The longest post in history!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a message here so this one is a bit of a marathon. No doubt a lot of it you will have already read on either Ben and Bron or Phil’s blogs, but this is my take on the story. You might want to grab a coffee. I think I’ll start where I left off on Tuesday the 7th of November.

We had dinner around at Anna and Andrews new place in Whistler Cay. They moved out of staff housing last Monday to a slightly nicer one bedroom apartment 20 minutes walk to the village. I steered clear of the red wine this time as we were due for an early start in the morning.

Ben and I rose early and headed over to the Maurice Young Millennium Place for our FSO (First Season Orientation) training. It was your typical HR do’s and don’ts, quite well run though, with some cool videos of the mountain thrown in to keep us interested. Training went until lunch time and then Ben, Mel (from Mount Gravatt), Donna (from Aukland) and I had lunch at the Garriboldi Lift Company (GLC). A lot of the restaurants offer 50% off at lunch time to attract business during the low season.

After lunch, we all headed over to the Day Lodge ski rental shop at the base of Blackcomb to learn how to tech skis. We are now fully qualified Rossignol and Soloman ski techs. Not much to it really. Find out the persons weight, height, age, boot size and skiing ability, look them up on a chart to work out the required binding tension, fit their boot and send them on their way. I don’t think I will be using these skills in my job, but it doesn’t hurt to learn.

I picked up a bit of work on Thursday setting up the rental shop downstairs in the Blackcomb Day Lodge. I rearranged every ski boot, snowboard boot, ski and snowboard in order of size. That took up most of the morning. After lunch we moved a whole lot of stock from one store to another. I was exhausted at the end of the day but it was good to earn some money towards this week’s rent.

Blackcomb opened full time as of last Friday. They are opening Whistler in a few weeks. I can only manage half days at the moment before my knees start to pack it in. Nothing serious. I just don’t want to over do it this early in the season. I rode Jersey Cream Express, Excelerator Chair, Solar Coaster and Catskinner. There isn’t enough snow to ride all the way to the bottom yet, so you have to download on either the gondola or Wizard Express. I can’t wait until they open the bottom half of the mountain because I will be able to ride all the way down after work each day.

I went riding again on Saturday with Phil. We managed to stay out until about 2:30pm. We ducked under a rope and went down Rock’n’roll which wasn’t open yet. It was the run of the day. So much powder with little kickers the whole way down. I went up to Rendezvous to say hi to my boss (Philippe from Nice) and organised for me to work at the Rendezvous storage the next day. Phil had a bingle with a Pommy chick on a cat track on his last run down and took out one of her toe straps. He got chatting with her on the chair lift and ended up having 7 jugs with her and two of her friends at the GLC. He called me up at about 6pm to see if I wanted to go to Long Horn (also at the base of Whistler) for a few quiet ones. I agreed, but only stayed out until about half eleven. The three girls were Anna from England (minus one toe strap), Cat from NZ (also lived in Melbourne for a few years and has dual citizenship (Aus/NZ) and a UK pass port…jealous?) and Miranda from Limeric (Ireland).
I slept through my alarm but luckily Ben woke me up as he was walking out the door to work. I ran all the way to the base of Blackcomb to be there for a quarter to eight start, then Philippe didn’t arrive until eight any way. Caught the Wizard Express up with a girl named Kerry. Kerry is another example of how small this world really is. She began telling me about her room mate who crashed into a guy from Jersey and lost her toe strap, then went out drinking with him and an Aussie at Long Horn last night. That’s not the best bit. When I asked her where she was from she replied, “Brisbane”.
“Where in Brisbane?” I asked.
“Alex Hills.”
She is living with a friend in Alex Hills, just off Vienna Road, and owns a house just off School Road in Capalaba. I could throw a rock from my place and land it in her back yard!

