We drove through heavy rain and arrived at Nanaimo on the East coast. We tried to locate a bike rental shop and ended up in Pacific Rim Bicycles. Unfortunately they don’t rent bikes but the guy there gave Pete an old set of forks from his recycle pile (for free) to try to fix his Wal-Mart bike. How nice is that????
We went for a swim, sauna and steam room which was lovely and as it was still raining Pete thought dinner out may be a good idea. I nearly snapped his hand off at this “budget breaking” idea. We found a great Greek restaurant and had the best moussaka and souvlaki – yum yum.
After a rainy night we prayed the forecast was correct for a dry day, and it was. We found the Steve Smith Bike Park with ace jumps and an all weather pump track.
It also had a weather shelter where Pete swapped his forks over. Unfortunately the replacement ones were too short – booh !
So Pete returned them and then tried in vain to straighten out his a bit. We took the opportunity of dry weather to touch up the paint on Fred’s resealed door and let it dry while we cycled around the pump track and then cycled 11 miles sightseeing to the harbour and promenade and back.
A new can of colour match spray paint was purchased to finish off the job. And while it dried we watched in awe while all the kids sent it down the two massive black jump lines.
After dinner we took a trip to the laundrette where a guy was wearing his sleeping bag while he washed his clothes – nice!
Oh, how lovely to have all dry clothes and towels! Sometimes its the small things that bring the most joy. Clean, blow dried hair is another for me I have come to realise on this trip.
Pete managed to find a demo bike from Apex Bicycles. There was only one available so I would be on Wilma – hmm, that was going to be fun. When we went to collect the demo bike, they’d sold it so Pete was given a large older demo bike to ride for the day – for free. He wasn’t too disappointed š We headed to Doumont Forest trails. First we did the Stairway to Hayden and Haydens trails, technical, wet rooty trails that weren’t too much fun.
But then we found Fine China and Finer China which were flowy and full of berms and jumps. In parts it was like a fun downhill pump track. It was so much fun (even as the rain for heavier), we had a couple of goes at it.
A second trip to the swimming pool was in order to clean up and warm through in the steam room. Lurvely! We revisited the laundrette to dry our towels so that we didn’t have them hanging about Fred when we had people viewing to buy him next day. We were anxious to be selling Fred, not to soon to leave us with nowhere to stay but not too late that we wouldn’t sell him before we had to catch out flight.
Our last stop in Nanaimo was to a bakery to taste the real nanaimo bar. It was superb – more creamy than others we had tried. Yum!
We must have been away from home too long though as the sight of Cornish pasties and cheese scones started our mouths watering too!!!!
