Canada catchup

Not blogged as much as I intended, but then in all reality there’s only so much to blog about when you’re in a ski resort.

We arrived late on Sunday evening after a gruelling 23 hours of travelling (for me, at least, since I had to take a flight down from Manchester to Heathrow; Chris was already at his parents’ house) and went straight to bed. Straight onto the slopes on Monday morning but soon had to abort because my boots were all wrong. I had the same problem two years ago, intense pain in my feet, as if if they were being crushed in a vice. So we took to them to a professional boot fitter in the hotel who did the Canadian equivalent of sucking air over his teeth and muttering “which cowboy did this then?” as he measured my crazily flat feet and then put my boots in a furnace so he could basically change their shape to accomodate my unbelievably crap feet. The pain’s since gone, although it still hurts if I spend a long time on the cat tracks rather than doing downhill turns.

I had a lesson on Wednesday at level 3, which I breezed through and have since graduated to level 4 (of 6), with a lesson at that level tommorow (Sunday). I’ve done some free skiing, but unfortunately not as much as we would normally want because Chris has been rather unwell and has required several trips to the hospital and the dentist. One of his wisdom teeth has caused a problem whereby an infection has taken hold and basically filled one side of his face with pain. He’s now had it removed and is now all doped up on north American-strength painkillers and antibiotics, so no skiing, solid foods, alchohol, driving or pretty much anything else for him :(

The snow‘s been brilliant, especially for the time of year. Apparently, it’s been “the worst year on record” in terms of snow. It didn’t snow from the end of January right up until the night we arrived, apparently, at which point it snowed 10 inches, so that was quite well timed. It’s snowing again now and is set to continue to do so through Monday, which is fantastic considering it is the end of March, and by all rights, Spring. Much better snow than the last time we came, and that was peak season!

We’re going to try and take a trip to Vancouver on Monday to do the city thing that we’re so fond of. We rented a Ford Explorer at the airport after discovering that renting such a car for the whole holiday worked out cheaper than two shuttle services from the airport to Whistler. It also gives us the ability to drive around whilst we’re here too, which has been pretty essential while Chris has been ill. Last full day is on Tuesday and we come home overnight on Wednesday. Horrible jet lag will then ensue so I probably won’t be back on all six cylinders until Monday.

I am taking pictures but they’re going to be pretty much the same as the lot I took when we last came, except this time I have a much better camera.