It was a beautiful day at the top of the mountain. The clouds were about 100 meters below Rendezvous so we had blue skies and a fluffy, white sea all day. Stupid me didn’t take my camera up. I haven’t made that mistake again. Work was pretty good. As I expected, there isn’t too much to it. Red tickets are for skis and cost $2. Green tickets are for bags and cost $3. That’s about it. I sit out the front of my storage hut and chat with people all day. I’m sure it won’t always be as nice and sunny as Sunday however. I even made $6 in tips! Paid for my lunch. I closed up the hut at about 3:30, chatted with Kerry and Wendy (the retail girls) for a while, then set off down Springboard for my first run of the day. It was sensational. I was the only person on the run. I was screaming “Yeeeeeewwww” the whole way down. So in a nut shell, I sit around talking to people all day, get fresh tracks in the morning, and the hill to my self in the evening. I think I’ve landed the cushiest job on the mountain again. I’d say it’s on par with my last snow job, snow making controller, where I was paid to sit in a heated room and surf the internet for 12 hours per shift. If I got sick of that, I could always jump on a skidoo and burn up to the summit and watch TV :) I’ve fallen on my feet again.

I went home and had a shower and a bite to eat, then headed out to the Retail/Rental meet and greet at EB (Essentially Blackcomb, it’s a store next to the Long Horn pub. Oh yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, they tend to have an acronym for just about everything here.) Met about 30 people who are part of my Phillipe’s team, then ducked next door to the Long Horn. Sunday nights are huge at Long Horn, and this was no exception. $3.75 bottles of Canadian went down a treat, and the place was packed. There was a 1 hour wait to get in after 10pm. It was the best night I’ve had out thus far. Closing time was 1am, so I guess that’s what time I went home.

First day of rental retail training was 8am Monday morning. Ben and I both slept through our alarms again. I looked at my watch in the dim light, the little hand was almost on the eight and the big hand was on the nine. Banged on Ben’s door to wake him up, downed two bits of vegemite on toast, filled up my water bottle and sprinted to the Weston Hotel. Made it with 1 minute to spare to be greeted by a room full of seedy faces lined up ready for another gruelling day of company do’s and don’ts. It was pretty funny because all of our supervisors were out with us too. They said that last night was the first test. This is the lifestyle that we all have to get used to. They stressed the fact that a hang over is not an excuse for a sick day and congratulated us for making it in on time (even if it was just barely on time). Most of us passed the test, although there were a few empty chairs after the first washroom break.

I couldn’t believe it. The best weather that we’ve had since we arrived and we were cooped up in the hotel function room all day!

The rental/retail division runs a staff lease program, where you can get a board (or skis) and bindings for $200 for the season, and bye it out for $200 at the end of the season if you want to keep it. Works out under half price so that’s great.

I found out that we are eligible for a staff referral program. We hand out cards to guests, entitling them to 10% off purchases at any of the mountain run retail and rental stores. For every $1000 worth of referrals, we receive $150 worth of vouchers to spend in any of the mountain run stores. I have the perfect job to offload thousands of cards, so free stuff here I come! Might end up coming home with two new boards. Fingers crossed.

We got a telephone installed in our unit on Friday. Free local calls, which is nice. We’re also getting DSL on Wednesday, so I’ll be able to read emails and post here more often (I wrote this part two weeks ago and our bloody modem still hasn’t arrived. Telus has worse customer service than Telstra!). Might even catch a few of you on MSN or Skype from time to time. Our phone number is 0011 1 604 905 3602. If you want to call, the best time to catch us would probably be between 12 noon and 3pm your time (that’s 6pm to 9pm the day before here). Internet is cheaper though, so just use that.





Had a great day boarding with Dave and Phil on Tuesday. We spent most of the day out of bounds to the left of the Jersey Cream lift. Found a really good bit of powder on the other side of a small creek that we jumped over. Phil and I got a bit cocky at one stage and ended up going a bit too far down one run and had to walk through a creek to get back to the lift. We learnt our lesson. Phil’s multi region DVD player finally arrived from Amazon so we sat through The Thin Red Line. I think it should have been called The Thin Plot Line, I wouldn’t recommend it.


