’d do with them. I saw two 90x120ft lots on the east side of Seymour, just north of Indian River Dr – in the middle of the bush. They are trail-access and…

December was a little more quiet, not the least because I caught COVID either at my work holiday party or the following workday which kept me off the bike (and in the house doing nothing) for ten days. It started out wet but mild, and pretty much stayed that way. On the 6th I got out for a funky Burnaby loop…

The most noteworthy rides that I’d done this month were already captured in their own posts, so this might be brief. I started the month by impulse-buying a frame from a friend who needed to sell their newly purchased Crust Evasion to fund unexpected costs. It is my favourite colorway, and maybe a size too small. I wasted no time ordering…

October started off with a bike commute, and I beat the odds on weather both to and from work. On the way home I swung by Trout Lake and was treated to a very dramatic sky – one of the reasons I’ll take a cloudy day over a sunny day is the visual interest of the clouds, and these were especially…

September is one of my favourite months of the year – the kids are back in school, so all the campgrounds are a little more quiet, and the weather is still generally good while also being a little less hot out. More recently, Septembers have become a bit more unpredictable, with heat and wildfire smoke being potential issues still. This was…

Onwards with the recaps! In the future I am thinking about doing a monthly post to summarize the month in addition to specific posts for special trips or whatnot – rather than a post for each decent ride. Still work-shopping. I love how this house looks like a face, and in this case, looks like it’s watching the crow on the…

We’re right into summer now, a season that I typically ride a bit less often because I really don’t like the heat. The days have started shortening again already, too! I did commute on the Hillborne on the 2nd, but it was pretty uneventful in terms of photography. The next day was Parkbagging, and the first park we met up at…

Unsurprisingly, June started with a bike ride. I seem to always get out on the first of the month. This time it was up the Seymour valley a little ways, not quite to mid-valley, to a nice spot along the river to have a mid-afternoon beer. Two days later was parkbagging again, and I haven’t explained what that is. It was…

Continuing on with the month-by-month recaps, now that I’m committed to it. May was my strongest month of the year for riding. It’s also my favourite month for cycling, so this came as little surprise. The days are long, it’s not too hot yet, and it’s decidedly less busy still than the summer months. Nature is in full force and at…

The arrival of April brought with it a rapidly expanding variety of blooms, and it was now the season of me going for after-work rides to larger gardens just to appreciate them all. The earlier blooming cherry blossoms were at peak, so I made a few detours on my commutes to hit up the best streets. Made me wish we didn’t…

March kicked off with Leia’s birthday celebration in the park; March 1st is her (unofficial) birthday. This was her twelfth. We baked doggie biscuits and Aimée made a doggie cake, and a handful of our dog park friends showed up to celebrate with us. The following day I headed out on the Bombadil for some forest time. I came across some…

Following my January post and in the spirit of recounting my year month by month as something to do while resting a virus away, here’s February 2025: a surprisingly frigid month after a relatively mild and dry January. In fact, overnight on the 31st of January into Feb 1st the snowline dropped quite low, and I set about on the 1st…

Following my trip recap, and since I’m stuck inside for a few days with the flu, I started the year with a new bike – the Bike Friday I bought a few days after Christmas – and on January 5th I got out for an all-day ride on it. I believe I was staying out of the house because Aimée was…

Well it’s the last little stretch of December now, and I’ve found myself sick (probably from the company holiday party, boo) so to help stave off the boredom of laying about, I’m re-living the adventures by bike from this year. The number of nights I spent away from home was still modest compared to most bikepacking enthusiasts, but it was one…

I only had one plan today, given the dry and reasonably warm forecast: be outside all day. It started with a long dog walk in the morning, and was followed up by 8 hours out on the bike – turned out to be 4hrs each moving time and not. I rode my trusty Bombadil, still outfitted with drop bars. I’ve been…

Weekday rides have become more sparse at this point, with the short daylight hours, damp cold, and near-omnipresent drizzle. I did manage to get a ~11km ride in yesterday to run some errands (and stayed dry!) but that was it for the week, so when the weather was looking nice today I was eager to get out for a proper ride.…

