Where Egos Dare

So that’s it. Son Of Son Of Gaysontrays is done. Bar the final night out, and the journey home, it’s a wrap.

After breaking my solemn vow never to take an afternoon off, yesterday’s afternoon off really helped me out today. We enjoyed the traditional final day of bumming around on a few runs for a long morning before a pint over lunch. It was the perfect antidote to the last few days of malaise.

In summary, then, that’s another great holiday in the bag. I had a bit of a blip in the middle, it didn’t snow, and Lawrence insisted on turning up every day, but apart from that, it was all good.

Bah.

Fucking Bah.

While I loved the first 5 days here. the last few have kind of knocked me on my arse. As a rugby player, I’m usually carrying a decent level of fitness into the months of january and february. However, after a gruelling preseason, I managed to pull a muscle in my back which effectively stopped me from exercise for eight weeks until early october. In what was to be the first full 80 minutes of my return, I contrived to break my collar bone. The operation to rebuild it was at the start of november, and—true to form—I haven’t played since, and have only recently started full training again. As a consequence of all of this, I’m nowhere near as fit as I usually am at this time of year.

For the first five days, it didn’t affect me hugely, but the last few days haven’t really been a great deal of fun. Instead of hitting the wall at about 2-3 pm after 5 hours on the board, the wall hits me after about the first run. True to form, when you’re a bit tired on a board, you start making silly mistakes and missing edges. This is exactly what I’ve been doing, earlier and earlier in the day as the trip progresses. One such arseplant seemed to jar the shoulder which has been stinging ever since, so adding in uncertainty about the resilience of my body to fatigue hasn’t really led to me being too adventurous.

Nonetheless, I’m still enjoying myself. A couple of days ago, we hit the nursery slopes for a morning of teaching ourselves to ride switch. It was a pleasant return to the original esprit de gaysontrays; namely learning new stuff, titting around a bit, falling over, and having a laugh. Once he found us after misinterpreting the simplest of directions (go to the middle station, turn left), Alex found us and spent what was left of the morning trying to ski backward. Since then, I’ve been hanging around on not-too-difficult runs, trying to regain my fast-fading mojo. With one more day left—albeit still with no snow—what do I have to lose? The journey home takes the best part of two days, which I intend to spend mostly unconscious, not sleeping next to the fridge, with its cheery every-10-minute wake up call which sounds like someone running while holding a metal bucket full of spanners. I suppose I’m committed to giving it the old college try.

If this sounds like I’m not enoying myself, that’s not the case. I’m doing what I enjoy; namely boarding and hanging around with the boys. I just wish that I could commit myself more to the boarding side of things. Oh well – there’s always next year.

Alas, it’s another picture quiz. Which of these is Ant?

No-one died.

The emphasis of the holiday seems to have shifted somewhat from the first few days. Whereas days 1 and 2 were all about chalking up as much of the mountains as possible, the last few have been more more aligned with the reason I think I came here in the first place; namely the subtle art of just titting around with the boys.

Now that’s not to say that we haven’t explored a bit, because we have. With Whistler Peak still closed because of the avalanche threat, I’d say we’ve covered as much of both mountains as we can. We’ve ridden pretty much everything except Symphony and the Peak To Creek. And there’s still four days left. The mornings seem devoted to trying out new runs, and afternoons seem to have evolved into taking it easy; just riding the mountain with the boys. Nothing terribly technical, nothing terribly taxing, just bumbling around and having a laugh.

Alex and Bingo have defected to skis, but Dec, Dave and I have remained true to our boarding brethren. Although Lawrence may come back, I think we’ve lost Alex for good. In all honesty, who cares? We all seem to be enjoying ourselves—I certainly am—so that’s the important thing.

On a separate note, Alex hasn’t called any other waitresses—and I quote directly—a “fucking alcoholic” recently, so I think it’s fair to say that our sustained charm offensive is really starting to take off.

Well, everyone seems to be awake—or in Lawrence’s case, as awake as they’ll ever get—so I must cut this post short, and promise to get more writing and less sleeping done this evening. I’m not a gambling man, but I reckon that the morning may involve having a bit of a look around, followed by an afternoon of silliness and banter.

