Big air

Yesterday afternoon me & Harriet (a potentially permanent housemate) went to check out the big air competition up on Blackcomb. I thought it would be silly not to watch any of the World Championships while they were here, and it even stopped raining for a while (although in its place the ramp was kind of shrouded in cloud). The top of the gondola was a slush pool too which had to be carefully negotiated to save turning my feet into ice blocks.

To be honest the whole thing was a bit disappointing, as it seemed kind of half assed. Plus the crowd didn't really seem that up for it (something to do with the alcohol free policy perhaps?). Some of the tricks were pretty awesome though, I took some videos which I haven't checked yet but I'll try to bang something up on the web. And I don't even know who won :) anyway it was pretty cool. Then we went and had double G&Ts at 3 in the afternoon mmmmm :D

Today I was working for the first time this week!!! It was pretty dead and, although it snowed for most of the day, it had turned to rain again by the time we had to go out and put the ski racks away :( I was going to go and check out the half pipe finals which are on tonight but as it's so wet I really can't be arsed to go and get soaked.

So, instead it's snoozing on the sofa! The Empire Strikes Back is on telly and there's a 24 pack of beer outside that is tempting us.

Oh yeah, today Si managed to dislocate his shoulder, muppet. Also his thumb which he previously thought was just bruised has apparently suffered ligament damage and has been put in a cast :D hehehe. So he properly looks like the walking wounded. Lol.

Vancouver rerevisited

I went to Vancouver today for a change of scenery, brought on by the fact that there were only 2 chairs open on each mountain today (although I'd already decided to go yesterday as the forecast was for lots more rain). It was very nice to see somewhere else other than Whistler, and reassuring to walk around a town where everyone isn't wearing a ski jacket..

My only agenda today was to see if there were any boards on offer at the boardshops on 4th avenue and check out Chinatown. The chinese supermarket was an experience :) where else can you find frozen goat meat and lower intestines? Also I went to the Sun Yat Sen gardens (or something like that) and took a bunch of pictures, which was quite cool.

After my supermarket shopping we went and had a curry in a proper tacky curry house which reminded me a lot of some places in Birmingham! The others I was with were craving for it and the one Indian restaurant in Whistler is (unsurprisingly) extortionate.

After that it was a loooooong drive home. Funny thing also, whilst we were in Van it was dry pretty much all day but once we got within 10kms of Whistler we hit the wall of water again...

Slush boarding

Forgot to mention yesterday - whilst we were having a race from the top of the Excelerator chair to the Crystal chair I stacked at top speed head first backwards, then woke up today unable to lift my head due to whiplash :) needless to say I was winning having straightlined from the top...

Today is all about the monging out in the house though.

Laters X

Jesus goddamn christ

Outside the rain is POURING down. We went up for four runs today and it was pissing down the whole time, plus the buses aren't running up to our house because the roads apart from the highway have become a giant ice rink (hence it's extremely treacherous to walk up and down our hill), so we've had to walk up and down the hill to get the bus and gotten even more soaked in the process :/

What the hell is going on? It should be dumping with snow. It's 1 degree above zero up to about 2200m, so instead of snowing as much as it should be instead it's wrecking the base down low and making the rest of it incredibly heavy... Everywhere else around has shedloads, this is not fair.

It's pretty miserable, and we're pretty peeved..

Photo update

I'm a bit late with this but I just put up some pics from xmas eve, xmas day and new year's eve, enjoy! :)

[here's a link for the lazy http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowiscold/]

More Weather

So a couple of days ago it was near -20 degrees and the next day it was 0 degrees... What's up with that! Today it's been raining on the bottom of the hill and in the village, but at the top it's been snowing all day :) the FIS world snowboard championships are in town at the moment (although I'm yet to go and see any events) so I bet they're well impressed with it raining on their race track and half pipe >:)

I took a different board up for a couple of hours today because when we got to the top there were a bunch of demo tents around, so I took up this 156cm Jeenyus wood series freestyle board (which was perhaps not the cleverest idea seeing as the snow was choppy as hell and very heavy) for a mess around. First thing today it was pretty miserable because we were sat on the chairlift, in the rain, and it was verrry wet. After an early lunch though we went a bit higher and had some reeeally fun runs. It was much easier after I got my normal board back because it's built to DESTROY the chop :p in fact my friend Mark described it the other day as, "a battleship" - hehe. Hopefully it'll continue snowing all week (latest forecast says that's likely) cuz I've got the next 3 days off as well!

Good for riding, bad for bank balance...

