Words: Sarah Devriese

I recently talked with Steve Sheldon, who is a mountain biker and trail builder in the Tri-Cities area.

Words: Sarah Devriese

The hardtail community might be small but it is mighty. People who embrace front suspension only seem to have a story behind their bike. “There were these mad men on hardtails, all from Chromag, and they were smiling the whole time [during the Four Queens race in Whistler], and when I asked them about it, they just said that the hardtail made the race that much more ridiculous and it was so much fun. It got me thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more I liked the idea, even though I had not ridden a hardtail in ages,” says Steve Sheldon from TORCA. Together with the words of a few other fanatics, here’s why the hardtail is so fun to ride.

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

I feel like most of July was a blur, I rode a whole lot of bikes, participated in the WORCA women’s event even after being sick with a stomach flu leading up to it and the first solid food I kept down was the morning of the event, it didn’t go so well, but I completed all the stages (and gave myself mild heatstroke to boot) Riding bikes in Whistler is one of my favorite ways to spend my summer. When I wasn't riding bikes in Whistler...

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

I always look forward to Canada Day Long weekend, it’s one of the only weekends that I put away the pedal bike and only take my DH rig with me.  This year with Canada day being on the Tuesday we decided to take the extra day and make it a 4 day weekend.  We left North Vancouver super early Saturday morning, which is going to make me segue here, I get super excited and nostalgic when I get on the rode before dawn, I goes directly back to being a kid and family vacation always started with an early morning drive.  Anyway, early morning leaving North Vancouver and headed to our first destination, Sunpeaks.

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

I don’t know why I ever think it’s going to be any different but Easter comes and goes and then I find that I am flat out like a lizard drinking till about mid October, why I thought 2014 would be any different is beyond me, and so I apologize for the long gap between the last update and this one.

Post Easter and a long thought about and finally executed “Cross Border”  ride finally occurred. Muddbunnies Club Vancouver joined forces with Muddbunnies Club Seattle and we picked Bellingham, called it the middle and met there.  Over 30 girls from both Canada and the USA turned out, the weather chose to be agreeable and we had a pretty amazing ride all over Galbraith Mountain.  I also want to give a quick shout out to Fanatik Bikes in Bellingham as they hosted us both pre and post ride, and gave us beer!

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

Additional photo credit: Dean Matthews

This is the 4th year I have organised a trip to Vancouver Island over the Easter long weekend.  In my mind this weekend marks the start of the "official" biking season (since biking never really ends for me, I just tend to bike a tad less over the colder months) It is a chance to get a bunch of friends together and pack ourselves off to one of my favorite places to ride; Cumberland.  For the past couple of years we have rented a private house that sleeps 10 and has a large garage for bike storage as well as everyone's guilty little please, a hot tub.

Day 1 - Nanaimo

Packing, I am terrible at packing to go anywhere (I not so secretly think it drives my Jackrabbit a little nuts as he tends to like to be a little more organised pre trip) I tend to pack last minute, no matter how often I plan to be organised earlier it never happens.  I have theories about this, the first is that by packing last minute I don't bring too much stuff that I don't need.  The second theory is that I enjoy a little bit of chaos in my life.  Regardless, not only did I need to pack, I also had to partly strip down my new Specialized Camber Comp 29er and rebuild it the way I like.

Leaving things to the last minute means that the last hour before arriving at the ferry (even with a reservation) is pretty hectic, I also had to collect 3 other members of our riding party along the way and fit them and all their gear into the Beast (aka Gina's  truck) we actually arrived at the ferry terminal with plenty of time to spare.

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

Thank you for photo usage: Berglind Hafsteinsdottir & Gina Hopper

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this before, but for all that I love to talk (and I can talk for hours) writing actually terrifies me, so every time I manage to complete one of these posts it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to actually manage to make the jumble of words in my head come out in the right order on the page, well mostly!  Anyway, back to the regular program.

Originally posted on muddbunnies.com

During my injury I decided it would be a good time to book a mountain bike trip for February 2014, since I had injured myself on my Downhill bike it only seemed logical that I would book a downhill trip… I chose the Big Mountain Adventure Costa Rica trip for two reasons, it was the hardest downhill trip I could find, and the owner sort of confirmed that it would be single track not old roads that we’d be riding and secondly, they had a group limit of 4 people.

When I booked the trip, I hadn’t taken into account what would be involved to fly to Costa Rica.  You had a couple of choices, direct from Vancouver but super expensive, or super cheap but fly all over North and Central America to get there.  I went with the third option which was find a reasonably priced flight with minimal stop-over.   Another point while I’m talking about planes, make sure to check what their bike policy is, a lot of the US airline charge $200 each way per bike, that makes a cheap ticket get really expensive, really fast.

Originally posted on Muddbunnies.com

After a three year hiatis I decided that 2014 was the year to revive the Aussie Diaries. A lot has happened in three years, but some things stay the same.  I’m still the same mountain bike obsessed girl I was in 2011 and the Muddbunnies are still a huge part of my life. With almost everything else in my life being in flux it’s nice to have a couple of constants.  So let’s get this started by playing catch-up.

2011 – 2012 in short hand
For those of you that followed my original blog, I never did make it to 200 days of riding, I did make it to 197 though, so figured I’d make the magic number in 2012.  Somewhere along the way though, the number stopped being that important, so although I didn’t stop counting, making it to 200 just stopped being so damn important. No, it didn’t happen in 2012 either, but by that stage I don’t think it actually mattered to me any more. I got another 193 amazing rides in that year if you are wondering.