A local couple, Steve and Meg, have a social media account called Hardtail Life (instagram and youtube) and organize the occasional hardtail group ride. They’ve had pretty good showings in the past but I hadn’t made it to one yet. Seemed like a great opportunity to get the Stooge out and meet some folks as well. As I was pedalling over…

Another Saturday afternoon outing similar to a few recent ones, looping around Burnaby Mountain. I was expecting some rain today but the forecast cleared up and I completed the ride dry. Temps were cool, about 6C. First up, I rode from home to Dageraad Brewing (I know, this is becoming a theme…) to try their holiday seasonal releases. A Belgian blonde…

After yesterday’s rainy ride, today was looking a lot more dry and I had a new personal challenge in mind. I had noticed on Strava’s global heatmap, when turned to ‘All Sports’, had an image of a small shelter that was constructed on the north side of Burnaby Mountain in a rather random area. There was zero heatmap activity for bikes,…

Late November around here means rain and cold, and getting out for a ride in these conditions can be motivationally challenging. After getting thoroughly soaked on a long dog walk first thing in the morning, I figured I’d spend the rest of the day inside in sweats – but then I remembered a trip to Rice Lake I’d taken a couple…

This is the second ride on my newly built up Crust Evasion, and the first one with freshly installed fenders. The weather was looking drizzly but not overly rainy, and cool but not too cold – about 7 or 8 degrees Celsius. I had noticed a trail on heatmaps months ago that piqued my curiosity, as it descended quite a significant…

I felt like my quiver was really settled, and there was basically nothing on my bike wishlist anymore. But then a friend who’d just purchased a Crust Evasion frame set had some unexpected financial and health challenges come up that necessitated selling it, and I got to thinking. I had never considered an Evasion despite being long familiar with the bike,…

On this particular Sunday, I set off on a mission to see some salmon at the hatchery at Cleveland Dam, which is located at one of the two watershed lakes in North Vancouver. I didn’t take a lot of photos of the ride up except the one below left after hoofing my bike up a particularly strenuous set of stairs –…

I’ve titled this the ‘Mushroom Ride’ but that wasn’t what it was planned to be. I hadn’t been up the Seymour valley for about a month, and I’ve made it a soft goal that I get up there once a month so I prioritized the valley for my route selection on this ride. I actually set off to ride to mid-valley,…

Having pre-rode the course the day before, this was the event! While people were welcome to roll out as early or late as they wish, I encouraged a 9:30 – 10am rollout for two reasons: I could commit to being there to see them off, and they’d likely be racing daylight at the end, which for me at least has become…

While the route was created in 2023, this is the first year I’ve organized some form of event around the Burnabop XL. I knew I wanted it to be around the peak of autumn foliage, and I knew I didn’t want it to be too big of a group. This latter point created quite a challenge with trying to organize a…

For four years now I’ve hosted a small group ride with the same friends on the Saturday of Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, which lands around my birthday. This year it happened to land on the day. The weather this time of year is far from reliable, but we’ve been lucky in previous years. However this time we got rain – lots of…

Not a particularly interesting ride, but a couple nice photos came from it so I’ve decided to upload. This was an after-work trip to Dageraad brewing, taking a noodley string of quiet residential streets out and the parkway back. I thought I’d beat the weather, but I rode right into it – which provided some pretty dramatic skyline, at least.

The days are rapidly getting shorter and the hours of reliable daylight after work are over. As such, my weekday rides had become fewer and shorter, but this day I decided to ride to the mid-valley lookout in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve (LSCR) even though I knew I couldn’t complete the ride in daylight. I’ve written about the LSCR, otherwise…

A dry and relatively warm day warranted pulling out my un-fendered single speed Wombat for a ‘bridge to bridge’ loop. This loop, ridden clockwise in this case, is about 32-35km and mostly pretty flat. The Wombat is my ‘just for fun’ bike, set up with a ~2:1 gear ratio which is a sweet spot between being okay to ride off-pavement without…

