Oi, get your hands off those trays!!!

Wow a whole week since I last wrote on here, can’t believe it. Since last Saturday I’ve worked 5 shifts at ‘the Roundhouse Lodge’ (which you can view at http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/cams/). I was in for four days in a row then, had Thursday off, worked Friday, now have 4 days off then 5 days on. Weird. I was supposed to be doing this thing called ‘fresh tracks’ which is where people can buy a special ticket on top of their day pass or season pass and they get to go up on the mountain at 7 or something, have breakfast at our place, then get out on the slopes before everyone else. This means that we have to get on the gondola at 6.15 in the morning to be at work for 6.45 then work a 10 hour shift. The upside of this is that you get 3 days off a week plus you get pretty much 40 hours, which means mo’ money (potentially mo’ problems), which would definitely be handy considering our shocking wage ($8.49ph, ~£4ph…) and my shocking rent…
As it is I think I’ve worked about 25 hours in the past week because I’ve had a few late starts. I’m going to have a word with my supervisor, Stefan (who lives next door) though, and see if he can get me on the earlies. I’ll hate getting up that early so it’s gonna be a bit of a mish and a fair amount of candle burnage I guess but whatever! For example on Sunday night my friend Alana started buying us vodka shots so we ended up dancing the whole night (was a breaks night with some DJ from Vancouver, pretty rocking, made me miss my muzik and the old ones and twos..) and got back around 2.40 then got up to go boarding early the next day before going to work. Actually that day they sent me home at 2 so I went out for another couple of runs with Matt, boarded all the way to the bottom then realised that I’d hit a rock and bent out about 4 inches of my toeside edge… Noice. Had to stick my plank in the shop for $45 worth of repairs, although to be fair they gave me a pretty good deal and it needed a service anyway after the rock abuse in the previous week or two. At the same time my feet were in absolute agony after just one run (the spines are broken on both of my boots and they’re too big for me it turns out), so I decided to go and get some new ones the day after, which set me back $365, argh!!! On that note, it’s scary how much gear you actually need to do a season rather than a week or two on holiday. For example my snowboard pants and jacket are both rated at 5000g/m2 waterproofness (or some measurement like that), but considering how often it rains here and how wet the snow is when it falls due to our proximity to the coast, you need 20000g/m2 waterproof gear to stay dry. It would have been useful to know that before I purchased a new jacket… Goddammit. Also, the seat of my pants gets wet EVERY time I go out boarding, which means that my botty gets rather cold by the end of the day :) this all amounts to more expenditure, which I can’t really afford!! New credit card methinks

So my job! Wow, it’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job which gives me more job satisfaction… JOKE! Hehe. *BUT* at the end of the day, it’s a job, which gives me money, and more importantly a lift pass!!! This is what I have to remember every time I’m thinking, “f*** this I can’t be assed”. On my second day I managed to forget to shave, which was commented on twice, then the third day I got told off for talking to my housemate Kim!!! What am I supposed to do, ignore people I know?! Anyway I decided to ignore the comments and get on with it (“tow the line” is an appropriate phrase here I believe). All I have to do really is glorified clearing, so it’s not that bad and the people I work with are mostly cool. I say mostly cuz there’s one guy, Pete, who is a “lead hand” from Manchester and is on a bit of a power trip. I reckon he’s just lapped up the corporate bullshit too much, but you can imagine the kind of English guy who thinks his job is important right?

One story of note this week to bore y’all with ;p had to queue for nearly two hours to get into Buffalo Bills on Wednesday night which was a bit shit, especially seeing as we turned up at 9.30!! Ridiculous. We sneaked a cheeky bottle of vodka into the queue though to prevent too much sobering up. The night turned out to be quality which is a relief seeing as we were seriously considering jacking it in. I only went down with Tim as it happened and he left after about an hour because the girl he’s chasing after left just before we got inside so he went off to look for her, mug. Lol. Which left me to fly solo! It was all good though cuz I saw a bunch of Canadian peeps I know, plus a girl from work, Aly (who is quite nice and I went out boarding with the day after), Gemma, Laura and Tania (Canadian girl, v nice), another couple of guys I know who live with Paul, plus some other randoms who I knew from sight so went up and started talking to! Girls mostly, an Aussie girl called Jane and an English girl called Kerri who I think I scored brownie points with hehe. It was quite funny afterwards because I’d ended up talking to these people for a while and didn’t get out of the club until about 2.30, and the last bus goes at 2.15… So I walked to the taxi rank, unearthed my coke that I’d buried in the snow after a visit to Subway earlier in the night, and shouted, “anyone going to Alpine!!”. Not sure what happened but I ended up taking a taxi with some Canadian (and maybe American) boarders, one of which was reputedly Devun Walsh’s brother and another Jeremy Jones, a Burton pro rider, but not sure how legit their claims were! They were going back to a ‘Wildcats’ house in Alpine Meadows (Wildcats is a group of riders who make snowboard videos and generally party hard and wreck stuff) and I was gonna go back there with them, which would have been quality, except I wasn’t convinced by their plan of running away from a taxi. So anyway, we got in a taxi at the taxi rank, drove 200 metres to the supermarket, got out, at which point the guys went in and bought/stole a bunch of food before leaving through the back doors and leaving the poor taxi driver out the front. Then we decided to hitch home cuz it was free, except no-one wanted to pick us up for some reason (at 3am in the ice rain/snow). After about 15 minutes the couple of guys who had fallen behind turned up in another cab which also had this French Canadian chick in it who was abbbbsolutley wasted. On the way I decided I had to get up early and was also worried about what the girl was gonna do so we jumped out at the bottom of Alpine and the guys took the cab on, probably to be run away from further down the road :p anyway I did my duty as a good lad and walked the girl back to her house, well I say walked but it was more like half carried, and then had to resist the urge to invite myself in due to the state she was in hehe. Anyway hopefully I’ll see her around cuz she was hot! Although another one who doesn’t have a phone, what’s wrong with these people! Anyway I got back at 4 then got up at 8.30 to go out boarding with Aly, who was actually much more capable than she made out, so no credit for teaching unfortunately ;) then had to go to bed as soon as I got home because we were supposed to be going out for our friend Jodie’s birthday that night… Ouch. Predictably the night was pretty average cuz I was knackered and couldn’t be arsed to talk to anyone, but we did sneak in a few games of table football in Moe Joe’s and me and Tim beat Matt Rai and Matt Game’s arses hard, boosh!

Worked again Friday, it was raining all day :( like, a lot. So when we went out boarding today the mountains were the biggest ice rink you’ve EVER seen! In fact I would go as far as to say it was the worst conditions I’ve ever attempted to board in. It was totally not fun so we did about 4 runs before packing it in. Hopefully it’ll sort out soon cuz I’m not working til Wednesday and want to make the most of it…

Right well I’m off out in a bit and this has taken me about 2 hours :s sorry if I’ve rambled on again, will try to be more concise in future, promise!

Lots of love