Southern California bound

I spent most the final day at Whistler packing my bag and relaxing at the hostel. I did end up going to the village to see some free outdoor concerts, for which it was drizzling, with the threat of rain. It was ironic that the bands that were playing that afternoon played some surf rock music. The first artist I caught was Hayley Sales, which I was very impressed by. She played some beautiful acoustic/surf rock and entertained the slowly growing crowd despite the threat of rain. I was so impressed by her band, in fact, that I decided to buy her EP at the merchandise tent for $5.

Next up, and the final band to perform at the outdoor music series for the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival, were Aussie band The Beautiful Girls, and they rocked the crowd both soft and hard. I would say that it was a fitting end to the festival, but I had only really attended this event for the entire festival, so I can't really talk. In any case, it was a nice end to my Whistler trip. I caught the bus to Vancouver the next morning where I took care of some things early on before meeting up with the others who had just come from Whistler.

A long evening in Vancouver

After taking a quick afternoon nap in my hostel room, the Pano crew got together and invaded a nearby tattoo and piercing parlor. Six people ended up getting a piercing (myself not being among those six) and all of them were generally satisfied with their decorative yet pricey purchase. We all went for sushi afterwards (and oh boy that sushi was great) before heading back to the hostel to watch game 7 of the playoff series between the Vancouver Canucks and the Dallas Stars.

It was quite a spectacle watching a playoff game in Vancouver. Whenever the home team would score, you would know it, even if you weren't watching the game, because of the screams of ecstasy from pubs in the streets and the beeps of horns from passing cars. I did, however, watch the gripping final game of the series, and Vancouver ended up victorious 4-1, after 2 late open net goals.

We headed over to watch Electric Six afterwards, and marveled at the jubilation on the streets, as fans, both on foot and in vehicles, expressed their joy at their home team going on to the next round. I can only hope that I will be able to watch the next series, which will be against the Anaheim Ducks. On a slightly tangential note, it was good to see the Golden State Warriors not only make it to the playoffs for the first time in 13 years, but also upset the western conference's number 1 ranked team, the Dallas Mavericks, in the first game of the series. Maybe both of my teams can make a double against Dallas this year.

Anyway, we showed up at the concert just as the support act was finishing up. Much of the Pano crew was there, and soon after all of us had a Jager Bomb, Electric Six got on stage, and things started getting crazy. The band exuded a unique presence, something that I had not seen before, not even in some high-energy gigs that I've been to before. The mosh pit was not very big, but it somehow managed to be the most - I don't want to say violent, but I guess a word to describe it would be animated - crowd I have ever encountered. The fact that it was a small venue made sure that the craziness continued. The security was quite lax, and I ended up crowd surfing no less than 3 times without once being called to come down.

All in all, the gig was off the hook, and well worth the $20 cover charge. The group splintered off after the show, and a few of us decided to visit some bars. After a bit of bar hopping and a few more pieces of sushi, I finally ended up going to sleep at around 2:30, only to wake up 2 hours later to get ready to go to the train station to make my way to LA.

A long train ride to LA

I'm writing this while I am on the Coast Starlight train from Seattle to LA. This leg of the trip to LA, which will last about 34-35 hours, comes after a good 3-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle at about 5:30 in the morning. I'll end up arriving in LA tomorrow evening at about 8, making it a bit of a marathon. Thankfully I've brought along a book and the new Pokemon game to keep me entertained, and will hopefully last me the entire trip. Otherwise, there's always the moving scenery, which reminds me a bit of the train trips around England and a around Wollongong. It's rather nice, but I'm much looking forward to getting off at LA so that I can finally make my way to Coachella. It's been a long time coming, and I'm quite excited.

Training day

This is my second stint on the laptop, writing a blog entry during this train trip, and I must say that I will be very happy once I get out of here. That's not to say that it's been enjoyable, because it certainly has been. I've seen some great sights along the way, and I've met a couple of Brits from Whistler who are also heading over to Coachella. The reason why I've grown rather tired of the trip is the amount of time in which the train is running late. As it stands it is somewhere between 2 and 3 hours behind schedule. What's funny is that apparently that's actually pretty good for this service. I've actually managed to finish reading Ender's Game (great book), volume 3 of Scott Pilgrim (which didn't really take too long as it was a graphic novel), and have made steady progress into Pokemon Diamond. It was certainly worth the experience to travel using this method, but next time I'll be going on the plane for long trips.

I live!

Short entry - I made it out of that train alive. Woohoo! Man, that was a painfully boring last few hours. Anyway, right now I have to hold up my laptop above chest level next to a door in order to get any wireless signal, so this update shall be short. At least the post itself was big. Indio tomorrow! I'll give a full Coachella rundown and hopefully a long-awaited picture update when I get back.

Whistler

The last few days of Panorama were probably a bit less bittersweet than expected, mainly due to the frenzy of packing and cleaning. In the end, it was a nice way to farewell the season. I had the last few days off work, which was really nice, and took some of the pressure off getting things sorted before having to leave. I pretty much had everything packed before the staff party, which was huge. Almost everybody was drinking out in the Great Hall deck, and there was a bit of skiing and snowboarding on the bottom of the hill too. There were a lot of emails exchanged and a lot of goodbyes.

The day after had a very familiar feel to it. Walking around the village was eerily quiet, with primarily staff wandering the streets, much like how it was at the very start of the season when we had all gotten there. It had come around full circle, and was kind of appropriate considering how the season had gone. A ragtag group of Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and people from all over the world had come to Panorama to enjoy the snow. They had gotten that and much more, and the last day here was a reminder of just how that journey had started.

As the airport shuttle bus, which I had arranged for a handful of us, arrived at the staff lodging, it was time to say a final goodbye to the place which had produced so many memories, much of which will probably last a lifetime. A good 10 minutes or so passed after we loaded the luggage trailer as a huge round of hugs and farewells (and a few tears) commenced. It seemed for a moment that nobody wanted to leave, but once the van started, we knew that, at least for some of us, it was only the start of the adventure.

