Rip it hard!

We leave Tofino/Vancouver Island as the weather turns bad again and the winds are weak. We hop on a huge ferry leaving Nanaimo/Vancouver Island towards Horseshoe Bay/Vancouver. After 90 minutes cruising the sea our beloved RV is on the way to Whistler.

To my big surprise we meet my bro Adi and his buddy Fabio in Whistler. We love to fly kites these guys love to fly with their bikes. Whistler Mountain is something like a paradise for downhill-freakzzz or bikes with wings. But hold on we are all hungry from a demanding day and decide to go for some good meat!

Sunday morning the sun is shining and my head is telling me that I had to many beers yesterday evening. Never mind Sabrina and me are up for a nice kitesurf-session in Squamish 50 km away from Whistler.

Squamish offers reliable thermal winds on a sunny day. Wind average is 20-25 knots. The spot is out in the water on a dam on the right side of the dam a river ends in the ocean on the other side there's a perfect flat water spot. A great playground for kite- and windsurfers. The only drop of bitterness they charge you 15 dirty Canadian Dollars to use the spot on the other hand it costs a lot of money to maintain this site completely built on a dam and the spotowners offer also a rescue service. However Sabrina and me have fun playing around at Squamish Spit. The fun ends at 6 o'clock as the wind becomes gusty. So back to Whistler to stay overnight for free on a huge parking lot. We meet Adi and Fabio for dinner. Unfortunately Fabio had again a crash with his bike and the right side of his leg is now fully covered with colors from blue to green to yellow to brown....arggggggffff. Get well sooon dude!

Ohhh lord what am I doing! Fabio offers me to use his bike and to try to follow my bro. A 60 bucks later my brother and me sit on the lift towards the mountain. What I see makes me really nervous. There are some huge gaps, kickers drops hoooooollly sh******t! My brother tells me that there are different lines to ride downhill. Green for the dummies, blue for the intermediate, black for the rookies, double black for the hospital.

Seven minutes later we are on the way to a blue downhill track with the beautiful name "Crank it up"!  My brother gives me the advice not to go to fast over the first kickers to make me comfortable with the bike. Seconds later we drop downhill into the forest. After 10 minutes and some near crashes and accidents I'm happy to be in the valley again. Coool it's a ruuuush let's do it again!

Adi shows me some real tricks. Unfortunately you can't see how steep it is on the picture but the kicker is massive.

Yeahhhhh broo fly smoooooooooth! That's the way to do it. Absolutely craaaazy!

Thanks a lot to Fa for the bike and to Adi for showing me the trails and riding slow ;)

Nuking winds, wind waves, big airs these are the words you read about Hood River in the World Wind- and Kitesurfing Guide. After 600 km in a row from Ashland we arrive in Portland.....shit rushhour. Instead of driving 10 minutes through Portland to get to the Columbia River it takes us more than an hour. From far we see Mount Hood our goal is Hood River a little windy town at Columbia River. 50 minutes later we arrive in the town and it's windy. After 700 km we are tired but not tired enough to leave out a good session. The next couple of days we rock the river...

After three windy hot and sunny days at Hood River the wind becomes unstable we wait for two more days but no change. Never mind we have to go back north anyway. A quick check to the wind forecast says that there must be wind in Tofino/Vancouver Island.  A relaxed night at the Walmart parking lot in Port Angeles later we cruise with our RV on a ferry in the pacific ocean. 1.5 hours later we have to answer some difficult questions at the US/Canadian border in Victoria in Vancouver. But we tell the customs officer what he wants to hear. Our fridge is full with beer and we deny his question if we have some alcohol with us. In the afternoon we arrive in Tofino. It rains like hell and there is absolutely no wind.

 We end our sightseeing tour for today in the Shelter Restaurant. They offer some excellent beer and delicious fish and chips.

 Exploring Tofino...

 Tofino welcomes you....

 Notice...

 Another knitting store, maybe i should start knitting soon... Sabrina get's an introduction about the "latest style" woolwinder. The older lady in "Blue" knits since 87 years as she told Sabrina. But here first question to Sabrina was: "Where can i buy these hairs" :-D

 The sky clears up...

...and we enjoy a relaxed session at Long Beach...yaaaa maaaaan!

Delicious Wine and Shakespeare

Thanks the generosity of Mat, Tony and J.D. we can stay for a couple of days at the Longsword wineyard located at the bottom of Woodrat Mountain and the main landing spot for the Rogue Valley Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club. The club is perfect organized and you can buy your 10 days visitors membership at the local country store. Most of the swiss paragliding clubs could take a leaf out of these guys book.

Landing and staying at the Longsword Wineyard has another positive effect. Mat, Tony and J.D. love their passion to create different types of delicious wines. And we highly recommend to visit the beautiful place for a tasting and enjoy the great scenery.

Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Peter shows off at the launch...

Full moon over Longsword...

New friends...

Peter welcomes us in his country for the 100st time. The Oregon people use their tongue to make new friends ;)

As you can see the economy in the U.S. goes down the drain. To cut down the tremendous costs for seats in the rear Chrysler decided to only produce seats in the front to make the cars affordable. Rear seats are uppon request and can be ordered as additional feature under the keyword "garden chair". This feature will be offered soon for all SUV's sold in Switzerland.

Peter's sister Kim lives in Ashland and works the 32nd season for the magnificent Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She organizes us tickets for free and we enjoy the play Love's Labor's Lost.

Thank you Kim for staying at your place in Ashland and making it possible to enjoy one of your great plays.

Thank you Peter for having sooooo much fun with you brother.

