Snow is cold

Feck it.

2005-06-07T02:17:00.000-07:00

*{`{#())#%}........

ok, presenting snowiscold.com !!!

Dusted.

new link, again

2005-06-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

hmmm the previous address I was using doesn't seem to be working too well right now so I've added a couple of mirrors.

Please use http://snowiscold.co.nr for the primary address, and if that's not working please use the current one or snowiscold.tk.

Hopefully there won't be any more problems :/

A fresh start

2005-05-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

I've decided to move my blog to my own hosting as whilst blogger provides a great service, I'm getting irritated by its limitations and well, got bored with it frankly.

So, I've moved to a new site - http://snowiscold.iceglow.com - please update your bookmarks!! (Yeah right)

Also I'd like to thank Omar for having the time to scout out other systems and save time on my searching (thanks mate ;))

PS my photos are still at flickr for the time being and probably will remain there, with new ones going up on the new site when I get the time to sort that out!

The Thursday before

2005-05-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

Actually I forgot to mention that on Thursday after not going boarding I got a call from Beth and we arranged to have a barbeque at our house. She’d bumped into some of the chefs from Sushi Village down at lost lake and they’d offered her the remainder of their salmon, which was a lot!! All the cuts that they can’t use for sushi, god knows how much they had when they started but we had a big bag of salmon parts for ourselves. The only problem was that we didn’t have a bbq, but, as they sell disposables in England we thought they would surely have some in one of the supermarkets… wrong. Instead the closest alternative was a ‘portable’ bbq, which we purchased along with some coals (and no firelighters because Beth said we didn’t need them). So later that evening, at around 8.45, three quarters of the way through that night’s episode of the OC, which my housemates insisted on watching, I took the bbq out of the box only to discover that it actually required assembling before you could use it. I mean, it required a screwdriver and everything, hardly the throwaway things you can buy in Tescos.. I think by the time I’d assembled it it was maybe 9.30, at which point Si and Beth tried to light the fire. Half an hour later there was still no fire, so a true man of the woods, Matt, stepped up and rebuilt the fire from scratch. I took care of the marinades (of course), and at maybe 10.30 or 10.45 we started eating dinner! The food was really really good (as was the beer), but made a lot of mess in our house – that’s hardly surprising though is it?
That night and the following one Dave and Lewis tried to topple my record time of 2 minutes 21 seconds for the metro city jam on SSX3, but to no avail!!! The record stands, muahaha.
Actually on the next night we had a meeting with our landlord as well to discuss our damage deposits. The guy is the most anal, tight fisted bastard I’ve ever met. In fact he enraged us when we went into his house (which was absolutely beautiful) because he said he was waiting for a big bag of money to fall on him so that he could renovate the place. We thought, “yeah our fucking damage deposits that you’re gonna screw us out of you absolute [expletive deleted :)].” Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I don’t think we’re going to get anything back out of it because maybe if he gave us some he couldn’t finance his 6 months a year’s worth of windsurfing trips. That would be a real shame wouldn’t it? Well, that reasoning coupled with the fact that we left the house in a bit of a state despite our best efforts to clean everything the night before our last day…

Yikes

2005-05-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

Turns out I didn't get to post later, so I guess that means I broke my promise :s oh well I didn't get any complaint mail so I guess my updating isn't that important to anyone *sob* :)

After that early night.. well it's all kind of blended into one.. Like I said the day after I had to get up at 6.30 to be at work for 8.15 (after my 45 minute commute to work it makes sense - I'm not a girl at getting ready promise). It was the first Saturday that only one mountain had been open and it was a gorgeous sunny day, which meant that for one we had loads of people because of the reduced terrain, and also that the people that were there hung around for ages on the patio drinking beer and sunning themselves, damn them. This 'problem' was compounded by the fact that ski patrol (the people who perform a mountain sweep to make sure everyone's down ok, who usually come and kick everyone out just before the last lift download) didn't show up that day so the patio didn't get cleared until maybe 4.30 or 5, and most of the staff buggered off at 4.30, which left about 4 of us to close up the entire place. I think I actually got to the village at 5.55 that day, having been out of the house at 7.58 that morning, making for a ridiculously long working day by roundhouse standards.
After that chore I phoned my buddy Pete when we got to the bottom to see if he was still around drinking cuz I'd seen him finishing up around 4.30. I went to meet him and a few other people in Crystal Lounge - another girl who had been working at the hut at the top of harmony with Pete, Katie, a cock sure of himself but generally nice guy Liam (whose board I stole on my way out) and a lodge host (volunteer people who cruise round the roundhouse but really don't contribute anything, for example the majority of their responsibility is asking people whether they'd like a tissue) called Matt. Pete let on that he’d picked up $100 worth of tips that day whilst being paid to stand out in the sun, so I thought it was only fair that he bought the first jug after the tribulations I’d been through. After a couple there we moved on to Cinnamon bear because one of the food servers, Ads, another Aussie who’s 6’5” and always wearing a huge grin, was leaving Whistler the next day. Turns out there were loads of people from work there so much more drinking and some nice games of pool. Somewhere along the way all the people from work disappeared and were replaced by Si, Lave, Mark and Lewis (Mark was on my course at uni and also in the ski club, as was Lave). When it got to around 10 we decided to move elsewhere, but I decided first that eating is cheating, but then realised I was definitely in need of some dinner having had my break that day at 10a.m. and then getting absolutely shitfaced. We passed by Zog’s where Beth was working, so I proceeded to ask very bluntly for a hotdog and fries, which I refused to pay for. Apparently she said to me, “Well I can give you some fries”, to which I replied, “and then get me a hotdog”, but I have to take Si’s word for it because he reminded me of it the next morning! Anyway she later told me she was worried about what a state I was in so decided to give me a hotdog as well. I then managed to totally miss my food with the ketchup pump, which she had to come out and clean up, and then after I’d finished attacked her with a squeezy bottle full of either oil or washing up liquid. Nice. (I did apologize profusely the next day, but I think she was cool with it all! Nice girl.)
For some stupid reason we wanted to carry on drinking so we went back to Crystal Lounge but by that point I was pretty much done for the evening. I saw Jess in there though who also seemed similarly drunk so I undid her halterneck top to see if it would fall off. It didn’t so then I tried to physically remove it but also no dice. Someone thrust a couple more beers into my hand which I dutifully saw off before stumbling to the bus stop having not contributed any money to the drinks tab. I saw Ali on the way to the bus stop coming down the steps but all I said to her was “have to get bus”. In fact I’m amazed I didn’t pass out on the bus and end up miles away from home but it was all good. Even more of a miracle was the fact that I got up the next day and felt fine, much to the surprise of my fellow drinking companions. Fortunately I’d managed to swap shifts with another guy Nathan else getting up at 6.30 again might have been a bit of a painful experience..

Anyway have to call it a night, will document more soon now that I’m settled in a new place ;o hehe. Keep the *ahem* emails coming, by the way Gurpal, Liverpool are so going down in the Eurocup :p peace. X

Timetable, eh.

2005-04-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

So the bus left 2 minutes early and I didn't get there on time, so celebrations on hold til tomorrow :) maybe for the best cuz I have to get up at 6.30 tomorrow for work.. Damn these early mornings... So off to bed :o more l8z, promise yo.

Losing touch

2005-04-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

Aaaargh it's hard to keep up with all that's been going on...

Last I posted about the party last Saturday night? Well that was crazy - awesome night!! Josh Wink was a bit disappointing and think missed the other guys I wanted to see but everyone was so up for it, it was wicked. There was a mental queue to get in but ran straight to the front with my friend Pete and got in about 12.15 after necking about 5 cans each and 3/4l vodka between us. Got home at 5.45 after taking a taxi with some randoms cuz all my friends/housemates were going to afterparties. 3 hours sleep and off to work. 6 people phoned in sick that day, lightweights. The day went so quick too because I was still wasted from the night before lol.

This week went up and hiked piccolo and flute bowls for the first time. Both are awesome but it's a long walk considering how long it takes to come down!! It was so nice just to be out in the beautiful sunshine though so it was worth it, except I didn't put any suncream on on Monday and got chronically sunburnt, the worst I've ever burnt my face. It was absolute agony. To try and remedy it applied cucumber straight from the fridge and much moisturiser/aloe vera aftersun. It seems to have helped somewhat but today at work I looked like a reptile because all the burnt skin is peeling off, i.e. my whole face. Will try to post a pic for you to laugh at tomorrow.

Yuki left for Vancouver on Weds, we were supposed to go see a bunch of houses (3) but all fell through, bah. We hired a car cuz she had so much stuff, it was a Chevy Malibu MAXX, I think the maxx part was all important, still it was also a piece of trash like the sunfire we hired before :) got back home around 1.15, could barely keep my eyes open!! She's looking for houses this week cuz they go so quickly once they're advertised, so maybe we'll have some success this week.

Forgot to mention that Blackcomb closed last Sunday, very sad as I've mostly been riding that mountain for the month previous. It's also gotten very warm the last few days, I think it reached 25 degrees in the village today!! This means the snow is disappearing fast too, we had to walk out quite a way at the bottom on Tuesday and the run down to the mid station is getting to the same state.

We had a BBQ last night, except we didn't start cooking til about 10 because the BBQ had to be assembled first!!! Also we screwed up making the fire the first time so had to start over :) we got lucky tho cuz Beth scored a bunch of free salmon from some guys' BBQ earlier in the day at lost lake, made it a bit cheaper, and the food was delish, prepared by yours truly of course :)

Am feeling sad about leaving, am really going to miss here I feel, even though I've bitched about the season/job/etc. I guess it's the same anywhere though, things are always better with hindsight.. Anyway have made excuses for celebrating every night while I'm still here, which is where I'm off to now!!

Will try to write something meaningful soon, sorry if this is disjointed.

Spread the love X

Smirnoff experience

2005-04-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'm going to a beeeg party tonight under the banner of "Smirnoff experience" as part of the Telus world ski & snowboard festival that's been in town the past week (check out whistler2005.com). It's been pretty cool cuz they've been giving out lots of freebies in the village - I've bagged a couple of free breakfasts, some hot chocolate and a couple of smirnoff beverages so far..
Anyway, there's a good lineup including Josh Wink, Ali B and Hipp-E plus a couple others I hadn't heard of... I think I could be the only person there not drugged up but hey. The only downside is I have to work at 11 tomorrow and the party goes on 'til 5.

Couple other things, I saw Justin Timberlake at work today, not that I'm that bothered, and also he's been following Lewis & Matt around a bit on the hill...apparently ;) also JF Pelchat - a pro boarder who's in a couple of our DVDs.

Oh yeah and I handed my notice in last Sunday - there's light at the end of the tunnel! Last shift is on next Sunday. Still not found a house yet but have heard back from a few places. Fingers crossed.

More later!

Avalanche blasting

2005-04-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

Today whilst we were putting the ski racks away after work (oh how I'll miss doing that) they were blowing snow off the peak with explosives! It was quite cool to watch, there were these guys hovering in a helicopter then they detonated a series of bombs in a line across the mountain, causing a load of small avalanches. After they'd finished blowing up the first lot, a guy stood on top of a huge windlip and blew off a chunk of snow underneath him, nutter.

Anyway, thought I'd share that :)

Two near misses?