In my previous overseas trip, I had a small section to sum up each stop, and although I don't intend to do this for every single city that I visit during this trip, I decided I should bring it back, with some slight adjustments, for each significant leg of the trip. And so, without further adieu, I present you the new and improved travel stats section, version 2.0.

Panorama overview

Dates of residence: Dec 01, 2006 - Apr 17, 2007
Nicknames: Man-o-rama, Pano-drama, home
Days on the hill: 39 days snowboarding, 2 days skiing, 1 day Nording skiing, 7 days snowboarding at other resorts
Theme song/s: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here, Green Day - Good Riddance

Whistralia

After spending a night in Vancouver so that I could see Social Distortion, I headed over to Whistler to meet with a few of the Panorama crew, and it turns out that there are a fair few of us here. Another group of people that are featured predominantly in Whistler are the Aussies, hence the nickname Whistralia.

So far it's day 4 of my stay here, and it's been very enjoyable. The terrain here is just incredible, and I've been able to find some powder in the past few days. The unfortunate thing is that because Whistler is so well-known and well-renowned, it attracts a huge amount of tourists, meaning any run that is easily accessible is tracked out within seconds of any powder hitting it. You really need to look for the good spots.

Yesterday, I did some backcountry riding. It was great to get fresh tracks, but the 1 and a half hour ski-out/hike-out was more than a pain and a half. I was really exhausted by the end of it, and took it easy last night. It's about 12:30 right now and I haven't even decided whether or not I will go out on the hill today. I probably will, but not for very long.

Anyway, I guess that's it from me for now. I haven't had a chance to upload any new photos lately due to how busy it was before leaving Panorama, and the fact that there were a few power outages in that period that prevented Internet access. The next update will probably come when I hit LA or San Francisco.

Fun in the sun

Saturday was both national stretchy day and national one-piece day. This meant lots of wacky outfits out on the hill. Not only that, but it was also quite a warm day (and by warm I mean around 10-15 degrees) so a big group of staff got together in various forms of attire and had a relaxing sunbathe at the summit hut, which brought back nice memories of Australia Day. The most memorable moment was when MJ showed up wearing a maternity bathing suit... and not much else but his skis. Talk about one-pieces.

I did a bit of one-piece skiing myself, before I dressed up in a different kind of one-piece - an Easter Bunny costume. I worked as the bunny for a couple of hours on Saturday night for a kids event where they had inflatable playgrounds (which some not-so-young kids momentarily hijacked) and performers. It was quite a scary experience having so many kids have so many different reactions to you while in costume.

It wasn't as scary as the next day, however. I didn't need to put the costume back on, but I was 'hiding' Easter eggs for a big Easter egg hunt in the village. It wasn't exactly hiding because the kids would hound you the moment they saw that you were carrying around a bag full of Easter eggs. Those kids are good. After a while they would yell out, as if part of an angry mob, "follow that man!" Needless to say, I was relieved when the eggs ran out.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a big air competition out on the hill. I completely missed the competition due to poor anticipation (I left home too late), but I did manage to catch a massive snowball fight that happened at the end of the competition. It was great because it was still nice and warm and a large portion of staff had drawn battle lines and were throwing snowballs at each other. I eventually joined in, and didn't get wet until afterwards, when a few of us decided it was a good idea to toboggan down the bottom of Showoff (the ski run directly next to the Mile One Quad) using only a canvas banner. By the end of it, the four of us were unavoidably covered in wet snow. It was lots of fun.

Perhaps one of the finest periods of the week was Monday night - the final jam night of the season. I finally got up and sang for the first time in a long time, but the best bit was when a group of people from the housekeeping department (myself included) got up on stage and sang Stand By Me. It was very moving... but also mostly very amusing because we were all quite drunk. The other songs I sang To Her Door (Paul Kelly), Black (Pearl Jam), and Good Riddance (Green Day), and did an encore request for Ian (singing Last Kiss) before everybody got up on stage again at the very end and did a spectacular rendition of American Pie for the final song of jam night '06/07. I'm pretty sure a few of us woke up the building when we got home after singing American Pie again really loudly.

Quest for the cup

The Stanley Cup Playoffs started today. It was great to see hockey playoff action live on TV, something that I don't think I'll ever see again when I return to Australia (at least for as long as I stay in Australia). I was feeling a bit sick so I didn't stay up longer than about 10, right after the San Jose Sharks won a thriller double overtime game against the Predators. I figured the game that my team, the Vancouver Canucks, were playing (against Dallas) wouldn't really be as exciting, so I went to sleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night, at about 1:30, the game was still going, locked up at 4-4 on quadruple overtime. It was crazy, and I was glad that I managed to catch the end of it. The Canucks managed to get a goal late in the fourth overtime period to win the opening match in the series. At that moment, I knew I was definitely gonna miss the hockey on the TV.

I've got photos and videos of events described above, but I've been far too busy or tired to post any up. I'll probably have them up by the end of the week, as tomorrow (a.k.a. today) is my last day of work... which I suppose I should go back to sleep for. I hope I'm feeling better in the morning, because I sure need that money for my travels.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... again?

The weather is cruel. After almost all the snow had disappeared from anywhere in the lower village, the temperature dropped on Monday morning and gave us a huge dump of snow. Naturally, as is always the case on every powder day this year, I was working. The bad thing was that I couldn't get any time off work until Wednesday afternoon, so I only caught the back end of some awesome snow. Still, it was pretty sweet seeing powder this late in the season. I'm doubting it'll snow some more, but I've said that countless times in the past few weeks and the weather keeps proving me wrong, so anything can happen in the last week of Panorama's season.

"Spring" snow at the lower village

Photos from March can be viewed here.

