Fresh Air Vlog: Enjoying the Okanagan, Banana Bread, Bikes for Every Occasion

Here we go! A new vlog. I must say, happy Father's Day to everybody out there. Just coming in after the weekend, it was great. Super excited about my presents and family time. Amie let me sleep in for a little bit today, it was amazing. But, we got some really exciting stuff coming up. We have a really high-powered, high-energy couple that's gonna be on the vlog today. Emma and Dalton came to us from Saskatchewan, Emma keeps saying she's not "from" Saskatchewan, she was just living there for a while. But anyhow, they were in Saskatchewan, they "wintered" in Arizona so they could bike a lot while it was snowing. Really long winters, really cold in Saskatchewan. Very fortunate to have them as part of our family. So here is Emma and Dalton.

What's your name? Dalton. I'm Emma, we're an item. Yeah. And we moved from Saskatchewan to the Okanagan about five, six years ago. We used to come out a couple times a year for holidays and really loved it, so we always want to at some point make it back here. It got to be really expensive, always travelling to BC for trips and races and stuff, so we figured, might as well just move here. My parents lived here, so we decided to come here. Yeah, and we love it. Since we've moved out here, we've kind of soaked up everything. We're into skiing, backcountry skiing, nordic skiing, mountain biking, trail running, road riding, a bit of everything. Swimming! I like swimming. Swimming, a little bit. It's been great, we absolutely love it. Yeah, and obviously, you work here. Yes. I work at Fresh Air, Harvey street location. And my role with Fresh Air is that I help with the women's hiking program.

Yeah, so COVID has been kind of interesting. Some people, obviously it's been negative and it's been really unfortunate for a lot of people globally. In our household, it's kinda been kinda good. Because Dalton's been laid off for a while, and that means that basically, I get banana bread every second day. And a lot of cookies. Dalton's claim to fame is that he is a cookie connoisseur, so yeah. Yeah, I've never, since I've been laid off, I've never done so much baking, yard work, work around the house, in my life, in this two-month span.  So I've been kinda being as productive as I could at home and trying to pick up the slack where I was too busy before. So whether it's wrenching on bikes, baking cookies - I basically have my own, personal sonneur. He's like, my bikes are always clean, always working perfectly. I work from home, so I basically work, from home. As soon as I wake up,  I start work and I'm in my office upstairs. And then basically Dalton, is just making sure that the sprinklers are working, that there's banana bread, there are cookies, my bike is in working order. It's kinda been awesome for me, really. So, I said to Dalton, "am I the only one who thinks this COVID thing has been somewhat of a positive thing for my house?" Yeah, so definitely we've been able to spend a lot more time together. Been doing a lot around the house, so it's been fun getting out for some more bike rides and trail rides and hikes. There have been some positives to it for sure.

As you can see, the passion those guys bring to us just, I mean, they contradict. You know, one's short, one's tall. One talks one listens. But very knowledgeable, very passionate. They became great friends of everybody in the store, our family. They've kind of immersed themselves in everything that the Okanagan haves. You know, this year they didn't even go to Arizona. They decided to ski. I think Dalton was, I think he missed the sunshine a little bit. He would never really admit this, but I think the guy wakes up at like four in the morning, rides a trainer for three hours before he comes into work. He definitely puts the miles on when the summer comes out, he's ready to go. He's full-bore. But, they're very passionate about what they do. That passion, excitement kind of, I guess, filters through all the staff. We all get super, super eager when they're in. So now that we've met Dalton and Emma, and heard their stories, here is their gear.

Emma: Yeah, so I have a couple of bikes that I really, really enjoy riding. Obviously I do a lot of road riding. Used to race road and do triathlon back in the day. And then when I moved to BC, I actually started to learn to mountain bike five years ago. But my all-time favourite, which is my new bike that I got, is a Fuel EX. And it's 140 mil travel in the front, 130 in back. It is an awesome bike to, obviously climb, but it also can handle the downhills. And then my road bike, there are days where I just want to feel the speed. And mountain biking is hard, climbing there's a lot of climbs here. It's very demanding and very manual. So, when I just want to have an easier day I ride with my road bike.

I ride an Armada, which is an awesome bike. I really love the colour of it, it's bright red and I like red. That's my fun bike, super light and snappy and it's very responsive, so when I put the power down it just wants to go. So I feel really good when I climb and it's very very good for descending. It handles descents really well. And that is my really fun road bike and recovery days or when I want to just put more miles into the body without necessarily feeling beat up from mountain biking.

Dalton: I'll tell you a little bit about my fleet of bikes that I ride here. Since moving here from Saskatchewan, we didn't really have any mountain biking in Saskatchewan worth mountain biking for so, I bought myself a Specialized Epic Evo, which is super fun. It's 120 mil front, 100 rear, so it climbs. It's super lightweight. It climbs really well. The stem is pretty good too. For most of the riding I like to do in the Okanagan, it suits my purposes. I don't do big jumps and I don't go flying down, way up at SliverStar, or the lifts and that. So it's a great all-mountain bike. It can climb fast, extend well, nice and snappy and responsive.

The next bike I have is a Trek Armada SLR and it's a super lightweight road bike, great for climbing, descends really well. Super comfortable, really absorbs a lot of the chatter in the road. So I can go for like, two, three, four-hour rides and it's super comfortable. I can get off that bike and it's great.

As you can see, they've got bikes for every occasion. They're not really racing as much as they used to, they're definitely getting out and enjoying exploring everywhere throughout the Okanagan, some vacations around. I think they're still hoping to get back to Arizona, enjoy the winter sun.

So, I know we mentioned this on vlog before, it's father's day, got to sleep in. It was definitely overshadowed, Father's Day was actually Jack's birthday. A while ago we bought him a new mountain bike, he's growing like a weed, so we got him a pretty cool bike. Him and his grandpa enjoy going up to Big White and SilverStar and riding downhill trails, just riding around Kelowna. So he got an early birthday present. It was kind of like the two months of birthday for Jack. But he got some pretty new gear as well, he's super excited, he's eager to get out. It's amazing to see fire in his eye. All he wants to do is ride his bike, doesn't matter who it is, where he's going.

Alright, that's a wrap! Again, thank you. Fathers, hope you had a great day. Everybody else, enjoy the sunshine, it's coming. Summer holidays, I guess school's gonna be out around now. But everybody, see you out on the trails, enjoy the Fresh Air. 

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