2005-04-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

Well the snow has continued to fall here although it's actually gotten a bit warmer the past couple days so it's only been falling higher up (potentially ominous although the forecast predicts more snow over the weekend). Monday and Tuesday were absolutely amazing powder days, on Monday I went to Whistler and rode Whistler bowl off the ridge line through some trees which was beautiful, then we went to West bowl and got stuck above a cliff band because the visibility was really bad, then managed to skirt round and pick a line through some big rocks :) after that we were too late to catch the last peak chair so we hiked to the very far side of Franz's meadow and rode through a clearing in the trees ending up by the bridge on highway 86.
Tuesday we hit Blackcomb and managed to get a bunch of fresh lines because the high winds (40mph at the top) and bad visibility must have put most people off. The glacier was in the best condition it's been in all season, although on the first run I managed to stay too far left and again ended up above some cliffs :) had to hike back up a little way that time which was a little scary because I could feel the snow was only about 10cms thick and there was sheet ice underneath. Could have been problematic if it had broken away especially as we'd noticed a sign at the top which said avalanche hazard :o
The first run down was so good we went back and did the same again! That was even better because we headed over to the far side where no-one had been and hammered it down over these powder rollers and slashing out huuuuge turns. The snow on that run is probably the best I've had, although the fact you couldn't see anything means that the hiking run was probably just better.
In the afternoon we went to do spanky's ladder because we thought no-one would have been there yet either. As we got to the top ski patrol arrived and said they were closing the high alpine off but we could still go down if we were quick. We set off towards sapphire bowl where there was a rope across the entrance saying "entrance to sapphire closed - extremely icy", or something like that, but we decided to go there anyway because we'd done it before and thought it would be more dangerous to try and locate the other entrance. A ski patrol guy came down after us though and said, "didn't you see the sign?" but we told him we'd already done that run so he said, "well, as long as you know what you're getting yourselves into". I was kind of worried though because along with me & Tim there were Yuki and another guy Masa who I wasn't sure would enjoy it too much. In fact if I had been leading then I would have probably made everyone walk back out, but the ski patroller said he would sweep after us and it was probably better to go down than try and get back up and go a different way.
Anyway, me & Tim had negotiated the entrance ok, and I actually believed it was in better condition than the previous time we'd been down there, when I heard an exclamation from above and turned round to see Masa sliding headfirst backwards down this ice track which was the traverse in (it's about 1.5m wide and with a maybe 10 degree camber). There was no way he was going to stop and I knew that on the corner of the entrance there was a cliff maybe 20 feet high and plenty of steep rocks off to the side if you slip down. Fortunately I'd stopped just before the corner and was well anchored to the run, so as he came I watched his speed (because I knew that if he was going too fast he could knock us both off) and as he came past me I grabbed him under the shoulder. Masa spun round and his edge stuck and he stopped right at the edge of the traverse...
The ski patrol guy was less than impressed, I'm guessing because he shouted "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??! How the hell do you get around like that?!?" when Masa slipped, but he put a brave face on it once we were safely into the bowl and finished with, "Have fun guys", lol. I was pretty shit up though cuz I could envisage Masa having been in some trouble if I hadn't been able to stop him. Anyway, we all got down safe enough but I think after that Masa was done for the day! I actually hugged him at the bottom and said, "shit man, you scared me". We felt obliged to go for a beer afterwards.

On Wednesday the snow was nowhere near as good as the previous two days because even though it had snowed 16cms overnight it had gotten warm in the morning so the snow was extremely wet and heavy which made everything very hard work. The high alpine was closed all day so we spent the whole day (or half day rather cuz I only made it up at 12 again) exploring tree runs off of the crystal chair. On our first run of the afternoon we'd found a sweet line to the far right of the crystal runs which eventually brings you out on the traverse back from the glacier. On the way down me & Paul had found a maybe 60ft cliff that needed riding around, but we thought everyone else was in front of us so there was no worry of anyone else coming past that way. Actually just before that I'd eaten it hard because of not holding my edge off a jump turn, which was quite painful, although I'd nailed a couple of nice drops before that :)
Anyway, we carried on down and the run opened up into a big clearing. When we got there all but one were already there, but the one unaccounted for - Tim's girlfriend Shannon - had come down to the left of where me & Paul stopped and was stuck on top of a 20ft cliff with a frozen waterfall about halfway down, which made the total drop maybe 30ft high. She was asking us if it was possible to come down because there was a chute to one side, but it looked pretty sketchy so we told her to go back up. Shannon took off her skis, went to step up and lost her footing. Everyone (including the 8 or so Japanese tourists who had followed us or someone else down there) fell silent as we watched her fall sideways, bounce off something then cartwheel down to a stop, skis and everything in pursuit. Time stood still for a moment but then we heard a "woohoo" from the other side of the brow she'd come to rest on then she stood up with arms raised to everyone's applause. I can't believe she didn't hurt anything other than bruising her behind, I've got a picture of what she fell off that I'll try to post at some point.
The rest of the day we hit another tree run which was pretty steep and hard work, then we did a big traverse off of jersey cream to an area which you usually get to by the glacier express chair. We managed to get a few fresh turns in but further down was really steep and heavy again so by the time we got to the bottom my legs were in absolute agony, but Tim made us ride to the bottom of the hill through the slush so I had to collapse upon reaching the end!

So that's my recent news, oh yeah I bumped into Matt Wood in the village a couple of days ago - one of my friends from school. I'm actually surprised it's taken this long before I bumped into someone I already knew!

And I just got my hair cut at a barber shop where instead of putting a towel round your neck they tie a piece of tissue, no expense spared.

Hikes, extreme and tree wells

2005-04-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

Well it seems that the end of March/start of April is pretending to be January. We had another 43cms last night, have had flurries throughout the week and it’s been snowing heavily this afternoon. Hopefully it’s going to continue until at least Monday because that’s when I have my next day off! Actually it’s not so bad because most of the top lifts weren’t open today because of either the high winds or avalanche danger I guess… It’s funny though because it seems that every time we have a big dump of snow I have to work the next day!!! The ride up was quite interesting this morning actually because the village gondola wasn’t working so I had to ride the fitzsimmons chair wearing my normal clothes :s
Ok so to the point of my title…for my past few days riding there’s been fresh snow each time. I explained in my previous post how we hiked on blackcomb glacier for a sweet run, well this Wednesday me and Tim continued the team extreme antics on ‘Spanky’s ladder’, which is an off-piste run that requires a short hike from the top of the glacier express chair. It’s a double black diamond but there’s only a short bit that’s really hairy on the changeover from Spanky’s into one of the bowls on that side of the glacier. On this part we first ended up at a sheer drop and then, having backed out on that, we came to a traverse that was pretty steep and icy. On this part I lost my edge and slid down a little way into a rock field but fortunately I managed to dig it in before sliding too far :)
It wasn’t as bad as it sounds because I could easily pick out a line through the rocks, just it was too steep and slippery to climb back up!!! I think after that part we came down through Sapphire bowl then traversed across the mountain til we hit the glacier road which runs out back to civilization. The whole run was pretty untouched, very nice snow and pretty steep! It was a really cool route though, I cartwheeled only once, and there were some nice deeps and chutes to carve some lines through.
The next day I made it out for a 9 o’clock start, which is unprecedented for me, but we’d agreed that whoever was late had to buy a pitcher of beer so I figure that must have been an incentive. Plus we were a party of 9!! We headed up blackcomb again and went straight to the glacier for the first run. Unfortunately I think the wind had been blowing strongly across it because it was very ridged and there were big icy patches in some places that I figured could only have been caused by high winds. What should have been a really nice run was actually pretty hard work for most of the way down!! Oh well. After that we headed back up the glacier chair then cut across to the top of the crystal chair (which is to be avoided as it’s painfully slow) and did another bit of off-piste called ‘fraggle rock’. To get here was pretty easy and it only requires a short hike again, you just walk up this big mound that you can see when you start out and then head down the other side of it through a bunch of trees down a fairly steep pitch and end up back on the main routes. The guy who showed us the way lead us over a couple of small drops, one of which psyched me out a little bit cuz it looked like there wasn’t going to be enough run out but in the end I nailed it :P but he took a bigger one a bit further down that looked a bit dodgy to me but he turned out ok so that was cool.
After lunch we went over to 7th heaven to see how that was. We managed to separate into a group of 3 (including me, pete and pete’s mate from uni) and a group of 6 because I stopped to put on a jumper in a shelter at the top because it was f***ing freezing, but they got cold waiting and then pete didn’t realize which way they’d gone (although apparently they waited for us for ages further down..), so we ended up going our separate ways at this point. 7th heaven was all crusty for some reason, presumably wind again, so after one tree run over frozen crust we decided to head back over to crystal and do some more runs down there. Whilst exploring we found this unmarked black run that headed down through the trees off one of the green runs taking you back to the lifts, so we hit that a few times which was wicked fun. The second time we were heading down to the top of it off the crystal chair though we cut off to the left of the piste and somehow I missed a turn and ended up in a big tree well with the ground level around my chest.. it was incredibly difficult to climb out because every time you try to push up the snow just falls away, much like I’d imagine quicksand to be like. I was told before during my orientation that tree wells are the biggest killer in whistler, but I’m not a believer in heading out of bounds on your own anyway and I carry a whistle in case of emergency!! Anyway, I called down to the other guys that I would be down in a minute and eventually managed to clamber out. About 5 metres further along though my board decided not to agree with me about which direction we were going in and I fell into another bastard tree well :) this one wasn’t as deep but it was equally hard work to climb out of because this time I was facing the tree.. I had to scrape all the snow off the top of my board with my hands because it was sooo heavy to lift up!!! All was good though and I eventually emerged and collapsed to the amusement of my companions.
So this concludes my latest installment! Hopefully it’ll continue this way until I’m set to leave, just don’t know why it’s chosen to do this right at the end but what the hey. We’ve waited long enough..

Speak soon amigos :)

johan rippey X

Sick, sick, sick powder day

2005-03-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

Oh my god we just had the most amazing day's riding, and now I'm soooo exhausted. This morning I managed to get out at 9, which is an accomplishment, and we went hiking into the backcountry. In the morning we went up to blackcomb glacier, took the t-bar to the top, walked up onto the glacier and along the ridge, traversed straight right across to the far side and then walked straight uphill to the far side of blackcomb peak. From that hike you can either loop round to the left and end up coming back down onto blackcomb glacier or go the way that we did and end up on the far side of lakeside bowl and eventually come back out at the seventh heaven chair.
The hike was absolutely killer, like walking up a blue run except in deep snow, althought fortunately the previous hikers' footprints had made it somewhat easier than it would have been if we were the first people up there. We had to take a few breaks even though it was only a 30 minute or so walk. It was quite a feeling of satisfaction when we got to the top though! Plus the views from the top were amazing, it was wicked to see everything from a different angle to how you usually see it from the pistes! Check the photos again, I took a bunch and some are quite impressive.
Anyway, the first run down we traversed quite a long way along the far side of the bowl then dropped into the trees quite a way over. The powder in the trees was beautiful, although at the top it had gone slightly crusty. I watched Nicolas, our French tour guide for the day, stack it into a tree and get buried up to the shoulders too, which was funny. Fortunately we all managed to make it back to the piste ok, although we were a bit worried about Pete, who managed to go down past the "way out" signs, which to be fair were tiny and inconspicuous, then hiked maybe 100m across the mountain to get back to the bottom of the piste!! After that ordeal everyone was ready for some lunch but we had only 10 minutes to get from the top of 7th heaven to the glacier creek restaurant, so we hammered it straight down there, which froze our faces!
After a baked potato for lunch we headed back to the glacier and did the same hike again... We lost Nobuko though because she fell off the t-bar three times, much to my amusement - the third time I saw her and another guy going ass over tit down the bank to the right of the lift line. In the afternoon the sun had come out and it was incredibly hot walking up that hill carrying all our stuff. Again it was totally worth it though, the second run down through the bowl was absolutely incredible - we took a line further to the right and were carving out huge sweeping turns through untouched snow. On the way down through the trees I took a rather extreme line though which was pretty, er, difficult :) fortunately me & Tim managed to find our way back to civilization just in time.
After we'd done that run me & Tim were thinking of going over to Whistler and hiking flute bowl but our legs said, "absolutely not", so instead we went for one more run top to bottom via crystal chair and jersey cream and headed to the longhorn for a couple of pitchers and some mulled wine :) awwwwwwwwwwwwesome day!!! Hopefully it's going to snow again tonight but there's a chance the freezing level could be at 3000m, which could be slightly problematic!!

Bungeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

2005-03-22T15:12:00.000-08:00

This Monday I did a bungy jump!! It had to be done because we had the opportunity to go for only $20 (I think normally it's $45 or $50), because we had some money to spend on an event for all the bussing staff at work. I think there was about 30 people who went all in.
It was actually scarier than I was expecting, although I wasn't scared before I jumped, as obviously I'm an adrenaline junkie ;) because about half way down the jump I started thinking, "shit I'm not stopping and I'm falling a long way"! I think everyone felt the same about it to be honest. One girl Nobuko had to be pushed off the platform, which was pretty funny, prompting someone to shout, "sorry, no refunds", lol.
There's a video of me doing the jump which Yuki took on her video camera too, which is absolutely comedy cuz it looks like I'm a puppet on a string, I'll try and stick a link up for it if I get it from her!
Unfortunately the riding that day wasn't as great as I was hoping because my option board seems to be too stiff for me and I was having trouble fighting with it that day which crippled my feet :/ but I'm going to fiddle with my setup and see if that improves the situation. Also we had to get off the mountain early cuz we had to go get the bus to the bungy place at 4.30!

