Eat, Sleep, Ride, Repeat
Man, life is strange. Tangling my life up by putting pressure on myself to constantly be “busy” or productive. Like it's some sort of social norm or responsibility. We work, then life, work, and do a bit more work. I always seem to ask myself “Where did the time go?”, feeling like I never got to enjoy recent experiences. Even after I just rode the best trail of my life, or surfed some of the best waves or deepest snow. So over the past year or so, I made it a goal of mine to truly take in the experience at hand and photograph as much of that as I could. Next thing you know we’re stuck in the middle of a Global Pandemic, fantastic… Putting sarcasm and uncertain feelings aside, it became the perfect time to reflect and look back on past experiences. Reliving those intangible moments of feelings, smells, and sounds; all of which drew me to cycling and photography in the first place.
I owe a lot to mountain biking. Regardless of the broken bones, bruises, headaches, concussions and crippling bank accounts due to broken bike parts. I can never seem to get enough. The places it’s taken me, the people I’ve met, and friendships I’ll have forever. It’s amazing what just two wheels can do.
Eat, sleep, ride, repeat. This is what a typical day in-the-life sounds like living in Whistler, British Columbia. Throw in a snack break or two at Lift Coffee Co and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a good time. The aroma of Longhorns fills the air as you wait in the lift line for your turn up the chairlift. Some days you can find yourself waiting in line for nearly 30 minutes in either pouring rain or blistering 30-degree-celsius weather. At what cost? Well if you have ever thrown your leg over a two wheel human powered machine and spent a few hours exploring the world's finest bike park, then you will easily understand our reasoning. Trails weaving their way down the mountain with perfectly sculpted waves of dirt, rock slab, and roots. I get excited just writing about this – how many air miles can I accumulate this summer?
There comes a time in the month of August when the local hustle and bustle of the village turns into utter chaos. Cyclists and party folk migrate to the West Coast of Canada (literally filling up hotels from Squamish to Whistler) for a solid 10 days of mountain bike events, parties, and broken joeys who manage to get in a little over their heads.
Welcome to Crankworx.
The village gets busy, and that's an understatement. So make sure to bring a bike with enough gears to pedal up mountains as lift line waits could skyrocket upwards of 40 minutes. The Sea to Sky valley offers an incredible amount of trails outside the bike park that are easily overlooked. As the chaos spreads from the village to my head. A few friends and I take a short drive down the road to Squamish, BC.
There is one thing you should know about Squamish – Squamish sucks, don’t go. Where trails of steep loam, rock slabs the size of your house, and even some flow rest in the forests and mountains that surround Howe Sound. This is the place to break a sweat. So get your legs ready for some climbing as there’s no chairlift here. Squamish is also known for its lush, deep, dank, green forests. Quite literally a “green room”. You have to see it to believe it. Moss covers trees from head-to-toe, drooping vines and ferns covering the forest floor. Feels like something out of a fairy tail.
Oh and one more thing... Squamish sucks, don’t go!
