OK, so I'm now totally convinced that it's not possible to go to Whistler and NOT have a good time. I arrived late on Friday arvo, having happily dozed pretty much the entire bus ride, and I high tailed it over to Can Ski in Creekside to pick up my boots. I stopped by Peak View to unload a bit of my stuff then headed into the village to meet the boys and take Kim over to my place with his snowboard (they were squeezing slightly more people into a one bedroom apartment than the hotel would recommend/technically allow so he needed a place to stow his gear over night! hehe).

Kim and I then headed back to the boy's apartment - possibly the most conveniently located place in Whistler! It took all of about 30 seconds for them to convince me to come out with them and Bernie made us his specialty rum and coke drink…pretty much just rum and coke with lime! Haha So we hung out there until Jop arrived around 10ish then we ventured out for the long trek across the road to the nearest club…somehow despite having a perfect view of the line outside the club from the bedroom window, we managed to let our guard down (OK, technically it was Bernie who was on line watch duty) and ended up standing in the line for about half an hour! Nonetheless, well worth the wait…particularly for the hilarity of watching Heiko argue with the bouncers at the end of the night to let him back in to get his jacket. He'd apparently lost his ticket for the coat check so was supposed to wait until everyone else had picked up their jackets before he got his back. He was pretty indignant about this and it wasn't until I took him aside and said, "Heiko, think very carefully…were you actually wearing a jacket when you went inside??" and he's like "Oh……" hahahaha So that was that a we hurried back across the courtyard to the hotel.

We arrived home to find Bernie making some sort of mince-egg surprise dish…basically a whole lotta mince and a bunch of eggs all chucked in a pan and scrambled around together! Not the most elegant culinary creation mind you, but pretty damn tasty at 4 in the morning. He then preceded to entertain us by putting on every single piece of his ski gear (goggles included) to go outside on the balcony for a smoke…strange, strange Austrian people… :P Being as late as it was the boys kindly extended some floor space to me and we all settled in for about 3 hours of sleep….NOT ENOUGH. When the alarm went off around 7 I was pretty sure I was going to cry.

BUT it was the first day of skiing in Whistler and none of us were willing to miss it that easily. With the exception of Bernie, who was still in bed when we cam home later in the afternoon. Kim and I legged it over to Nordic and I got ready in about 5 minutes flat, all the while mumbling incoherently to myself. I laughed out loud, quite literally, when I walked in my bedroom door and found that Maggie and Jane had left the Pasta Man picture in my bed as a lovely homecoming surprise for me - OK, let me explain, we have on our wall this seriously creepy painting of an old man eating pasta that somebody once upon a time must have considered artistic, that gives me and Maggie nightmares, and he occasionally likes to re-locate himself to random locations in our lodge as a nice little surprise for us girls! Haha.

So, back at the hotel, we were all geared up and ready to go (more incoherent mumbling). And we headed over to the gondolas so Jop and Kim could pick up their day passes and Heiko and I could pick up five very strong, very large coffees (OK 4, Jop had tea - crazy boy). The gondola ride up was…interesting. Too sweet coffee + swinging gondola + pounding head = not good. But somehow, between that caffeine and the cold, fresh air and the fact that I was now standing on top of Whistler mountain ready to ski for the first time in 5 years and thus ridiculously excited, my body managed to do a full 180 and I've never felt quite so good in my life. I put my beautiful, beautiful skis on, pointed my feet down the slope and prayed to God that everyone would indeed be right about it "being just like riding a bike". Turns out - it is! I didn't fall once that day AND I managed to keep up with all my uber-cool snowboarding boys, most of whom have been at this since they were wee young things! Kim aside - he'd never been on a snowboard in his life, but managed to absolutely rocket down the mountain and once beat us down a run while we were all naively waiting at each turn for him to catch up. I was teased no end about being a skier but I held my ground and it was good times for all. We had to dodge a fair few patches of dirt, rocks, and small, unpredictable Michelin baby ski schoolers, but aside from that it was a truly perfect day :)

Mid-afternoon I began to realise A) how much hard work skiing is on the legs and B) the reality of the fact that I'd slept about 3 hours the night before. My body was shaking it's fist at me screaming "Why Olivia!? WHY???" but it was about time for the lifts to close anyway, so I had mercy and we called it a day. At least I made it through the entire day though! Dennis was not so fortunate - Heiko and I lost him on one of the first runs of the day and couldn't find him at the bottom of the slope. Eventually he just got on the chair lift and headed up by himself, only to fall asleep on the way, having to be woken up by the lifties at the top when he failed to exit, falling off the chair lift and deciding to go back to bed! Haha Tell you what though, despite sleep deprivation, and aching legs, I could not get the grin off my face. Ear to ear my smile was, and it stayed that way, pretty much unchanged for the next 48 hours. That night we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for awesome, cheap post-skiing grub and I when I got home to Peakview that night, I fell into something of a coma that was punctuated only briefly by more of Maggie and Jane's hilarious antics - most of which I incoherently mumbled way through and promptly forgot after passing out with exhaustion again.

The next morning Kim and Bernie headed home, so it was just me and the pro-snowboarders who were kind enough to stop for breaks between seriously speeding descents to wait for me to potter down the mountain and my own pace. They ambitiously tried to convince me to take a rail in one of the freestyle parks but I politely declined, citing that I wished to have the use of both my legs for the rest of the season. I'm in no hurry to do a Wout and put my own knee through my forehead thankyou very much! That evening we took the Greyhound bus down, although Jop and I apparently missed the no-talking memo because we received a severe telling off from the bus driver for conversing too loudly - Oh gosh, I do apologize for making conversation on the THREE HOUR LONG BUS TRIP!! I actually thought she was considering chucking us off at the stop in Squamish, and that may not even have been a bad thing considering we were lucky to make it home alive after numerous tight corners and narrowly missed street signs. But we made it home alive, and that night, as I fell deep into sleep in my oh-so-uncomfortable-compared-to-my-one-in-Whistler bed, all I could think was…OK, I wanna go back now!

LIVxo