Exodus

A considerable chunk of the 2nd and 3rd floor's residents left today. Ben, Leigh, John, Alex, and Shane all drove off for their road trip to various resorts on the way to Whistler (something I would have done if I weren't traveling around in the summer), and Kelly left to go home for a few weeks. So for the next 3 weeks it's going to be eerily quiet around the place. Mind you, it is only 3 weeks left, which in itself is kinda scary. It's really sad to know that our time is almost up, but it's gonna be a damn sweet period right after the season ends, with a week in Whistler, and Coachella almost right after, not to mention one or two gigs in Vancouver before heading to LA.

Ski free

I borrowed Jessalyn's skis for a day last week, and had a lot of fun learning on my own. I actually picked it up pretty quickly. I guess once you know the mechanics of one sport (i.e. skiing or snowboarding) then you can figure out the other easier than somebody who hasn't tried either. Anyway, after a couple of hours I was linking turns comfortably. The only downside was that I could go fast, but I had trouble stopping fast, so I was still very cautious, as there were lots of other people on the hill. Still, it was a great experience, and I can see myself doing more of it as the snow gets softer in the next few weeks.

More photos should be coming soon. I took some great shots when I went up to Taynton Bowl and rode some phenomenal powder last week.

Of course, it doesn't always pan out that way...

Well, just a week after the supposed end to winter conditions (and on the day that the season officially ticked over to spring, no less), the weather decides to pull another one on me, as the summit of Panorama got another dump of snow (about 15cm on Monday night, and more yesterday). I was working yesterday, and, despite it not being a busy day, could not find a way out of work, so I was looking out of the window all day and seeing the snow just puking from the skies. I guess that means that I'm going back up to the summit again after all.

To make things decidedly more interesting, I was (am) meant to go to Lake Louise today for a staff trip. It's $15 I'm thinking about throwing away for another great day of riding at Panorama. I was out bowling last night and told Alex and Shelley that I'd go riding with them today, so I don't exactly want to ditch them to go to Louise for a measly 10cm over the past 2 days, especially when Pano has gotten more snow in the same period of time. That's not to say that they'd pike too, but I'd still feel bad either way.

I still haven't made my final decision. It's 6:30 now, and the bus for Lake Louise leaves at 7:15, so I have about half an hour to choose between Panorama or Lake Louise. I'm kind of leaning towards Panorama.

Speaking of plans going haywire, it seems that even more people are leaving soon. It kind of sucks to see them go, but I guess people have good reasons to stay or to go (as is my case), and I'm gonna farewell everybody else in about 4 weeks anyway, so it's not such a big loss. I'm sure I'll see most of these folks again somewhere in the future.

The last beautiful day

Well, I think I'm done. I think I've gone to the summit for the last time of my stay here. It was almost a perfect ending to my season of doing runs from there too. It all really started two days ago, just before midnight, when, out of nowhere, it started to snow at the village again - something that Panorama hadn't seen for some time.

It continued to dump throughout the morning and early afternoon of the next day (which was yesterday). Add to that the fact that it was in negative degrees for the first time in a while, and it was a recipe for some fresh tracks. The only problem with this situation was that I was both working yesterday and was meant to work today. Thankfully, a series of events occurred that led to me being able to get the day off, and oh, what a day it was.

I didn't actually go riding too much today. I did two runs... one was a practice run while I waited for Taynton Bowl to open up, and the other was through Taynton itself. I had committed to this being my last run at the bowl (unless there's another massive dump of snow before the end of the season), and I wanted to make sure I had some nice powder for it, so I decided not to do Devil's Drop (which I had wanted to do all season) because it was too tracked out, as per usual. Before I headed out, I had an excellent sandwich at the Summit Hut, my last meal at the top of Panorama, and took in some of the beautiful scenery for one last time. It was a shame that I didn't bring my camera along, as it was a beautiful day.

Then, it was time for my last hurrah. It's still a month away from the end of the season, but I knew that this would probably be the last time I would bother to take three lifts up to the top. I took my time to scout out the tracks, and eventually found some attractive powder in between Kinbasket and Whitetail, two of the last runs down the bowl. I didn't hesitate to strap in and there began my final descent, making some fresh tracks and surfing some nice fluffy snow. I was not only riding through good snow but was also riding really well. It was so good that I decided not to go up again, in the fear that I'd have a bad run and spoil my big finale.

It doesn't mean that I won't be going riding at all for the rest of the season, though. I will still do a lot of riding, but I'm probably going to restrict myself to the bottom half, cruising through groomers or getting better at the terrain park. And, of course, there's staff trips, and my end-of-season trip to Whistler. But it's goodbye to the summit of Panorama, at least for 2006/07... I know I'll be back here some day.

KA-SMACK!

My very massive bail about a month ago can be seen here. Enjoy.

Slush

Conditions have been deteriorating over the past couple of weeks, and in more ways than one. First and foremost, spring has decided to come particularly early this year. There's still been some precipitation on the mountain, but the state of the runs are what you would see in an average Australian season - ice or slush - because of the increasing temperatures that haven't allowed for any decent powder. The champagne and summit runs were closed for the first time since the start of the season yesterday due to high winds, and will probably close permanently some time soon due to the lift operator staff thinning out (as a lot of them have left or are leaving).

That seems to be the general theme around work lately. A lot of people are taking off early because for some it's not really worth it to stay - there's not a lot of good snow anymore, and there's only about 4 weeks left in the season. The lifties in particular have been hard hit, and they've had to poach a lot of housekeepers to keep their numbers up, which has meant that we've been losing lots of staff too. Not only that, but a good portion of the support staff in housekeeping have left for other positions or have headed home. It's gotten so bad that I'm taking on a different position tomorrow, just for one day, because the new trainees for that position are still being trained, and are all off tomorrow.