Birthday and last week’s events

2005-03-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

Just a few notes about what’s been going on..
Last week I went down to Vancouver with Yukiko and we stayed in the Pan Pacific hotel (vancouver.panpacific.com) which was a very nice place!. We got upgraded to a harbour view room too, I got some pix of the view that I’ll stick on the net soon. While we were in Van we spent most of the time shopping (for my birthday pressie :o) which I felt kinda bad about, especially cuz I’m so picky.. Still, we managed to find a t-shirt and a pair of skate shoes eventually (mwah). I was actually quite shocked because she said if she was working in a proper job she would spend like £250 on someone for their birthday, which is unprecedented to me being the pauper and skinflint that I am :)
We went to a thai restaurant called ‘Simply Thai’ for dinner that night (you can see it at www.simplythairestaurant.com) which was good but still not as good as the Siam Smile in Cheltenham! Also we were given bad directions by the bus driver so we were about 30 or 40 minutes late and walked a long way in the wrong direction… muppet.
So that was Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday I didn’t really do anything because the working Sunday then walking round for two days had tired me out cuz I guess I was still getting over being ill. Then on Thursday I was supposed to go on an all mountain pub crawl cuz it was another of my friend’s birthdays (Bobby Dazzler) on the same day, but I ended up getting out of bed at 2pm then going for a late lunch so I only made it out for 6 o’clock! We ended up going to Merlins then Crystal Lounge then Tommy Africas, although some of the contingent went to Moe Joe’s and I think we were being separatist, but it was a really good night, I broke out the pink wig again and a bunch of the guys were in one piece ski suits, check the pics out :)
On Friday, or maybe Thursday night, it actually started dumping snow. Then it continued to snow until Sunday night!! I think we had about 75cms which has made this week a much more inviting prospect :)
On Sunday night I went out again for my birthday, because some people had complained about my lack of informing everyone (mainly because I couldn’t be arsed to phone loads of people on Wednesday), so yeah I said we’d go out again. Unfortunately because it coincided with the snowfall, which has been such a rarity, no-one was really up for going out on a massive bender so it ended up just being some drinks at the longhorn, which has its locals night on a Sunday. So that was the extent of my birthday celebrations this year! Although I did get a birthday cake this Wednesday (a week later!).

Small compensation

2005-03-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

One of the good things about being here is that you get views like this one - this was taken over Alta Lake as we made our way to Rainbow Park on Thursday. By the way, yes there should be snow on the trees :)

The trip to Rainbow Park was scary because the light was just fading and we were the only people walking towards it! Everyone else was going the other way, and the bears are waking up again...

Future

2005-03-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Recently I've started thinking about where I'm going after here, most of my plans depend on finances.. not good news.
At the moment people seem to be leaving here in droves. Last Friday Saturday Sunday I mentioned there were 3 leaving parties in succession, 2 people from work and my housemate, Kim. So far I don't think anyone's left this week, but it does seem like there's always a leaving party going on.

I'm almost certain that I'm going to go down to Vancouver after finishing here (our lease expires on the 27th April), but it depends on me finding a job quickly as I don't have money to go out partying at the moment! I'm not sure if I'm going to go down with anyone either, but if I do go down on my own then it'll be hassle trying to find a house..

Of course my original plan was to go from here to Vancouver then Toronto then go travelling to some places in the states, but that was when I thought I had a grand stashed away for that which has long since been cut into, baaaaaaah.

I'll keep things posted, anyway.

Worst season ever.

2005-03-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

Well I think it's become official that this is is Whistler's worst ever season. That is - since the resort opening at the start of the 70s. I can't help but feel a little bitter that it's been like this the year I came, but I guess everyone else who's here is in the same boat, or state of discontent. I actually believe that I have a curse on the snow, everywhere I've been in the past 5 years has been the same, yet I refuse to attribute the lack of snow to the phenomenon that is global warming like many others are willing to do because other places are getting loads of snow. Ironically, one of the reasons I came here is because of the recent unreliability of snow in the Alps... Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha...

Anyway we're still trying to make the best of it - my housemates informed me that it was actually pretty fun yesterday in the Spring conditions (that is, slush everywhere), but to me that's not really ideal, plus I expect you can't ski to the bottom any more because it was raining top to bottom the past couple of days. I can't check the riding out myself at the moment either because I've been ill for the past week :( I've spent nearly all this past week sitting around the house with the occasional trip into the village, I'm going to go back to the doctor's today in fact because I'm still running a temperature.. I had to phone in sick to work last week (oh no!) which means I am actually only going to get paid for one day's work this fortnight :)

On that note, on the Sunday morning when I rang in my supervisor actually questioned whether I was ill or not because the previous night I'd had to go and see my friend who was leaving for Korea the next day. One of the mindless lead hands was there too and he had obviously gone back to him the next day and said I'd seemed fine, when in fact I'd rung the guy who was leaving and said I wasn't going to make it because I was sick, but he pleaded with me to come so against my better judgement I decided to drop by for an hour.. I was pretty angry about the whole thing and was going to phone the manager to make a complaint but I thought there would be no way they'd do anything about it so didn't bother >:( the Roundhouse is a joke. If I were to do another season I'd definitely want to save up beforehand so I didn't have to work. I mean it's novel working on the mountain and you have beautiful views out of the window that you couldn't get nearly anywhere else etc etc, but when you have such muppets in charge and get paid such a mockery of a wage it really doesn't seem worthwhile. At the same time I was thinking that maybe if the snow was good then the atmosphere both at work and in the village in general would be that much better that it would all be ok, but it's not, so it's not, if you know what I mean :) oh well. It's still nice to be surrounded by the mountains and the weather has been very nice and mild recently ;) in fact so much so that I'm expecting to run into a bear sometime soon!

Yeeeeoooowwwww

2005-03-04T12:32:00.000-08:00

Arghhhhh haven't updated for ages again

Most significant news is that my family came out to visit last week, they stayed in a skiworld chalet (very authentic) down in Brio - just the other side of the village centre to me. Unfortunately they had all their meals provided for them at the chalet as I was hoping to be treated to a week of fine dining :) however on my Dad's birthday on the 22nd we went to a restaurant called Araxi, which is supposed to be the best restaurant in Whistler, and it was sooooooo gooooooooooooooooooooooood.... It's just a shame the bill was almost equivalent to two weeks' worth of paycheque, so I don't think I'll be going back in a hurry!! Not that I had to pay of course.. On the next day I took my Mum & sis down to Vancouver for a whirlwind tour, we hired a car which I got to drive, yayurh. It was f**king weird to be driving on the right hand side of the road!!! Plus the road from Whistler to Vancouver doesn't have cats eyes at the edge of the road, so it was pretty difficult to see where we were going when there was oncoming traffic in the dark on the way home, not the most fun in the world. Also the car was an American piece of trash - a Pontiac sunfire - avoid. Still, it was great fun to drive again after so long!! I miss my civic :(
On the last day I took my Dad & sis out for a whole mountain exploration, we covered so much ground!! I think everyone was absolutely shattered at the end of the day, well maybe except for this marine guy in the same chalet who came too :)

I felt a bit bad for my folks because the snow situation wasn't great (tired of hearing that yet?) but at least it was nice and sunny all week and the snow condition actually improved throughout the week, paradoxically. It actually snowed a little bit this week as you may have gathered from my previous post but that only amounted to about 10cm and now it's set to get warmer again for the immediate future.. We're thinking that maybe the snow won't even last til the end of the season (due April 17th) unless it dumps again soon. As you can imagine I'm a bit bitter that it's turned out like this the one year that I chose to come, but what the hey we can but make the best of it. On Tuesday & Wednesday this week we had a couple of pretty good powder days, Tuesday we hit Blackcomb glacier with a posse of about 10 people from work, we went to check out the ice caves too which were pretty impressive!! Wednesday we went in one of the bowls on Whistler that I hadn't been in before so that was cool to check out a new place, although it was a bit disconcerting the number of 'cliff' signs that there were dotted about the place :)

Related to boarding - I bought 2 new snowboards!!! >:) And no, I'm not rolling in it, in fact I am very poor! One of them is an Option Makinen 163.5, which is super stiff, kinda like my old board except more directional and with a deeper sidecut for better transition. I have only ridden it twice on ice though so hasn't been much fun so far! The other board is a Sapient PNB1 157, which is a twintip freestyle board and a bit softer. In fact I can't believe how fast you can go on it and still feel safe considering the flex of the board. The Sapient is awesome, it's so fast and fun plus it has bright pink sidewalls (which match my new bright pink goggles :D) and says kickass karaoke on it, what more could one want? First time I took it out though it tried to kill me by doing what I've since checked out to be a 25ft jump over the corner of 2 pistes, I damn near landed it as well, although the resulting stack inspired concerned onlookers to come and ask if I was ok afterwards, lol. Luckily it didn't hurt at all, in fact I hurt myself far more on Tuesday by landing on my MP3 player on hardpack whilst messing about going really slowly. Fun and games.

On the social scene I still haven't been going out that much because I keep feeling ill, but I went out a couple times when my family were here cuz my sis wanted to! We did bills on Wednesday, dropping about $130 on the bar between us I reckon and then Moe Joe's on Saturday, where Becky wussed out at 11.15 after I'd invited a bunch of people out :) Beck you missed Tim confessing his love for you on Friday night, in fact he was begging for a phone number - you shouldn't lead people on like that ;)
Also there was another sushi party on Monday just gone at Yukiko's house, we had pretty much the same crowd as last time but the food was even better and we (or should that be 'I') drunk too much sake :p don't think that did too much to help my cold.

I had some bad news yesterday because my Dad is quite ill with mumps and also I was in contact with him whilst he would have been contagious, so hopefully I won't catch it too!! I was advised to go to the doctor's though to see if I could get any booster or similar, and while I was there I was telling him about my general state of health recently and have been told to take a week course of antibiotics and take a couple days off work! So today I'm resting up again, having not been out boarding yesterday due to feeling crap too. I actually feel quite a bit better today but maybe I'll wait til Sunday to go back to work to make sure all's well. Also we're supposed to be having a leaving party tonight for my housemate Kim, who is going home on Sunday, but I haven't seen her for ages so not too sure what the score is with that!!

Next week I'm going down to Vancouver with Yuki for a couple days to have a wander round the shops and stuff, we're staying in quite a nice hotel so am defo looking forward :) also the week after that I'm hoping to go down to Mammoth in California to board on some real snow for a couple days - California is killing it this year, goddammit, so if that materialises then that'll be something else to look forward to as well!! Still, am keeping hope alive that the conditions here are going to be very good at some point before the end of the season.. It's strange that we actually *need* things to look forward to, because I didn't envisage ever having to stay motivated when living in a ski resort where you get to go skiing every day.. The morale at work is hitting rock bottom though. I think pretty much everyone has had enough of the place, which makes for some quite entertaining conversation, especially my friend Eamon who is totally hippy like fight the power/against the system :) an outburst last Sunday about how the lead hands are just tools of the Intrawest machine invoked the people concerned to take him aside and ask if he was having some kind of emotional breakdown lol.

Anyway! The onset of rambling tells me that it's time to end. Hope all who are reading are well :)

Abrasão, X

!!?

2005-03-02T02:05:00.000-08:00

Hey there's some white stuff coming out of the sky.. Does anyone know what it is?!

Stuff and things

2005-02-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't posted anything again for a while, but this time through laziness rather than lack of news :)

Two weeks ago we had a period where it was raining a lot but snowing a lot at the top of the mountain. On the Sunday night of that week it also snowed a bit from top to bottom, and they opened the top lifts again. I was pissed off then because I was scheduled to have Monday to Thursday off that week but on Sunday afternoon they changed it so that I was in on Monday and Tuesday, so I missed the fresh snow again.. dammit.

Then the next Thursday it dumped 30cms overnight. They had only forecast something like 5cms so since then I've been paying much less attention to the forecasts because it seems like they don't know what the hell is going on. It came down very quickly because when I came home at about 2 in the morning it had only just started snowing and by the time I got up to go to work it had stopped again, but anyway I had to wait until the next Monday until my next day off grrrrrrrrrrr.

