Stumbling around mtbr.com while I work up the motivation to go out for a cold, damp ride, I found this neat little video of the Cannell Plunge trail I rode when camping with some randoms I’d met on mtbr.com north of LA last year. I’m pretty sure this is the last section which was a complete blast (dropped five thousand feet in eight miles apparently) that absolutely fried my brakes. As this riding season comes to an end up here in the Rockies, I can’t wait for the next one in the western USA. I’ve just decided on all the replacement parts that need ordering – perhaps I will have to go in to outdoor sports winter hibernation to finance the trip, but that’s not too likely.
It was another beautiful fall day in town today & after Saturday morning chores, discovering some drunken lout had kicked one of my tail lights in (grrrrrr) & a trip to the grocery store my thoughts turned to going for a ride.
There was a bitter cold wind blowing down the valley today & riding across to get to the G8 was on the chilly side – I wasn’t enjoying that at all. Feeling rather lethargic I failed to clear that first steep climb & was pretty slow until some guy caught up to me & I got a bit of motivation to get going. From then on the ride was great & as I was by myself I decided I wouldn’t complete the last part of the figure-eight – I rode back up the first part I did to make more of a Gp or Gd ride. This was a stroke of genius as I could finally check out a side trail I’d seen many times shoot off up the hill a bit further. At some stage after climbing a while & then a little pushing I felt that I was going to hit the hiking trail going all the way up Grotto. I really wanted to turn around at the top of the loop & come back the way I’d come as it looked really fun, but this desire was less than the one to see where the loop came out on the main trail. There were small bits of steep slickrock & some fun parts in the descent. I finally knew where I was after another couple of junctions & I shot down the last descents to come back out at Cougar Creek.
Just a quick update for those (or the one person) wondering how I’m supporting myself on my travels at the moment. After five months working for a temping agency doing all sorts of things (mostly low paying & not all that interesting) & the last two months here at the cement plant for the same temping agency, today is my last day for PPP for a while. For on Monday, I start as a temp employee of the cement company. This is great as it gives me five months of the same job & a large chunk of what the company is paying is no longer being siphoned off by PPP – therefore I get a nice bump up in my pay checks & I will be able to save more. I’ll be doing the same sort of little projects for a while (at the moment I’m working on the equipment downtime reporting – quite like those many hours I spent working with & redesigning the OEE system in the Iron Plant) until those projects run out & then I’ll just be general (but well paid) labour helping keep the place tidy (there’s a lot of dust & spillage around – as I found out during those exhaustive safety & equipment audits). Now that I’ll have a decent amount of money coming in (well decent compared to the last year and a half since I left shift work), I must start budgeting & saving well if next year’s three month MTB roadtrip around the western USA is to be everything it should be (more about that another time).
ll this means that I shortly won’t be baking bagels on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings – can’t say I’ll miss the two double-shifts & 55 hour each week. I definitely didn’t come to Canada to do that – although, it was good for a time to learn something new & different & it helped me buy the Outback off Megan & Alex. This weekend is Halloween – a much bigger deal over here than it is back home. Still, I won’t be dressing up or anything – but this self-portrait of me trying not to fall to my death off the top of the Clinker Stacker in the dark depths of the Storage Hall is not my usual get-up & worthy of posting.
We never had these guys wandering around the steel mill back in NZ – bighorn sheep apparently. I’m told with the combination of hunting (bows only, no guns) & mating seasons, these males are down from the hills for a bit as it’s safer & there are better prospects. But that does mean that there are more cougars wandering around Exshaw now. Still, I suppose it’s better than the grizzly bear visitor we had a month or two back.
