CODY SHIMIZU

A look into my life, a journal to look back on, a blog for others to see.

After months of snow and slush cold and warm weather freezing the river valley over with ice, I was pretty ecstatic about being able to go to some place warm and ride some trails with dirt, especially in B.C. When I first saw this on the ABA site immediately I knew I wanted to go, but knowing my parents I knew they would just shoot the idea down, after reading the details of the camp and looking at a cost of $400 + the cost for the flight there, I was convinced that they would say no. As expected when I first told my parents about the camp they did not seem to be on board with the idea of me going, but after some sweet talking and some convincing I finally made a deal with them that I would pay for the flights to and from Victoria and they would pay for the rest. I immediately searched for the cheapest flights, the flight to Victoria was the same as the rest of the people going from Edmonton, but since the camp was during the family day weekend even though we were returning on a Monday the flights were expensive, so I had to settle with a flight which took me from Victoria to Vancouver than from Vancouver to Edmonton getting there at 1:14Am the next day. At least I saved a $100.

Since I started mountain biking around 2 years ago it has been a little dream of mine to ride the west cost B.C. and I had never expected that my dream would come true so quickly. From the moment I stepped off of the plane I could feel the nice humid air of Victoria, it was nice to be away from the dry cold air of Edmonton. It was sunny outside and best of all, there was no snow!

From the airport we went strait to the dump (Hartland MTB Park) to go ride. Since we didn’t take our bikes on the plane, fortunately we did not have to build the bikes so we just got changed into our riding gear and threw our legs over our bikes. From the first climb you could tell that the Hartland is no easy place to ride with big rocks and roots making every pedal stroke challenging. since we start at the bottom of the park we had to climb for a while before we got into any serious trails. We were fortunate to have Sidney with us who knew the trails, so she took us to a trail called “Who`s Your Daddy” which mostly pointed down and had everything from smooth fast sections to big gnarly rocks and even some jumps. It was a great trail to start the trip off with, it had a little taste of everything that Hartland offers.

After our ride we went to the hotel at which we were staying at for the next few days, I had heard some rumours about this hotel none of them were bad, but they were not great either, as soon as we got to the hotel I immediately figured what they were talking about.

As you may have noticed they are advertising colour TV. But the rooms were nice and big, clean, and the staff were friendly.

The second day the ride was amazing great weather great trails, we did this one climb called the legend and if you could clean it you were a legend, and just like its name it was a hard climb, Then we met up with Cory Wallace the national mountain bike marathon champion, and did a loop on the outbounds of the dump. It was a great ride, that is untill I got back to the van and checked my back pockets. I had lost my phone. I was pretty devastated, I’ve never had a problem with keeping my phone in the back pocket and falling out, and this happens to me in Victoria? Really!? I thought to my self but I had already given up on my phone, because if it had fallen off to the side of the trail it would be almost impossible to find it. The next day as I was barley getting over the shock of losing my phone, some guy who was apparently hiking around the Hartland area he had found my phone! At first I couldn’t believe it, I was ecstatic about the news, thank god for putting it in a zip lock bag.

On the third day of the camp they did some video analysis where they took us onto a certain section of single track and filmed all of us trying out a few different lines, which I thought was really cool since I’ve never been able to see myself riding ever before, once we got back to the hotel they over lapped the footage and showed which line was faster and the techniques of each people and to see what we can improve on. Here is a sample between Logan and Aiden

By the second last day I was quite tired but I was sad that there was only two more rides left, and would have to go back to snow filled Edmonton, I wish I could have stayed in Victoria until spring in Edmonton. The ride was amazing as usual, by this day the weather was perfect unlike the first day where you could barley see the blue sky, but by then the sun was shining and you couldn’t find a single cloud. At the hotel since this was the last night we stayed up close to midnight playing cards, playing on our phones, which wasn’t the brightest idea since we had to get up by around 7:30AM the next morning.

On the last day we decided to go for a fun ride, riding all of our favourite trails down and up hill, some of our favourites were “Switchbacks” “Whos your Daddy?”, and “Torpedo Run”, just a fun ride overall. Then the dreaded journey home was to come. We got dropped of at the airport at around 3pm at the Victoria Airport, about 9 hours later I was back in the wintery cold Edmonton.

Overall I loved the trip it was well organized great coaches and riders, amazing trails and beautiful weather, what more can you ask for?