Ski Brotherhood

Today at work it was actually quite fun, dare I say. One of the rooms at the restaurant was closed off and I was working at a private function for 'the Ski Brotherhood', which is a group of around 450 all black skiers who are in town at the moment. They had a DJ playing and the hoochie mommas were getting jiggy. Also they had something of a penchant for sprite, and coca cola are running a promotion at the moment whereby you can win stuff with the tokens found on the underside of the bottlecaps. So every day at work we collect the caps from coke, diet coke and sprite (this is how interesting it is). Anyway we had a stash of like 150-200 caps by the end of the day and then we popped them all in the gondola on the way down (which took us nearly the whole journey) and won 19 free bottles between 6 of us :) also I managed to get 2 giant cookies, a huge chocolate-raspberry muffin and some raspberry pie at lunch on top of my soup and pizza :D so woooow interesting day huh?

coolio, literally

The past few days it's reached -20˚C here. Yesterday with windchill it was -30˚C on the hill, people were going out for one run, coming in to get a hot drink, then going home.. I heard of 3 people who got frostbite(!)

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week I was doing my instructors course (which I passed!) so we were sat around a lot of the time freezing our nuts (or anti-nuts) off.. which was nice..

Anyhoo now I hope that maybe I can get an instructor job at the weekends and perhaps stay with my current job for 3 days a week. I was half thinking of dropping some hours anyway because I'm concerned about not doing enough boarding while I'm here, plus we're due some excellent days sometime soon. Of course I can't really afford to work less but what the hey :) It's either that or try and switch jobs, but I think that maybe that would be a step sideways rather than forwards... Decisions decisions

Neeeeeeeiiiiiiuuuuuuws

They were fine at work, nooo worries. Plus psychologically it felt like I'd worked 6 days in a row even though I'd had a day off in between. Incidentally I've seen another job advertised for retail/rental/valet host, but the downside is that I have no time to go to the cabin to apply..

Today I started my CASI level 1 snowboard instructor course. I was hoping for great things as a couple of my friends said it was really useful for improving your riding, but I don't really feel like I've learned much today! Plus I stacked onto my right butt cheek on ice twice whilst trying to bust a backside 1 which didn't put me in the best mood :)

Other news:

• Jamie upstairs has broken his leg, oh dear.. Apparently he's in Vancouver right now being operated on but will be back on Friday


• Seamus is going home on Thursday :(


• I don't think I've been out clubbing for 3 weeks


• Had some traditional Korean food last night cooked by one of my workmates and spoke about "knowing people's minds" :) in fact I think that deserves a whole post


• Work is sooooo boring


• Got a core shot on my board last week (which means where you remove all the base material down to the core), which sucks, but it's only a little one so not too bad


• Am trying to find the money to buy an option makinen, woohoo :)


• Have run out of non interesting news items to bore you with

That's a wrap.

Ooops

Have to work tomorrow at 9 (so up at 7) so I don't think it's going to be a majorly crazy one tonight, we're going to my friend Paul's in White Gold for a house party but I'm guessing I'll leave pretty soon after 12..

So my nothing too crazy didn't really work out.. All was going well until I noticed a guy was DJing upstairs rather than it just being CDs one after the other, at which point I felt compelled to ask for a go. It was already 1am at that point though and I ended up playing for an hour and a half and missing my last bus home (at 2.15).. Then I attempted to leave twice but Paul (whose house the party was at) and Tim wouldn't let me go and gave me more drinks.. I Didn't end up leaving the party until 4:15 and had to bring Jennie (who lives upstairs) home with me and put her in bed cuz she was kinda sick :)

We counted down the new year with the help of the TV and Beth had brought a bottle of champagne to crack at midnight (and then proceeded to throw most of it on the floor), then we attempted a rendition of Auld Lang Syne and no-one knew the words as per. Then somehow it got really late, Lewis and some other people went to Garfs and saw Pamela Anderson, then came back to the party around 3:30, all my housemates left, we pillaged all the alcohol that we could find, had carrot fights and cornflake fights, ate chocolate gateaux......

Anyway like I said yesterday I had to be at work at 9 this morning, so I set my alarm for 7.15 and looked forward to getting up after 2 hours sleep. When I woke up it looked kinda too light to be 7 in the morning, so I looked at the clock and it was 12.15... Oh. Dear. I phoned work straight away and left a message, got dressed and ran out to get the bus (well, ran is a little overdramatic, but the thought was there). Whilst on the bus though I phoned them again and spoke to my supervisor, Stefan, and he said not to bother coming in because it wasn't very busy and be in bright and early tomorrow, so I got off at Meadow Park (sport centre) and walked back home, and hopefully I'll still have a job when I get there tomorrow :s (!)

Possibly the best new years for a few years tho :)