On that Monday and Tuesday I had a couple of sweet days riding. I went up with Yuki because she'd been out the day after it dumped 30cms and said it was only so-so, so I said right I'll show you some cool places to go :)
On the Monday we went over to lakeside bowl on Blackcomb which was closed due to avalanche risk, so not wanting to risk my pass (because if they catch you riding in closed areas they can revoke your lift pass) we headed up to Blackcomb glacier - you have to take a t-bar to the top then walk for maybe 15 minutes (well you can walk for as long as you like and drop down on either side of the mountain, one way takes you through or around a permanent closure area then you drop into the 7th heaven area, the other side is all the glacier but there is a huge area to pick your line down). We stopped after the walk and had a cookie picnic, but unfortunately I had forgotten my camera because I was rushing for the bus.. I took a couple of pics with my phone camera but I haven't checked them out yet so it's quite possible that they're rubbish, if not I'll whack them on here later on!

The run down was sweet as, on the initial traverse (in an effort to find untouched lines) I hit quite a big rock and bailed, which was quite funny, but fortunately I didn't damage my plank. The snow was a bit hard but there were some fresh patches still, the run out was pretty dodgy though, which I guess is why they had a big sign saying, "EXPERTS ONLY!" at the glacier entrance - it was a 30-45 degree slope which was largely sheet ice, and I haven't had my board edged for maybe 7 weeks? :) so that was interesting..

On the Tuesday we went up Whistler and hit Whistler bowl, which again is all off piste and pretty gnarly (which incidentally Al, if you're reading, is how you spell it ;P), the run down off the peak chair is a proper black run, but it was great fun because there was lots of soft snow and metre high moguls, the kind of run where if you fall you cartwheel down it :) which I did. The runs down in the bowl were great fun but the exits back to the piste were VERY sketchy. The first time was a steep slope with lots of rocks and trees and bad coverage, which required crawling and jumping down some sections, and the second time we came the other side of the stream through beautiful snow and scenery but hit a very steep and densely packed tree line. There was only one track which went underneath a big pine tree where the ground was totally exposed, so I thought there's no way I'm taking my board over that, so I took off my board and attempted to climb down next to the tree whilst holding onto some shoots which were poking through the snow to one side. I got to the bottom of those and then lost my grip on the branches, so pitched forwards and started sliding down a steep slope headfirst backwards clutching my board in one hand and thinking, "uh oh". I couldn't stop but fortunately I came to rest before colliding with anything.. I looked back up and there was a perfect path of snow between the trees for about 10 metres that I'd slid down. Anyway I shouted, "WAIT!" to Yuki (lol) but she decided to walk back up a way, cross the stream and come down the same side we had the first time. I carried on down to where to other run down came out but was a bit shaken and was annoyed that we'd separated (you should NEVER go out of bounds alone and hiking in deep snow takes a long time), but all was fine though! It was pretty tiring and by the time we got back to the lift it was time to go home.

A couple of weeks ago I went to play basketball with some people from work, they have a staff gym night every Friday. It nearly killed me! Seems my legs are stronger but my fitness is still just as bad :)

Last night we had a staff party at one of the mountain restaurants called 18 below up at base 2. It was a beach party theme so everyone was invited to bring their best beach costume! I came home after work and put on some shorts with my shirt and fisherman hat (you know the one) but then though f*** that it's freezing so put my trousers back on :P
We had free food (shepherds pie!!) and a couple free drinks (4 for me) and then we played........... bingo. I thought, 'what the hell are we doing sitting in a mountain restaurant playing bingo'. I won one game at the same time as another guy so we had to do a zoolander style walkoff to see who would take the prize. I surprised myself by going for it despite only having had 2 beers at that point and I blatantly spanked the other guy's ass but they decided diplomatically to award us both with a prize :)
The best costume competition was comedy - the guy who won stripped down to just his speedos and started dancing around but they did a runners up competition too so we were shouting for a guy called Gary who had come in a wetsuit and was carrying a surfboard (lol). After the party finished we walked down the piste to Merlins, which was also comedy because most people were wearing shorts, a couple of guys were wearing flip-flops (or "thongs" if you're retarded), it was pretty icy and very cold! Myself and Graham managed to sledge some of the way on a piece of cardboard, but then my shoes started filling with ice so we had to scrap that. Anyway after a couple of pitchers of beer and a jaeger bomb (a glass of redbull like stuff with a shot glass full of jaegermeister in the bottom, which f***s you up like vodbulls :)) I was done so headed home under the pretence of going boarding in the morning, except here I am now on the couch as I have been all day!

The Word on the Street

2005-02-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

Boo.

Well I haven't had a great deal to report over the past couple of weeks, I got pretty sick of going to all the bars here so have been abstaining from going out so much, plus everyone has been short of shifts recently due to the shite weather!

My situation hasn't been as bad as some other people, for example my friend Fee's restaurant has been closed for 3 weeks! And I am back on 5 days a week this week. Having said that, I've asked to change to 3 days a week because having had a taste of the good life I can't be assed to go back to the old ways... Doing my 5th day in a row this week nearly killed me :) besides we paid our last rent installment a couple of days ago so anything I earn from now on is gravy!

I went out boarding the past couple days, I was pissed off yesterday because it had rained top to bottom a little bit on Tuesday night (it's been below freezing at the top for the rest of the time) and Monday and Tuesday looked to be awesome boarding days - not great visibility but quite a lot of fresh powder from the on and off flurries over the previous week. I was meant to have Monday Tuesday off, which are my regular days, but they changed my schedule on Sunday so I had to work those days :( this has also provoked me to want to work less, muha.

Aside from work and boarding I have been spending quite a lot of time with a very nice Japanese girl who I work with :) which is a welcome alternative to going drinking every day!! Her name is Yukiko and she's in one of the pictures I've stuck up on the web, I'm also trying to learn some Japanese from her :p partly out of interest and also to try and keep my brain occupied a little bit to counteract the destructive effects of performing a monkey job ;)

So yes, that's about all the news I have. We're all praying for it to dump!!

Pleeeease everyone let me know what you've all been up to, I'll probably be a bit slow to reply but I will reply eventually!

Lots of love X

Big air

2005-01-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-17T22:55:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-04T18:22:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-01T15:09:00.000-08:00

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 :)

Happy New Year!!!

2004-12-31T21:01:00.000-08:00

Ok so I'm on time this time :)

Sorry M&D for missing your call - I was at work until 4:45 today so couldn't answer the phone, your voicemail message didn't make much sense either!

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..

Hope you all had a good one, post me some antics and new year's resolutions ;)

PS Thanks Clo for your message at midnight :)

Back on da hill yo'

2004-12-27T23:28:00.000-08:00

Back in da house. Went up today for the first time in 2 weeks - partly as you know because I'm a crip, but also because the snow's been so shite that it hasn't been worth getting out there. Anyway today I went up Blackcomb to hit it up solo stylee. The snow was pretty variable - everything from powder to chop to hardpack to ice to loose stuff with rocks poking through. It was a good day though and wicked to know that I can go up again without fear of sending shockwaves up my back every time I hit a bump. Managed to take in 7th heaven - Cloud nine (very bumpy and rocky) and southern comfort (great and no-one on it) then hit the glacier (sweet as but the run out was boilerplate) before blitzing a green a couple times then heading through the park, but managed to resist the temptation of the kickers for today!

Did my good deed for the day too - helped some stoopid American woman carry her pram (with baby inside) up and down the steps between the bus stops and the village plaza.. There's a lot of stoopid Americans here. My friend Eamon found a $100 bill that had obviously been dropped by an American with too much money to spend - he rinsed $60 on beer and the rest on pizza, good skillz. Lol. Anyway I'm off to bed, hope y'all had a good Christmas too! Hit me up with what you got up to.

Merry Christmas!

2004-12-26T21:34:00.000-08:00

Ok so I'm a bit late on this but merry Christmas all! I had to work the past 5 days, weird cuz it made Christmas seem like any other day of the year, but I went on Christmas eve to the shop with Jess & Sarah to buy some food for a big dinner and we had 12 people eating at our place. It was snowing all day on Christmas day too - white Christmas! Walking home via the liquor store at the Shoestring Lodge was amazing cuz everything was white and there were big snowflakes falling all around me and I sound gay... :)

...and how many times can *you* say Christmas in a paragraph?..

Anyway got home around 5pm and cracked open a tinny with my supervisor from work, Stefan, who lives next door to us and keeps an oven on the back of an old truck which has been parked there permanently since we moved in. Then proceeded to consume another 9 beers before we finally ate! Dinner was cooked by yours truly with the help of my lovely assistant Jessica - we had chicken roasted with rosemary and garlic, roast potatoes and roast/baked veggies - leeks, yams, baby carrots and courgettes, plus sprouts(!), broccoli, stuffing and cranberry sauce. It was awesome!!!! I was amazed by how well it turned out considering the fact that not all the food would fit in the oven and we had to fashion two extra roasting dishes out of aluminium foil (or "aloominum" if you're retarded). We did a secret santa too - I got a jackass type DVD and I bought Si a goggle wipe with the Whistler Blackcomb trail map printed on it and wrapped him up a pair of Kim's underwear (goaded on by Matt) because I forgot to buy him the chocolate that was going to comprise the other half of his present, which got me slapped across the face by Kim when she discovered whose they were. Dinner was eventually ready at 11pm and then we had lemon meringue pie and rhubarb and apple pie with ice cream. Then most of the guys went home while me & Matt killed a bottle of port, then I passed out with some port still in a glass sat up on the sofa and woke up wondering why I was stinking of alcohol (spent all day wondering that til I took my jumper off in the evening and saw the bright red stains down my yellow t-shirt. Also explains why some of Jess' hair was dyed red cuz she was KOed on my shoulder).

Work was a serious mission today, like slow torture and I was blatantly still drunk when I got in. Fortunately we get coke etc. on tap for free which is just the job eh? (Canada EH?) Is going to be luxury having the day off tomorrow cuz the last two weeks have been seeeeriously heavy going. Have to stop going out now though because have just about exhausted the last of my money and there's an option board with my name on it :) oh yeah, and I'm going boarding tomorrow so fingers crossed my back'll be ok!

Near death(ly) experience

2004-12-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

Had one of the worst experiences of my life this morning. It was Si's birthday yesterday so we had some people over, had some drinks (including punch made by moi again - the ming lives on guys!) then headed into town. To be fair I didn't drink that much (well, by my standards maybe) and I felt pretty fine in the morning. Anyway, after having missed the bus to work at 10.13 by seconds I had to run down to meadow park (the local sport centre, which is about 5 minutes jog, the bus runs in a big loop round alpine meadows you see then goes back down the main road so if you miss it at our house you can head it off down there if you're quick) which stirred up all the alcohol in my stomach again and I felt fairly half cut when I got on the bus. I made the gondola at about half ten and was in it with 6 or 7 people, still feeling fine. Then about 5 minutes into the ride, which is about half way to the mid-station, I started to feel kind of funny. By funny I mean slightly nauseous and light headed, and I debated whether to get off and chill for a bit at the mid-station, but I thought what the hey I've done this loads of times and I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyway we set back off again and I started to get quite severe motion sickness. My head was totally spinning, I felt really queasy, the sun was shining through the windows and we were packed in there. All I could do was stare at the floor and recite mentally, "don't be sick, don't be sick, don't be sick on the 7 random holidaymakers in here", but I was expecting at any moment to have to jump up, push past the other people, climb on the bench and vom out the window. This went on for nearly 15 minutes, possibly the longest 15 minutes of my life, but I made it to the Roundhouse (albeit very dizzy) whereupon I chilled out in a toilet cubicle for 15 minutes until everything stopped spinning.

It was really bizarre because it's not like any hangover experience I've ever had, but I'm guessing it must have been alcohol related because the symptoms eased off over the course of the day! At one point I was expecting to have to send myself home, but I thought I couldn't really do that then rock up to the staff Christmas party later on, at least not without risk of getting sacked! So had to soldier through. Gnarly. Anyway, thought I'd share that with you all so can think, "haha." :)

What a difference a day makes?

2004-12-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

Got up this morning after having passed out almost fully dressed last night, expecting to go out boarding. So we got up and suited up and I was jumping about and my back was still giving me jip so had to give it a miss :( depressing. I hope this isn't going to be a recurring issue throughout the season! Backs aren't the best things to injure...

Went into the village instead to do a spot of shopping (not that I have money to burn, these were necessities) and got some thermal trousers (as one pair of mine seem to have disappeared somewhere in transit) and a balaclava thing! So now I can look proper ninja on the slopes. Got a bit of a bargain on both really because thermals count as 'essentials' so I get 45% discount at intrawest owned stores on them and other essential items (note that jackets and trousers aren't essential items, apparently. I'd love to see what would happen to the people who came up with that when they skiied sans ski jacket and trousers) and I bought the balaclava from Summit and my friend Jo put it through on her staff discount, so I got it half price AND avoided giving intrawest my money! Bonus.

