Just at the hotel room resting after the first day of the Toronto Bike Show. I rode to and from the event with an extra long seatpost in my bike, it’s only takes about 20 minutes in a granny geared fat tired bike, so it’s pretty close. For some reason it makes me happy to be able to ride the same bike to the show as I perform on. 

The performing went quite well. I am always a little nervous that after at least ten years of performing at this show that my riding isn’t go to keep up with expectations. But I have to remind myself that I can only do my best and that will have to be good enough—today it seemed like it was. Perhaps having a challenge in my demo set up beyond the routine moves and obstacles makes it more interesting to me and hence the audience. There is an old pick-up truck that I’m riding on, and my challenge is to ride from the roof to the edge of the bed and balance down it. I got on it today, but not off the end. I’ll have to work on that through the weekend. Fun.

I also had a seminar today on the Mind Game of Riding. Quite a few curious folks listened to my 30 minute speech on a topic that is both deep but simple at the same time. It went well from my point of view, but will need some fine tuning to make my points as clear as they are in my mind.

A few days I visited a school in Mississauga as one of the winners of my Trials of Life contest. Here’s a little article from that.

Here are a couple photos from the school I visited in Burlington. The first is Matthew’s family-the other winner of my Trials of Life contest. The second is him and I being interviewed before my presentation by Matt Hayes, a popular host of the local news.

I had my first official outdoor demo yesterday at a local bike shop, just 10 minutes from my home. The shop’s called Sharpey’s and it was season kick off/fundraiser for the BC Childrens Hospital.

Here’s a link to the incredible story of Ryder, the shop owners son, and the reason behind the  fundraising efforts yesterday at the shop, and just one of the many ways in which the family is giving back after all the support they received during the last year. What a beautiful family.

It’s Sunday now, I’m getting ready to go to Toronto. I’ll be visiting some schools as part of my Trials of Life contest. I’ll be performing at the Toronto International Bike show. I’ll also be giving some workshops on the Mind Game of Riding, a topic of much importance. Here’s the little blurb they’re using to promote it at the show:

No matter what kind of cycling you enjoy most, it is always desirable to progress your riding skills. I am frequently asked to describe and break down techniques step by step, but I often feel uncomfortable doing this because it encourages an over active mind resulting in disconnected movements.

My goal for this workshop is to share an approach to riding that will allow your skills to progress naturally, safely, quickly, and ultimately with more enjoyment-I will share my experience on topics such as visualization, fear, and mind/body awareness. The items discussed can be applied to all styles of riding no matter what level you’re at, so please join me!

So I’m just trying to finish some preparation for that workshop (but got distracted writing this blog post), and also get some washing done, go to the farmers market with Caryn, and also go to a family festival with the family, and also go over a proposal with Joan Jones for the reno of the Port Moody Trials Park. Whew! I think the rest of the day is going to go by pretty fast! 

All the best everyone!

Ryan

I always enjoy shooting with Mr. Steve Behr. We had exactly one hour at the Cathedral in St. Albans, England to shoot these pics for a magazine, and I think we got the job done! 

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Vancouver, with 25 degree weather (that’s Celsius my American friends), and some great people to hang out with. I was at a TFK event called “Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day”. Some skill clinics, some tech clinics, some trail rides, a BBQ, and of course a trials show at the end of the day.

Whistler is situated among some of the most spectacular scenery, but it can still be a fairly toxic place to spend five days, especially during a gravity and testosterone fed festival like Crankworx. Participants and spectators are recovering from Crankworx in many different ways right now. The hype, buzz and adrenaline can be a bit overwhelming, and it’s sometimes hard to shake it off and bring things back to reality.

I felt nicely grounded after listening to this song today by Xavier Rudd today….

energy-song

Anyone else stuck in the traffic back to Vancouver last night? It took me over four hours to get home! I had some good podcasts to listen to though (check the side panel to the right). I think most drivers remained positive though, one guy even got out of his car while we were stopped, knocked on my window, and gave me a beer….no I didn’t drink it Thanks buddy!

We’re spending mega bucks on a new highway from Vancouver to Whistler, and they’re making great progress. There was no construction last night, but yet the delays were enormous. My former team mate and mentor Robin Coope was stuck in the same traffic jam, and suggested that the new highway may be safer, but could result in huge delays in Squamish because of the cities traffic light situation, which has grown to seven along the highway. Once the highway is complete, we could still be in store for some huge delays during busy times, such as, oh, say for example, the Olympics. Good prediction Robin, I hope you’re wrong, but I fear you may not be.

 

 

Just found some time to get online this morning (Sunday) before another 3 shows today – which will make my five day total 15.

The Crankworx slopestyle contest was last night, and it certainly was a show. Watching these guys launch their bikes and bodies through the air is scary, beautiful, stylish, crazy, and elegant all at the same time; it’s hard to know what to think!

I’m actually riding with a sprained finger today, first injury I’ve had from a trials show in a long time.

The trials contest called trialsworx was a huge success, the Baia Family poured their heart into organizing another great competition. It was great to so many kids out for the kids version as well which attracted 78 kids to compete!

So I don’t have much time to chat here, just thought I’d share a few thoughts while I was online. 

Seeya,

Ryan

After a shoddy sleep in an overheated hotel room, I woke up, walked across the street to the bakery and bought a freshly baked croissant and cinnamon bun, then rolled down the street to the World Cup venue at Mont Saint Anne for my third day of demos here in Quebec. After a fairly quiet first show in the morning, I hung out, ate some healthier food, caught up with e-mails in the press room, and watched some of the DH preliminaries.

