You’ll never get me on a cruise. Unless it’s to ALASKA! Recap and New PTR Link! 2/1

[eandesmom]

Now, before I forget, I thought I’d share our border crossing pics. I tried to upload them to facebook and then lost my connection the minute we crossed (or lost it without roaming charges lol) and just realized I hadn’t moved my pictures over when I did the first Whistler update.





Exciting huh.

Unbeknownst to me, the weekend of my Whistler event, was also the biggest weekend Whistler has for events. All year.

Outside of the Olympics.

Crankworx, a huge mountain bike event, was the same weekend we were there. It had been mentioned to me at the Friday evening function but frankly I didn't think too much of it. It's Whistler, there is always something going on. I needed to be at the event at 7:45 am. Needless to say, no one was up while I was getting ready but I managed to figure out the coffee pot and drive myself to the hotel on time. The morning went well and finished at noon. The gang had gone down to explore the village so met me back at the hotel and we drove back to the condo together so we could grab lunch and I could change.

We had no real plans for the afternoon. I had an evening function but didn't need to get there until 8 or so. Our plan was to putz around the village, come back, hit the pool, make dinner and then they'd watch a movie while I did my gig. We had a nice lunch, changed and headed out. Our condo is in the Blackcomb base area and the walk to Whistler, takes about 10 minutes
They had seen some of the bike stuff and mentioned it but I have to admit, it was far more than I'd expected. I have never, ever, seen Whistler that crowded. Walking alone, we saw some interesting stuff. At the creek, young adults were rock hopping at a competition. I forget what it’s called but they have these special rock hopper bikes that don’t have seats, that they literally hop from rock to rock on an obstacle course over the and across the creek. Crazy stuff! We ended up chatting with a guy who’s 20 year old son was down there hopping away. And apparently doing rather well, it was the “expert” pool. Making our way through the crowds and past the huge expo in the parking lot we came ot the Whistler base, the hub of the bike activity and the base for the bike park. It is a week long event and the place was packed with muddy dirty bikers. And the occasionally snowboarder. There was still snow at the top, not even heli skiing I think!
This is the event (if anyone is curious

http://www.crankworx.com/index.php/s...kworx/schedule

And this is what we walked into.



Looks pretty empty right?

Not so much







This booth intrigued us (as did a marquee showing the weekends events)


So we went over to check it out

A booth about Cheeserolling. In fact, it was the Canadian Cheeserolling Festival!

What is Cheeserolling you ask?

Cheese Rolling is deceptively simple: an 11-pound wheel of cheese is rolled down a hill and everyone chases it, slipping, tripping and tumbling on the way down.

At the Canadian Cheeserolling Festival the lucky winner gets to keep the cheese, and gets two ski season passes to Whistler Blackcomb.

Sounds cool, right?

At the booth they had a mini hill. The boys each rolled a cheese down a tiny Astroturf hill. Evan won. And got a hat. Say…CHEESEROLLING!

Eric got a hat too.

Though I didn’t capture the actual rolling, they did do a great imitation of what can happen.





And you can see the hats in the picture. Saturday would be the actual festival, we discussed that it might be fun to check out. It was not all that warm out but we forged on, grabbing free drinks for the kids and playing with statues



I hadn’t brought my camera with me so these are all from my phone. Our “first” Olympic shot



Glad I took this one, I have more with the real camera but couldn’t get it without people.

Rings seen we headed back to the condo for a swim, a little salmon for dinner and then I took off to my event. Saturday brought SUN! Same drill in the morning but a much much nicer afternoon. After doing our drill of lunch and changing clothes we headed back out.

Where to?

Cheeserolling of course! http://www.canadiancheeserolling.ca/
At Whistler, in the summer, there are a ton of things to do on the mountain. You have the bike park, you have hiking, you have actual skiing and snowboarding. Generally speaking you’ll need a ticket of some sort to go up and while the peak to peak sounded fun it was also pricey. Peak to peak means you can ride any lift on either mountain, including the one that goes from the top of one, to the top of the other (Whistler to Blackcomb). The peak to peak is new to us. For the 4 of us, it would have run about $140 and we just weren’t feeling it at that price. However to get to cheeserolling, they were offering free rides on one of the smaller chairs, all you had to do was say “cheeserolling” to get on for free.

So we did.





Checking out one of the bike ramps as we go up



If you do the ziplining in Whistler, you’ll go over this



More bike park



And…where we got off. The upper part of the lift was closed



We could see the crowds



They even had a map!



This cracked me up





Rollers getting ready





Crazy master of ceremonies



Who decided, between races to do games and things. All of a sudden we hear him say “It’s time for cheesy human tricks. Any volunteers?”


Continued in next post