Kev's Extreme Pow-Wow!

Although today was the busiest day in Whistler ski school history, I still didn't work this morning and went skiing with Jennifer again. For the afternoon I picked up a level 3 supergroup who I skied down Ego bowl and down Pony Trail. Unfortunately as we started to head down the mountain late in the day, one of my students fell awkwardly and appeared to pop something in her knee. This meant calling in ski patrol, who came to the rescue, taking the student down the mountain to the clinic. Afterwards, her fiance was a bit shaken up so we gingerly skied down to Emerald chair where I managed to persuade the liftees to let us up (15 mins after the lift shut) so that the remaining two students could get the gondola down.

The amount of information that you are required to capture when there is an injury like this is really quite shocking. Fortunately I'd managed to gather 90% of it whilst up on the mountain waiting for patrol so filling out the paperwork at the end of the day was pretty straightforward (but still time consuming). Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to wish the student and her fiance well at the end of the day so hopefully they got seen to at the clinic without too much difficulty and that the lady makes a full recovery.

Apparently I'm assigned to an all day private lesson with a child tomorrow so we'll see how that goes...

Although Whistler was busy, I still managed to get the morning off from lessons to ski with Jennifer. This was cool but I then had to dash back to pick up my students for the afternoon lesson. I was skiing all over Emerald and Red Chair with them, which was a nice change to the Olympic chair.

After work, Jennifer and I joined some other Base Pod instructors for drinks at Tapleys and then she and I headed off to get some dinner out. Note to self that Talas white wine from Woodbridge in California is lurvely.

Jennifer and I spent today on the slopes again. Fortunately today the weather was lovely so we jumped on the Peak chair so that Jennifer could see the view from the top. We then skied/boarded down past Harmony to the Burnt Stew trail and snuck off into the powder for some fresh tracks.

Jennifer's boarding improved over the course of the day and I'm looking forward to seeing the progress that she'll make in the next few days whilst I'm busy instructing skiers.

We stopped in at the pub on the way home. Got to go and help with dinner now!

I'm sure my family won't be offended when I describe today as the perfect Christmas. There were a number of factors that led to this. Firstly, Jennifer's here for a couple of weeks and I'm loving having her around. Secondly, we had a lot of sleep and then caught up with the Cady and Purcell families via Skype when we woke up.

Then, we headed off up the mountain for Jennifer's first day of boarding out here. She looked awesome in her new purple/pink Burton outfit and her boarding was pretty nice too as we scooted around Emerald, Garbanzo and Big Red for the day.

Lunch was taken in at the Roundhouse restaurant and consisted of a Christmas Day burger - not bad! After lunch we got back down the mountain and had a jacuzzi outside in the snow and then set about making our Christmas dinner. The dinner was excellent and we both reflected afterwards on a wonderful day.

It doesn't get any better than this!

Went shopping with Jennifer and then taught in the afternoon.

Now we're going to the pub! Merry Christmas!

Went to pick Jennifer up this evening. She's pretty tired! So glad she's here. It's awesome!

p.s. Had the day off again today and skied West Cirque and Harveys. Both unbelievable. Oh and skied the new Symphony lift for the first time. Also incredible.

I turned up for morning session today feeling really tired. Not a good way to start the day. As we got skiing I was one of 30 odd base pod instructors in one group with Bart that had made it for a pre-public ski. As a result we didn't really do that much but what we did do I was awful at; no engaging of edges, no pivoting, washing out skis. What a nightmare!

As we did the pre-lesson briefing we were all told to wear standard issue Whistler Blackcomb hats rather than the assorted hats we have all taken to wearing. If they give me a lovely Silverfort instructors hat then yes, but the poxy WB hat is not likely to replace my trusty Salomon headgear for a while yet!

Lesson handout was quite random this morning and the turnout for lessons was also low so the number of instructors left without lessons was massive. Because I'd not been very pushy about getting myself a lesson, I ended up with an unexpected day off.

Rather than chilling out and having a rest though, I decided to go for a ski with a few of the other guys so George, Andy and I headed off with Duncan and Hugh to Blackcomb. We headed for the glacier chair and hit Piccololo, which was ultra steep but filled with lovely fluffy snow. We then went off the back and skied the blowhole... George decked it in his instructor uniform and got cheers from the public onlookers! We then managed to get ourselves into a cliff-edge pickle that left many of us side slipping and rock hopping next to a precipitous drop. This was all worth it though as we found a new stash of deep untouched powder which we proceeded to make our own.