The bad conditions have also thrown my goals out of whack. I no longer intend to ride every run on the mountain because of the cover becoming thin and exposed, and have become consigned to the fact that my 75% coverage will have to do. I've also stopped at 5 other resorts visited throughout the season, as I can ill-afford trips to any of the resorts that are a little further away (with the exception of Whistler after the season). I have a feeling that I'll be back to visit some more resorts somewhere down the line, just not this year.

As for my plans for the season, I have all intentions to stay until the end. I need to save up some money for my post-season travels, and it would be mighty handy having a few more paychecks, and to get my bonus too. They're not making it an easy decision though... there's a staff day on the day after the season ends, which means people would probably head off on the day after. The bad thing is that the buses stop running on the day the season ends, which means a lot of people would be stranded here. I'm trying to get a charter shuttle going from Panorama to Calgary Airport, but it would cost too much if we don't get a full shuttle. I'm hoping for at least 3 or 4 more people, because it would then be worth it to get one. Otherwise, it'd be a free-for-all on the 17th of April to get on that Greyhound to Calgary, which would then be followed by an expensive taxi to Calgary Airport.

The post-season

In any case, my plans for where to go after the season ends are solidifying. Some travel details still need sorting out, but the locations I want to visit are pretty much locked in.

I fly out of Calgary on the 17th, going to Vancouver then heading straight to Whistler for 5 days, as I get 5 days free at any Intrawest resort for finishing my contract (another reason why I want to stay until the end of the season). After that, I'll be heading from Vancouver to LA (by plane or train - that hasn't been decided yet) then catch a bus to Indio for Coachella. I'll probably hang out in LA for a few more days after Coachella, then go to San Francisco for a month or so. I've got tickets to see Arcade Fire at the Greek Theatre in Berkley (which is near San Francisco) on June 1, which I'm really looking forward to, even though I'm already seeing them play a condensed set at Coachella. I then head to Chicago for a few days in mid-June, followed by New York, then to Montréal for the International Festival of Jazz.

Montréal is the first stop of my eastern Canadian adventure, where my goal is to try and visit all the eastern provinces, as well as major cities like Toronto and Québec. Speaking of Toronto, I'll probably be visiting the city twice. The first time will be around the time of my birthday, because I've booked tickets to go see Roger Waters there, and the show just happens to be on my birthday. The second time will be around early September, when I'll be in town for the Toronto International Film Festival. I'm very much looking forward to both of those trips. My last stop will be Vancouver, which is convenient because my flight to Sydney leaves from Vancouver, and because the Vancouver International Film Festival takes place not too long after the Toronto one. I'll probably visit Vancouver Island while I'm there too, as I hear it's beautiful there.

I don't have a great deal of new photos, and most of them are of people partying, so I won't bother uploading them yet. I'll put up some new ones when I get some good shots.

Canadian vacation

I ended up getting a room at the Banff Center's Lloyd Hall for around $70. It was twice what I would have paid at a backpacker's hostel, but all the ones in Banff were booked out for that day. The good thing was that it was a nice little hotel room. It obviously had to be classy-looking because of all the international conventions they had at the Banff Center.

After checking in at the hotel room, I headed into town for some dinner. After seeing the big line-up at The Keg (steakhouse), I went a few doors down to the Elk & Oarsman, a pub and grill. I had a bison burger, which tasted quite nice. Afterwards I ran into a trio of travelers from New Zealand and proceeded to get drunk. There was a guy playing tunes on the stage and knew some NZ and Aussie songs like Crowded House and Paul Kelly. I eventually got drunk enough and went up on stage and sang a couple of songs (rather badly), and I got a free Jager bomb from the barman for my troubles.

Mike turned up at the bar after he finished work, and after a couple of drinks we went across the street to Tommy's, a nice little pub, for a couple more drinks. We had a few games of darts and eventually headed back to the Banff Center with Mike's girlfriend, Lindsay. We hung out for a bit then I crashed at my hotel room until about 10 in the morning.

Splurge!

Despite the late start, Sunday was a pretty full day. I took a scenic trail over into town, which was great. I hadn't done a walk (as in, a nature walk type of walk) in some time, so this was a nice scenic experience. I saw the Banff Springs from a distance and eventually ended up in town after going along the Bow River. By this point, I was pretty hungry, so I stopped over at Evelyn's Again, a coffee chain in Banff (the chain is called Evelyn's, this particular one was Evelyn's Again, the third one in town is Evelyn's Too). The food there was pretty average. There was something advertised as an Aussie Meat Pie, which was nowhere near what an Aussie Meat Pie should be. Needless to say, I was not very impressed with my purchase.

The Bow River meets the bridge at the end of Banff Avenue, and makes for some good photos

What I was happy with, however, were my other purchases on Sunday. I bought some new DVDs and, after meeting up with Mike, some new clothes. I finally bought those gloves I've been looking at buying for ages, as well as a new tuque (what Canadians call a beanie), a shirt, a sweater, and a windproof North Face shell, which was the most expensive of the lot. I won't even say how much I spent on that day of shopping, let alone for the entire trip. It had to happen eventually though, I had been planning to buy new stuff for a while.

At the end of the day, Mike and I were very tired for reasons we could only attribute to the energy drink we had earlier in the day. We lounged a bit at Mike's room then went to see a show at the Banff Center. We saw Mae Moore and Lester Quitzau, a Canadian folk-pop duo. They put on an incredible and entertaining show that everybody in the small intimate audience really enjoyed, myself included. The plan afterwards was to go to Aurora for 25c beers. Sadly, there as a DJ playing that night, and they were charging a big cover charge and coat check fee, so we just went to McDonald's for dinner and went to Tommy's again, where the drinks were also fairly cheap. It was an early night out as we wanted to go to Sunshine for a full day of snowboarding the next day.