Phil with an offering to Ullr, the snow god


Kerri and Me at the Ullr Party

I wasn’t feeling great on Wednesday. A bit of a sore throat was coming on so I had a quiet day reading my book on Osama bin Laden. Quite a good read. The mountain threw a big party at Base 2 to worship Ullr, the snow god. Apparently they didn’t have the Ullr party last year and it was the worst season in resent memory, so they decided to play it on the safe side this year. The night consisted of a free hot dog and a cookie, plus all the hot chocolate and hot apple cider that you could stomach. Then we sat around in the cold for about an hour, and finally they set fire to a whole heap of wood carved skis and snow boards as an offering to Ullr. The finale for was fireworks display that would have been much more impressive had it not been covered in pea soup fog.

Spent Thursday on the couch again but managed enough strength to go out for dinner with Ben, Bron and Phil. We had planned to head to the Mongilie Gril for a half price meal, however the line was out the door and down the stairs. We wandered around the village for a while and decided on the Dublin Irish Pub. The lure was half price starters and a free dart board. We ordered our meals, 3 serves of fish and chips and one stew, then tried our hands at some darts. We all played quite well considering our lack of dart throwing experience. The meals were quite nice, but the darts was the highlight of the night. We even ran into Dave, who had been out drinking with his new boss from The Cheow Bistro where he will be working at a couple of nights a week.

The highlight of Friday was making it to the end of the day without having to leave the house to buy another box of tissues. Stupid cold.


The view from my office at Rendezvous

I worked at Rendezvous on Saturday. Had a great day. It was one of those post card blue sky days that make you happy to be alive. I think I have about the best office views in the world up there. I was quite busy because all the Vancouver day trippers had worn too many layers and so wanted to store their coats with me. I also had a great run down the mountain at the end of the day. I’d say that’s the highlight of any work day. The ride home. It will be even better when the mountain opens all the way to the bottom.

I worked at Glacier Creek on Sunday. Another amazing blue sky day, however work was a stark contrast of the day before. I had one customer in the first two hours. Dave was working next door, clearing the outside tables at the Glacier Creek food hut. He kept laughing at me because all I seemed to be doing was sitting around waiting for people, which I was. At least I had time to create a make shift tripod for my camera and get this shot.


My office at Glacier Creek.

Yes I am wearing nothing but a t-shirt. It was almost 10 degrees. The ride down to Glacier Creek from Rendezvous in the morning was deadly. I would have been better off wearing ice skates. It hasn’t snowed for about a week now so the snow is getting really patchy. It ices up at night, then slushes up in the afternoon. Slush is much better to ride on than ice though.

I slept in on Monday morning. Had some brunch at about 11am, then Dave and I headed up for some afternoon slush boarding. We went past Ben, Bron and Phil on the lift on their way down from lunch at the top. We get 50% off food so it is economical catching the chair up for a cheap meal.

We had a few good runs and then I decided to take my first jump for the season in the terrain park. I was packing bricks however it went off with no incident. Felt good actually. I did a fun box as well just to tempt fate but that was enough extreme boarding for one day.

We stopped for some after noon tea at about 2:30pm at Rendezvous. They had a two for one pizza deal, which with our discount came out to be about $1 per slice. We sat out on the balcony in the sun and took in the view. I took my eye off my pizza for one seconds and a cheeky bird helped itself to a piece of pineapple. I decided to see how tame the birds really were and low and behold…



We played with the birds for half an hour or so, but still couldn’t get them to take the crust from Dave’s head.



Finished off the day with a small Après session. You can’t beat $10 jugs at Merlins after a tough day on the hill.

We took Ben and Bron up for their first day on the hill on Tuesday. They both did quite well. We did mainly green runs so I spent the day riding switch (that means my left foot is forward instead of my right foot (I’m goofy (that means my right foot is normally forward))) (I hope that’s enough bracket closes!).