Another lap round and we hiked further across the glacier than I've done before in order to get to a really nice steep untouched pitch. This was unbelievable skiing - probably my favourite of the year so far, and also allowed us to traverse the valley wall to the right and drop down late to the cat track.

After a well deserved lunch at glacier creek we headed down the mountain via Jersey Cream chair and I realised that fastening my boots even tighter led to much more accuracy in my right-leg skiing. I'll have to pay more attention to that in future. I'd been thinking that my poor skiing this morning had to be down to my boots (always blame the equipment!) but fortunately it was just down to user error. Note that this should not be confused with a lack of technique! I just need the right kit to transform the abundant technique into good skiing! ;-)

Jennifer should arrive here tomorrow, assuming that the fog that's hammering Heathrow doesn't affect her transatlantic flight. I couldn't be more excited about spending Christmas with her out here. Even only 3 weeks apart is really hard work so it'll be great to catch up after that time and for her to see how her bloke is getting on in Canada. Happy times!

Before spending the afternoon struggling to teach two level ones, I fitted in some chilled powder skiing and then made one of the best discoveries of the season. Having woken up with a stinking hangover after the Christmas party, I'd managed my daily 4 weetabix but still hadn't felt great all morning. After the skiing however, I popped round to Zog's where they sell hot dogs that are legendary. I'd heard about these from my colleagues so I grabbed a Zog Dog for lunch and was delighted with what I got. The best thing was that as an instructor, we even get discount on our hot dogs! What a great job!

Today saw another day off. However, rather than resting today, I instead took part in an all day Level 3 preparation training session. The free training is one of the best perks of the instructor job out here. I spent all day with six others aiming to improve their skiing to the level 3 standard. My skiing felt like the weakest of all those present but my aim is to improve my skiing to somewhere near the standard by the end of the season.

It also happened to be a good powder day so whilst improving our skiing, we took in some seriously nice deep powder runs including the gun barrels and one of Guy's powder stashes! The latter was the scene of some attempted powder 8's (Guy is one of the world powder 8 championship team members fielded by Whistler) which could have gone better!

In the evening, we had our ski school Christmas meal at the Fairmont Chateau at the base of Blackcomb mountain. The food was great, the free drinks were welcomed and we went for extra drinks at Merlins afterwards. Several pitchers and some sneaky but very unpleasant Grappas later and my Base Pod colleagues were all quite sozzled... as was I!

Now that the Internet is back, I can finally compile my week 2 stats. What I've decided to do is to remove the lemon bread and muffin count because from what I've seen so far, these are both pale shadows of their former selves and thus they're not likely to improve radically. Instead I'm going to keep count of the number of people I've taught to ski. There was something else that I really wanted to keep a tally of but until I remember what it was then it'll have to wait!

Anyway, the steady riser this week has been the days skied on Whistler mountain. This is inevitable as I teach and train on Whistler. To be honest, I can't see myself hitting Blackcomb on a regular basis until I have a few more days off. I've had no jacuzzis this week and still no Jaegermeisters (although I'm expecting a spike for Darren's short visit in February!) but more than making up for these lulls have been the number of calls to Jennifer and a continued and consistent rise in burger intake (note that most of the burgers this week have been with bacon and cheese!).

Today was my day off, and I needed it. I woke up aching after six consecutive days of training/instructing on the mountain and a nice lie in was long overdue. When I got up I had a nice relaxed breakfast and collected a Christmas present from Steve at the post office, then headed into town to collect the discounted lift tickets I got given as a full time Intrawest employee! These I promptly put to good use as I picked up Jennifer's Christmas lift passes. Then I did a bit of shopping, chased up the downed Internet service, went food shopping, went booze shopping, got the washing done, bought a shirt for tomorrow's Christmas party and bought a new microphone for the laptop. All these things had been on my to-do list for more than a week and all of them got sorted today. This means that tomorrow, all I have to do is get up and go to my Level 3 instructor training and then go to the Chateau Whistler for our Christmas party!

I'm really enjoying my time out here!

Today's morning training session was taken by Lincoln, who I skied with in April so it was great to catch up with him again. He was really happy to see that I'd come back to work for the ski school. His training session took no prisoners this morning; all six of us were pretty tired by the time he'd finished with us!