Monday was pretty straightforward day to explain. We woke up early, snowboarded until about 4:30, had dinner, and went to bed. An entire day of riding really takes it out of you. Mike and Pat took me out to Sunshine's backcountry, which is not nearly as good as some of the stuff we have inbounds at Panorama, but was still a fun adventure. I started becoming comfortable with jibbing small features in the middle of runs, which we don't really have here at Panorama.

Mike and Pat hike up to do a kicker at Sunshine's backcountry

More complications

I had a long, albeit interrupted, 12-hour sleep and woke up just as Mike was going snowboarding and Lindsay was going to work. I left and took the scenic trail to town again, this time to have breakfast at a much nicer bakery-style place, the Wild Flour. I generally just had a stroll around town and ended up on the other side of the Bow River, doing the start of the Bow Falls trail. Unfortunately, the rest of the trail was closed off for reasons unknown. Consequently, I just went to the Fairmont Banff Springs instead. It's much more grand up-close, and the inside was just insane. There were probably more rooms and more shops in this huge castle than there was in the entire Panorama village. I'd like to think that one day I can afford one or two nights in that place.

They don't call it the 'Castle in the Rockies' for nothing

I headed back downtown after checking out the hotel and had a milkshake from Cow's, which Reader's Digest had once highlighted as having Canada's best ice-cream. I must admit, it was pretty darn tasty. My next stop was meant to be an art gallery at the Banff Center, where I would hang around for the next couple of hours waiting for Mike to get back from snowboarding. Alas, the gallery was closed for the day, and I just sat around the lounge area outside Mike's apartment reading Popular Science and Ender's Game for a couple of hours. Mike was stuck in Sunshine until about 4:30, so when Lindsay got back, she let me leave my stuff in their room while I went out and got dinner.

I had dinner at The Keg, which had one of the most phenomenal steaks I have ever eaten. I had their biggest cut of prime rib, which was 14oz, and it was juicy and tasty all over. The accompanying baked potato was also about as great as the steak. After chomping down this huge cut like a machine, I walked back to the Banff Center to get my stuff. I caught the taxi to the Greyhound station early so that I wouldn't miss the bus, which seemed pointless later on as the bus showed up about 30-40 minutes late.

As we approached Radium, I turned on my phone (which was running out of battery) and tried to make some calls to get a lift back to Panorama (the last bus to Panorama was 9:05, which I was not going to make even in the bus from Banff was on time) but alas, the phone went dead before I had any success. At this point I was consigned to the fact that I had to hitch a ride back up, which would have been hard at 10 at night. By sheer luck, when the bus pulled up to the Petro-Canada station in Invermere, Justin, one of the people from the cash office at Panorama, was waiting there. He was picking up his friend from Toronto, who had just flown in, and so I was fortunate enough to be able to get a ride up from him.

Right now it's back to the normal routine. I was slow at work yesterday due to exhaustion from the Banff trip, and today I'll probably only go riding for a couple of hours before calling it quits. I got a whole weekend of work ahead of me, and I don't wanna be feeling dead for that busy period. New photos are finally up on my Photobucket album for February. The video of me crashing spectacularly at the terrain park should be on Ben's website, but I don't know the URL for that yet.

Banff

I have nowhere to stay tonight. I'm currently in Banff, at the Banff Center, anxiously awaiting on whether or not I can find some lodging for the night because, due to certain complications, my first night's accommodation has fallen through.

Complications

It all started when I woke up late for the bus (as I had mentioned in my post this morning) and had to end up hitching down to town. After about 10 minutes of waiting by the side of the road watching a very small number of cars pass by as I stuck my finger out, a nice man from Calgary (with a rather nice BMW) stopped and told me to hop in. We had a chat, as you do when you get a ride from somebody, and before I knew it, we were at the Petro-Canada gas (a.k.a. petrol) station where the Greyhound buses stopped. I hung around the general area for an hour before going back to the station to wait for the bus, which was, naturally, about 10-15 minutes late.

I caught a bit of sleep on the bus, and when I woke up we were getting close to Banff. Last night, Justin told me that Mike could no longer give me some accommodation for Banff for tonight. I was originally going to stay at Zach's place, but he was going to Edmonton tonight, so I decided I'd try Mike. Alas, that fell through, so now I sit here at the lobby of Mike's accommodation, using the Internet, as I wait for him to find me some slightly less free accommodation at the Banff Center (where he works and lives). Fortunately, I hear it's quite a nice place since they have lots of important international guests visiting here on a regular basis, so maybe it'll be a bit of money to buy a bit of the experience. Anyway, I have to wait for Mike to go on his lunch break before he can try giving the reservations desk another call (as he got put on hold for about 10 minutes just before he had to start work).

To go on a bit of a tangent, but still sticking to the general theme of things not being as simple as they could be, I decided to buy a board bag today. I figured that I'd be needing one for the end of the season when I set off on my adventure and have to haul off my two boards, bindings, and boots, among other things. All the ones that I had seen so far at other places had been too large for my board, so I decided that Banff would be an ideal place to get some more variety in terms of size. I ended up buying an LTD board bag... just a cheap padded carry-on bag (i.e. no wheels). However, it wasn't my first choice. There was this really cool looking Drop bag that I bought, but once I got my board in there, it turned out that the handle was a bit off-center, making it a bit of a pain to carry around. The good thing was that the LTD bag was the same size and the same price, so I went for a straight swap for it. Should teach me to look more closely next time.

Action plan

I'm not sure if I'll get much done today. It's already 4:45, and I'm still waiting on that accommodation to be sorted out. Assuming it does get sorted out, I'll probably just take a leisurely stroll around downtown Banff and maybe buy a couple of items I've been meaning to buy for a while, mainly gloves since mine are breaking apart. There's always tomorrow to do some more shopping (which was one of the main purposes of this trip). I'll probably also get some nice food to eat for dinner, as I am quite famished. I only had a sausage and egg (and hash brown) sandwich for breakfast, and a few snacks for lunch, and the greater variety of food establishments that Banff has compared to Panorama is calling out to me. Mike finishes at midnight tonight, so we'll probably end up going out late. Not quite sure where the night will take us, but it'll be short (bars close at 2) and hopefully pretty damn sweet. The big night will be tomorrow night, when Aurora serves 25c beers, kinda like Cowboys in Calgary but with bigger glasses. Time to get drunk on a dollar again.