I didn’t go up on Wednesday. Gave my feet a bit of a rest. It’s tough work breaking in a new pair of boots. It’s even tougher when you know that you are giving them back in a few days. They are falling apart already so I’m taking them back and exchanging them for a better pair. We hung out at Phil’s for most of the day. We organised to have dinner at Mongolie Gril with Anna and Andrew but the line was out the door again so we went to the Brewhouse instead. We love that place.

Whistler opened for the first time on Thursday. I was all set to go up and my boss called and asked if I could fill in for someone who was sick. I grudgingly said that I would work. I stored one pair of skis all day. That’s $2. The only thing that made it worth even going to work was that I got my board tuned for free. Fortunately the on hill tuning shop was as quiet as I was. I didn’t even bother riding down in the arvo. There wasn’t much snow and I didn’t want to cut up my base. It started snowing quite heavily on the lift on the way down. I began coming up with a reason to go down to Glacier Creek in the morning before work.

I caught the lift up at 7:45am on Friday morning and got to the top at 8:10am. I am supposed to open up storage at 8:30 on the nut. What the hell … I took a ride down to Glacier Creek. It was awesome. 10cm of fresh powder and mine were the only tracks. I pretended to grab something from the Glacier Creek storage hut, then jumped on the Jersey Cream chair. I made it to the top at 8:29am, ran in to get the key to open up and Wendy was just opening up the retail shop where the key is kept. Perfection. It snowed all day. I kept myself entertained by making my first snow man for the season.



Not a bad effort I think. He stood tall until just before lunch when some villain decapitated him with his ski pole. I vowed to rebuild him bigger and better than before.



I got a few comments about this guy. I also had a few families taking photos with him which was nice. I had a great ride down in the afternoon to top off a great day.

I worked at Rendezvous on Saturday. The Whistler gondola broke down before anyone could upload so everyone who was waiting in line simply walked across the court yard to the Blackcomb gondola and paid us a visit. It was my busiest day so far. The 10cm of snow from the night before drew a lot of Vancouverites.

I worked at Glacier Creek on Sunday. I took a grand total of $6 for the day. The highlight was the rescue chopper landing 20 meters behind my storage hut. I went out to see what the commotion was about and just about got knocked over by the artificial blizzard caused by the rotor blades. Phil and I decided to head to the Longhorn for locals night. It was a fun night. I took a few happy snaps. I knocked off relatively early as I had to work in the morning.

I did a half day on Monday. I took an early ride down to Glacier Creek to get rid of some old displays from the retail shop. My boss is in charge of all on hill retail stores, as well as storage. After I arranged for the cats to take the displays down the mountain that night, I went back up to Rendezvous and sorted out the back room of the retail store. Basically unpacking boxes and organising excess stock. I knocked off at 2pm and went riding for the rest of the day. The snow was still nice from the dump on Saturday night. We had a “B” party at Brio (staff housing) that night. We sent Dave up to check it out and he said there were heaps of people up in the lounge on level 3, so Bron, Ben and I began wracking our brains for costumes beginning with B that we could build with the materials at hand.



For those of you who can’t for the life of you work out what I am supposed to B (see, I can be witty too), I was a Bed Base. I’m holding the steel frame from Dave’s bed. He doesn’t use it because no bottom mattress was supplied. The party (which was renamed a “social” because you aren’t allowed to have “parties” in staff housing) was shut down prematurely by one of the house advisors (I think she was having a bad day) and by the time we made it up to the lounge, the party had dispersed to various rooms in the building. We managed to find a break away in 408 and they were getting ready to hit the Crystal Lounge for some Karaoke. We all tagged along (I left the bed base at home and picked up Dave’s Santa hat to become “Bad Santa” (hey, it started with B). A few of the group managed to get up and have a go. I was all ready to sing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen but they ran out of time (there’s always next week). The last song of the night was sung by Katherine and Anna (who were dressed as “Beavers”). They sung “I’m a Beaver” by Neil Diamond. It was really funny. They kicked us out at 1am and those of us who weren’t quite done yet headed over to catch the last hour of 80’s night at Tommy Africa’s. It’s just as tacky as it sounds, but we had a good time all the same. Somehow I grew a beaver tail and became irresistible to all beavers in the club (well, one in particular :)) Everyone had a great night, including Dave who got thrown out for falling asleep….twice. I don’t know how he found his way home.