After training we stood around waiting for a class but it wasn't particularly busy so we went skiing with our supervisor, Wade. He took us to the top of the mountain and then proceeded to drop us down through some moguls in zero visibility, then down the ridge and steeply through the VD (Very Delightful in case you're wondering) trees and chutes. By this time my legs had gone to mush and I was embarrassing myself through a complete lack of control! After skiing that stuff, groomed runs were a lot easier, however, we headed down Lower Franz's to Creekside and managed to further exhaust ourselves.

At lunch I discovered a new food source; one that is possibly going to be worth keeping a tally of... The sausage roll. Purchased from the EBCB, these are a delightful contributor of nutrients and protein and are worth their weight in gold (particularly when they're bought with instructor discount)!

The afternoon brought a proper level 2 supergroup lesson so it was nice to get skiing with students that were starting to turn and able to ski on the magic carpet run right from the outset.

Tomorrow's my day off and despite wanting to go and jump straight on the Sympony Chair, I'm going to look after myself and have a full day off work to rest. The Internet is still out so I'm hoping that it returns before Christmas, otherwise it'll be phone calls only to the Purcell and Cady families on Christmas Day; and Jennifer has already indicated that this would be unacceptable!

Today started similarly to yesterday; a morning session, this time working on edging at incredible speeds down the empty, well groomed slopes. The high spot of this morning was that the cloud stayed down in the valley and the instructors present witnessed a beautiful sunrise from between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. It's things like this that make me realise how much better the commute to work is here in comparison with that in Swindon from home to the office, through rush hour traffic to an over-full car park!

Yesterday saw the opening of the Symphony Express lift up to Piccolo Peak. Apparently there was so much snow that it was actually really difficult to ski (like my morning session a couple of days ago). Today however, I sniffed an opportunity to get on the lift for the first time. I didn't get assigned a morning lesson, meaning that I had chance to scoot over to the Symphony area, but after a couple of delays and some pretty swift skiing (not too swift as I was in uniform), I found myself stood under the new lift but without the time to descend to the lift line. Therefore I'd spent 40 minutes speeding along pretty dull groomers and then was faced with the prospect of a nasty traverse back along Burnt Stew trail (that white knuckle ride of a cat-track!). Booo! Well I have a day off on Tuesday and I'm determined to spend the morning skiing in that area. I'll let you know how I find it!

This afternoon I took charge of the level two group lessons so I picked up all of the skiers that are able to stop and turn their skis and ensured that they had an instructor... in this case, me! Unfortunately, of the 7 people I started to teach, 2 were able to ski reasonably proficiently (level 3-ish), and the other 5 turned out to require an absolute beginner lesson! I managed to negotiate a swap and handed off my two good skiers to another instructor receiving a couple of strugglers in return. I then spent the afternoon getting the class to get down the nursery slope safely. Two of the students were really struggling to start with so it was extra satisfying to get them under control by the end of the class. All in all, this was a nightmare lesson to start with, but I was really happy with the progress that was made by each of the students. It appears that I can do this ski instructor thing for real; which is a relief after getting this job for the season!

After shadowing a couple of experienced ski instructors, I was due to teach my own class for the first time today. However, first was the morning session. We took 40 minutes to get up the gondola, because of a combination of high winds and a rounded gear in the gearbox!

After the morning session, a number of us waited to have a lesson assigned to us but nothing happened, and so we were left to ski... in the powder... for an hour and a half! We headed up the mountain and found that the Peak had opened for the first time since before the storm. After heading up there, we split into smaller groups of yellow-coats and made our own way down the mountain. My group headed into Bagel bowl and skied a beautiful ridge line bordering West bowl down through some trees where the snow had piled up to obscene depths. This was without doubt the best bit of skiing so far this season.

The afternoon brought an assignment of two students for a level 1 (absolute beginner) supergroup and I headed off up the mountain with these guys and learnt quickly about what teaching techniques work in practice (and which ones don't!) At the end of the lesson, the two chaps were both safely getting down the easiest of slopes, and one of them was even starting to make turns. I was pretty satisfied that I'd done my job, and rather than being offered a tip, I was instead offered a job on a cruise liner out of Miami! I politely declined but was flattered by the offer!

I'm writing this is notepad because the storm that hit Washington State and southern British Columbia last night managed to take out the cable Tv and the internet for the whole of Whistler! Imagine those scenes from "The Day After Tomorrow", where the world climate changes in the space of a day, and you'd be thinking about something similar to last night's storm. Anyway, where there's rain and storm on the west coast over here, if it's cold enough, then this means snow...

Well last night, it was cold enough, and there was snow... 46cm of new snow! I got up early this morning and the roads were covered, the paths were covered, everywhere was covered. I hiked out from the apartment at 7.30, and had to wade through knee deep snow all the way to the locker room. More instructors than usual were up early for morning session although many were busy digging their cars out on the road from Pemberton!

I headed up the mountain for the morning training session in the gondola with Otto, the director of the ski and snowboard school in Whistler and a few others. On the way up the mountain, he proceeded to call the director of the Silverstar ski school and a few others, to gleefully tell them about the conditions!

As we reached the Roundhouse lodge at the top of the gondola, we were held for another 15 minutes whilst mountain safety cleared a few final slips in the Emerald area of the mountain. I've never seen slips on roundhouse roll before but there was one! Anyway, as we got skiing, all of the instructors were minded to look after each other as the snow was "deep". So deep that as we all got moving, a couple of the instructors ate snow straight away as their skis submarined into one of the drifts just below the ski racks.

We headed down a blue run (blues in Canada are the equivalent of reds in Europe), Jolly Green Giant, and found that the snow was so deep that we couldn't get any speed up. This resulted in a number of instructors plummetting into the snow and requiring some assistance to escape. Otto reitterated before we set off that it was a good idea when you came off your skis to remember where they were going so you stood some chance to find them again. As my skis submarined only moments later, I tried to remember Otto's advice, but unfortunately my low-profile digging found no missing ski. At this point Otto arrived and immediately found my ski with the sort of simple manoeuvre that makes even an experienced skier feel really stupid!

Later in the day, I helped to teach on of the supergroups (where there's only three students to one instructor), and felt pretty happy at the end of the day, having skied some crazy powder, and having improved the quality of an intermediate skier's skiing.

Before instructing for the first time; it seemed a sensible idea to see how it was done so today I shadowed Pablo, one of our Argentine instructors in a level 2 class. Fortunately I managed to sneak off at lunch for a quick ski but unfortunately couldn't find Pablo in the afternoon until I spotted him and his class on the way down the mountain! Anyway, a bit more experience and I'll be ready to teach for the first time...

I spent today learning about how the Whistler Ski and Snowboard School wants its instructors to teach people to ski. Unsurprisingly, this is pretty close to the CSIA method that I'm certified to teach; which is fortunate.

I met a number of the other instructors for the Whistler Base pod today and they all seemed like good fun. I also met our supervisor, Wade, who seemed impressed by my ability to name all James Bond actors, including George Lazenby! Wade managed to put me out of my locker misery by explaining how Canadian combination padlocks work! Now I've got somewhere to put my skis and gear without having to lug it from the apartment to the bus, to the slopes every day. Sweet!

I'm signed up for early morning training tomorrow; which involves ski improvement on the mountain before the mountain has opened to the public. I've also managed to sign up for CSIA level 3 prep sessions, which should improve my skiing and give me the chance to do some pedagogy. Groovy!

The most important development of today (apart from the much-sought-after locker) was the purchase of built-in earphones for my skiing helmet. Unfortunately my helmet is in my locker and I won't get chance to try these things out until next Tuesday (unless I get let off scheduling in the meantime) but I'll let you know how they are.

Right, back to snoozing on the sofa (I'm sooooo tired again today!). The TV here is pretty appalling although Tenacious D are performing on Spike TV at the moment so it's not all bad...

After a great powder day (my first proper powder day of the season) yesterday, I woke up this morning feeling really tired still so I decided not to ski today. I wasn't missing a great deal as there was only another 7cm of fresh snow this morning! It feels odd to baulk at fresh snow but there is a minimum of 15cm of snow forecast for each of the next 4 or 5 days!

An unexpected surprise was my invite to the first season orientation at the new Millennium Place building in town. This is basically for newbies to the Whistler Blackcomb company as opposed to Intrawest itself, which incidentally appears to be selling Whistler Blackcomb to another company. Anyway the briefing was fairly run-of-the-mill although it managed to show some pretty groovy videos of people skiing some amazing stuff in the resort. The initial session consisted of mainly instructor inductees but also included other areas like mountain operations and Club Intrawest Tree Snow Clearing staff.

The briefing morphed into a first season briefing specifically for instructors and the most vivid bit was the safety video. Rather than focussing on how to keep your class safe, it instead focussed on the safety of the instructor. One of the Whistler Kids supervisors (in fact the guy who examined my level 2 teaching) showed some stats on instructor injuries, designed to highlight the fact that at different times of the season, different instructors are especially susceptible to injury.

Apparently first season instructors are most susceptible to injury in January, typically as a result of going nuts with work over Christmas and New Year and partying at the same time. However, the wider ski school stats show April as being the most likely time for instructor injuries in general - this being as a result of long hard seasons. I'm not sure whether Paul was referring to me when he also mentioned that 28-30 year old instructors couldn't handle the demands of a season instructing without pacing themselves. Well hopefully my days off show that I'm already thinking about that.

More horrific still was the video showing people falling awkwardly and injuring themselves. This was obviously a bit of a shock tactic, as there were also bits deliberately overlayed with snap sounds... or at least I hope they were overlayed! :-o Anyway the message definitely came home - "if you go down, stay down" - no really, that's what they said!

Finally, I heard the first couple of instructor jokes for the season... How many ski instructors does it take to change a light bulb?... One because the whole world revolves around them. Better still... How many snowboard instructors does it take to change a light bulb?... Three; one to change the lightbulb, another to video them changing it, and another to stand there saying "Awesome"!

Tomorrow I'm donning the uniform for the first time on the slopes for my first on-mountain training. Depending on what happens tomorrow, there's a chance that I could be teaching on Thursday. More tomorrow!

I've decided to do a weekly analysis of the stats that you may see on the sidebar to the right of this page... for no other reason than because I can!

This week has seen a very strong sign that staying in contact with Jennifer whilst I'm out here is very important. I've used skype a lot this week and have not been disappointed.

Next up on the charts is the wipeout count. Now I've been very critical of myself in awarding myself 5 wipeouts. All of these happened in the first 2 days and only one of them was a 'proper' wipeout. I'm not to proud to admit that I fall over, but I categorically refuse to admit the blame for any of these falls. Typically snow conditions and equipment failure can be cited as a reasonable excuse (anyone that knows me will acknowledge these as typical mountain biking excuses although snow comes into play rather less).

On the food front, the banana bread has been very popular, taking a hit on an almost daily basis. The lemon bread has been disappointing (not very lemony so far), and the muffins have only been sampled once.

As Darren pointed out in his comments, the lack of Jaegermeisters so far has been disappointing but my reasoning is that I'm trying to feel fully better before I start poisoning myself again ;-). Darren must be impressed (but unsurprised) by my burger intake. I suspect I will average a burger every 2 days or so.

Finally, low on the graph so far is the powder day count. Although there's one powder day noted so far, that wasn't a particularly good one. The good news though is that there is some significant snow forcast for this week so hopefully by the time I'm doing the morning training sessions with the other instructors later this week, we'll be enjoying some serious pow... watch this space.

I had a well deserved lie in this morning and got out onto the slopes at about 11.30am. Rach and Lou would be proud, and I now understand why they were so precious of their mornings in bed in January! When you're here for a long time, there's no rush to get up unless there's deep pow to be skied.

I spent about an hour today watching the instructors in action on the nursery slope. Having not taught before, I'm a bit nervous about being thrown in at the deep end for my first lesson but having watched the team out there, it definitely looks manageable!

Skiing by myself was fun but tiring today. When I ski by myself I tend to forget to stop and consequently I soon end up with very achy legs. I'm hoping that in a couple more weeks, my legs will deal with the punishment by building up some more muscle, just in time for me to push them a bit harder!

It's so nice that I'm starting to feel better out here. I've had a couple of months of feeling run down and exhausted. At the moment I'm still exhausted but it's down to skiing rather than illness. The fresh air and the exercise are definitely having a positive effect.

I listened to my iPod almost non-stop today and after a few days of using it on the mountain, it's only just ready for a charge now. Times have changed because the last iPod I bought lasted in the cold for about 25mins... not enough for one decent Dream Theater song!!! Feel free to pull my music tastes apart as I scrobble them at LastFM. I can definitely recommend the 5G iPods for their battery life alone. Am still looking forward to my first deep/steep pow moment whilst listening to something suitable (Bon Jovi anyone? ;-)).

Today was unremarkable skiing wise although as it was Katherine's last day here we went up Blackcomb for a change.

I left Katherine wating on the slopes this morning whilst I attempted to get to the bottom of the training mystery. Since I've been here it's been very easy to get my pass and uniform but there has been no guidance on what training I'm meant to sign up to or how to sign up for it. Well today I was in luck as I found the Whistler adults ski lesson scheduler, Judy. She promptly got me signed up for a BST (before school training) session on Wednesday. This just happens to be with my supervisor, Wade, so things should become a lot more clear after Wednesday.

Judy also scheduled me for my lesson plan and in the process asked me which days off I wanted. For the time being I've asked for Tuesdays and Wednesdays off as this means that I work through the busy weekends rather than waiting in line for lifts. It also means that I stand some chance of getting to the much sought-after Level 3 preparation training sessions that are run on Wednesdays (cunning huh?!) although I've yet to get signed up to any of these and they'll stop soon for Christmas and New Year.

Over the Christmas break, Whistler is the busiest that it gets all season with the 28th set to be the busiest day of the year for the ski school. Therefore the schedulers attempt to book you in for as many days as possible during this time; typically booking you straight through from late December to early January with no breaks. Somehow I managed to persuade my scheduler that working on Christmas Day would be a bad thing (Jennifer wouldn't have spoken to me again had I worked on Christmas) and somehow blagged both the 25th and 26th off. Brilliant!

Went skiing today. Fairly manky conditions but found some fun wind crust up high on Whistler.

This morning was made better by firstly picking up my staff pass. Not only does this give me a right to carve up the mountains for free for the whole season, but it also gets me an all important (and not insignificant) discount on my lunches (for lunches read burgers).

The afternoon's highlight was popping in and collecting my instructor's uniform. Yes that's right, I've got the uniform. Just carrying it through town allowed me to transcend the paths and float back to the apartment with onlookers watching in awe. I wonder what effect it will have when I wear it on the slopes for the first time next week!

Photos of the uniform will appear as soon as those with first dibs have seen it!

Having been working so hard this week... not! I decided that I'd earned a day off the slopes and so I happily attempted to snooze through Katherine's departure onto the slopes as she endeavoured to test yet another different type of ski.

Whilst I've known Katherine, there has been a painfully long ongoing saga of whether she should get her own skis, some new boots or some heated insoles etc. Combine this with the rose-tinted view that Dynastar Legend 8000 skis are the best ski in the world, ever, and you've got one messed up girl. Well yesterday her skiing world was thrown into disarray as she tested the Legend 8000s and found them to be distinctly average. Dreading the fallout from this, I kept my head low and greeted the news that she was to try the Volkl AC3's with muted enthusiasm.

Test day came and went, and a smiley Katherine returned with glowing reports of an awesome on-piste skiing experience. It seems that the Legend 8000s have finally been replaced in folklore by the Volkls and that she has found the ski that she wants to be with. I for one am hugely relieved, having suggested the Volkls all along ;-).

Anyway, tomorrow she's going to buy a pair... erm, after testing some Atomics! Doh!

For me, through the wonders of Skype (I'm thinking of getting them to sponsor me whilst I'm out here), it was great to catch up with the whole family today and to hear that Mum and Dad had a great time in Portugal for Dad's birthday. Therefore today I'm giving a big shout out to them, Steve, Lia, Grace and of course Jennifer.

Sun in Whistler is rare, and when it happens you've got to get out there and enjoy it. Unfortunately the snow was a bit slushy and hard going in places as a result of the sun today. Nevertheless, I was out on the mountain working on my skiing legs (which now ache a lot!) for the majority of the day.

Check out the photos from today on my flickr site as there are some nice ones of Black Tusk; one of the primary landmarks visible from Whistler mountain, and one which I'll no doubt spend most of the season pointing out to my skiing clients!

I've spent the evening stretching in the hope that tomorrow I'll not be feeling sore. Muscle pain is one of those things that comes with the territory. I'm concious that I don't want to over do the exercise after my virus so I'll probably take the day off tomorrow. This should at least help me digest the muffin and banana bread slice consumed today!

After handing in the final set of pre-requisite paperwork to the ski school this morning, I headed out for a day's skiing. It turns out that whilst the paperwork and passes are processed, there's not much more I can do other than go skiing for free! What a hard life!

In the morning I headed off up Blackcomb mountain with Katherine, but it soon became apparent that the best bits of the mountain were closed. Blackcomb mountain only opened just over a week ago so I guess this shouldn't have been a surprise but when you get a powder day like today (not big pow today but there was some to be had), one really wants to be skiing off the back of the glacier. I'm not sure of the conditions down from Spanky's Ladder yet so I didn't want to risk that one.

