Road trip 1 - May snow in Whistler !

Unbelievably Wednesday the 10th of MAY 2006 became a ski day for the lord and I !!!! May ?? !!! With the sun beaming in down town Vancouver on my first full day in country it was hard to believe it but rumour had it the mountains were still open for business and thick with snow !

Waking up stupidly early any good time we may have had on our side evapourated when we walked to America to pick up a hire car ! (Doogie was adamant it was only a couple of blocks away....... yeah right-O chief) One two hour car ride through a still doormant city limits later we hit the old favourite 'South side diner' in creekside for a hit of lard in the form of a Canadian breaky that giant haystacks would be proud to devour ! Obviously it was small change to starvin' marvin' fonters who munched away like it was an appetiser !


Suitably fueled up with grease and armed with very cheap lift tickets (in fonters' case) the gondola ride up revealed a winter wonderland bathed in sunshine with still masses of snow all the way up from midstation !

Being able to wear only tee shirts below your jacket and skiing in such warmth was as an absolute peach ! The mountains were empty and the conditions pre lunch were great if not a little slow ! Of course that was remedied by a cool pitcher of good old Kokanee over a lunch of burgers and cookies. There after the slow conditions and addition of beer legs led to an afternoon learning to ski backwards (no doubt in preparation for the extreme trick skiing I will have mastered by the time all you european punters turn up for holiday next year) .

Remembering that Rog 'the gentleman skier' Cooper would not approve and having bumped into 'Tones homes' Ascough we sought not to over do it day one and elected to grab an early seat in the sunshine pation of the 'Longhorn Saloon'.

Now unfortunatley the perfect day ended with a bit of a nightmare for myself, that all I will see for the next week will no doubt chuckle at ???

Disregarding the lords advise, who has learnt over the years to look after the pink dome, I elected not to place any sunscreen on my mush !!!

You would think I would have learnt my lesson with the lobster face incident in DC........ but oh no............. lets do the burn again !! So you can see it kinda laid me out and the evening beer in the Whistler Brewhouse really didn't go down too well. The only consolation was that fonters potted the black three times at pool so I won when in truth I could hardly hit a cows arse with a banjo !!

Feeling a little like a bear who had just woken up from hibernation myself it would seem quite appropriate and ironic therefore to bump into exactly that whilst finishing the first run of day two !!

This big fella by the white chair in the back ground hardly batted an eye lid at us whilst he found and slurped a bottle of coke from the rubbish bin ! Electing to move on before he had a sugar rush and saw me or fonters as a tasty snack we headed back up to the peak chair to continue our backward skiing clinic !

Enjoying my day immensely and feeling like I was a million miles away from the lunacy of the London commuting hell I would normally have been enduring at that precise moment Fonters of course felt he had to chip in.....

'Oh I do enjoy my work you know' of course reminding me somewhat unsubtlely that this action was ongoing of course while he was still officially 'at work' !! Right OK.......


So ending the day with a slush run to midstation we bombed back down to Vancouver so Fonters could operate home to blighty and leave me to start the new adventure properly !

By the way did I ask ?

Is it raining at home ?

Was the train on time this morning Mike ?

mmmm ? what to do next weekend given it's Victoria day and a bank holiday ???