Jen and I learned long ago that when you’re climbing and biking in the same trip, it’s very important to do the climbing part first. That way, if you mess yourself up biking, you still got some climbing done.
After Squamish, we went an hour farther north to Whistler. Despite all of the trips we’ve done up here, this place always amazes me. However, these days we tend to do a bit more riding outside the park then we used to. There are just so many good trails that you have to tick off a few new ones whenever you can.
Our first two days were spent doing laps in the park, remembering how to ride fast on technical trails, and re-learning how to fly a bike. The next day we met up with Martin, Tatjana, Ken. Despite living in North Van, Martin has been in the park very few times. For Tatjana and Ken, it was the first day of their first trip.
The three of us rode a handful of excellent trails on the lower mountain. Then we took the lift up and started down Freight Train. It was then that Ken decided that he’d had enough of mountain biking and wanted to ride in ambulances instead. I’ll leave out the list of injuries that resulted from his crash, but it was enough that after getting to the medical clinic in Whistler, they decided he needed to go to the hospital in Vancouver.
The next day, Jen, Martin, and I decided to get out of the bike park and ride a link up of Hot Dog Alley, Sirloin, Darwin’s, Flank, Into the Mystic, LESS, Lord of the Squirrels, Legalize It, Three Birds, and Danimal that our friend Toni had recommended. Toni knows his trails, so we took his word for it and went out for an adventure.
The ride was simply amazing, and it was a good mental release after the previous day’s stressful ending. But once we got back into the park on the following day, I promptly crashed and injured my wrist (nothing serious) and ended my own Whistler trip.
So, back to Squamish we went. The plan was to maybe do some easy climbing, but in the morning as I pulled out of our campsite, I managed to run over a post and rip the wiring harness off the bottom of the DEF pump on our Sprinter. It was in such a bad spot that we had to jack up the van and rip the post out of the ground to extricate ourselves.
We learned a few things at this point. 1) If you damage any part of the DEF system, you have to replace the entire thing. 2) Third-party mechanics cannot order a DEF system, so you have to go to a Mercedes dealership. 3) The DEF tank is a $2400 part, and Mercedes charges $165 an hour to install it. In total, I managed to do just over $3300 damage, but at least it was in Canadian money. That stuff is made out of plastic, so it’s definitely not real.
With a couple days to kill, we ended up at Martin and Nicole’s house at the base of Mt Fromme. Tatjana was also there, and Ken had just been released from the hospital, so we got to have a little reunion. Despite all the damage, Ken was just so happy to be able to walk that he still had a smile. And, since we couldn’t go home until the van was fixed, Jen and I got in one last ride on the Shore before heading to visit friends on Vashon Island and decompress a bit.
Then, we picked up Tatjana and Ken (who could not fly because of his injuries), and I drove for two days home as carefully as if I had a wedding cake in the back seat.
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