The title of this post refers to the state of the village today - there were so many people! When we got off the bus there was a massive queue of people to catch the free village shuttle home. Lazy bastards - it's like a 5-10 minute walk :)

Tomorrow is Si's birthday! I've bought him a goggle wipe (as he's always bitching about his smeary goggle lenses)(actually he bitches most of the time, this is just one of his gripes) which has the Whistler-Blackcomb trail map printed on it, how cool is that! Lol. I'm sure he's going to be 'stoked'. I'll try and get a picture of his happy face tomorrow.

Anyway I gotta go get me roast veggies out the oven. First proper meal I've made in a week!

Or so I thought...

2004-12-18T17:30:00.000-08:00

Intrawest have no record of the hours that I've worked. They're amazing!!! Hence zero dollars in the bank today. Awesome. Work v busy again today as one girl didn't turn up and am very tired as felt duty bound last night to pop out as it was Fee's birthday. Only saw her for about 15 minutes though and went home at 10:15 to go to bed! So was bit pointless. Tonight chilling out again methinks, believe housemates might have hired return of the jedi :)

Oh and forgot to mention yesterday that I managed to smash 3 dishes during the course of my shift, get in! Also stole some jams today, who said I don't get any perks.

Have come home this evening to a pitiful Christmas tree decorated with beercans, lol. Si is jealous because I have an advent calendar and he doesn't, meh! Thanks mummy for my Christmas parcel which I received yesterday, I shall be opening the pressies on the 25th!

Heaps!

2004-12-17T19:36:00.000-08:00

Ohhhh I forgot to mention, Aussies say "Heaps" in the same way Canadians say "super", for example, "that's heaps good", except they also say, "yeah heaps better"... Heaps or super, which is worse?!?! :)

Also Si overheard a conversation the other day where an individual was described as "Super quality". "Yeah he's super quality" was the quote. Is there no end to this madness?

Some more things.. Oh and it's payday!

2004-12-17T19:08:00.000-08:00

Went out with Dee last night, was cool! Chatted for ages, amongst other things she was telling me about how they used to race around their souped up cars back in oz, hehe. Ended up getting 2 hours sleep (wink wink) then walking home at 7 this morning encountered a wolf/husky thing running in the opposite direction (in the dark) which growled menacingly and scared the shit out of me!!

Work was joyous as I was fairly out of it, actually it's been pretty cool the last couple of days as the atmosphere has relaxed a little but today was CRAZY busy as I was doing 'cart' which means collecting all the crockery from the stations in the restaurant and running them (on a cart, surprisingly) to the dishwashing room, then racking everything up. The only problem was we had a massive lunchtime rush and there was only one person doing the dishwashing... So there was an enormous bottleneck of stuff and it was basically piled up floor to ceiling (I'm not really kidding), so it was kinda nuts in there for a couple hours. Jumping topic slightly I think there may be something of a shakeup at work after Christmas as other staff I've spoken to there seem to have mixed emotions about it also :)

Other things of note - there was an absolutely beautiful view down the valley today as there was a lagoon of cloud shrouding the foothills then the sun was shining on the peaks all the way down the valley. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so you'll have to use your own imagination but yeah, where else can you look out of the window at your workplace and see that?! On a negative - I was stuck in the lift with a rather outspoken Canadian idiot this morning, which was the last thing that I needed. Goddamn I'm hard done by :)

Oh yeah, and went back to enquire about the DJ job AGAIN a couple days ago. They've put this useless woman in charge of opening the club due to their management crisis and she was totally unhelpful as she has too much on her plate apparently, so basically I'm back to square one and have to go see the guy who is the main DJ at the club on Saturday. At least I can namedrop I guess. Will keep you informed!

Commendation

2004-12-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Today at work I was in the daily newsletter - called 'the Messenger' - because someone had filled out a comment card praising my excellent service, saying how I'd shown them to their seats and made them feel very welcome, LOL. What a joke. When I heard it I thought it must have been one of my friends taking the piss. It later transpired that Kim and Caroline had filled out a card the day after I'd been told off for talking to them, but of course work don't need to know that ;)

Discovered that I'm working Christmas day, but don't really mind as it's not really an occasion without family, is it? Hopefully will have New Years Day off though. Also I'm not getting a huge amount of hours at the moment and am working 5 days a week instead of 4... I believe this stems from the fact that I've only been on time to work once so far :) ah well. At least it means I don't have to get up at crazy o'clock. Today was actually quite cool at work and it's easy as, but it's just the prospect that it's soul destroying and I can't say I've ever been particularly attracted to food and beverage :) we shall see.

New age hairdressers

2004-12-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a verrry stiff back, maybe I spoke too soon! Nah it's loosened up over the day and is getting better. Good stuff.

Today I decided to run some errands and got partially through them, most important was a haircut as my hair was getting rather bouffant. I went to this place called 'the Loft' and got in straight away with Kat. She seemed nice enough and we were talking about where we lived etc and she said her ideal place is a farm style house in the BC interior (where there are many beautiful places) with a big garden, where she could have some dogs and maybe keep some chickens, and where she could grow veggies and be self sufficient maybe. So I laughed but said fair enough, I saw myself ending up in more of a city place. After that we were talking about going travelling and what places we'd like to visit and from there ended up talking about world governments (can you see where this is going?), at which point she started on about corruption in governments worldwide which inevitably lead to the Bush administration and the apparent corruption in the UK and Canadian governments. She also started saying how we are going to see massive changes in our lifetimes as the world's natural resources are running out and the population is apparently about to boom due to the effect of the baby boom (whereby the children of the boom are now at the age where they will all be having children of their own) and how she thought the US were going to spill into Canada as they were running out of space and were militarily stronger... At this point I was thinking, "woah hold on, the population demographic in the UK has been fairly stable over the past couple of decades, the US have looooads of room to expand as the population is around 275 million, compared with India which has a population of 1.7 billion in a much smaller area, also the UK is waaay more crowded than the US, I don't think it's going to be spilling over into Canada any time soon, if ever. On top of that, it's just after 12 and I don't need to be concerning myself with all this stuff this early (natch)!!", but I let her finish off. It wasn’t actually all strung together one after the other like that but most of what I said was either “mm hmm”, or, “well I don’t know about that”. She finished by saying it's all about the love and you get out what you put in etc., by which point I had fallen silent.
After a pause I said, "so did you come here for the skiing?" :)

It sounds more intense there than it actually was and it was nice to have someone talk to you about something other than small talk, but she did kinda go over the top with it..! Also it was weird to sit there in my chair and look out the window and see the lifts going up the mountain. I'd always wondered actually if hair dressers existed in ski resorts… I don't think it's something I'm going to do regularly though because it set me back 37 bucks... Argh that's my money for the week gone in less than 2 days :(

Oh and the first season orientation course was actually pretty good, can imagine you were all concerned :) I was supposed to be going to a Heineken sponsored Christmas party tonight as well but instead am camping out here to save money, times are hard.

Later all X

Housesitting

2004-12-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

Today I haven't left the house, I was about to go to the village earlier to speak to Affinity Sports about a rental tech job but then my back started giving me grief so I took painkillers and mooched about! Yesterday I hit this jump hard twice, but there was a big steep run in and a weird takeoff and both times I ended up with my legs rotating upwards. The first time I landed board-ass-back, which didn't hurt at all, but the second time I managed to get about 6 feet off the ground then landed square across my shoulders on my back, which winded me quite badly and meant that every bump in the ground thereon sent a painful shock up my back! It's not serious though, I should be back on it next week (as I have to work until Sunday) and I was expecting to not be able to move this morning which didn’t materialise.

Anyway! Enough worrying my mother (don’t worry mother). I’ve decided to try and look for another job as I can’t see myself sticking with the one I’ve got all season long. Also it seems that I can’t take advantage of a lot of the staff discounts which are offered to certain staff because I don’t work in retail, which is ridiculous, and sucks.

Last night went out to Tommy Africa’s and felt very sorry for the girls on the dancefloor who were more or less surrounded by prospective suitors (which I think is a far too nice description of them). I even asked a couple of girls on the bus home what they thought of it! (They said, “yeah some guys can be kinda sleazy”)

Tonight we’ve watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, awesome! Oh, and I have a date on Thursday, I’ll keep you posted ;)

See I am capable of not writing an essay…

Oi, get your hands off those trays!!!

2004-12-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

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

Job & much snow

2004-12-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

It’s DUMPING outside. It started snowing yesterday evening, has been going all day today and doesn’t look much like stopping. There must have been about 30cms at least so far down here and probably getting on for 50 up top as it was snowing all day up there yesterday while it was raining in the village. Anyway let’s start at the beginning else this will get all out of order.

Yesterday I had my first day of work. Great fun, I had to go get my uniform in the morning beforehand and there was a queue out the door because they were giving out all the vollie ski patrol uniforms too. For some reason they didn’t want to give me my uniform when I’d been down the afternoon before, even though that would have made infinitely more sense. Anyway, I really enjoyed queuing up for an hour which also meant that we (myself and another guy Mahyar who was also on the food safe course the day before) were late there by half an hour. Apparently it was all fine though, so no sacking on first day, bonus. The uniform itself is quite cool, a grey mesh-like long sleeve top and black whistler-blackcomb combats. Shame we didn’t get the outdoor uniform like the bistro workers who have to board to work do though. I think I’m going to try and blag a fleece off them cuz they’re nice north face ones and it would save me a purchase! My plan of attack is to say I’m cold at work and in transit, will keep ya posted.

Training consisted of a guided tour of the premises plus a rundown on the various responsibilities you may be assigned to in addition to the standard table clearing shite, which is always your primary responsibility, apparently. So after we were done with that I went on a table wiping circuit for about an hour before being nabbed to assist with the stocking and merchandising of another section which opened today. So spent most of the time helping the catering manager – Candace – set up a coffee bar! This had the unfortunate baggage of me being kept on for another hour and a half after the other new starters had been sent home, but I didn’t mind as it means more money! Plus it looked horrible outside, blizzard conditions.
Anyway the job looks ok, not sure how I’m going to cope with it but will see how it goes. The people seem cool too, plus I get free lunch every day I’m working, which is not bad. Our supervisor doesn’t really seem to give a shit as long as people appear to be busy, and they even decided it was ok for me to keep my earring in while at work, lol. I have to go in tomorrow as well but have a late start at 11, so that’s quite kush.

After work I went to staff and monged out (literally) at Tim’s until about half 7, at which point we went down to Merlin’s (a bar in the upper village which is owned and operated by Intrawest) where there was supposed to be some party thing going on. We met a bunch of the guys down there too, including Sean with his cast (see below pic).. Anyway it was a pretty standard night out, except for me changing venues 3 times! Went to get some pizza after too as once again had missed dinner, then met a nice Norwegian girl called Line (Leenah apparently) at the bus stop who a very pissed Matt & Dave were attempting to talk to (along with her two friends) when I got there!

Today I managed to get up and out of the house in 12 minutes! I’d arranged to go out boarding with Tim, Jess and maybe Fee and the third text message this morning finally roused me from my stupor. Getting ready *did* consist of rolling out of bed into boarding gear and then briefly brushing teeth before legging it, but I was still impressed with the speediness (tbh I was worrying about Jess getting arsy if I was keeping them waiting ;) It looked set to be an awesome, if not somewhat visually impaired, day so I was keen to get out anyway!

