Four years go I was at the peak of my mountain bike career. This is kind of sad when you look at the fact that I am now 20 years old but fuck it. I was fresh off a 2 week stint of construction work and felt invincible with the $1400 dollars I now had in my savings account. It was the middle of August and I had nothing to do as I was confident that a sum of money like that could easily last me a year until the next summer. Bicycle Rockers was also at its peak at this current time and had been invited to Silver Star through Pinkbike. Silver Star had just completed a new bike park and was eager to get some coverage on it. Pinkbike had to run a story and for whatever reason they called Harookz and Jesse at BR to be their guys. I got the invite via MSN and was more than stoked to be a part of this journey.

The crew came down to Ross Measures, Tyson McCrea, Harookz, Ryder Kasprick (pre husband/baby daddy), Jesse Roberts, and myself. Driving up in the BR van, we departed early one sunny weekday. At this point I am going to stop telling this story in this manner as there is a lot of fucking boring details that simply don’t need to be told. I will basically just go on a point by point basis from here on out.

• So we get to Silverstar and are greeted by our Pinkbike liaison. He will now be referred to as “P.L.”. He is a good guy all-in-all, and he has hooked us up with this trip, so he would remain in my good books for the time being.
• We get introduced to our accommodations. They were fucking great. We had a big ass house stocked with bunks and food. We had a great deck with our own personal hot-tub. I personally felt sorry for Silver Star. They had trusted Pinkbike to provide them with a legitimate crew of people to publicize their operation and had gone above and beyond to impress us. Some of us were those things but of course it does not appear that way when they see Ryder and I jump out of the car, claim how “dope” our room was, ask why the TV isn’t a flat screen, and then promptly demand beer for when we get back. I would say I have come a long way since then, but at that time I was arrogant and was armed with a strong sense of entitlement.
• We go up the mountain and immediately my bike breaks (Thanks Cove Bikes, you guys truly fucked me over and over again in those years). By the time I get down, the guys at the rental shop have provided me with a Devinci Wilson. While I was appreciative of this, I still could not understand why any one in their right mind would give Mike Wilson his own pro-model bike. Not only was he fucking terrible at riding, but he also gave the sport up less than year later for his Mormon religion.
• That night, Silverstar treated us to some sort of alpine European dinner. This was a disaster. P.L. liked it but that was pretty much it. Jesse at the time pretty much survived on a diet of junior bacon cheeseburgers and I could see his face go white as the schnitzchel was placed in front of him. I am pretty sure Ryder didn’t eat anything other than Pez and Doritos and all I ate was hot-dogs from 7-11. We quickly choked this down and headed back to the cabin for a hot tub.
• All the older people had been drinking all dinner and being the little bitch I was I begun to complain about not being able to drink myself. The mountain had shit the bed majorly by deciding to hold off until the next night to bring us beer. Jesse decided they were too drunk to drive down to Vernon to get to a liquor store but said that I could drive and that they would come along as passengers. At this time, I had a learner’s license. So you had me driving a god damn Ford e350 down windy mountain switchbacks with a bunch of drunken mountain bikers as my passengers and I don’t even have a valid license. Thank fuck we had no run-ins with the law because I still wouldn’t have a license if we had.
• We get back to the place and drink heavily. I was like 120 pounds and drank a couple 40’s of colt 45 with Ryder in the hot tub. I believe it was at this point that P.L. realized we were not good additions to the team. I started to sing M.O.P’s “Ante up” obnoxiously and I just don’t think he could see how I was adding any value to this trip. Whatever, M.O.P is fucking awesome and if he doesn’t like it, tough shit.
• Next day was more riding, went pretty well. This time, I ate Nacho’s and not some Scandinavian dish so I was content and we all knew tonight was the big night.
• We get back to the crib and there is a cooler PACKED with booze. Unfortunately, some asshole had forgot to remind Silverstar that Mike Reid had canceled on the trip so there was even some cider drinks in there. Whatever, I figured these would come in handy as those “oh fuck, we’re out of beer but fuck it, we have some ‘mike’s hard’ left” drinks.
• The communications guy at Silverstar came to party with us and was awesome. He was shot gunning multiple brews before dinner.
• P.L. got a little worried as everyone other than him proceeded to get shit-housed. I don’t think he foresaw this. He figured everyone would just have a few brews but being the people we were, we looked at any opportunity to get drunk as something that was to be seized and exploited to the fullest.
• We are all in the hot-tub and all day Ryder had been taunting Jesse that the “infamous 2-six stallions” (rival bike gang) were better than the Bicycle Rockers. Seeing that in his drunken state Jesse was starting to let all this taunting get to him, I decided to provoke the surrey-boy mentality that undeniably lay somewhere deep down beneath his calm demeanor. This backfired. The guy went totally apeshit. He started to yell at me so I flicked hot tub water at him. He then began to choke me so I had no choice but to throw pint-size blows. I really figured I was getting the worst of it but P.L. did not see this as being the case. He was quite a bit bigger than I and decided to exercise this size advantage. Amidst my fury of blows, I felt a hand grip my bathing suit. Next thing I know, I am in the air above our deck. I land with great force on my knees in the doggy style position. Still in shock, I feel P.L.’s hand grip the back of my throat and he says “YOU HAVE TO LEARN A LITTLE SOMETHING CALLED RESPECT”. He really killed the buzz with that. No one spoke for a bit but I think Harookz played middle-man and ended up making everything all right. I admitted I had gotten slightly out of control and soon we were all drinking again. The night ended with Tyson and Harookz testing each other’s strengths with various push-up contest’s and arm wrestles. All of the drinks were downed and we felt content with the trip. Our man from Silverstar was absolutely shitfaced and could barely stand, but this failed to deter him from hopping in his car and driving home.

We left with fond memories of Silver Star the next morning. I made up with P.L. and all was forgotten.