We are now in Hood River, Oregon and enjoy soon our 2nd craaazy nuke kitesession.

Hasta la vista baaaby!

From Frisco to Woodrat

Satisfaction! Oh yeahhhh we have it! Giving up our beloved jobs was not an easy deal. But if you ever have the chance to do so do it! - It's the best decision we ever made and it's something we not gonna miss with the age of sixty. Even better we would love to step out again. Let's assume we find a job "to step in". But enough of the esoteric blabla.

We arrived in Frisco and left it after three days. Big cities are nice but honestly if you know one you know probably all of  them. Shopping, sightseeing, whatsoever! - Unless two Gangstaaazz park right next to you and start to roll a blunt.

It happend at Mussel Rock a good coastal flying site in Frisco. The locals call Mussel Rock just "Dumps" a couple of years ago the place used to be a huge dump station. It's completely polluted and so called no man's land perfect for paragliding. But back to our to friendzzz that parked their car right next to our motorhome. A blunt is some weed rolled in a nice tabacco leaf. Sabrina and me had the impression that we might run into troubles. But too late!  The window of the car next to us goes down and a black guy with golden teeth asks us if we mind when they smoke next to us. How gentle Gangstaaz with good manners! We both disagreed and said that we sometimes like to smoke this kinda special cigarettes too. We ended up giggling in a very weird conversation with two pimpz from the San Francisco Pacifica hoooood. As quick as these guys arrived as quick they left with the words: "Cya in the next life!" Sabrina and me agreed that this is the best movie we've ever seen :-D

This picture is dedicated to Hans W. from the Rhinevalley. He started to make jokes about my "day and night wearable" brown manchester pants. Actually i bought these jeans they are so freakin' comfortable and they fit me perfect. Be prepared!

Could also be in Athens.

But it's Frisco as you can see right next to the Exploratorium a science center that is closed on Mondays. Guess what day we took the picture!

After some good paragliding at the Dumps we leave Frisco towards north. We stay overnight at a gasoline station close to Sacramento. Instead of counting sheeps jumping over the fence we count trucks stopping by at the gas station arfffhhhh.

Further north we pass mystic Mount Shasta a vulcano 4322 m high. And end up at Woodrat Mountain close to Medford OR. Woodrat Mountain is well known for it's excellent flying conditions sometimes easy sometimes hard but never the same.

Unfortunately i forgot my favorite T-Shirt at launch. The coyotes had fun during the night!

Sabrina going high in the glass-off. In the later afternoon the warm air from the whole valley is pushed up. Believe it or not but on most days one hour after sunset it's still possible to fly up to 2000 meters!

This guy is probably our main reason why we decided to visit crazy America. Peter is the craziest of all of them. We met him in South Africa he's organic he's real he's a SNAG (sensitive new age guy :) He knows the cool spots in the US better than anybody else and it's pure fun to hang out with this potato head!

Jacksonville is a little town close to Woodrat Mountain and something like the american dream. It was founded in 1851 following discovery of gold deposits. Today it's nothing else than a touristic attraction some of the buildings are still original and you should not miss to enjoy one or two beers in a saloon with swinging doors.

Beside women even minors are allowed to enter the saloon but hold on. They seem to have the same bewildering forest of paragraphs like we have in Switzerland.

Did you enjoy the meal darling! After the plastic surgery Sabrina looks better than before. In fact she's imitating the American girls sitting next to us. They had lunch when we were sitting at the table. When we finished they were still having lunch. Ugly!

Since the gasoline prices are rising even the Dutch pimps have to pull over sometimes. The number plate is dedicated to the driver!

Fresh Fish, Jiffy Pop, Big Trees and Kitesurf Action

Sabrina prepares the fire for our dinner and suddenly sees two eyes watching her. Intuitively she turns on the light of her torch. It could be a black bear! - Cold sweat. With wide open eyes she points the light of her torch to the direction of the eyes. She is lucky it's just a washbear that looks for some fellowship and some food to share.

Two fresh trouts that's the catch of the day. We pack them into aluminium foil with some butter and cook them over the fire. What a delicious meal!
 
We finish the day with some Jiffy Pop prepared on the open fire.

Wednesday 1st of June we leave the beautiful Honeyman State Park and stop for two days at Floras Lake. More precisely at Boice Park Langlois. The chances for Thursday look great to catch some wind coming from the south.

Thursday morning our RV shakes it's windyyy! - We quickly have some breakfast and chat quite a long time with the two elderly friendly and openminded camphosts J.C. and Beth which are touring through the U.S. in their RV since 1988.
We rush to the lake pump our seven squaremeter kites. Despite the gusty wind we have a lot of fun. It's good to be back on the water!

It's Friday and we cross the border to California. At the border a friendly customs officer asks us if we keep agricultural goods with us. We learnt from crossing the Canadian/U.S. border and instantly both deny by saying: "No m'am". She let us pass with our campervan full of agricultural goods like milk, eggs, avocados etc. We even have firewood from Oregon huuuuuch the world is in danger!

A couple of hundred miles later we are tired and stay overnight in an RV park in the middle of nowhere. We both feel a bit strange it's not about feeling insecure. But the people are strange here. Maybe for them we are too. We get our ass out of this area as quick as possible. And drive all the way towards south through the impressive Avenue of the Giants which is part of the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The park protects some of the oldest and biggest redwood trees age 2000 years and older.

The next couple of hours we drive down the Nappa Valley. It rains like hell and suddenly between the fog and mist we cross the Golden Gate Brigde.

 If you`re going to Saaaaaan Fraaaaaancisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.





Impressions from Floras Lake: