05 February, 2006 (Sunday)

(Picture: Josh and Merv say "Hi hi" off the Falcon chair)

A brief update
Life on the mountain is consistent, almost routine. There haven’t been any significant blips on the radar this week, although the usual happenings have more than kept me out of trouble. The weather has turned clear and still, with smatterings of snow in the evening. Great for bombing down the slopes or just staring at the mountain tops from the safety of the ticket office.

I’ve survived my first Gem Lake tickets shift, at the little Westridge Warming Hut – 7kms down from the main village. Both mornings that I was there it was relatively steady, going to quiet in the afternoon. The gals (Jess, Lauren and Emily) looked after me, ensuring I had my early morning Earl Grey tea and providing me with snacks and lunch. I’ve also tried my first Big White ski lesson (turning very very very slow in fresh powder) and had my first Happy Valley skating rink experience. Not the most intellectual of pursuits, but that can be a relief sometimes.

Everybody is talking about it being mid-season, with more road trips heading off to see the peaks of Apex, the verticals of Red Mountain and the night scene of Whistler. Throughout this the influx of new Aussies and new hires across the mountain continues. It’s almost as though as soon as one person leaves another is there to take their place. We’re one down in Tickets which may make things hairy come Presidents week if we still have the flu doing the rounds. Nasty.

Big White news:

• Valentines Day: Valentines Day is February 14, exactly a week from today. Sam’s has released entry forms for all the singles for a Perfect Match type game. Unfortunately mine and Josh’s were filled out on the spur of the moment last night, so the quality may have suffered. What do I have to offer? “Personality”. Well, my answers were concise (for a change). I wonder if I’ll have any secret admirers? Usually I’m the one who goes for the bad cards and terrible verse.
• Tanya and Merv: Both Tanya and Merv have left the mountain. It was sad to see them go, especially halfway through the season. It feels like they went just when things were happening.
  Merv left us a legacy of tim-tams and sweet sake. He returns to Sydney to begin his career in law. Tanya meanwhile bequested us some great times and a promise to keep in touch. She’s headed back to Melbourne to start on her latest career change having been accepted to do post graduate teaching. Best of luck Tan!
• Happy Valley hours extended: The skating rink at Happy Valley is now open an extra hour later to 10pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. That means even longer shifts for us ticket folk. I guess it was inevitable. Almost every night we seem to get this 8pm rush of punters who want to skate and then we end up turning back the next wave at quarter to 9. And then they want some kind of discount because they turned up late!

01 Februrary, 2006 (Wednesday)
I’ve been intending to have a few ski lessons here to improve my style and learn some techniques. Being a member of Big White staff I can join in on ski / board lessons for free as long as the lesson isn’t full. They run sessions twice a day here (10am and 1pm) with 6 gradings of ability (firs time on snow to expert).

My first Big White lesson began on a good powder morning. Overnight we’d received a new 15cm of powder snow which layered everything in pure white. I wasn’t sure of what level I was at so I fronted up for the Level 4 lesson – which was supposed to be for people confident on Blue runs. We ended up with 11 skiers which had us break the group into two, to assist we had a ‘ski off’ taking some easy turns off Woodcutter, a green run just off the main Village.

Within the first 5 minutes Martina, our instructor, told me that I would probably have done better enlisting in a Level 5. Most of my fellow ski pupils were just coming out of snow-plough turns and weren’t getting a lot of pace cutting through the snow. I persevered though, and Martina gave me some tips about posture and where my arms should be (I have this bad habit of dragging them sometimes, which probably doesn’t do my balance any favours).

After two hours we had completed maybe four runs, a few blues and a few greens, and Martina had critiqued us all. It wasn’t a bad introduction to ski lessons here, I guess I’ll be doing a Level 5 next time around.


The beer and chips diet (A new spin on the “Super Size Me” theme)
Josh has this story that he tells of a group of his friends who, during university, entered a dare where they ate only beer and chips. The urban legend goes that these guys (and yes, it seems only guys would be stupid enough to keep it up) kept on this diet for over a month. It reached the point where their skin turned yellow and when they finally found their way to the doctors they were diagnosed with scurvy. Great story, eh?

Well, up here in the mountains I understand that people often get lazy and are dietary challenged. (Especially those kiddies who are fresh out of home and aren’t sure how to boil water, let alone fry an egg.) I know people who live almost exclusively on toast and others who swear by 2-minute noodles. Heck, even back in Vancouver there was the crowd who were living on $1 slices of pizza from the corner store. And it’s nothing new, I remember somebody telling me about last season where they survived on bacon rinds for a few weeks because they couldn’t be bothered to shop (the snow was that good or kitchen that grotty?).

It is these same people who scoff when I admit that I try to cook, and seem close to hysterics when I allow that I like my vegetables fresh and go to the trouble of crushing garlic, frying onions and then simmering when I make a pasta sauce. So I’m starting to wonder: how far are they off the 2-minute noodle / beer diet? I’m not sure if sauce dipped chicken wings once a week counts as variety, but some days I’ve just got to wonder.


Bridge – The next big adventure 2006
One of my friends back home sent me a short email to let me know that I wasn’t the only having adventures abroad. Some of my (UNSW - BIT) university peers are doing some kind of North American tour, hitting Vegas and then Aspen. Their online diary is of a different flavour to my own (meandering descriptive passages and navel gazing reflection). Check out the excitement at: http://www.okane.com.au/bridge/snowbunnies06/

An aside - some background:
Once upon a time there were 54 of us recruited into Business Information Technology, a side effect of the late 90s tech boom. We started off as a tight knit group, sharing almost all our classes, taking up a section in the lecture theatre and sitting out on the Quad Lawn together, chatting and smiling way too much. But times changed, and half-way through the course the university group began to drift. Cliques developed and people started getting catty.

It’s almost 4 years on since those days of sun and Quad lawn time. We’ve all gone our separate ways although the little cliques seem to still be around. In some ways it’s a very distinct reflection of the different (and sometimes conflicting) personalities that we had to contend with. Most of the group has gone very corporate, others of us are still dodging in and out of the game, all the while trying to find something else. It’s going to be interesting to look at the group 8 or 9 years from now and see what happened.