Fortunately it is possible to ski on both mountains in one day, therefore we headed down from Blackcomb after a few runs and headed over to Whistler. After briefly considering a trip down to Dusty's, we found the conditions to be better high up on Whistler mountain so enjoyed the brief good visibility for a while before lunch and heading home.

In the pow today I had a great double ejection moment. For the uninitiated, this is where both ski bindings eject you, sending you flying whilst the skis typically bed in and stick in the ground. Unfortunately I did this in knee deep powder so had a brief worrying moment when I turned round and couldn't see the skis. Fortunately, a quick retrace of my flight trajectory led me to the skis! Serves me right for not attaching the powder trails that are so useful in just this circumstance!

Am feeling pretty tired again this evening, and it wasn't helped when my jacuzzi was rudely disturbed by the fire alarm, signalling a required evacuation of the building.

After a number of requests, I've extended the tally chart still further and will be keeping track of a wider range of stats during the season. Rather than tracking them on my blog entries, I've added them to the sidebar but will endeavour to ensure that they are always up to date. Does this make me a geek? I don't care - I'm loving it!

I spent today sorting out various pieces of paperwork that need to be in place in order to start work in Canada. Primarily today was spent sorting out my postbox and my social insurance number application form. The latter was sent off after excessive photocopying and admin fees this afternoon.

Tomorrow morning I've got an appointment at the bank to open an account over here. I don't know whether this will mean that I'm in a better position for money laundering but I do know that it'll mean that the ski school can pay me.

Other than the admin stuff, generally I've been feeling more at home in the apartment today, especially after a couple of skype calls home. Makes me feel a lot happier about being out here and the prospect of skiing again tomorrow afternoon is starting to get exciting again!

On the tally front, I've somehow notched up another slice of chocolate banana bread courtesy of Katherine, who brought it back to console me for missing a powder day. I didn't need much consoling as I've been feeling quite tired today after yesterday's afternoon on the slopes.

I have decided to extend the tally to include a couple more categories so see below for the running totals. Note that the wipeout category is on 2 so far as a result of 2 minor tip/tail collisions getting used to the skis again!

Banana bread: 2 slices
Lemon bread: 0 slices
Burgers: 0 burgers
Jennifer calls: 4 calls
Wipeouts: 2 wipeouts
Powder Days: 0 (although if I'd skied today it would be 1!)

Woke up this morning after a jet-lag-disturbed sleep and set about finding the ski school 'welcome center'. After showing my face there and confirming a few details, without being able to provide bank account and social insurance number details, I was issued with a day's lift pass as it was a sunday!

At lunchtime I headed off up the mountain and got used to this skiing lark again. Felt pretty good considering that I've not exercised for 8 weeks but am feeling pretty tired this evening. I've also still got a nasty dry throat (sympathy gratefully received but not expected given the circumstances ;-)) so the dry mountain air has taken its toll. However I'm really hoping that the mountain air will also help to clear the remnants of the virus.

The conditions here today are pretty spankingly good for the start of December. The snow base is 160cm, which is more the norm for January time. However, it's a few days since the last dump so the snow, although great, was not powder soft. Perfect conditions for getting used to skiing again though.

Thought I'd keep track of a number of statistics whilst I'm out here so I'm going to track number of slices of banana bread or lemon bread eaten since day one (today), number of burgers consumed, and number of phone calls to and from the beautiful Jennifer (who I'm already missing terribly). I've been here for a day so far and the stats are as follows:

Banana bread: 1 slice
Lemon bread: 0 slices
Burgers: 0
Jennifer calls: 2

I wonder how many ski instructors travel across the world to their jobs by flying business class? Well that's what I enjoyed yesterday as a result of being bumped up from economy no less! This isn't normal for me but it was just fortunate that I was travelling with BA pilot Katherine. Pretty awesome way to travel and as a result, the immigration and hire car situation was easy to deal with on arrival. Add to this the confirmation that Jennifer had got back safely from Heathrow ok after dropping me off and all in all this was the least stressful day of travel to Canada that I've had in the last 4 years.

The apartment is lovely, lots of space for me to put all my junk and a nice central location so that I can get out and about to the shops and slopes easily. The only problem I've got today is that the broadband doesn't seem to have been connected quite yet. Still, nothing a little wireless roving can't resolve ;-)