Met up with Fee, Jess and Tim in the village, and after the obligatory faffage we set off. I was appalled when the girls ditched us about 200m down the first run as Jess was demoing a new pair of skis that she wasn’t very confident on, and I don’t think the pair of them were up for our suggestions of what to go and do (explained below), hehe. So, leaving the wimpy girls behind we headed straight for the top (well, as far up as you can go at the moment, which is the top of the harmony express chair) and hit the flute bowl, blind… Hehe. Tim actually had to convince me for a brief second that it was a good idea because the wind was howling over the top of the ridge horizontal snow stylee and I thought that maybe the ‘foehn’ winds might have frozen up the top layer a bit. It turned out to be fine though and once we got past the blind part in the cloud, during which you could see literally no definition, we nailed a SICK powder run down. The only problem with flute is that you have to traverse out down a track to get back to the chair, but today it was worth it! :) After that we hit symphony bowl a couple of times and dropped in off the cornices into the double black diamond ‘harmony wishbones’ (will be a very nice run when you can see where you’re going), which involved launching yourself off an edge into the run below. The first time we took a bad line and it was a bit crusty, and further down we went too far right into the trees and had to hike out a bit at the bottom, which sucked, but the second time we nailed a nice dropoff and a beautiful powder field with trees dotted around before dropping down through the trees underneath the chairlift, which was wicked (did end up in a rock garden at one point where there were loads of big mounds of snow and I was thinking, “Hmm, are those trees? Can I ride over them?”.. Got round the other side of the first one though and it was a massive rock, so cut back out of there!), we got to the bottom smiling, which is always a good sign. Then realised we were late to meet the others for lunch so we headed down ‘the saddle’, which is in a third bowl, glacier bowl, I think. Anyway we couldn’t see shit again so kinda eased down there and then realised we were somewhat below where we needed to be so had to go all the way down to the top of the creekside lifts before we could grab a chair back up to the restaurant. After lunch we figured we’d head back as hitting powder takes it out of your legs even more than normal! Plus all the runs were chopped up so required effort to get down at speed. When we got to the gondola midstation to catch the lift down to the village there was a massive line-up (aargh! Canadian lingo) and we spotted Fred the snowboard instructor who thought it was ok to board to the bottom, so we thought YEAH LET’S DO IT. It was pretty much ok but the snow was soooo wet and heavy it was quite hard going. Plus there were a few streams which required jumping over as well as rocks under the surface to eat your board if you weren’t careful… So yes, there’s a reason why it’s not properly open yet. Anyway I thought it was wicked fun and went all the way to the bottom, which again induced shouts of YEAH! Hehe. We had a quick drink afterwards but it was pretty cold being sat outside (my damn trousers aren’t waterproof enough and keep soaking through on the bum, great another expense. I’m not convinced my jacket is sufficiently waterproof either…) so headed back home for a nice hot shower and hot chocolate, all good. Right now it's still snowing outside and the others have just gone to make a snowman, I'm just chilling with my rosé ;) later all X

Seamus noooooooooooooo

2004-12-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

Man down...
We have our first casualty of the season, Sean broke his wrist today in two places and tore his ligaments on his first run of the season. That's right, his FIRST run of the season. Poor guy man, went out drinking with him last night and he was pretty miserable (and understandably so). The doctors reckon he'd be out for 3 months, but Sean's plan was to go to Australia and meet up with his girlfriend on her round the world trip at the end of February, so that would mean he's out for his entire season. He has to have surgery on Tuesday because he's broken it that badly and then has to do physio after that to heal the ligaments... I felt for the guy because he was going through the same things that I did when I did my back in on my gap year, how it could have been avoided, how stupid it was, how he wasn't going to go out riding that day...but we agreed that it was just very bad luck as he'd fallen the same way a hundred times before. In fact he was stopping at the bottom of the run to get on the lift and just managed to fall awkwardly on it, not going fast or anything. Anyway he's waiting to hear what they say after surgery on Tuesday and if there's any chance that he might be able to get some riding in before he has to go to Oz. At least if it comes to it he has something to go on to though and isn't going home.

Incidents like that just compound the fact that our bodies are very fragile indeed.. Pretty gutting :/ get well soon Seamus!

Food safe?

2004-12-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

Did a shitty food safety course today which lasted 7 hours! They could have fit it all into 4 easily.. Sucked because I managed to leave my phone on discreet all of yesterday whilst I was out riding (lasted a whole hour and three quarters ‘til my legs gave up the ghost, largely brought on by having to hike up to Blackcomb base II to get my goddamn day pass and missing the bus to staff housing..) and missed a call from my recruitment person up at the Roundhouse, Erin (who ends up laughing hysterically every time I speak to her for some reason - maybe something to do with my lack of organisation regarding giving them all of my details, for the second time..), who had phoned me to ask if I could attend a food safety course and to call back. Unfortunately we’d already arranged to go out that night for Di’s birthday so looked like more burning the candle at both ends. As it happened we ended up in Buffalo Bills and the birthday party was at Garfinkels. The reason being that when me & Si passed by there at 9.30 there were only 4 people inside… Hmm.

Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed at 7.30 after having slept for about 4 hours and set off for this thing. I had to call Erin up to say I was attending as she had “tentatively booked me” to do the course – she just ended up laughing at me as per when I explained the story of how I’d retrieved my passport now so I could give her the rest of the information that she needed. The course would have been boring as hell but fortunately my friend Fran was on the same course so we spent most of the day passing notes, giggling like schoolkids and getting pissed off with the way too happy and over-enthusiastic group of asskissing Canadians behind us. I managed to pass the course fine fortunately, most of it was common sense and the test was multiple choice, however I am now a qualified food safe level one, er, person. I get a certificate and everything, bitchin.

Unfortunately I now have to go get my washing, as I’ve hit rock bottom today by running out of pants and socks :)

Looking forward to another early start tomorrow (ahem), hopefully they won’t keep me there too long so that I can get some riding in the afternoon before heading to some kind of staff payday party at Merlin’s straight off the hill! Yeeeh.

Laters X

Second tracks

2004-11-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

On the back of last night’s festivities I got up after a mere 5 hours sleep to hit the slopes this morning at 8.30. I’d arranged to go up with Tim as I’d left my backpack in their room up at staff housing and I had to go up that way to get my day ticket anyway. So I dragged myself out of bed this morning feeling wwwwonderful and got up and out as quickly as I was capable. Matt Rai stayed round at our place last night so we headed up to staff housing together, although the bus did turn up whilst I was putting my board boots on so I legged it out of the house sans my helmet or a beanie… Goddamit.

Unsurprisingly Tim wasn’t up when we got to staff housing at 10 and also the stupid intercom thing on the door doesn’t work so you can’t actually get in unless you tailgate someone! Anyway someone turned up after we’d been outside a while so I went about banging Tim’s door down. We managed to raise him from the dead and he looked just as happy as I was to be out of bed. I went to get my day pass while he got ready and we eventually got on the lift at 11.13, poor effort!

Tim took out his new Option Free Plus for its debut and I’d just changed my stance quite a lot (widened by an inch and moved angles from 24/6 to 18/-3) and, considering the picture of health that we were in the gondola I was expecting a slow start to the day :) after a couple of runs though we met up with some guys that Tim knew – one was a Canadian snowboard instructor and the other guy was a Kiwi who had more than one season under his belt. They were pretty much hitting every kicker and bump in sight and spinning 360s like it was nothing – sick. The Canadian guy – Fred – took us on a bit of a guided tour. We did some tree runs in powder and two of the bowls at the top of Whistler which was pretty sweet! Unfortunately whilst we were doing the second bowl I was straightlining near the bottom to get enough speed to carry across the run-out and hit a compression which sent me flying through the air and rotating forwards and slightly to the right. Landed on the nose then catapulted onto my head before cartwheeling through the air, sending my goggles flying in the process, and finally coming to rest on my back about 10 metres from the lip. After that my boarding was pretty much done for as I was somewhat dazed, which was compounded by the fact that we had to do a ridiculously long traverse to get back to the lifts that destroyed any strength left in my legs after having been slashing the pow-pow. After having a rest though Sascha (who was the Kiwi guy) convinced me to do one last run before heading home :) I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be in much pain tomorrow as random parts of my body started hurting after we came off the hill… Oh well if you don’t fall over then you’re not pushing hard enough, right? It’s just sods law that I managed to head plant after leaving my helmet behind, although fortunately I managed to loan a beanie to keep me ears warm :)

There’s some awesome terrain on the mountain, even though we only got a tiny glimpse of it in today’s outing. Plus we covered probably less than a third of the top section of one of the mountains, and the snow is much thinner than it’s going to be, crazy. There were some really nice tree lined blue runs further down too which are going to be wicked for hammering down at mach 7. In fact one of the runs we hit a couple of times today – Emerald – was a fantastic run with some nice lips on it for knocking out a couple of jumps on the way down.

Anyway I’m rambling a little, hopefully I’ll get up tomorrow if I’m not in too much pain but it’s 50:50 at the moment! Damn my lack of fitness :)

Jay oh beeeeee

2004-11-29T17:02:00.000-08:00

Got a job today! Result!!!

Is quite funny what process I had to go through to get the job considering the rigmarole at the recruitment fair. Fran had heard about a job going at a restaurant called 18 below at Blackcomb base 2 which she told me about last Tuesday, so I phoned the woman, Estelle, who is the head of recruiting, and asked about it on Wednesday. She asked me a bunch of questions about what had happened in my original interviews and what kind of experience I had and said that she thought she might have a position in a different restaurant and that she'd call me on Monday morning. So I sat in all morning today, got up at 7.30, and waited for the phone to ring (well actually I played SSX3 and GTA San Andreas :) but no call! So at 1p.m. I phoned and left a message and she called me back at 2.20 saying that she had a couple of positions going at the Roundhouse restaurant on Whistler either washing dishes or 'bussing' - which translated into English means general clearing up and keeping things stocked. I said I'd like the busser position so she said, "ok they've authorised me to hire you straight into the job, so that's it! Bring the necessary forms to 'the Cabin'" - simple as that. So off I trotted with the forms and it was aaaaall good baby. Woohoo!

So that means FREE LIFT PASS! Get in. I checked straight off if I could get day passes for the couple of days until I get my proper pass (Thursday) which was all good, so basically I'm set! I have to go and get uniform on Thursday and then have training on Friday (how hard can it be) and find out my shifts and stuff. But yeah, basically I should have no worries now :) I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy clearing up after people but maybe I can search for something better in a while… Anyway will see how it goes and at the moment I’m STOKED (another N.Americanism).

After that we thought it would be rude not to celebrate so went and got mullered, and even pulled a nice Aussie girl whilst with hat hair - crazy place this is!

Pictures!

2004-11-25T13:22:00.000-08:00

greets,

well Telus managed to pull their finger out and we got our modem yesterday, finally. So now I can share some lovely pix with you all plus stick some posts up that I've been writing for a while in anticipation of this day :) I was going to link the photos up through here but that proved to be major hassle so I've set up a photo thingy at flickr (which will also let me post photos to here should I so desire in future). You should be able to view them at http://flickr.com/photos/snowiscold/.

If that isn't working then let me know! Otherwise, enjoy :)

First tracks

2004-11-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

Went up the mountain for the first time today, which put a TOTALLY different face on living here (for the better)! Up til now it’s been kinda weird living in a resort town with no resort, if you get me. I was actually pretty excited to be going up, so much so that I had an early night and got up at 7a.m. (unprecedented thus far) to make sure I wasn’t going to miss the early lifts. I’d arranged to go up with Beth to give her a hand with learning the art, and after I’d sat around outside Spicy sports (her place of work) waiting for her to get changed, plus bumped into Dan and Oli outside, we all headed up at around 8.56a.m. I wasn’t sure how much to layer up since it was my first time out so I whacked on 5 layers comprising thermals, t-shirt, microfleece, hoody and (new) jacket. Bloody good job I did cuz I was pretty much on the money as far as the temperature went, although I’m going to have to invest in a balaclava thingy (which I was planning on buying anyway) soon to keep the wind off my face at the top as I nearly got brainfreeze on one of the chairlifts! I also debuted my new helmet ;) should look totally ninja when I have my full face balaclava thing too, lol.

Anyway back to the point… On arriving at the top of the catskinner chairlift I agreed with Beth to go and do a couple of runs solo to find my feet whilst she did the same (at a somewhat more gentle pace, being only her 3rd day out boarding) then I’d catch her up either on the run or at the top of the chairlift and give her some pointers.

The first run I did was a fairly tame green run called ‘Easy Out’. The snow was pretty hardpacked and the first run down was pretty sketchy, but by the end of the day I was flying down at pretty much my regular pace :) I had heard some horror stories about people trashing their boards on rocks during early season so I was a bit wary of that, and by the end of the day the run we’d been doing was pretty trashed at the top with some tree bits and stones kicking about. I managed to avoid doing serious damage though but something has made my edge go kinda serrated in one place, argh.