The plan for Monday is to go to Sunshine Village for some backcountry snowboarding. Since Mike's a local, he knows all the sweet spots that not a lot of people go to. Jacky, Andy, Tyler, and possibly a few others might be coming to Sunshine on Monday too. I'm not entirely sure that I'll go again on Tuesday. I've only got a reciprocal letter of introduction (for free lift tickets) for Monday, so getting some tickets on Tuesday might be a bit of a hassle. Another hassle is going to be getting home on Tuesday night. The Greyhound gets to Invermere at about 9:30, and the last bus back to Panorama leaves at 9:05. I'm hoping that I can get a ride back from one of the people coming back from bowling.

Oh yeah, speaking of which, there's now a regular bowling get-together every Tuesday. I obviously won't make it this Tuesday, but I went last Tuesday and it was great fun. It's not your regular 10-pin bowling though. This was a Canadian variation on the well-loved sport... 5-pin bowling. It's pretty crazy. You get 5 pins positioned in a V-shape (each pin worth a different amount depending on position), 3 shots at knocking them all down (like regular bowling, you get a strike if you get them all on the first, and a spare if you get them all on the second), and have to aim at these targets with a ball that is about half the size of a regular bowling ball, and has no holes. It certainly takes more precision aiming to get a good score in this variation of the game. It's just about as fun as 10-pin though.

I guess I should get going soon. I gotta wait for Mike for any updates, and I've been hogging this computer for about an hour now. Ciao.

Marathon man

Well, I survived the craziness of working 8 days out of 9, and came out of it in one piece. I am, however, incredibly exhausted and just missed the bus to Invermere that I needed to catch. I guess snowboarding all day on Thursday didn't exactly help.

It all started on that fateful Thursday of last week when I started work, when I thought I'd be working my longest shift ever. Alas, I was mistaken as, after 6 days in a row of hovering around the 10-hour mark, and about 6 or 7 hours of snowboarding on my day off, I experienced a true marathon of a 14-hour shift yesterday. I came home at 11 at night, which threw my plans for Banff completely out of whack. I was meant to sleep early so I could catch the 7:40 bus to Invermere and wait for the Greyhound over to Banff, which leaves at 10:25. Sadly, I woke up at about 7:25 and couldn't be bothered walking over to the bus, which I probably would have missed. The current plan is to hitch a ride down, which usually works out. I hope it does again today.

The actual marathon was meant to happen on Thursday, when I had planned to do a 9am to 9pm snowboarding bonanza. It was all talk though. I was dead tired by 4, and Mark, Jacky's friend, hurt his shoulder on a run, so everybody decided to call it a day early. I guess it was a good thing, as I wouldn't have lived through that 14-hour shift if I had boarded 12 hours the previous day.

Anyway, I better start heading off and try to hitch a ride down to town. Photos when I get back, I promise.

Ch-check it out

Well, I ended up getting that job. They started me off on the same day that they told me I had the job, so it was a bit intense. Add to that the fact that it was a fairly busy day and it all equated to a 12-hour marathon of work. I was actually going to finish at about 7:30, but there was a bit of an emergency at the last minute, which I volunteered to help out in, and I ended up finishing at 9 on the dot, quickly rushing to Laura's going-away dinner soon after, for which I was about an hour and 10 minutes late for. But anyway, I guess it's pretty good that I get paid for 12 hours on a higher rate than what I usually get paid for... and that's just my first day for the week.

The annoying thing is that I gotta work for the next 6 days, making it a full 7 days in a row. It only really sucks because the heavens have finally opened up today and is giving us some insane snowfall, and by the time I have a day off to go snowboarding, all the snow be chopped up. It's a really busy period too, so any new snow is almost guaranteed to be tracked within days of fall. My only hope is that it keeps snowing until Thursday (or it snows HARD on Wednesday).

Road tripping

The Fernie trip on Monday was pretty epic. The resort had gotten 11cm overnight for a 24 hour fall of 14cm, so everybody on the bus was pretty excited to have a great day on the slope, and it certainly didn't disappoint. I rode with Nugget for most of the day, and he's a bit of a crazy snowboarder, so we did some pretty crazy stuff. The most memorable run was the short but oh so sweet ride down one of the Knot Chutes, which were some crazy double black chutes off of one of the ridges. We also managed to get stuck in a creek (with no paddle) after going too deep into some trees. We somehow managed to navigate our way out of there. All in all it was a crazy day, and I was just so tired by the end of the day that I completely skipped jam night.

I went on a bit of a road trip on Tuesday. It was an impulse decision after finding out in the morning that Tyler and Andy were driving Georgie to Calgary (with a slight detour at Banff) so that she could catch her flight home. The general plan was to drop Georgie off then go back to Banff for some sightseeing and shopping. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the Calgary city limits, Tyler's car had a bit of a cough up and the 4-wheel drive gave way. It was still fine in 2-wheel drive mode but they didn't want to risk prolonging the trip so, apart from a stopover at the mechanic at Banff (which was just about closed), the side-trip was canned.

I was meant to go to Lake Louise yesterday but decided not to after feeling lazy in the morning. I got up early, but unlike the morning of the Fernie trip, the snow report on the net wasn't that appealing. It was only about 3cm overnight, and the weather was freezing, so I decided to just surrender my $15 (which is what it costs for a staff trip to another resort - quite a bargain) and chill out at Panorama. I did a few runs, trying out a smaller board that Becky donated to me, and decided to call it a day early on. I ran into Leigh and Ben and we hit the park for the last run of the day. It turned out to be a bad call, as I had a massive bail (caught on camera too) off one of the jumps. Nothing broken, but I got a bit of whiplash and a few bruises.

