There’s something about this season that feels a little more epic than last. I started snowboarding last season and after an epic first season of riding at Cypress, Grouse, and Whistler, I hung up the board at the end of the season thinking I wasn’t going to get the time this year. So far I’ve been twice, both times in Whistler. Last weekend was the opening day of the ski season in Whistler, Mount Baker, and Cypress. I even think Grouse may have opened for the weekend only, but I have a soft spot for Whistler.
Last weekend was fixing to be an epic weekend and it didn’t disappoint. At the last minute Friday afternoon, I decided to book a hotel room in Whistler for Saturday night. It seemed like a good idea since I had planned on riding all day and then going to dinner with friends, which could almost guarantee my drinking, and I decided that staying in a hotel was better than being the DD for the evening.
I got up at 4:30 AM and met some friends at 5:00 AM to start the drive up to Whistler. We got there in time to check into the hotel just a bit early. The clerk was nice enough to let me check in 7 hours early without paying for the extra day.
After checking in, I got into my gear and headed for the lift lines, which looked like an hour wait just to get to the lifts. I still had to buy my ticket, and that line was about 45 minutes long, but I was ready to wait. While I got myself situated in the line and had been waiting for a good 30 minutes, I heard a voice saying they had an extra ticket. I thought it was a familiar voice, so I turned and saw my friend and co-worker NC standing there. My reaction was, “Hey N, I’ll take the ticket!” After taking another look at the lift line, it was quickly decided that breakfast was going to be the better choice than waiting in line.
After a nice breakfast with some old and new friends, we hit the slopes. A good mix of boarders and skiers were part of our group. I’m not one to ride with others; I’m a loner on the slopes. I plug myself into some music and go as fast as I safely can without losing control. Saturday was no different, except I hit all my turns, caught some air, and managed to ride the entire day without hurting myself. Well, I hurt a little bit, but it had more to do with a historical injury and not anything I did during the day.
At the end of the day, we all met up at the GLC and had a few beers. By 5 o’clock, it was time to get cleaned up, which involved taking advantage of the hot tub at the hotel and a nice long shower. After that, we headed to Sushi Village, and that’s where the night started to go a bit sideways. I’m not sure what possessed us to order the “Dumbo” size of sake (6 liters), but we did, along with quite a few pitchers of sake margaritas. With the great company, the good food, and the metric ton of drinks we consumed, we decided it would be a good idea to head out to the bottle shop, pick up some more drinks, and head to a friend’s hotel room to spend the rest of the evening. All 12 of us thought this was a good idea. To the bottle shop and then to the friend’s hotel room took us close to an hour. Anyone who knows the village knows that it shouldn’t take an hour to get to any hotel from the bottle shop, but we’re a special bunch.
Getting to the room was an exercise in futility. We managed to get there, but once there, we managed to break almost all the glasses in the place. Not intentionally; it’s just we’re a bunch of klutzes when we’ve drunk that much. So after a few games, we heard a knock at the door. Turns out someone had called hotel security on us, and we were asked nicely to leave the room. If we didn’t leave the room right away, the people whose room we were partying in were going to get kicked out. So in light of that, we decided to take the party on the road. We ended up closing the bar we went to (2 am) and finally got back to the hotel room at 4:30 AM. Between the weather (snowing) and the company, it was good times!
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