As much as we all like to complain about the weather here these days (non-stop rain!), I’m pretty sure I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t disgusting in Whistler for the month of June. I just finished a weekend of Dirt Series camps in what can be best described as monsoon weather on both days. The nice thing about the camps is that people come stoked to ride their bikes at all costs – I’m impressed that all of the people I got to work with were pumped on shredding despite the absolute heinous weather we were in all day each day.

Before my coaching weekend, we had Phat Wednesday #1 last week. I’ve decided that the hours before the actual race are what makes these little races so rad – all of our friends are out doing hot laps on stuff we wouldn’t typically spend much time on. That day was especially rad – Gunner finally got his pass and was learning the ropes on his new Aurum, Casey Brown was out in full force after we haven’t seen her in weeks, Claire was riding, Strand was out…I was loving it. Even had a cameo from some Calgary shredders on holiday.

Bline - pre race...hah! Jinya Nishiwaki photo.

I took a mega-digger drifting too hot into a flatter berm on BLine right before my race run so I’m still rocking a swellbow of impressive proportion (with elbow pads on!), but I still managed to put down a chainless race run that was super fun from the top of Bline to the valley. I refused, in the end to “paddle” with my feet across the road, which in hindsight I think might have been a mistake. The amazing Claire Buchar got me by .86 and Lula Darquier was behind us (not bad for her second year of beer league!).  This is the first race I can remember that was top three fastest overall chainless (usually it’s just first or second – not everyone). I love these races.

1 Claire, 2 Sarah, 3 Lula. (Shawn Beaudoin - Lula's very proud husband - photo).

-Leishner

Fellow Race Face teammate, Beth Parsons, wrote a post about her trip to Utah on Pinkbike and it went on the home page today. I like what she did with this post – Parsons is a piece of work and we (you know, people) like that. We ran into her by chance in front of Chile Pepper Bikes as we were about to board our shuttle for our lap of Mag 7 and she joined what turned into our mega-crew for our week in Moab. She has been dating my coworker and top 3 personal favorite patroller, Gia, for some time and it was great to get some riding in with them both after all of these years of talking about it.  Her post can be found here: How to Be Thirsty in The Desert and is worth the read.

Beth and I risking our lives on a section of Mag 7 in Utah. Parsons supplied the comments, Gia took the photo.

Other than exciting Pinkbike news, I’ve been on the bikes constantly. Today was my first off day in some time. The bike park has been in awesome shape, the Aurum is killing it with new suspension and Race Face bars, stem, seatpost and cranks and I’ve been getting Whistler valley trail rides in on a daily basis on the Sight. Last night was a dinner with Shimano during the Saint media camp for their 2013 product launch (the entire pre-production line has been in and out of Fanatyk Co all week and is installed on a bunch of our Aurums and it all looks and feels incredible), and tomorrow night is our first Phat Wednesday of the year. I’m looking forward to having all of our usual suspects crowding the bar at the GLC and to two hours of Seb Fremont mispronouncing names all over the microphone.

Ya summer!

-Leishner