I'll try to upload that video and some new photos this weekend... if I get the time. It's going to be the busiest period for the resort since Christmas, so it should be a hectic few days in a new position. Talk about trial by fire.

Worn out blues

It's been another full-on week. I had two days boarding at other resorts (Fernie and Kicking Horse), two days of pretty long days at work, and another two days at work when it was fairly quiet. The other day was spent at an interview and in town. The interview went pretty well although I won't find out who they decide will get the position until next week. I hitched a ride to town (I love how easy it is to get a ride down to Invermere) and spent about 60 bucks on groceries, mostly consisting of various meats that will hopefully last me for the next few weeks.

The trip to Fernie was pretty good despite the icy conditions. I spent most of the day doing groomers and had a few runs at the terrain park too. I can definitely see how the resort would be great on a powder day. Kicking Horse had some pretty epic terrain too. The visibility was pretty bad but that was because it was snowing all day, which made for some pretty sweet riding. The only really bad thing that happened that day was Denise having a huge crash. She got a concussion and was taken to the hospital as a precaution. Fortunately, it wasn't anything major.

I have the next three days off, two of which will be more staff trips. Tomorrow shall be a return to Fernie, where it has been snowing on and off for the past week, and on Thursday, I'll finally go back to Lake Louise where it probably won't be as good as it was the first time I went, but hopefully it won't be icy either.

The vibe around the staff housing has been getting a bit weird lately. There have been a lot of parties but they have mostly been for people leaving, so it's kind of a bittersweet feeling. A lot of the people are going back to Aus or NZ because of uni or because they simply want to get on with their regular life. It's strange to see people leaving so early when it's only just halfway through the season.

Going to California

Plans for my post-season travels have been uncertain due to the many options that I've had to choose from... until now.

Earlier in the evening, Ben, John, Kelly, and Leigh were making plans to see Tool in San Diego at around mid-March. I was tempted to go but wasn't sure because of the total cost of that trip, which would have had to have factored in return travel (bus to Calgary then plane from there), concert tickets, and accommodation. I then decided to research other bands who were on tour, and found out that Arcade Fire were doing a few dates to promote their upcoming album, Neon Bible.

The tour date that caught my eye was their appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Coachella have had pretty solid lineups in past years, including some of my favourite bands. I decided to investigate further, and to my amazement, I read through one of the best festival lineups I have ever seen. I had no other choice but to throw caution to the wind and commit to going to this event. The 3-day pass and camping fee alone is around $400 [side-note: I speak in Canadian dollars because that's what is most familiar to me right now] but the 3 headlining acts (Björk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Rage Against The Machine) themselves makes it worth the cover charge.

I guess the loose plan right now will be to visit some relatives in LA and take a 4-day side-trip to Coachella. There's about 6 of us that are going so far. I think most of those people are taking a week-long trip to Mexico right after the season ends, but I don't know if I'll join in on that. It'd probably be a good idea to save some money after that $400 splurge, especially if I want to see a specialist about this rib problem. I'll definitely need to start dipping into the Australian bank account some time soon.

Curling is a dangerous sport (and other winter adventures)

On Sunday, some people from housekeeping and guest services, along with a few others from a variety of departments, went to Invermere for some curling. Curling is one of those sports that you wouldn't think would be very interesting but, upon closer inspection, is quite a neat little game. I would equate it to lawn bowls, with the obvious differences of the lawn being sheets of ice, the balls being stones, and the people sweeping to help the stones along.

Anyway, during a few practice games, I got a bit too enthusiastic about sweeping the ice, and slipped over, falling on the stick, with the stick hitting me square on the ribs. It's been hurting ever since, and was probably not helped by the fact that I took on some more physical activities this week.

On Monday, we had the weekly broomball game where, quite spectacularly, we lost 1-0. Drama was added to the game late in the first half as I scored a goal that was soon disallowed because the ref couldn't see the goal too well (which I thought was a bunch of crap). I was pretty angry for the rest of the game, especially after the other team scored. By the end of the night, the pain in the ribs was intense.

I wasn't going to do anything on Tuesday, but ended up going out to buy some new bindings for my board and tested them out for a few runs. A couple of weeks ago, I had a huge crash on a run rife with moguls. I flipped over a few times and ended up landing on my board. The front strap of the back binding (probably the weakest part of the bindings) ended up snapping, and I had to ride down to the bottom with one dodgey binding. It wasn't really too bad because it was the front strap, and I guess it was bound to happen eventually, seeing as I got those bindings about 6 years ago. Anyway, the new bindings ('06 Burton Cartel) feel so much better than the old relics that I used to ride with (Burton Custom from ages ago).

I wasn't going to do anything on Wednesday, but again I strayed from my plans and went ice skating on Lake Windermere. Cara, my supervisor, knew somewhere to borrow some skates for free, and it was free to skate on the lake, so this helped my current financial situation. Oh, and it was lots of fun to go ice skating again, and with a bunch of friends too. The only downside was that the ice was a bit uneven. That, and I was quite tired by the end of it. Read as: ribs hurt like hell.

They were very sore again today after a few hours of Nordic skiing (aka cross-country skiing). A few of us that went ice skating yesterday decided to give Nordic skiing a try, and we went on a couple of the easy trails, which weren't all that easy due to a few big dips. There were several spills but nobody was seriously hurt and the general consensus was that it'd be great to go again some time.

One of the many great views witnessed while Nordic skiing

Today is also the end of my 3-day weekend, and I now have 3 days straight (possibly more, depending on next week's roster) of work. Fun times. I applied for a different position within the department that has slightly better pay and a bit more consistent hours, so I hope I get that. Otherwise, I'll probably be applying for a transfer to a different department as soon as the 3-month probation period is over (around the start of March) because my current position just isn't getting me as much money as I would like.

