I started writing this earlier, and I just put some Rush on to listen to as I finish it. Hmmmm... maybe Red Fisher would be more appropriate since it's the Left Coast of the Great White North.
As I write this, the Vancouver, B.C. area is overwhelmed with the 2010 Winter Olympics. But on my first trip to that area in 1985, Whistler was almost a ghost town. In so many ways, it was a different world then. People didn't carry phones around everywhere they went, stumbling over things as the text dumb messages to other people not paying attention. The very first car phones were just coming to market then, which were the size of a Kleenex box and cost a couple thousand dollars each. People with pagers were thought to be either doctors or drug dealers. The little biege Apple Macintosh personal computer, with an AMAZING kilobyte or two of memory, had come out the year before. A few rich people had radical VHS video cameras, which consisted of a recorder unit, bascially a VCR that you wore on a shoulder strap, with cables connecting to a shoe box sized camera. Speaking of cameras, most public places didn't have security cameras then. Mountain bikes, basically BMX bikes for adults, were starting to show up in bike shops.
The little village of Whistler, British Columbia was a ski resort then. There were no snowboard resorts then. There were only a handful of snowboarders in California and the Eastern mountains, they even had a few contests, but few of us had even heard of them.
We were at a ski resort in the summer, which was kind of like being at Disneyland when it's closed. There were cool buildings, but only a handful of people wandering around them. Thanks to Jay's parents, we had the amazing condo of a room right in the middle of this biking wonderland. The square in front of our hotel was the gathering ground for the freestylers, most of whom were staying in cheaper motels down towards Vancouver, or camping down the mountain a few miles. We'd sleep in, only until 9 am or so, and have breakfast in the room. Then it was out to the mountain. There were intermittent flatland sessions on the square all day long. Most of the racers, which was a tiny number for a contest called the World Championships, spent the day up the hill at the track. Us freestylers would go up and watch the racers practice, or even ride the crazy downhill track ourselves at times during practice.
The little village of Whistler, British Columbia was a ski resort then. There were no snowboard resorts then. There were only a handful of snowboarders in California and the Eastern mountains, they even had a few contests, but few of us had even heard of them.
We were at a ski resort in the summer, which was kind of like being at Disneyland when it's closed. There were cool buildings, but only a handful of people wandering around them. Thanks to Jay's parents, we had the amazing condo of a room right in the middle of this biking wonderland. The square in front of our hotel was the gathering ground for the freestylers, most of whom were staying in cheaper motels down towards Vancouver, or camping down the mountain a few miles. We'd sleep in, only until 9 am or so, and have breakfast in the room. Then it was out to the mountain. There were intermittent flatland sessions on the square all day long. Most of the racers, which was a tiny number for a contest called the World Championships, spent the day up the hill at the track. Us freestylers would go up and watch the racers practice, or even ride the crazy downhill track ourselves at times during practice.
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