For those that have been following our Cranky coverage, you’ll know that Welsh dad Jason Carpenter and his daughter Manon are competing in Crankworx events. Today’s repo is from the AirDH which was won by Lopes and Griffiths. (Stay tuned for the DirtTV video and main repo)

Day 5 – Air DH on A-line

Phew, dragged out of bed again for first lift and A-Line, not really my cup of tea first thing in the morning. Braking bumps, corners and overshooting jumps to flat…. Obviously that’s not what the locals are doing, but it’s all I could manage. I did, however finally take some pictures.

Practice went fine, we did three runs, found a couple of faster lines, nothing special. It rained in the night so there was a bit of ‘bite’ to the dirt and all was riding well. We upped the tyre pressures to 30psi for a bit more speed.

I was left to fend for myself after practice as my run was just over an hour into racing. Manon went to wash her bike and have a snooze as her run wasn’t until 3:30. Then it started raining, nice. We’d cut the mudguards off that morning for extra speed ‘cos the nice weather man said it wasn’t going to rain. Luckily one of the shops here has a free to use tool rack and a box full of spent tubes, five minutes later I was sporting a sexy new rubber mudguard, classy she was too.

Quick text to Manon to tell her to fit hers, then another to tell her to bring me some money as I didn’t have a bean and a last one to tell her to bring her coat because it was freezing up top.

I went up an hour early to do a run of Dirt Merchant to warm up as I was so cold and wet. This didn’t really work as I was colder afterwards but hey what can you do? Went straight back up in the bubble to retain what warmth I had. Up top it finally stopped raining and I had a chance to warm up, said Hi to the fella who beat me in the Masters Dual B final, name of Andrew Gunn, he won the Masters race about 10 mins later.

My run was OK, track was a bit slippy after all the rain, but generally good. I was going fast and pedalling as hard as my old legs would go. Lost a few seconds overshooting jumps like usual, and landing flat with no speed. Did a 4.54 which was only good enough for 7th, still I was nice and warm at the bottom and the sun came out too.

Manon turned up with some money so I could have a cup of coffee and some lunch. Apparently after washing her bike she nearly oiled her chain with superglue!!! That would have been interesting.

Anyway up we went and I took a few shots of the Pro ladies milling about and warming up. On the way up I managed to snap off a pic of a sweet layback superman over the big first jump. Don’t know who it is sorry.

I missed Manons run as I was riding down Ninja Hampsters to get her going over the GLC drops but the Hampsters got the better of me. I just caught up with her as she was pedalling across the flat towards the drops, no time to get the tripod out sorry.

She finished 10th in the end with a time of 5:05, 15 seconds down on Ffion Griffiths who surprised everyone who thought Jill Kintner had it in the bag.

Lopes won the Main event but I took a nice picture of Brendog so there. Unfortunately it’s on Manons camera, don’t have a card converterthingy.

Full results here.

Our day wasn’t over there though. After Manon came down we went up to check out the Canadian Open Downhill Track. Oh My God, it’s mental. Huge, steep rock drops, massive jumps and a steep steep that I went over the bars on.

Todays moan – Whistler Ropes

The ropes they use at Whistler to cordon one track off from another suck big time. They tie them at either waist height or neck height between trees, then they tie little orange ribbons on them so that your mates can see where the rope is as they are trying to untangle it from your windpipe while it is trying to kill you. The one that got me was on the outside of a very crashable corner, 1m from the track. OK, I went over the bars because I was riding like a tool, but I wasn’t expecting to have my head near sawn off by a Whistler cheese wire. I’m now sporting a sexy rope burn round my neck that makes it look like I’ve tried to hang myself. Nuff said, they need to lose them and use sensible barrier fencing like any normal folk.

I waited for a bit till I could breathe again then we headed down to watch some slopestyle foolery.

Giant Slalom tomorrow folks, track looks mint, long and fast.

Whistler concrete snakerun.

Sram thingy.

Cranky:Manon And Jason’s Adventure part 3