After my second run I headed back up to the top and, predictably, Beth was nowhere to be seen. Normally I would have been able to get her on the walkie talkies that I have, but the charger for them has turned out to not be multivoltage (seeing as the stupid North Americans run on 110V) so it’s probably destroyed :) bugger. So I tried calling with no success.. Then I decided to hammer it down a black run to try and see if she was on the chairlift, which ran above that piste – no joy, but on the chairlift up I saw her still going down the same green run, lol. When I eventually caught up with her it turned out she’d only managed one run in the time I’d done four and had taken a nasty knock on the coccyx, so she went for a coffee break and I continued exploring alone. Whilst stopping to pick my line down the next blue run I bumped into Jen and her bloke Ant, so I cruised around with them for about another hour before stopping for lunch. I was going to treat myself to something but on seeing the prices I decided to eat my crushed ham sandwiches instead that I’d made that morning, efficient eh?! (Which were crushed when I fell earlier by overdoing it down the same black run, sliding down on my back underneath the snow cannons and getting a trouserful of wet in the process..)

At lunch we met Kash (Ant’s mate from Bournemouth uni), Lewis and Matt, but we made it a fairly short lunch break as I wanted to max my time out after purchasing a day ticket for $41 (although that’s still cheaper than going to Tamworth or Milton Keynes!) so I headed out again with Matt and Lewis to see what kinda standard they were up to ;) after having stopped my legs were feeling some serious burn though so I was glad to reach the bottom of the first run!

After a couple more times down Matt stopped to give Oli a hand (as it was his first day out and Dan had abandoned him) so me and Lewis sessioned the green run a bit more, caught up with Beth and her newly found friend Lara and tried to give them a hand with their technique.
By the end of the day Beth was linking her turns pretty good but Lara was at the point of exhaustion so my efforts with her were somewhat wasted! In fact I made sure she got home ok because they were about to shut the lifts and the only way down was to go down a run which was closed and unpatrolled, which I didn’t think was a good idea seeing as I’d somehow lost everyone else! It’s a good job I didn’t because by the time we got the chairlift down it had started snowing and the lower parts of the runs were shrouded in cloud. Oh yeah, and on the chairlift down, I realised I’d spent the whole day boarding without insurance as it didn’t start until the 24th ;)

Job Hunting

2004-11-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

Today we went job hunting. It sucked. As I may have previously mentioned, there were supposed to be more jobs posted by Intrawest on the 20th, note ‘supposed’, mind you I wasn’t expecting a great deal cuz the woman on the phone did say that realistically she didn’t expect more jobs to be put on there until the start of December, and given their previous performance and adherance to their word… so, yea.. we went job hunting today. There was a job fair at the Four Seasons resort – for housekeeping positions – yep that’s right, a whole job fair for housekeeping positions. And you had to have 2 interviews (which was going to be 3 until a million people turned up, as per out here) to get a job. I managed to get the chief steward as my first interviewer, great. The interview went well but I don’t think he was too keen on my goatee… or the fact that I forgot to shave this morning cuz there was a bit of a queue for the shower :) lol. After that bombed out (actually they said they’d give me a call within a week, which means rejection seeing as no-one here will actually tell you you’re not going to get a job) we went round the hotels in the village looking for anything going. Me and Si managed to make the process light hearted but it was a pretty miserable day, so when we bumped into Sean in the village (Dunc’s mate from uni, probs his first mention) we thought it was only reasonable to go get a pitcher to ease the pain. Except Si forgot his ID (well to tell you the truth Dave has got Si’s drivers license and Lewis has got mine – until Friday anyway cuz then’s his b’day) so we got chucked off the patio :D after that we had to go to the Dubh Linn gate cuz they never ID, do pitchers of Irish lager for $10, and have a darts board :) a game of killer later then back home for some chill time before hitting the slopes for the first time tomorrow, booya. Will let you know how it is…

Night X

Whistler first impressions

2004-11-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

NB: I started writing this a couple days after we got here, so sorry if there's any incohesion as it's now the 25th! I've back-dated the post for continuity's sake.

Whistler… Well I’m not sure what I expected it to be like, but it’s not like I expected. That doesn’t really make much sense but that’s a good way to describe it :) Unlike most cities over here it just kinda sprawls (although we have been informed that it’s one of the most modern communities in the world). What surprised me about it was the amount of space between everything because in most French resorts everything is crammed into not a lot of space, but then I suppose that’s not the North American way, is it…
Anyway, the hostel we stayed in, the ‘Shoestring lodge’ was an improvement on the Vancouver hostel but still not fantastic by any stretch (check the room photo lol), plus we discovered possibly the noisiest sleeper ever in the guy who we were sharing with to start off with :) oh and the bathroom was pretty minging, hostelling is great eh! Having said that though, as soon as we moved out of there into our house we missed the squalor and bustle of it and it’s so easy to meet people, but it’s also nice to have a base where you can unpack and have a bit of quiet. Living out of a backpack is a serious pain in the arse unless you’re willing to unpack and repack at each new place, which I wasn’t, hence it did my head in :)

To start with we were going out a fair bit cuz to be honest there’s not that much else to do at the minute and also to meet everyone who’s up here. Well not everyone but lots of people who you randomly bump into plus many friends of friends (of friends…) although that’s kinda hit the wallet a bit hard! The first weeks were always gonna be like that though innit. Last night managed to take a night off from drinking to go to the cinema, and even managed to not drink any alcohol for a whole day on Tuesday (gasp) [note that I started writing this a while ago so the rate of spending – therefore drinking - has, necessarily, been slowed quite a lot since then, but I’ll get to that later!]. In the first week though we had the Halloween party night, which was absolutely awesome. See we’d all picked up these costumes whilst we were in Vancouver in anticipation of the Halloween celebration up in Whistler. Matt was a naughty nurse, Si was Hula Harry, Paul was Pom Pom Paul (rofl), I was a beauty queen, Lewis was some kind of warrior princess/She-Ra and Tim and Dunc picked up some random dresses and wigs at a later date to join in the cross dressing theme. I think the costumes all set us back about 40 bucks (~£20) but it was well worth it for the comedy value (sure you’ll agree when you see the pics). We went with an early drinking theme once again – think we started about 5pm whilst getting into costume before going upstairs to the Gator grill for some quality Mexican scran before heading out. First off we went to a bar called ‘Citta’ (pronounced Cheetah – a pretty cool bar that has different offers each day) and met some hotties from Victoria. Not sure what they must have thought of us turning up in drag but to be honest I reckon the ladies were loving it, especially the squeezing of large fake foamy breasts, although my cries of “like for like” seemed to fall on deaf ears :) after a couple of beers there we went to a club called Moe Joe’s after failing to get into Tommy Africas as originally planned because the queue (or line-up in Canadian) was ridiculous. Having said that I’d just managed to muscle my way to the front when the other guys decided we were going to leave and go somewhere else so I was a bit narked! We had a quality night although I was a bit disappointed that none of us won the fancy dress competition. When we got home there were a bunch of peeps outside the hostel having a smoke and I bumped into Al’s housemate from Nottingham – Jamie – who has ended up living in the house above ours, it’s a very small world… In fact it’s so small that I also met another guy called Si Mountain or suttin like that who knows Al and Jamie from uni! Anyway back on track – we got home and Si decided it was a good idea to throw all the tissue paper that had been contributing to his ample frontage into a tree outside the hostel. Then Paul went to sleep in Kim’s bed because she’d said she was staying somewhere else, but then Kim came home, saw someone in her bed, went and got security and the guy dragged Paul out of bed by his ankle, still in costume hahaha. Paul then RAN home from our hostel back to creekside (a good few miles in the freezing cold, nutter. He is from Kendal though, home of the mint cake!). So yeah I think that’s pretty much the story of Halloween night, you’re prolly bored of hearing about it :)

Aside from socialising (joking), the most important issues here are:

1) Housing
2) Job

With much emphasis on housing. Even if you’re in staff housing, cuz as we’ve since discovered this is in no way guaranteed… So yes, let me tell you about the job situation…

Turned up for my first interview on the 3rd November (wow that was a long time ago), millions of people everywhere, very busy etc etc. So I’d heard that if you checked in early then you could get an interview ahead of your slot. Mine was at 10.30am so I got there at like 9.45 after getting a cab half way there cuz I thought I was going to be late and didn’t get seen til about 10.45… Annoying. Anyway the interview went really well and I got called back for a second interview the next day (kinda necessary since the 4th was the last day of the recruitment fair) and spoke to the guy who was in charge of the interviews for the position that day, which was also good and he took my name etc., so I thought sweet that seems all good. Also I was told at least twice that I would have a one on one interview the following day. I turned up for my interview and ended up being interviewed by 3 guys along with another couple of Aussie guys (i.e. a 3 on 3 interview, although this didn’t surprise me greatly as I’d heard similar reports from friends about their interviews) which obviously wasn’t as good as a one on one but still, I thought it went pretty well so I was fairly confident about getting a job. Heh.

Unfortunately we all had to wait until the 8th or 9th of November before ringing to find out whether we’d got a job or not. I was supposed to ring up on the 9th because, I guess, my interview was in the latter half of the week. The day came though and I’d heard a sneaky rumour that you could find out on either day but they’d just told everyone a time to space the whole thing out. As it was I phoned at like 8.30pm on the 8th along with my friend Sara who’d also gone for the same position, albeit in a different store (Intrawest, who own the mountains, own a bunch of different stores which are scattered about the place). Had to hold for about 20 minutes which was a bit annoying, especially when they told me that they were afraid they couldn’t offer me a position at this time :) Sara got hers though, which, more importantly, means that she gets to stay in staff housing. In fact all the guys we met in Vancouver from Leeds uni got jobs with the mountain so they all get to stay in their room. Unfortunately Dunc didn’t get his job as a liftie so is faced with the prospect of being evicted from staff housing unless he gets a job when he reapplies (which myself, Si and probably Lewis are going to do too, being the only people left in our house without jobs :) [update: Dunc has since found a job as a housekeeper and a place to live in Creekside, so it’s all good!]
Of all the people I’ve spoken to about their jobs, far, far more people didn’t get the job than did. This spawned many conspiracy theories about the recruitment process, especially that it seems as if Intrawest tried to maintain a 50:50 male to female ratio in their staff even though there’s apparently 6 times as many guys as girls in Whistler (which I’m not sure I believe, although there’s definitely more guys), which meant that nearly every girl I spoke to had got a job (along with about 5 other job offers – basically if you’re a fit girl out here then you’ve got it made! One shop even tried to poach my friend Beth after she’d already been employed, lol. She is fit though ;p)
So anyway, that night after finding out I hadn’t got a job we just all got really wasted and went into town, it’s the only way. Can’t remember where we went though, ah well.

Think I’ll cut this there because I know it’s a bit of a chore reading huge chunks at one time (*cough* Gurpal) so I’ll post some more going out stuff and general info later on so you can take it in piece by piece (and spread out the excitement – ahem), plus I think my housemates are getting annoyed by the fact I’ve been on the computer since I got up 4 hours ago solidly :p

Tata for now guys, apologies if I've written nonsense! X

Internet eedjuts

2004-11-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

Hey guys,

sorry this has been so quiet the past couple of weeks, i'm in the process of writing more stuff to go on here and we were supposed to be getting the internet at our place last Tuesday but the fools at Telus didn't send us out a modem cuz they didn't think we needed one (?!) so we're still waiting on that... Rest assured that more will be appearing soon though!

Brief news though - Blackcomb mountain opened yesterday, there's 90cm of snow up top but at resort it's still v patchy. It's snowing today lightly but more is needed! It's supposed to be dumping tomorrow though I think so I might sneak up the mountain one day this week. Still haven't got a job (and hence a pass) yet but that's set to change in the next few days I think! Will keep ya posted anyway... :)

Hope all are well X

Whistler residence :)

2004-11-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

bit slow on this but have moved into a house thingy in Whistler, address is...

8436B Matterhorn Drive
Alpine Meadows
Whistler
BC
V0N 1B8

hope all are well!

Vancouver

2004-11-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

Well I just got to a PC up in Whistler, so thought would offer an overview of events in Vancouver now I have more than 10 minutes to spare to write stuff down before the computer KOs... [actually I finished this post on si's laptop 4 days afterwards cuz I used up 3 hours of internet access househunting that day and it costs bucks!]

Vancouver is one of the nicest places I've been, surrounded by the Pacific ocean on one side and mountains on the other, skiing practically on your doorstep when Grouse mountain opens plus some nice beaches too. Also hundreds and hundreds of nice bars and restaurants!! Also an apparent abundance of pleasant (natured and to look at) barmaids who are happy to work hard for your tips ;)

Speaking of tips, there's a hugely complicated system of tipping over here... 10% is pretty much expected wherever you go, and people get pissed if you don't give them that :) my friend matt (not quite sure why she picked on him over everybody else but there we go) managed to majorly upset the barmaid in the bar we ended up at every day by not tipping enough on a $150 bill so she had to make up the 10% out of her own pocket to appease the rest of the staff, lol. We accounted it to drunkenness plus general difficulty in raising enough money from everybody to cover just the bill alone! Oh and the taxi driver who drove us from the airport was a bit pissed cuz we only tipped him 9 cents, oops. We weren't to know! Also there's tax (government sales tax I believe) on every price that is quoted here, slightly confusing as there are different rates for different things and everything seems cheaper than it actually is.. Fortunately beer is cheaper than at home, although I've still managed to spend $300 in 4 days, hmm.