This post is of just a rather typical local loop rather than a trip or grand adventure. It was a ‘scenic’ route that I took to one of my favourite local breweries, Dageraad, to meet some friends. The brewery is about 15km from my home if I take a direct route, but this wasn’t very direct. One of the purposes of…

Most people think of the Three Stooges when they hear the name Stooge Cycles, I imagine. Well, there must be something to it, because I have now had three Stooges and feel like I’m where I need to be. My first was the Speedbomb – I was enamoured by the blue-green colour in particular, but the geometry was a close match…

More than ten years ago, a Slack group was formed by an acquaintance for local craft beer geeks to discuss the growing local craft beer scene. The group grew to about 100 members relatively quickly, but stopped growing many years ago now, and the slack evolved into a group of friends. As this happened, channels for hobbies and other non-beer topics…

Booked in haste as soon as reservations opened this past spring, I had a site at Shingle Bay campground alongside a handful of friends for August 22 – 24. Shingle Bay is a secluded campground along a particularly beautiful bit of coastline, accessible only by foot or bike, and with a minimum of services: no water, just a single pit toilet.…

I’m not sure if this was the first bikepacking trip I did, but it was certainly one of the earliest examples. I had bought a Salsa Vaya the year before, and had completed the Ride to Conquer Cancer from Vancouver to Seattle on it about two months prior. I had transitioned from primarily riding fixies and mountain bikes to taking a…

A long-ago ride that I’m writing up many years later, but since it was such a wonderful experience, I remember it well. It was the first camping trip on my Surly LHT, which replaced a Salsa Vaya. In retrospect, I should have kept the Salsa and went 650B for more tire clearance, but I hadn’t considered that at the time. We…

I’m writing this over a decade later, so the details are a little more sparse, but this trip remains a core memory burned into my soul. It remains the most beautiful terrain I have ever experienced. It’s also the only time I’ve seen grizzlies that weren’t separated from me by a fence. I went with my friend Nick, just two of…

Like most cyclists who like to go camping by bike in southwestern BC, the southern gulf islands hold a special place in my heart. I try to get out to one of the islands two or three times a year, which is the most I can seem to manage in balance with the rest of life. Saturna was the only island…

Chemainus is a smaller town on Vancouver Island about 45km south of Nanaimo, known for its murals and artsy vibe. It’s unique for southwestern BC in that regard, as most of our small towns are conservative and rather devoid of culture. It’s also the town that my dad moved to a few years ago. I’d put together a route last year…

After two nights at pops’ place enjoying family time in Chemainus, it was time to work my way back home. Leaving just after 10am, I planned to skip West Bush Main, which was a stretch of unmaintained gravel road mostly used by dirt bikers, but still take the remaining off-the-beaten-path connections I took on the way in. I was especially looking…

As mentioned in the last segment of my holiday challenge to ride each of my six* bikes 50km over the holidays, *I bought a seventh mid-challenge so I took it out on New Years Day. Now, I only bought it on December 30th, and it was built up but never ridden by the previous owner. Not even one ride, and it…

On New Year’s Eve, I got out for an over-50 km ride on the Stooge Scrambler, complete with 700m climb to the snow line. This completes my challenge, right? Well, it should have, but on Dec 30 I impulse bought a Bike Friday that cropped up for a bargain on Marketplace in exactly the spec I was daydreaming about. So with…

Over the previous days I’d ridden both my Rivendells and both my small wheeled bikes, each over 50 km. Today was time for the fifth bike in the quiver, and I selected the Wombat. My reason for this selection was the optimistic forecast. Note, it had actually been quite nice for every ride so far – to the extent I was…

Today, Febuary 9th 2025, we adopted a dog. The name she comes with is Sunshine, which we’ve been shortening to Sunny. It’s Sunday, fittingly. Aimée found her locally fostered, her photo was most cute, and she sounded like a perfect fit. They didn’t know her age or her lineage for sure, but pegged her at ~3.5 years old and maybe an…