Second show was great fun, rode a couple hard lines, and because I purposely started the show early, the audience, and myself, had time to watch most of the women DH action. Congrats to my teammate Fionn Griffiths who took a 5th. Solid! She later snatched up a bronze in the 4X, she’s gotta be all smiles tonight.

I caught up with my buddy Marc Landry from FastTimes, he was shooting for Shimano, and I shadowed him for a while to catch all the best views of the mends DH, which was well under way at that point.  Close to tend, I had to race back to the bottom, but still saw the top few guys blow away the rest of the pack, with Minaar, Hill, and Atherton rounding out the top three (if my memory serves correct that is). Right at the same time I got a call from Caryn who had just finished her first mini-tri back home in BC, nice work love!

My 4:30 show was the busiest yet. For some reason it still lacked the magic from four years ago when I was here with my mentor and friend Robin Coope, but it was the kind of show that still left me smiling. I miss Robin’s dedication to his french rhetoric!

I rode my trials bike back to the hotel room, showered up with the intention to head back to the hill. But my hotel room was changed, and I had this beautiful room instead, with a large living room that just begged for a yoga session. So I decided to put on a yoga podcast from Eoin Finn (the Tragically Hips one), because when I flow naturally, I just don’t push myself as much, and after this practice I was sweating and tired and feeling incredible. At that point the weather was sketchy, and I ironically decided to watch the 4X live on freecaster from the hotel room, while multi-tasking with a few other ‘puter chores.

It’s raining a little right now, so with a full belly, a happily tired body, and a day of shows tomorrow, I’ll think I’ll skip the famous Mont Saint-Anne party (which goes until 4am), and catch a good night sleep.

 

My voyage to Quebec has been very worthwhile so far. More and more I am judging the value of my trips against the emissions that were released to make it possible; its gotta have purpose

The first thing I am happy with is my involvment in the production by Velerium in downtown Quebec City last night. It was quite a scene that incorporated my trials show, along with a flow show, a jumping competition, street running (parkour), breakdancing, and live music. I was happy with my shows, but more so there were a few special moments chatting with the audience between shows. As a Canadian, I am also quite honored to be participating in part of the celebrations for Quebec’s 400th birthday, Bon Fete Quebec, content d’etre ici!!

Todays show at Mont Saint Anne was really quiet, not a lot of people around, tomorrow should be the big day. I was glad to have the time to sit down for an interview with David Howard after my show, he’s the Story Editor for Mountain Bike Magazine. As an accomplished journalist in a number of different fields, I’m really glad to have had the opportunity to have some deep conversations about not just riding, but life in general. I’m excited to see how this article unfolds in the magazine, perhaps a few month down the road.

I’ll leave you with a short clip from one of the street runners from last night, whew!!!

 

Dorothy had it right by saying “there’s no place like home”; just arrived back with Caryn last night from a long trip from MUC to YVR via YYV. Our flight was delayed leaving Munich and they said it was because of some bikes they were loading, and since they missed their push off, the delay for a spot over the ocean(600 to 800 at any one time)  was now 90 minutes; terrible they actually blamed it on that because it was obvious to many passengers who the family of six, who had been on a bike tour through Europe, were. Luckily they snuck us off without the full delay. 

So it was great to hang out with Thomas again, here’s a picture of us beside his new demo trailer. He was rocking it on the bike, he was doing a high jump thing with a small kicker and made it up 16 pallets, so smooth!

I met up with Mark from Singletrack magazine while in Kaprun, and he was with my buddy Sanny from Scotland who hosted me in Glasgow for a film festival a few years back. We were hanging out for dinner and Mark was brainstorming ideas for a top ten list of things Austria has contributed to the world for his blog; I think they did a pretty good job!

By the way, I think the fact that per capita, Austrians emit only 2.34 tonnes of Co2 compared to Canada’s 5.46 should make the list….although they have much work to do, their footprint still requires more than two earths to sustain if everyone adopted their lifestyle.

Caryn and I met some pretty amazing people during the last couple weeks, we truly are fortunate to experience the culture and see the sights of such an amazing part of the world.

Caryn and I are hanging out in Kaprun, Austria, a village in the Austrian Alps that is big on mountain biking. The event we’re here for is called Bike Infection, and I’ll be performing with Thomas Oehler and Petr Kruas this afternoon.

The first day in Kaprun, Thursday,  I did a show for the local school, got to ride on gymnastic equipment.

The students seemed to have enjoyed it, and now many of them have signed up for the bike race during Bike Infection this weekend. Nice!

Then later on I had a hair cut, my hair is now the shortest is has been in about 15 years, but to make up for it my facial hair is the longest it has ever been.

Here is another link to my friend Mark’s photos, these are from our visit to the Krimml Waterfall a few days ago.

Ciao….

So I have just finished up a fantastic weekend at the KitzAlp Bike Festival in Austria. I performed in downtown Kitzbuhel on Thursday evening, taught a youth skills clinic on Friday, then another performance on Saturday at the Race. It was so much fun to ride a variety of obstacles for a change; I basically built a demo course out of spools, pallets, and beams and had a blast.

The Marathon race was 55 and 88km long, with over 1000 competitors, wow! The youth races on Sunday consisted of a technical trials style challenge in the morning, which determined their starting position. Check out the images for a taste of the challenges they had to negotiate. Love it!

Picked up my buddy Mark Bakker, former Norco web guru, in Kitzbuhel today, he’s busy back-packing around Europe and our paths crossed. We’ll travel for the next couple day with him.

Well, I’m going to Buggerhof until the next post….