Memorably described as the 'capital of man love in the USA' by our good friend Julius Clever.... We arrived in San Francisco after a spectacular volcanic drive through Oregon and Northern California, past Mt Shasta, which I've never heard of before but is a monster volcano and due an expulsion soon according to a sign on the Highway near it. De Gorski was also due an expulsion of steam shortly after arriving in SF, after driving the wrong way down a one-way street, and on the wrong side of the road on a two-way street, whilst trying to return the hire [View Full Entry]

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Bend is a city sitting at 4000 feet in the high desert in Oregon, around 2-3 hours drive from Portland. The scenery is pretty wicki wicki wild wild west round here. Bend is a bit of an MTB mecca in the US but doesn't seem to hold the status in the UK of Moab in Utah or Fruita in Colorado. Like Whistler it has numerous shops where a great trail map is available with topography, recommended routes etc, we didn't get lost once and minimum stopping to read the map was required. I imagine Bend would be popular with the singletrack [View Full Entry]

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The Oregon coast is renowned for its ruggedly picturesque border with the Pacific. We will have to take this for granted because when we drove down it, the weather was horrific with gales, driving rain and not enough blue sky to make even a sailor's hankie, let alone trousers. However all was not lost as there was a secondary reason for our visit. A few hours south of Seattle is the small coastal town of Astoria, which has pimped itself to Hollywood on amny an occasion, and has hence appeared in a number of celluloid horrors such as Short Circuit (Number [View Full Entry]

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Seattle gave us Microsoft, Starbucks and GRUNGE so it has more than made its mark on the modern world. (De Gorski can remember exactly where he was when he heard Kurt Cobain was dead, and McThommo still has a ticket from one of their subsequently cancelled gigs). We had a one night stop here before heading off to Oregon and stayed in a wicked hostel called the Green Tortoise , right next to the famous Pike Place market. Highly recommended - make your own waffles for breakfast, amazing wet room bathrooms, double-bunks and great location. When you sta [View Full Entry]

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'Hucking' is the gentle art of riding your mountain bike off a humungous great big drop, and doing a trick of 'twizzly steez' ("stylish spinning") at the same time, if you can. Generally hucking is considered somewhat passe by most mountain bikers and has got a bad name due principally to a guy called Josh Bender who definitely had more 'cajones' ("balls") than he did skill. Now Whistler is also famous for its 10 day-long Crankworx festival which features numerous different gravity events including several dh races (one to Gee, one to Sam), a slalom race (think Minnaar won it) and [View Full Entry]

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We made it to Whistler no problems with our heads still attached. The greyhound is a bargain, it was about 30$ Canadian each inc bikes for a two and a half hour bus journey north of Vancouver. We did encounter some felons on the return journey but they were pretty friendly. There is plenty of scenery to enjoy on the way up, Canada is MASSIVE. Whistler village is a ski resort about 130 miles north of Vancouver. It is home to many of the events in the 2012 winter olympics and there is a lot of work going on there at [View Full Entry]

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We spent 36 jet lagged hours in Vancouver and it seemed like a pretty pleasant place. Vancouverians turned out to be friendly, laid back and pretty liberal by the looks of things. They live in a small city with lots of skyscrapers, where the buses are mainly electric and have bike racks on the front. How genius an idea is that? Vancouver is built on a grid system and the thing I really like about it is this:- if you look down the street, in the distance you can either see the sea or some mahossive mountains. In our brief time [View Full Entry]

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