So yeah, first day we got here we were all pretty wrecked having set off at 5 in the morning from home, travelled on the plane for near 15 hours (which sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half after we were supposed to take off whilst they fixed an "oil filter" in the left engine, v reassuring), sorting out visas through immigration, moving my considerable amount of stuff around.. so we only managed to stay out 'til about half eight and were in bed for 9! Lame. We managed to catch some Bavaria (Brazilian beer brewed in Canada, apparently) special night action whilst we were there though, think we got through about 5 buckets between 5 of us. Then woke up around 4 in the morning thinking hmm it's lunchtime and I shouldn't be in bed, but yeah getting over that now with the on/off night drinking system that's being employed. [actually it's become more like every day drinking since we got to Whistler, but I'll cover that in the next post!]

The next day we headed down to the SWAP office in Vancouver to see if we could get in on an earlier orientation meeting to sort out social insurance number, banking, mobile phones etc. The meeting was actually pretty good, some useful info and stuff plus the staff were very helpful, so perhaps shouldn't have been so cynical about handing over money to BUNAC! We met some guys at the meeting who we'd seen the day before on the plane trip, plus randomly bumped into another girl who some of the guys (self included) had been in touch with before we left! Then we went searching for a couple of snowboard shops to kill some time before going en masse to get phones, then headed to the pub at 4... briefly managed to go home to get showered then we went down to some other guys' (well, one guy, Tim, two girls, Jess and Sarah) hostel then worked our way up Granville street before ending up in a, er, strip joint cuz that was the only place we could see that was willing to let us in with bags! :) quite funny as we had 3 girls with us. Also quite funny that, having not paid to go in, the beer was actually cheaper than most of the bars we'd been at previously. Tim was totally wasted and decided to start taking pictures of the girls with his digicam (looool). Unsurprisingly this drew the bouncers' attention and I thought his camera was probably done for, but, being outside England, the bouncer was fortunately very friendly and understanding (in fact I don't think he did much other than laugh the whole time we were there) so he got off with a slapped wrist and deleted pictures.. Don't think I was loving it quite as much as everyone else but was pretty funny!

Day after that we went over the bridge to South Van and checked out a bunch of board shops. The equipment was crazy cheap - they had boards for at most half the price of what they are in England. I checked out a few jackets but have decided to leave off purchasing everything 'til everything is sorted up in Whistler! Not sure how much I'll have to play with you see. So yeah, went to a few shops, had a very lengthy chat with one of the boardshop girls, then met up with the guys for lunch at a sushi place (not the best idea when everyone is hung over), which was pretty interesting. Si had some weird fizzy explode in the mouth fish egg style things, cool :) in general everyone made a very poor attempt at finishing off the food, Lewis in particular having left all his breakfast except for one piece of toast and then only managing to eat one tuna roll at the sushi place hehe. Possibly the worst display of eating I've ever seen :) after we were done not eating raw fish we walked all the way to the opposite end of the city centre (serious mileage) and checked out Stanley Park. The guys wanted everyone to get rollerblades, well Si especially seeing as he plays ice hockey and could demonstrate how much better he was than everyone else ;) but me and Duncan decided the Santa Monica Boulevard style beach cruisers would be a much better option so hired them instead. Didn't get very far round though cuz we were pretty late in the day and Matt and Jen made a poor go at blading and ended up walking back! Grabbed some dinner then we got home everyone was pretty wrecked so everyone just KO'd.

On the next (and last full) day the hardcore among us (Paul, Si and Lewis) went back to Stanley Park and got some rollerblades (everyone this time). It looked like a poor decision for a while because I stacked it in the middle of the road just outside the shop (was quite a nasty hill down to the park entrance) so had to scramble across before the red man started flashing at me. Managed to get the hang of it after a while though and we got all the way round in about 2 hours I think. Was a cool excursion and managed to take a few nice pictures, but I'm sure I missed a bunch of it because I was very conscious of getting over confident and doing some damage :) after that we trekked (everything is pretty much a trek) back across town in search of dinner via the main shopping street. Some of you guys (*cough* Chloe) would have loved it with all the boutiques being in one place! Had some weird burrito type thing which sounded good and was cheap (main reason for choosing that) but was actually literally meat in a tube.. Yuk. Went for a cheeky beer midday stylee then back to the hostel to dump some stuff and get changed quickly before getting out on the beers proper. Sat outside a bar and got a few jugs in, waitress came out and had a go at Matt as mentioned above, then realised that she was making a mistake by being assy and became SUPER FRIENDLY (North Americans love their 'super' adjectives, especially the girl who gave us our orientation talk, I was cracking up) with Paul mainly. In her favour she was wearing a cracking little black dress, and was also very fine, although it later transpired that she was a bit of a ho as was spotted with numerous different men throughout the night. Oh then a tramp came up to us (which is a very common occurrence in Vancouver, apparently all the homeless people in Canada amass there because everywhere else gets SUPER COLD. I must have had at least 7 guys come up to me asking for change one day whilst we were walking about), so yeah the tramp came up to us and asked us for some change. We'd met another tramp earlier in the day, well I say met but he actually just came up to us and said, "do you want me to climb that tree", so inspired by that plus the liquid dinner we said, "we'll give you some money if you climb that pole" (lol) he went for the wrong one so we sent him across the street to climb the designated lamppost. The guy literally ran straight across the street, grabbed a newspaper dispenser to climb on top of and wrapped himself round the post, spurred on vociferously by the crowd of rowdy brits on the other side of the road (plus Welsh, Duncan, and Irish, Mark, dudes), was funny as. After a substantial amount of beer I decided it was probably best if I got something to eat, plus we wanted to check out a different bar which was opposite our hostel (the Royal, next to the HI central, which has parties on alternate Wednesdays), so we set off in search of $1 pizza (well actually its 93 cents but the aforementioned tax on everything makes it up to $1 on da nose) while the rest of the guys went into the club next door to the bar we were in. We (Duncan and I) were determined to find pizza for one buck and went on a mission. The first place we asked in was $1.10 a slice - obviously an extortionate amount to charge so we told the owner of course. He kindly directed us to a place down the road which DID have $1 pizza though, but we ended up walking miles in search of it :) the Royal was kinda dead but bumped into a couple of guys from Warwick uni(!) in there, and another girl from Warwick proper (England is so small).
The club we went to was actually pretty cool, and surprisingly busy for a Wednesday night, plus they had vodka cranberry for $2 :D we had a go at lighting up the dancefloor as per, and then I managed to find courage to actually go and talk to a girl I had been admiring :) transpires that everyone outside Gloucester is actually happy to talk to you, and she turned out to be a really cool chick as well as being foxy! She's just broken up with her boyfriend of 4 years tho, so probably that'll be that..but I did say that maybe she'll get an invite up to our phat pad in Whistler though at some point ;)

So yeah, our last day was unsurprisingly blurry and pretty much all that took place was getting the Greyhound bus up to Whistler! After a bitching bacon and cream cheese bagel from the place next door to our hostel. Think we managed to go on a brief sightseeing tour of the place, but will leave that to the next post as this is a bit of an essay already! In short, Vancouver rocks! Will definitely go and spend more time there.

Hope the fans are appeased :)
Until next time...

quickie

2004-10-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

EDIT: sorry all have changed my number already!! gone on to a monthly payment thing instead cuz pay as you guy sucks :) new one is +1 604 906-1636, booya.

original post follows...

hey guys, just a quick one to say i've got a canadian number, it's (see above instead!) feel free to call or text :)

vancouver is wicked, real nice scenery and met a bunch of cool peeps already! haven't got over how the houses and streets are so reminiscent of film sets yet tho, oh and the TV adverts are funny as :)

nighty x

Eek!!

2004-10-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

Well turns out I was right in thinking the queue for the phones was a bad sign! Spoke to Whistler career centre whatever thing yesterday evening and booked in an interview for the 3rd November, quite late in the recruitment fair. Then was informed that the staff housing was fully pre-booked and the soonest I can apply for the waiting list is 11th November, assuming some people get kicked out cuz they don't get hired..

This brought on mixed feelings, at first I thought that's cool cuz it'll be fun trying to find somewhere to live and makes it a bit more exciting, but then also I thought of the prospect of not having anywhere to stay.. not quite so fun :)
I've been in touch with some very nice sounding people though who are starting the house hunt asap and hopefully we'll get a big place sorted sometime this week!

Watch this space, as they say... (pretty lame, sorry)

Also I figure that the recruitment is going to go on a bit longer than first suspected as they have to give everyone a company fit interview and then a job specific interview, and if they don't finish the company fit interviews 'til the 4th (which I assume is true, mine being on the 3rd) then it's bound to go on for like another week... That's cool though, reduces the amount of time until the lifts open!

3 days remain... (been watching Donnie Darko)

Tiiiiime for an update

2004-10-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

ok, well the day is drawing near... Think I will just about be sorted in time, which, for me, has taken a near monumental effort!!! Last night I finally got round to doing my job applications, but after that I gave up on holding to make an appointment having waited to speak to someone for 20 minutes... Bodes well eh. Actually I think some elaboration is required due to the length of time it's been since I last posted...

So, after the first choice interview... A while after that I figured we needed to get moving with the organisation for Canada. I did much research and decided that Canadian Affair were going to be the cheapest way of getting here, so we thought we'd better get the flights sorted so that we could proceed with the BUNAC application (had to send flight details plus insurance forms). We originally booked for the 17th October from Manchester, but didn't get the return flight sorted out for aaages after that. Turned out that we didn't leave on the 17th after all, bit annoying because it meant we lost £95... Ah well what can you do, that's what trying to plan ahead does for you ;) We didn't go then cuz I/we decided that it would be better to stay and earn more money for a week, plus save by not being away, plus I'd never have had time to do everything otherwise! Oh and also I figured that it was going to take too much time/money/hassle to go to a number of recruitment fairs before the Whistler one, whilst simulataneously convincing myself that Whistler was indeed the place that I really wanted to go to! Multitasking, wow.

Also, I got offered a job by First Choice to be a chalet girl in France (they warned me about "training" at the interview but not gender changes). Sucks a bit cuz they don't tell you which resort you'll be working in until after the training, also the contract start date was specified as January... I asked them why this was and they told me that they weren't sure they were going to get enough bookings over the Christmas period, lol. Anyway, that should be kush as a backup in case all goes tits up :)

Back on track...

For you guys, the readers (or my fans? :), I am about to make this publicly available, and I'd imagine this'll be my last post before I go unless I get some literary inspiration before then..

I made this for my friends and family as much as, if not more than, myself, so that if you want to see what I've been up to or leave me a comment then, er, you can! I'll be checking my email regularly too though so up to you what you'd rather. Hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures and stuff on here too from time to time, as long as they're suitable for general consumption of course :)

Well take care of yourselves guys! Will post more soon X

no news is?

2004-09-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

hmmm have just been checking the information I've collected so far on resort recruitment fair dates etc. and noticed that one of the resorts I was very interested in going to (Big White) has its recruitment fair on the 15th/16th October :/ no way I'm going out that soon so have emailed them to see if they're attending the BUNAC SWAP organised thingy on the 28th October (apparently lots of resorts from BC and Alberta are turning out), else if there's any chance of getting a job there after that... Bit of a pain in the arse, was considering Big White (and Fernie) as another backup plan but looks like it's been ruled out!

Other news: went for an interview with First Choice last Wednesday (1st Sept.), seemed to go OK, but who knows with interviews eh. Anyway they said they'd let me know in 7-10 days, so fingers crossed for that as a backup plan. I nearly didn't go to the interview at all because of my usual excellent prior planning, meaning I had 45 minutes to get to the place (about 45 miles away) that I'd never been to before, but managed to arrive only 2 minutes late, don't know if that will have an adverse affect on my chances of getting the job tho, we shall see...

and i bring you...

2004-08-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

...my weblog for 'the trip'. This is obviously way too much forward planning, I'm fairly impressed with myself :)

Watch this space...