Ricky Federau: Almost getting killed then going to Whistler.

Thursday morning at 7am I go for a paddle with Anna and Bret. Bret is kind of new to this whole white water kayak thing so he just ran the shuttle for me and Anna on the upper part of the river and then he was going to join us when the water calmed down a little lower down river. The river is raging cause its been like 35c out for the last week and that snow that I have been skiing on is now on its way to the ocean. Me and Anna put in at Tamihi, I got worked right away, but my roll is solid and I used it like 5 more times and I even got stuck in a hole and almost swam but no swims for me! Then we get to this place were there is a bunch of wood in the river and Anna goes first and gets stuck on this log and I am floating towards this log just watching Anna get worked and then she pulled the cord and swam from her boat. Long story short I huck huge air off this log and float upside down under the rest of the logs and roll up on the other side, total fluke but I will take it now I fallow Anna's boat down river and get it out like 4km later. Bret almost called search and rescue when he saw me float by with Anna's boat with no Anna in it. We all made it out alive and all we lost was a nice kober paddle. So if anyone finds a paddle talk to Anna. After this is was time to pack up the car with all outdoor gear know to man and go to whistler and have some fun for 3 days.

Once I got up there I stayed with the Routley's. As soon as I got in the drive way Keith Ray was there and we went and floated our kayaks down the uber high green river. After that it was off to the weekey thursday night loonie race. I have never done a loonie race before, but I have heard all about it. What normally goes down is 300 people pay 2 bucks and they race around for like an hour and then do a post race apres. This weeks race was a little different because they were doing a fund raiser and there was no official apres cause the money they normally spend went to the charity and same with the prize money I would have won for winning. Yeah, thats right I won the loonie by 11seconds, I broke my chain and had to ran the last 10minuts and barely hung on for the W! I guess thats what you get for throwing down the power. Normally you win 50 bills for winning but it all went to the charity, so I feel a little good about myself, its all good. So no official apres but there was plenty off food and drink that people brought to the finish and the post race BS is always top notch. They raised $2,300. everyone should do a loonie race in there life time.

Day Two was going to be a epic day out on the road bike. We are going to ride up the duffey lake road and back to whistler its like a 140km road ride with a 14km steep climb up to Joffre lake. Tony and I meet Tyler Alison at Dusty's and some how ran into a injured Jeff Beaty who was just waking up off the sidewalk from a late night bender at Dusty's. Tony is in the 50-60 category and has won medals at master world championships and Tyler is 16 and is the great hope of the nation to win medals at Olympics in like 4years. We rode out and I just tore those guys a new one up the climb up to Joffre. The weather was so nice the whole ride but it just pissed ran on the decent into Pemberton and we all froze to death then at the bottom the sun was out and it was 25c. We stopped at the gas station 35km from home and loaded up on some sugar to get us home. Tyler being the Junior it was up to him to get the crazy stuff so pizza pretzel and a family pack of licorice was the order of the day. We had an insane head wind on the way home and I had to tow those boys back, for Tyler it was the longest road ride he had done ever. Tony and I get back and Tony opens up the fridge and one of the sponsors for Team Whistler, Whistler brewery gave him a bunch of beer and we sat there and drank it, what a great day. Oh yeah before the ride I kayaked down the river again but we went at 7am and was riding road bikes by 10, sometimes you just got to pack the adventures in.

Day three I had just one more thing I wanted to do and that was go on a epic whistler single track ride. So I meet up with local legend Eric Crowe, aka “crowe man”and we did “thrill me, Kill me” and its all just rocks and roots and little bridges and short ups and short downs and hard, hard single track. Thrill me kill me took like 45-1hr to do then it was up to “comfortably numb” and its more of the same. CN is 24km long and they say it takes 4-7hrs to do, so its not for the weak. Crow man ran out of gas and cut out early but I kept it rolling and finished the trail in about 2hrs and 15min. After this ride my arms and worked, and my hands are so sore from braking and shifting so much, you are just on the gas the whole time, its quite a ride. OK I am going to pass out for a couple days now.