January 4, 2004: Whistler Day 2

The second day started earlier than the first. At 06:30, the phone rang. It was the baggage guy. He had the goods. We had our appreciation, which you could simultaneously call a subdued sense of anger, or a sense of relief. Of course, being 06:30, we picked up our bags and went back go bed. It didn't quite sink in that the timing was more or less perfect until we got up at 08:30 and proceeded with the snowboarding plan.

The morning was rather busy. It consisted of a group breakfast at McDonald's, a shopping trip for food at IGA, finding the lost Express Card voucher which I had replaced, redeeming it (rather easily with less hassles than we expected for being California residents), and procuring rental gear for those who didn't own any snowboard gear. By the time we all took the gondola up together, it was close to 11:00.

We made it down about a quarter of a run together before splitting into skill level based groups. It was a bad day for beginners. Apparently there's been very little snow since Christmas. Although what's there has stayed around in the sub -20°C weather, it's been well packed by the Christmas crowd. Any fall made itself well known. For me, it was pretty good. The wide, steep, groomed greens were plenty of fun. I found I picked things up pretty quickly and did much better than I did at Squaw a month ago. I managed to stay with Asmodean and Lancer through the majority of the day. There were generally no crowds or lift lines, since most sane riders were detered by the insanely cold temperatures. It was cold enough for my finger to freeze painfully after less than a minute without my glove, cold enough for my pinky toes to go numb in my boots, and cold enough for the slight fog in my goggles (which normally goes away in a matter of seconds) to freeze and make me curse paying exhorbitant amounts for goggles that still suffered fogging (although they normally work well in more decent temperatures). It got to most of us by the end of the day and we were all relieved to be packing it in around 15:30 (lifts close at 15:00).

Since most of us missed lunch, we had a relatively early dinner. I'd like to say we cooked, but in reality we cheated. Budget dinner day started with a trip to IGA and consisted of two IGA rotisserie chickens ($6.99 each), two boxes of Uncle Ben's wild rice with flavourings, three cans of Chunky soup, a bag of frozen vegetables, and a loaf of toss-in-the-oven garlic bread. About half an hour later, a fairly sumptuous feast, from cans and boxes no less, was served for under $50 by myself and Sinyee.

Dinner was followed up by a Battlestar Galactica marathon, with the DivX video, residing on Arislan's notebook, was played using my notebook (which had TV out and was connected to the living room TV), over ad hoc 802.11b. Cool use of wireless I think, and props to Arislan for setting it up. A skipped out on a good chunk of it to search for a 7-11 (for long distance phone cards). In the process I managed to deposit cheques from November's Tafelmusik concert at the TD, and picked up a gingerbread latte from Starbucks. I was surprised to see that there were actually more shops than I first thought there were, but it was really too cold to check them all out.

We finished the evening with a Japanese DVD titled "Suicide Club". I'll spoil it for you here: the ending was meaningless. It's one of those films where you watch, and at the end you say "what the hell was that all about?". I don't care how artsy you are or you think you are, it still falls in that category of film. I tell you this now to save you a good 2 hours of your life.

Although of no particular importance, other than journalistic integrity, the evening ended with everyone sleeping, and me hiding out in the bathroom to chronicle the events. I think I'll take a shower now and go to sleep. Maybe I'll find some cybercafe tomorrow and post this.