Cypress, Vancouver, Mike China

It's been a while since my last update, as we were in Vancouver, and then entertaining the world famous Mike China.

** WARNING - This is a very long update. There are pictures though, so if you prefer to watch, scroll down :-) **

Cypress Mountain Day 1 (Thursday)
Cypress is in fact in West Vancouver. This must be very cool for Vancouverites, as it's only a short drive over the Lions Gate Bridge. It also gets around double the snow of Whistler as well, their current base is nearly five meters.

Alas, it's also much smaller than Whistler - the first sign of this was the fact that I was unable to buy tickets for more than one day at a time! The second sign was the fact that we could ride from the very top to the very bottom in about 5 minutes. After the vast expanse that is Whistler/Blackcomb, it was pretty funny.

We had a lot of fun there - despite its small size, it has some great tree runs, and the "Glades" and
"Top Gun" runs were awesome. Unfortunately the visibility was terrible, so I didn't get any photos.

I have decided that noone in Vancouver has any excuse not to be good at snow sports. With three mountains within an hours drive, and Whistler within 2.5 hours you have the perfect setting for a life of ripping.

The hotel wasn't too bad either - it looked a bit dilapidated from the outside, and the room initially had a bit of old-person smell, but the bed was king sized (and very comfortable) and it had a fridge for the beer.

Chinatown
After months of no Chinese food I was pretty fired up for our visit to Chinatown.

Except, it sucked.

We walked around for ages, couldn't find any restaurants that were open, and were confronted by many of Vancouver's finest crazies. It seems that British Columbia (much like our home Victoria) has closed many of its mental health facilities, leaving those who used to reside them to wander the streets. A little disturbing to be honest.

We had to jump back in the Jeep and head to another suburb before we died of hunger.
We found a Singaporean restaurant (that turned out to be more of a generic asian experiance). Coincidentally we had ventured out during some kind of charity night, so Kat entered a competition to win $2500 of vouchers, and received a free tea cup. Woo!

Cypress Mountain Day 2 (Friday)
Another great day. Kat had to get the Greyhound back to Whister ready for work on Saturday, while I hung around in Vancouver awaiting the arrival of Mike China.

Finally however, I managed to get some decent Chinese food. We had tried to go to a restaurant in North Vancouver on Thursday night (but it was closed and opening on Friday). I headed there with Jacqui and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food. The Ma Po Tofu was excellent, and it was a delight to eat Gai Lan (Chinese Broccoli) again after what feels like about 10 years.

If you're ever in North Vancouver, you should defiantly check out Red Chilli Szechuan Cuisine (741 Lonsdale Ave, North Vancouver -604-986-2088). Excellent.

Vancouver (Saturday)
I don't know whether you've ever been in a city with no plans, no guide book, and no clues. I don't recommend it. I spent a whole day in downtown Vancouver, and it was pretty boring. Partly my own fault, and partly due to the fact that it felt very much like Sydney's CBD on the weekends. Oh well.

Finally it was time to head to Vancouver airport, and await the arrival of Mike. The plane from Denver was a little late, but nothing dramatic. A couple of hours later (through a near white-out on the road) we arrived at the Turd. Thankfully the two beers that I had in the back of the Jeep were still kind of cold, so we had them, and hit the sack.

Riding
Finally I took the camera up to the mountain. Of course the sky was not blue, but hey.

Here's our guest, looking very dashing.


I was surprised that after 2 years of not riding, Mike was pretty darn good at it.


Kat was grumpy, but still looked good in the trees.


Gettin' some lean in...


...and a little more. Great lookin' jacket. Good thing it's mine!


Despite grumpiness, there was still a little air.


....and bringing a bit of smack down in the terrain park.


Alas no photos of me yet. Sunny tomorrow, so I will give Kat a quick lesson in pro-photography.

Guitar Hero
Of course, what evening is complete with out some guitar hero.

Demonstrating his infinite prowess....


There ain't no hair like big hair, ladies.


By this stage I'd had a few beers. So the old long exposure and crazy zooming came out.


There's nothing quite like strange portraits to warm the cockles.


Someone looks kind of evil huh?


Departure
All good things come to an end, so this morning I took Mike back down to Vancouver. The turd is much quieter and less interesting now.

That is all.