It's been an overwhelming week all in all... but at the end of every week comes the weekend. This weekend I felt a lot of fondness for the North Shore mountains being right there for me to go and play on. The weather was really very "Vancouver" (wet) but that didn't stop Suzanne, Kala, Krista, Luisa and I riding up Fromme to do a wet and slippery run down the Seventh Secret and Pipeline trails. There's no snow at all up there, which is very different to this time last year and a little upsetting for skiing... but it will come. All in all it was a great, muddy, wet, and cold winter ride. Just the way it should be! We finished off the ride with a (rather late) Hippy Breakfast in Tommy's Cafe. YUM.
After a day in the rain, what could be better than making jelly and cake? To be honest, I have no idea what might be better... but jelly and cake were pretty good. Krista's housewarming had a jelly moulding competition and I went for points in the creativity category by putting a flashing bike light inside mine. The idea was to make a kind of lighthouse, but the collapse of my jelly coming out of the mould made it more of a "traffic cone in a pile of tar" composition. I was quite pleased with it anyway. I was more pleased with my banana and apple cake... which I think I ended up eating most of. YUM (again).
Today there was more North Shore fun to be had. Jacek, Kala, and I ran from Lynn Valley to Deep Cove, along 14km of the Baden Powell Trail. We also got a bit lost and added a rather large road climb into the route. Oops. The trail was really fun... rooty, wet, muddy, with the classic North Shore mist hanging in the trees. Then at the end the sun came out! Deep Cove was looking very pretty in the evening light and we met up with Paul and Angie for famous Deep Cove doughnuts... bumping into Margaret and Tomas on the way, who had come out for a walk.
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Thank you everyone who came out in the manky weather, and thank you North Shore mountains for the good times. Paul's been processing some old photos, this is what I was doing last January. Will the snow be like that 6 weeks from now? I hope so...
