Ch^H^H...Train of Thought

Whistler : Jan 30 - Feb 5

This past week, I was out at Whistler in Canada riding the slopes. I made a few small notes about what we did each day, and then filled in the rest after getting back. Here, goes...

Day -1:
Before leaving, Brian, Albert, and I decided to test our skills at p-texing and waxing our snowboards. P-tex is a plastic compound that resembles a hot glue gun stick. You light it on fire and drip it into the deep cuts in your board. Since it's really hard compared to wax, it doesn't come off easily. So it's used for patching. The problem is, it tends to burn and turn black. While the bottom of their boards are black, mine's white. So it looks like I have dirt embedded in my board. Ugly. Oh, and we found out afterwards that it's a cyanide compound. Yeah, should have done it outside instead of breathing in the fumes in Brian's living room. As Brian also learned, ironing P-tex with a foil covered clothes iron isn't a good idea.

Waxing was a bit easier. We melted wax onto the board and then ironed it into base material. After it cooled, we started scraping off the excess wax and made a mess of the kitchen. We also learned that we need to get a better scraper. Using a kitchen cleaver is not quite the right way to do it. :P

Day 0:
We arrived at Whistler after a 2 hour plane ride, and a 2.5 hour limobus ride. The limobus smelled bad and had horrible suspension. Dave threw up from motion sickness. Not cool.

Day 1:
Today was my first day on the slopes at Whistler in Canada. Brian, Irene, Miles, Albert, Chris, and I started out on the green runs twice since my board was freshly waxed and slippery. Near the Emerald Express. After doing that twice, we decided to hit GS, to Harmony Express, to the Saddle. Getting to the Saddle, we had absolutely no visibility since it was snowing with fairly high speed winds.

The Saddle was basically a large chunk of a hill with great powder for hundreds of feet. Being that the snow was pristine and the light was shaded by the mountain, it was also hard to see the bumps and stuff. In short, it's like you're going down it blind. Feel the bumps. Adjust to the contour. If you don't, you'll trip up. Most of us did, but since it's so soft, it doesn't hurt at all. There's a picture of me after flipping over when I tripped on a mound of snow.

Anyways, the loop through Saddle takes about an hour and a half. We did it again after lunch and then rode Olympic Run to meet the gondola at the halfway point. Since there was rain and snow at the lower parts, Olympic Run turned into a large slush pit which, as it turns out, makes for a really fast, soft, and fun ride. It's like snowboarding on an Icee drink. Since a large number of snow mounds dot the area, you get tossed into the air a few inches every 5 feet or so, but fouling up the landing is harder since it contours to your board and dampens the landing for you.

Dinner was at Caramba and was pretty good. I got a pesto pasta dish. I forgot what it was called specifically but I'm tired so I don't feel like thinking about it.

Day 2:
Yesterday, we went to board on Blackcomb; the more difficult mountain. The area's really wide so I tried riding switch a lot and messing that up. We stayed around the 7th Heaven Express lift area and then moved on to the terrain park after lunch.

Albert's good at the park stuff. I tended to run off the edge of boxes and rails. I did some smaller jumps successfully but wiped out on the larger ones. My shoulder's sore since I landed on it.

Hy's Steakhouse has pretty good filet mignon. 11 oz. $39.

Day 3:
Miles and Irene are expert skiers. Brian and I are expert snowboarders. What's wrong with this picture?

Yup. This past day was "t0t41 n00b" day. As you can see, all of us except Albert switched from boarding to skiing and vice versa. Quite an interesting day.

Miles and Irene seemed to learn snowboarding really quickly, although Irene has a head start since she's done it at least once before. Brian apparently remembers how to ski quite well. And I'm surprised that after 10 years or so, I made it down Olympic Run (to the gondola halfway point) at the end of the day falling only about 4 times.

I learned that despite it being a decade since I last used skis, type 1 settings are crappy. For those of you who don't know, it's a grouping that people use to figure out how much to tension the binding springs. Miles says, "Type 1 is for the people who are afraid that they'll break their leg or something skiing. It'll disconnect at the drop of a hat."

Type 2 is more likely to be better for me since during a sharp right turn, my right ski disconnected. :P I was like, "okay, start turn, tweak right foot to be parallel to left. Eh? WTF? Where's my right ski?!?!" Yeah, not cool.

So after returning the rental stuff to Affinity, we had reservations for Ziptrek. (zip lining)
Basically, we're strapped into a harness and we go from one end of a line to the other 4 times over a creek separating the Blackcomb and Whistler mountains. (Fitzgerald? Whistler Creek? Ah, I don't remember.) It's really fun.

The third run was longest one spanning 1100 feet. And the fourth run we had the option to flip over on the line and go across upside down. Going across in the darkness upside down, the view of the landscape looked really cool. I could see the silhouette of the mountain and trees. On the last run, one of the guides suggested that we pick up some snow and attack the other guide with snowballs as he zips over. :P

When we got back, we were really tired. However we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we tried making meatballs. Of course, we didn't actually know how. So based on what Miles and Albert suggested, I took an egg and then
mixed in some hand-shredded bread slices. Looks like puke, but it fits the "egg and starch" description.

I started massaging that mixture into the ground beef and let them take over that so I could take a shower. When I got back I discovered that they decided to add bacon in there and were about ready to steam the meatballs. They actually tasted pretty good and held together with about the right texture. Note for future reference: 1 "large" egg (actually pretty small), and shred 2 slices of bread. Massage in 2/3 lb ground beef.

Day 4:
n00bfest continues! Albert switched from boarding to skis (he's pretty good at it too) and Brian's got ski retrieval duty now that he's back on a snowboard. Chris joined us trying to do switch for as long as possible. (he normally rides goofy)

Chris, Albert, and I first went on the green runs and after lunch went for the blues and finally a black run. We finished off by going down Olympic Run all the way to the village. That was tiring.

Day 5:
Okay, so it's the 5th day in a row on the slopes. I'm friggin' tired. At least I'm back on a snowboard now.

On the positive side, the night before carried in at least a foot of snow and the temperature was dropping below zero up at the top of the mountains. So there's fluff everywhere. So much that we have problems getting stuck knee high in snow.

In the morning we ran the green runs near Emerald since all the other lifts were closed. You could hear the dynamite charges going off as they cleared avalanches. After lunch, Albert and I took the Harmony Express up to some unknown runs with crappy visibility and then went down what looks like a double black. Mostly on our asses.

After that, we took the Harmony Express up one more time to the Saddle, to Franz's Run, to Expressway to find out that's closed. We're directed to the Big Red Express which takes us back to the top of Emerald and we race down Olympic Run without stopping. We ended up at the bottom at the same time. It was 3:54 as we got off Big Red. It was most likely 3:57 as we passed Emerald since we were looking for some dude playing bagpipes as we were on the Big Red. Couldn't find him after we got off the lift so no picture of him. And we arrived at the Whistler Village at 4:14. So, we took about 17-18 minutes total. Very tiring.

In the evening, the 5 of us in the suite decided to go out to walk about since it's friday night and we've played cards too many evenings already. We stopped by the Longhorn Saloon to get a drink and sit for a while then went to Garfinkel's (a bar/club). Irene, Brian, and I each drank a kamikaze. Since Irene wanted to dance and there wern't any other people already dancing, Albert, Miles, and I went with her on the floor. Shortly after, more people started dancing. Some random group of girls were taking pictures all over the place and wanted us to pose in there too, so now we're in somebody else's vacation photos. :P

We leave for home tomorrow. The trip was nice.

Posted by hachu at February 7, 2005 01:14 PM