Saturday, July 9, 2011

Whistler Week 1

first week is almost over and its been a bit of a roller coaster.

Starting with a 3am wakeup call on monday morning to get to the airport for our 6am flight. Thanks to Rhino for volunteering for that one.

After checking in our bikes with no dramas(thanks QANTAS, they didn't even weigh them, legends) we boarded the plane for a quick trip to Aukland then onto another plane to LA. Watched 4 movies between Melbourne and LA, played solitaire, slept, ate etc...

Thanks to the marvels of air travel we arrived in LA 6:30am on the same day we left melbourne. Sadly this was where our trip took a turn.

LAX is shit. no other way to put it. I made the mistake of only giving us 2.5hours to get from our plane, get our bikes, recheck our bikes and board our next flight. LAX was having none of it and we waited at passport control for over an hour. got our bikes and rushed our re-checkin, sprinted to terminal 8 and then got stuck in another que.

Connecting flight missed.

thankfully the United checkin people got us on another flight via Denver the next day so we had a night in a LA hotel and another 6am flight. Our bikes were somewhere in the airport hopefully to be put on a plane heading to Vancouver....

Denver is a nice airport. Vancouver is way better.

Sadly our bikes didn't make it. They weren't allowed to arrive before us so were being shipped on a later flight to arrive at 9pm. Because it was 4pm the baggage people organised to have the bikes delivered to our accommodation. "Should arrive by midnight..." So after we checked in at our accom we waited. And waited. and waited.... by 2am i gave up. Left a note on the front door with our numbers just in case and tried to get some sleep. 4am the phone rings and our bikes are here!

So dramas over it was time to get ourselves settles and head out on the trails....


The view from our apartment


Fresh bridge on A River Runs Through It. Sweet.


Rocks and roots. Plenty of tech to ride..


Mel on some of the Whistler stage of the BC Bike Race.

bridges in the Lost Lake Park

1 comment:

neil said...

I'm jealous, that looks sweet.