Onto my fourth bike of six, I chose the Brompton today because the weather forecast was iffy at best and the route was going to be reasonably urban. It was Saturday, Dec 28th 2024, and it was also Park Bagging. Park bagging was started by a bike pal and has been running since May 2023, the idea being that participants visit…

Day one was the Raleigh Twenty, day two was the Hillborne. Day three, Dec 27 2024, was also Friday: the day of Camp Coffee Club’s morning meeting. This week was at the OG location, Waterfront Park in North Van. I show up quite irregularly on account of the early hour, but I got myself out before sunrise and on site shortly…

Quick recap of the challenge: instead of Festive 500 from Dec 24 to 31, I challenged myself to ride each of my six bikes a minimum a 50km over the same period. Part 1 was my old Twenty on Christmas Eve. I took Christmas day off to spend with my partner and pupper. But as of Boxing Day I was back…

I hadn’t considered doing the Festive 500 this year, though I’m quite familiar with the challenge. It wasn’t until a friend proclaimed they would attempt it that I realized I could put some time towards such a challenge since I had the week off work. I wanted to put my spin on the challenge and ride each of my bikes (six…

Two weeks after I rode this route on the Susie, I went back out on the Bombadil with clearer skies – thankfully, since this time I had no fenders. It was cool but not especially cold; maybe 7 or 8C. The snow line was still pretty high and I only saw the odd patch near the top of the visible hills.…

Rob and I are two peas in a very peculiar pod. These rides Rob and I have been doing where we try to find the sneakiest, least likely routes up mountains have “inspired” me to create Bike Portage Club because despite failing spectacularly on a consistent basis as rideable, they’re still really rewarding days out with a bicycle. In terms of…

There is a popular trail along the west side of Mosquito Creek that starts just off the busy Marine Dr in North Vancouver and heads north to Montroyal Ave. Beyond that it does technically keep going to the powerlines, but it quickly devolves from wide dog-walk friendly path to technical hiking trail, complete with climbing ropes in one section due to…

We are gluttons for punishment, clearly. Armed with a fresh idea of how to get up to the sub-alpine ski area of Cypress Mountain using as few roads as possible, Rob and I took advantage of the long daylight hours and headed towards the mountain. I took the trust Wombat once again, this time featuring some gears thanks to the Problem…

This year, local bike shop Kissing Crows hosted an official Swift Campout overnighter to Saysutshun (Newcastle) island just outside Nanaimo BC. I don’t typically camp in big groups but it’s really fun to do occasionally, and this was a really good group and a perfect destination for the large numbers. It was an early morning start to catch the nine-something in…

With the bike park coming to Grouse next year, access to ride all the way to the tourist area, with grizzly bears and beer on tap, was about to disappear. So we made one last go at it. It was also the very first ride on my new Stooge Scrambler, which replaced the Tracker I had previously. All parts swapped over…

It’s not a great name. The reason it has this name is because it’s at the base of what is called suicide bluff, a predictably steep and treacherous bit of topography along the west side of Seymour mountain. Nevertheless, I had this far-fetched idea to try to connect from the end of Suicide Branch, a dead-end spur deep in the Lower…

I’ve written up previous experiences of this loop, but this day I rode a bike that I’ve only had a month that is extremely well suited to the terrain: the Susie Longbolts / Wolbis Slugstone, a “hillibike” by Rivendell. The name ‘hillibike’ is to signify its suitability for trail riding while distancing itself from today’s interpretation of a ‘mountain bike’ since…

July 13, 2024 My pops lives in Chemainus, a small town along the coast of Vancouver Island between Nanaimo and Victoria. I’ve ridden to his place before a couple times now via a combination of paved MUP and quiet roads with a few kilometres of highway shoulder. But I hoped to find a way to get there that reduced my interaction…

In February, a friend noticed that all three of the small cabins at Sooke River Campground, a campground I was entirely unfamiliar with, were available and for a very reasonable rate during an April weekend that they had available. Impulsively, I booked one while friends booked the other two. Given that April is typically a wet and cool month, the cabins…