Tuesday was my first day up Whistler. I rode with Phil, Kat, and Marico. Whistler is out of this world. It is orders of magnitude bigger than anywhere I have ever been before. Although a lot of the mountain isn’t technically open, it is accessible and there is so much powder to play in. The signs at the entry of the closed sections read “Early season conditions in place. Unmarked obstacles. Proceed with extreme care.” In some places there is just enough snow to hide the next boulder that you are going to scrape over. The base of my board is toast. Oh well, the riding is worth it.



Had a lovely Apres session at the GLC after downloading then headed home to get ready for the concert containing members of Sublime (not the whole band unfortunately) at Buffalo Bill’s. Ben’s friend from uni Shannon was at our place when I got home. She popped in for a day of snow boarding on her North America adventure. Ben, Bron and Shannon had dinner at the Brewhouse and picked up some tickets for the show. The general consensus was that the band was a bit too heavy. Ben and Bron took off at about midnight and Shannon and I weren’t too far behind. I was happy to get out a bit early to be fresh for some early morning boarding.

Got up Whistler by my self on Wednesday morning and retraced my steps from the day before. I was feeling strong so had a good morning’s ride. I met up with Ben and Bron at lunch time and did a few runs with them. Bron came down pretty hard on her but coming off the Emerald chair and decided to call it a day. Ben joined in on a lesson (which he pointed out was really cool because it was full of girls.) and I took a few more runs through the trees in the family zone under the Emerald chair. Headed round to Phil’s place for a bit of fried rice and scrabble in the evening. I haven’t won a single game of scrabble yet. I am picking up a dictionary from the library tomorrow to read at work.



Thursday was another early accent of Whistler with Phil, Kat and Anna (Anna is from Sydney, she is Kat and Kerri’s room mate). I was the coldest day I’ve had riding so far, about minus eleven or so. We found some great powder again over the back side of the Harmony chair.



Met up with Miranda from Ireland and headed up to the Roundhouse before the half price food finished up at noon. It was also nice to warm up the toes a bit. Ben showed up at about five to twelve and sprinted into the bistro to pick up some lunch. He came through the cash register at about 12:03, the girl said that she was sorry but he wasn’t in uniform and so couldn’t have half price on his food. Fortunately he already had the money in his hand and told her that was all he had and she let him off, just this once! This drew icy glares from every other staff member in the line who were about to pay full price. Had a couple of good runs in the arvo but as we reached the top of Franz’s Meadow our bodies all ran out of gas at the same time and we decided to call it quits. Had a quiet night at home. I stayed up ‘till midnight writing a couple of pages of blog and had plans of phoning home to catch up. Much to my disappointment no one was home so I went to bed in a huff.

I had a well earned sleep in this morning. I contemplated staying in bed all day to rest my neck from consecutive days of whiplash but received a call from Phil at about 11am asking if I wanted to do some Pilates at Meadow Park. I ummed and ahhhed and decided to go. We caught the bus down (my first bus trip since the week we arrived, I might get through my 20 trip ticket after all.). Jumped on the tread mill for a 20 minute jog. Got the heart rate up a bit and burnt 300 calories. Headed down to the Pilates lesson, which actually turned out to be Core Fusion, a torturous hour of lower back and stomach muscle agony. The hot tub after the lesson was just what the doctor ordered for my neck and aching joints. Headed back to Phil’s place to upload a few photos from my collection and upload this post. No plans for tonight. Working tomorrow and Sunday. And now you are up to date.

I'm still missing a few photos from this post so if I have refred to them in the text, they will appear over the next few days. Make sure you are reading Phil and Ben's blogs. They are much more interesting than mine. Thank you for your patience. Still no internet at home. Grrrrr. I won’t go this long without posting again. Fell free to drop me an email and let me know what you have been up to. I love hearing from you all.