Blog Wars: Whistler Strikes Back

Firstly, petrol prices here. 

I saw a gallon of petrol, not gas but petrol cos it’s a liquid, for $2.01 USD.

Add 10% tax, convert to Aussie, it’s still cheaper.
That explains the war in Iraq

Secondly, Americans are little-endian when it comes to bananas. 

This is wrong.

We should wage war with them.

I told my family how Americans open bananas, and they just laughed. 

There is an obvious handle for opening bananas. And they don’t use it.

They squeeze the other end, and hold it by the 'obviously a handle' end.

I called my family, when my sister had returned from southern Asia and my whole family was all together. I was talking to Natalie, and at one point she says, “Alison’s here if you wanna talk to her."

“Aw yeah, put her on."

“She just said, ‘Why would he wanna talk to me?'"

Ah, my family loves our togetherness.

Alright, Whistler Adventures Round Two!!!

The Slopes

I was inclined to go down them most of the time. 

Well, no matter which way you point a snowboard it’s inclined to go down a hill. They are kinda annoying like that. 

Ways in which snowboards suck:

- they slide all the damn time

- you cannot stand still without unclipping your foot

- walking doesn’t work well

- flat ground is the worst

Ways in which snowboards are cool:

- you feel a million times more awesome when you pull off sharp turns and skids

- you’re just cooler in general

Snowboarding down Blackcomb mountain was pretty cool. The green tracks are long and windy, with large low-gradient sections that give a really scenic view out across the valley … when it isn’t foggy.

Scenery!

More scenery!

Caradhras Galadhon

Dang, I loved these views

Then The Fellowship of the Ring, the Dream Team themselves, went up Whistler, to the very top … after taking the gondola from half way up Blackcomb, across the valley, to halfway up Whistler. 

The Fellowship: 

Bumblebee - aka Harley Adams, who wore the camera half the time and raced behind us to get all the good bails stacks on camera.

The Dark Knight - moi. I was rather distinct in my indistinctness; completely black, except for polarized lenses. 

P!nk - Chris, who asked me to buy him a hot pink ski jacket. So I did. 

The SpeedBlitz Blue - Will, my fellow Aussie, who skied well and crashed well.

P!rple - Jenna, who ran afoul of Chris's 'maneuverability' more than once.

The Fellowship, at the top of Whistler

What was left of the Fellowship, at the bottom of Blackcomb

The top of Whistler was intensely foggy … so foggy, in fact, that I could not see 50 metres in front of me, or indeed the bumps and dips in the snow! 

This proved … interesting.

Quality vision

Notice how you can't see what is snow and what is fog?
Neither could I.

This is not just MS paint with the grey colour, this is a photo.

I’m scooting along, kinda just hoping that nothing is in front of me, seeing only white, and a small purple blob ahead of me (Jenna). I don’t know if I’m about to go off a cliff, or what. 

And what a journey. 

So on Steven’s Pass, and Crystal, some of the runs were decently long, taking ~10min to complete, gunning it the whole way. 

These took upward of twenty, gunning it the whole way. 

Dayumn. 

Whistler was a huge trip down, not least because I hit loads of flat ground and got stuck on my stupid snowboard. 

Finally made it past that, and hit icy snow, no powder whatsoever. Ouch.

With a bruised butt, I get past that, see a flat and a chair lift and think, the end, oh joy!!

….. only to realize that I was still several runs from the bottom. 

Ugh. 

It was really enjoyable though. 

Before that, though, we hired our gear from the chateau. 

When we were hiring the gear, and the people there serving us were talking to us, I was trying to place someone’s accent, and it took me a while before I thought, “I can’t hear any accent on them."

Then I realised what that meant, and then noticed it on many others. 

There were loads of Aussies there, including one girl from Inaburra High School (which won’t mean much to some, but to others - small world, eh?), and I immediately thought, I’m home!

Ah, so good to hear that comforting Australian accent. 

Canadian Food Reviews:

I went to the city with Matt a while back, and he was really excited to try poutine, whatever the heck that is. 

Me, being me, got all excited too: “Food. There. Cheap. Go."

When we stopped in Vancouver for dinner, Matt had poutine.

Harley's review of poutine: "meat, cheese curds, chips, gravy"

Matt's review of Vladimir Poutine: ... Actually, no, I'll clarify first. Matt is our group's foodie. So in Canada I asked him to give me a 100 word review of Putin and this is what he said.

Matt. He does food reviews.

Matt’s Food Reviews #1

In Soviet Russia, Poutine eats you

Philly Cheesesteak Poutine
The first of the three quintessential Canadian foods is the dish known as poutine. While the classic poutine consists of fries, brown gravy, and cheese curds, the one I had bought came adorned with ribbons of shaved beef. Despite opting for the slightly Americanized version of the Canadian dish, my friend reassures me that it is common to see stalls selling variations of poutine.
It only took a few mouthfuls before the food became hard to swallow. The brininess of the gravy was dominant in every bite, and I found it difficult to taste any of the other key ingredients.

Rating: 1/5

Based on that review, Matt, I would not bother eating this.

We also had Beaver Tails, at Whistler. Given that some cultures eat chicken legs, I did not think it weird for these to actually be beaver tails, as Andrew the Canadian man said. 

Matt also reviewed this, and this will come in a later episode.

More Gridiron

So, that game I mentioned last time. 

I watched it in a pub with some other interns and a bajillion other people.

What a boring, stupid game.

I’ll just spoil it now and get it over with. 

Seattle won. 

It was about 45 min in (game minutes, not actual minutes), and Seattle was losing by two tries (or touchdowns, which is like a try but you don’t touch the ball down to the ground. Go figure). It was pretty much over for them. 

Then it got tense. 

About half an hour later, Seattle scored a couple of tries touchdowns, and overtook the other team …..

Then they came back and made it a tie. 

There were two minutes left on the clock (yes, that’s right, I’m adding correctly). 

Twenty to twenty five minutes later, the game ended. 

Seriously. 

There was overtime, due to the tie, but the last two minutes just went on and on. That is the most stop-start game ever. 

The team will huddle and discuss what they will do, then they get together, and ready the ball. The clock starts. 

One bloke throws the ball backwards to another, who stands there and looks for a third bloke to throw it to. Often he’ll find someone, throw it, and they’ll get tackled. 

That’s about 5-10 seconds of gameplay. 

Then the clock stops. 

Repeat process. 

For an hour. 

An entire hour, split into 10 second chunks. 

Who the hell goes to watch this game live? 

Watching golf would be more interesting that this. 

To be fair, cricket is slow, but the clock keeps going. And they rack up points at a higher rate, too.

More Whistler

I had bacon for breakfast. 

Canadian bacon.

Man, I want a bacon weave of that stuff. 

Here is where we stayed in the chateau.

The base of the red light is our room

I’ll use Whistler Round 3 to wrap up everything, but I must mention this now: 

It's third day of whistler, on the final run. We were on a small stretch of blue, and Harley was ahead of me, skiing down. Suddenly he pitches forward, goes head-over-heels, twists to the side, gets his skis utterly mangled and twisted off his feet, then hits the ground face down and slides down a bit, ending up lying with his face in the snow. 

Perfectly still.

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To hear the epic conclusion to this tale, tune in next time for Blog Wars: The Return of the Candy Van!!