Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Catching up

It's been almost half a year since I last blogged. I didn't even finish chronicling my North American adventures. Shameful. Here's a refresher course for that, which I hope to keep somewhat brief:

I felt dreadful all throughout my stay in Boston and missed out on seeing much of the city. It was Bologna all over again. Fortunately, I started to get better as soon as I got into Toronto (you rock, Canada!) and managed to catch up with Janna for a session of night boarding at Blue Mountain, which wasn't all that spectacular (you suck, Blue!).

Catching up with people was a recurring theme throughout the entire trip. When I got to Banff, I met up with Martyn from high school, James again - he was there for a mini vacation before he headed home - and Amanda, who I knew from online. Next stop was Panorama, where I caught up with Shelley and Anj (and missed Brad completely due to poor planning) and then Revelstoke where a whole bunch of the old Pano crew were living and/or working.

Vancouver provided a nice reprieve from the near-constant snowboarding. The snow on the mountains surrounding the city was sub-par (and I hear did not really get much better until after the Winter Olympics had finished) so I took it as a chance to kick back and relax for a few days. I watched a couple of Canucks games at the pub with Shaun (ex-Pano) and chanced a meeting with Ben, a Vancouverite I met when I was backpacking in St. John's - he was living and studying in Cork, Ireland at the time, but happened to be back in town at the same time I was there. I cannot finish a paragraph about Vancouver without mentioning the sushi, which was as delicious and ludicrously cheap as ever. It's one of the reasons I keep going back to the city.

Catching up continued back into the USA when I stayed in Seattle with Lee (from LISA '08) and boarded Stevens Pass with Jon (a tutor I had in uni). I spent New Year's there before flying to Colorado to spend some more time with my parents in Winter Park. I did a bit of snowboarding - not too much because slopes of Winter Park were notorious for their moguls and traverses - and we went dog-sledding on one of the days, which was a definite highlight of the entire trip.

The other highlight came in another part of Colorado. I went to Albuquerque to meet up with Dylan and Angela, loose acquaintances that I met briefly in Sydney, who were involved in organising a trip to Silverton, which was essentially a backcountry ski area with one lift that took you high enough to get started. There hadn't been some new snow so it was rough in parts, but there were some really sweet spots and for my final ski run of the entire trip I decided I'd go for a heli drop since it was one of the cheapest places I'd seen it offered. The sensation of the helicopter taking off, flying into the valley, and then rising up and finally landing on the top of the run was worth the price of admission so the powder the run had to offer was simply icing on the cake. It was the perfect end to the trip.

Hmm, that wasn't a short refresher after all. Oh well.

Hmmmm, it seems I was comment spammed when I wasn't paying attention to this blog. I think I shall turn on word verification...