Getting Jiggy in Nelson – B-Team Style!
We woke up early and still didn’t know if we were in the right place. No one wanted to leave the room to find out, so we stayed put. Thankfully Porter opened the door not too long after so we did in fact have the right place. After catching up a bit with Mike we decided we’d brave the bit of snow (yeah that’s right, SNOW in friggin' MAY!) that fell the night before and head out for a ride. We headed over to Selkirk College to warm up on the dirt jumps. Little did we know we’d hardly leave these jumps the whole weekend.
The rhythm was super flowy and we all started to try new tricks. Robb is now known as Robb “Tobbogan” Thompson, Cabbage learned sweet lazy one handers, I learned the helmetless no hander and the rookie learned to jump doubles. Gord…well he was just an a*shole as usual! We spent the better half of the day jumping and then decided to hit some trails.
We tried to get up to Burl Ives but the snowline was still too low so we were forced over to an old classic, “The Gimp”. This trail rips, we all hauled down it following the screams of a madman known to some as “Mental” for a reason, “Yeah, f*ck YEAH!” We called it an early day after The Gimp and headed for the cooler of beer. This is where things got rowdy. A few too many beers later, someone came up with the bright idea of going to a fine Mexican establishment for a fancy diner. Escorted by a crazy Aussie (Kirby, one of the original nutbag trail builders in Nelson) we made our way to Mazatlan.
Things got a bit crazy here, no one was in any shape to decipher the authentic menu, everyone ordered some platter or another, and I just pointed to the cheapest thing I could find. I still don’t know if it was just how wrecked we were or if the food was in fact as good as we all remember it to be but that was THE best Mexican food I’ve ever had! We chowed down and made quite the scene. After dinner we headed to the beer store to reload (like we needed anymore!). Gord had sucked back 2 margarita’s with 5 shots in each of them and had a big plate of Mexican spice which was not agreeing with his stomach. He let something go in the liquor store that smelt like he shit himself and then rolled around in it. We grabbed the beer and high-tailed it out of there to let the clerk deal with the stench. Back to Porter's for more.
We drank hard for a little while longer when Mike, Jeremy, Shawn and Dylan showed up; by this time we were pretty much incoherent. They tried their best to lure us out to a bar but we knew riding would be out the next day so they gave in. We opted for sleep instead. One of the better decisions we made all weekend.
Saturday we woke up a little late and most of us were feeling the ill effects of booze mixed with Mexican food, but we had to ride none the less. We decided to ride another Nelson classic, Bedframe. We sessioned the trail and remembered that the years old trail by today’s standards lacks flow, but still tons fun where the trail points down. After rippin' the trail we decided we wanted more time on the dirt jumps (we’ve never all dirt jumped so well at once and these jumps ruled!). Back to the college with BBQ in hand.
Nothing beats grilled meat and dirt jumps! A local (Phat Pat) popped in and spent the evening jumpin' with us. We made plans to hook up the next day and all rip a trail out in Castlegar. As always when the BBQ comes out so does the beer and it didn’t take long to get the night time shenanigans rolling. Once again we got into the sauce pretty good and a lot of the night is a blur; Kirby, Mike, Shawn, Jer and Dylan stopped in to watch some vids and have some beers. At some point in the night we decided to do a munchie run to the 7-11! Man why is it that every night ends up with weird 7-11 trips? We were all shopping when the lights went out and they bunkered down for no reason. Everyone got the boot and not one of us was dishonest enough to steal so much as a bag of chips!
Sunday things were slow to get going, the weekend long party was catching up to all of us. The plan was to drive to a trail in Castlegar with Phat Pat and Kirby the Crazy Aussie. The seven of us headed out and met at the trail head. We couldn’t shuttle the trail so we had to push for 45 minutes to the top, that’ll burn off all that booze! The trail (Dr. Claw) was a bit wet from the hail we had on the way up so some of the stunts at the beginning were unrideable. The upper section featured some gnarly, rocky lines with sketchy drops. There was a lot of pushing involved which we weren’t too keen on. Once we got down to the lower section the trail began to flow. The bottom section has about eight gap jumps in a row ending on an ugly ten foot huck. We all walked the section first to see what needed to be done to flow top to bottom. We all had a blast rippin' this trail up until I came to the drop at the end, for some reason I blew up on the landing real bad. Kirby was following pretty close and somehow managed to stop before ploughing into Gord and I on the tranny. I was pretty dazed after the crash and headed right for the magical cooler of beer (that always seemed full) that we stashed in the creek at the start of the day.
Mike had a bit of a bad end to the ride when he broke his wrist on a dumb little gap on the ride out. A little beer in him, Mike figured he was good to ride some more. We took a long drive to Kokanee mountain for the evening and decided on 2 runs. I sat out the first run while the boys ripped Newtsack. Mike unfortunately had to bail because of the wrist and joined me for beers at the bottom. We took a rip back up and decided to do some camera work on the trail and get rookie Steve riding some teeter-totters. Steve once again amazed us. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ride so well the first time out.
After riding Porter decided he’d better get x-rayed, we dropped him off and drove around looking for food, chicks and trouble on the main drag. We found it all! We picked up Mike who was freshly casted and in need of more beer. We kept the partying to a minimum watched some vids and hit the sack early.
Monday was supposed to be a quick day and we were gonna be on the road home nice and early. That never works out the way it’s supposed to. We started the day off early playing on some newer dirt jumps in town and then moved on to session the new 719 road gap. We played around for a couple hours on the drop and Robb hit it a bazillion times. Phat Pat met up with us half way through the session and decided to give the rhythm a shot. Unfortunately he went in too hot and overshot the landing on the double after the road gap and banged himself up pretty good. We were thinking of calling it a day there but the idea of more dirt jumps and BBQ was too much to resist. We went back to Selkirk again and met up with some young punks who were rebuilding the jumps. They were even better than before now! Good job guys! We stayed way too long and didn’t end up leaving until 6:30!
The drive back was long, we didn’t get back to Calgary until 3 am and we all had to be up at 5 am to work. What a shit show!. Never again! Yeah right, who are we kidding! To sum up the whole weekend; ride, beer, ride, beer, ride, beer, beer, beer! Somehow we all lived through the weekend to tell about it, the Rookie had an eye opening experience, Porter will probably never have us back again and we somehow managed to only piss off half the town of Nelson.
Next Stop: Kelowna!
Here’s a link to the rest of our trip's pictures
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