$1.86

That's how much I owe the company after rent was taken out of my last pay. It could have been a lot worse, I guess. It's still a bit annoying though.

Earlier in the week there was a staff trip to Kimberley, another nearby resort. We were lucky enough to catch it on a powder day. Unfortunately, I had, in the previous day, accidentally left my board and gear at the office. Consequently, I was riding with Jacky's board and boots all day, which felt a bit weird.

Yesterday saw a massive party at Paradise as the Aussies (and a few non-Aussies too) listened to the Triple J Hottest 100. It was a grand time, matched only by the BBQ today, followed by beers at the summit. As the new batch of photos will reveal, we hoisted the Australian flag up at the summit and generally had a ball.

That's it for now. I'm about to go to an Australia Day party at the Crazy Horse. Hopefully it'll be good, though I won't drink a great deal due to aforementioned money issues and work tomorrow.

Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent

Well, after (somewhat) recovering from that illness that I had last week, I found myself in the unfortunate position of having 3 out of my 4 days at work with very little to do. I didn't work a great deal of hours, and I'm unsure on whether or not I'll make enough to cover rent.

One of the better things to come out of this week is my new guitar. It's a 1/2 size acoustic guitar that I got from eBay for about 40 bucks, and it's great to finally be able to play some songs in my spare time.

Dave called me the other night to catch up a bit. I was half asleep when the phone rang but couldn't sleep after the call after finding out that a good mate's sister had recently passed away. It's that kind of news that you don't want to hear, especially when you're overseas. You feel so helpless when all you can do is make a phone call and see how they're going.

New photos!

Yay.

The Internet is still as slow as ever in our building, but thankfully, it's working perfectly in our sister building, Paradise (FYI, our building is called Monument), so I've taken the liberty of uploading some photos with their connection. As always, they can be found at this location. Here's one I prepared earlier...

You're probably wondering one of two things right about now: 1) What the hell is he wearing? and; 2) What the hell is that thing next to him?

First, let's go into the story of the suit. I bought this suit waaaay back at the start of the season. It was the week leading up to the '80s theme party, and I desperately wanted to find some really cheesy '80s style fluro ski suit. Out of sheer luck, I found a proper heli-skiing one-piece suit at just about my size at the children's consignment store for a very reasonable $25. I picked it up without hesitation and was quite pleased when I found out it was actually quite a warm and waterproof outfit. In fact, it's a bit warmer than the ski jacket that I brought with me. It's also good for riding in powder because you don't get any snow down your pants (because it's a one-piece). I've been wearing it more than my normal ski gear due to the amount of powder we've been getting.

Now the deal with the wolf in the Santa suit is a bit more straightforward. This was on Christmas Eve when I went riding for a bit in the morning then headed down to the village to chill out for a bit. I found out that Santa was going to be around, and ran into this mascot walking about. I just had to get a photo with it. It turned out there was an actual human Santa as well, but that wasn't nearly as fun as the costumed wolf Santa.

I called in sick again today. I worked yesterday but didn't feel the greatest and couldn't really get a lot done, so when I woke up today, feeling a bit better but still not the best, I decided not to risk overexerting myself for another day and just took the day off. I'm hoping I'll recover over the weekend. I guess I'll just have to pay for rent out of my pocket for the next pay period. The good news is that I got about $360 today (pay day), so I have a tad bit of wiggle room for the next bunch of weeks, as long as I don't splurge too much.

Crazy days and lazy days

It's been more than 2 weeks since my last post, which is probably due to the craziness of the past few weeks. Work has been really busy, and in between work were New Year's celebrations. My first day off for the week was Saturday, and I spent that snowboarding and generally being lazy.

Work has been okay lately. It's been really busy, and I've been really slow, but I'm told it's better to be slow and get everything done than cutting corners to be quick. It's not earning me a lot of dollars, but it's not too bad. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a different position.

Snowboarding-wise, I haven't really gone too often lately, mainly because the resort has been pretty busy, and it's not really worth it to go out a lot unless it's a powder day. I've been trying to cover much of the resort's runs so that I could claim I've done all of the runs by the end of the season. It's looking pretty good so far, but there's still a fair bit to go.

My other mission is to visit as many other resorts as possible. That started on Tuesday, when I went on the staff trip to Lake Louise. The trip wasn't as great as I would have hoped, mainly due to the fact that I've been feeling pretty sick lately. I had almost no energy during the trip and only managed to go up 3 times before giving up. On the plus side, I did have some incredibly tasty (albeit incredibly pricey) prime rib burger.

At the end of the day I had worked up quite a fever and ended up calling in sick today, although half of the reason why I called in sick was because of a temporary limp I had acquired from playing in the staff broomball league. Broomball is a game that is pretty much a bastard child of field hockey, ice hockey, and football (aka soccer). It is played, oddly enough, with brooms and a ball. Similar to ice hockey, you can bat the ball down with you hand, but only the goalie is allowed to grab the ball. Like football, you can kick the ball, but you can only score by using the broom.

Anyway, a teammate and I, and a player from the other side, were all going for the ball. My teammate accidentally hit me square in the calf, and it's literally been a pain to walk ever since. I still have a bit of a limp, but I'll probably go to work tomorrow since I only have 2 working days left (requested the Lake Louise day off and had today off sick), and I want to make rent for the next pay period.

Despite the minor misfortunes of late, it had just recently hit me that I am living in a beautiful and friendly mountain village where I get to snowboard often and am surrounded by great people. Life is good.

Photos may be delayed for a bit longer, since the Internet connection seems to be moving along at a snail's pace lately. It really sucks not having admin or physical access to the router to be able to mess around with settings and whatnot. I'm just mooching off the other staff building's net connection at the moment.

Oh yeah, I hope everybody had a great Christmas holiday period and a safe New Year.