I love The Gimp. I’ve recently spent a bit of time faking tilt shift photos—a medium of photography which I think is great. So far, I’ve gone from this

the original

After applying a cunning fake tilt shift

to this.

I like both photos very much. But for very different reasons.

Having altruistically backed up the rather fantastic Generation Kill from the internet, I fear it’s worked its wicked way into my subconscious. Today, Dec and I split from the others for the final run of the day. In arranging a meet in 60 minutes at the Garibaldi Lift Company, this is what I came out with.

We’ve reached the LOD. RVP is the GLC. ETA is 60 Mikes. Stay Frosty.

Much to his discredit, it was only Declan who understood what the hell I was going on about.

The Hello Sailor competition is in full flow. Without wanting to brag, I’m in the lead by a distance. The current standings to date are:

Ant has HelloSailored:

Dec once, Alex twice

Alex has HelloSailored:

Dec once

Dec has HelloSailored:

Lawrence once.

As things stand, it’s looking like a solid Pease win.

I’m not the world’s fastest boarder. In fact, in a recent race, I got beaten down the hill by the Blackcomb Glacier. It’s also been alleged that I’m not one for the most direct route down a run. That allegation is correct. I’d go as far as to say that although we’ve ridden the same runs all week so far, I’ve probably covered 3-4 times the distance of—say—StraightLine Emery.

After 2 days of pretty good boarding, though, I think it’s fair to say that we’re all feeling the pace a bit. Declan is as ever slave to his osteoporosis, Dave has knackered his knees, Bingo seems hurt, the tendonitis in my Achilles tendon is back, and Alex is sporting an interesting combo of dead leg and broken arse.  Nonetheless, the happy banter that has run through our boarding trips to date is relentless, with a sincere word yet to be spoken since we left Heathrow.

Yesterday’s plans were to have a run or two with Alex, and then go exploring a bit in the morning. Alex’s lesson the day before really paid off—he’s got the whole turning thing down, and is improving with every run. My fortunes, however, seem intrinsically linked to the wellbeing of my fast-deteriorating ankle. After a really happy run or two down to the middle of the Whistler Gondola in the morning, my tendon—frankly—gave up. Not wanting to miss the exploring session of the afternoon, I tagged along to the top of Little Whistler—making my current score Chairlift 0 – Mushy 5—and round to the bottom of Franz’s chair. With hindsight, I shouldn’t have. Although the run was mostly benign, there was a long steep section where I’d normally be game to chuck in a few turns and traverse my way slowly down. With my ankle unable to take any weight, however, I just didn’t have the confidence to get onto my toe edge. So I glumly slid down what would have been the most challenging run we’d done to date, cursing my ankle all the way. After catching Franz’s back to the top of the Whistler Gondola—Chairlift 0 – Mushy 6—we had lunch, and I finally got to take my boot off and ice my ankle. Lunch was quite a quiet affair, with everyone nursing an ailment of their own, and we decided to have a fun meander off of the mountain, and then hit the jacuzzi back at the hotel.

The ice really calmed my ankle, and the run to the village epitomised why I keep putting myself through this shit—just arsing around down a mountain with my friends, each of us under no pressure to do anything but enjoy ourselves. I’m pretty sure we did. Bootcam made its reappearance, and once Declan has been stretched in Post, I’ll be putting those up on the interweb for your perusal.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the outdoor pool / spa at the hotel. And it was lovely. I mean realllllly good. A pleasant meal was spoiled—as ever—with a trip to an Irish pub. The heady mix of diddly-di-do music and meaningles tat stuck to the walls does nothing whatsoever for me. Tag in the exorbitant price of the drink—which in the back of my mind I know is partly to pay for the diddly-di-do music and the tat—and all in all, it’s not a great place to drink. Why does a pub need an old biscuit tin, antique sewing machine, and wooden mallard stuck to the walls? Why? Bah.

So the SP for today seems to consist entirely of exploring Blackcomb a bit; something we’ve really not done enough of in the past. Might as well…

Oh, and one more thing. Never order wine at a restaurant if you’re with Alex.

Upon going into the bathroom this morning, there were three products by the sink. The 64 million dollar question* is this: as a man eight years older and eight stone heavier than Alex, of the three products, which are mine, and which are Alex’s?

*any prize stated may or may not be monetary, and might or not be valued at $64 M