Snake vs. Alligator = draw

The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

How often do you hear a phrase like that? Full, awesome story here.

Lessons and visitors

Firstly, I'm a little behind in telling you that I took my first pupils out for a ski lesson last week. I loved it! No money changed hands, I assure you, though naturally chocolate was both offered and accepted. I work with a girl called Serina, who has been snowboarding since the beginning of the season, though has had mixed feelings about it. She has a friend who skis coming over in a couple of weeks and wanted to ski with her, so asked me to take her out. She'd skied once before, when she was 14, but had broken her arm on her first run. A challenge, then. PJ, her boyfriend is a good snowboarder but had never been on skis, so we started from scratch. Serina was a natural! She loved skiing and kept saying she didn't know why she'd been boarding all this time, when she was obviously a skier at heart. Ha! PJ was a bit frustrated at being a beginner again I think, in the same way that I was when I went snowboarding for the second time last week. I found myself sat at the side of a green run having fallen over for the umpteenth time, aching and cross, watching skiers whizzing past and eventually said sod this, went and got my skis and had a brilliant afternoon. PJ did the same an hour or so after I left them, but came and said thank you to me for giving Serina confidence. The following day she went on a lesson with Ski School and did her first ever black run at the end of it! I'm so proud of her...

And now onto the big news of the week and the reason I've been slack with my blogging: Jenny & Liddi have left today after staying with me for a week, during which time I've
sent them on a scavenger hunt around Banff (a thinly-veiled ruse to get them to buy me cupcakes, I'll freely admit), they've had ski lessons with ski school here at Sunshine while I was working, done shots at the Devil's Gap bar, we've taken the gondola up Sulphur Mountain and soaked in the Banff Upper Hot Springs whilst laughing at some poor teenage boy's carefully-tonged hairstyle, eaten ribs at Tony Roma's and spaghetti at the Old Spaghetti Factory, had Easter dinner with Megan & Craig and enjoyed an impromptu party at the Beaver, skied together on bluebird days, had a cleaning frenzy in preparation for a landlord inspection and locked Jen & Liddi in the bedroom while the landlords were there so they remained unaware that I had illegal guests. It's been lovely having visitors and I hope they enjoyed themselves too. I don't think Liddi particularly enjoyed skiing - I strongly suspect she has now hung up her skis and retired her poles - but nonetheless she actually did it really rather well for a beginner, as you can see in the video below. Nice one Liddi!

Winnie the Pooh is alive and well and living in Macedonia.

The value of privacy

If everyone could suddenly read everyone else's thoughts then very few people would survive the subsequent massacre

The above quote is from a truly excellent article by my old mucker Clive James that I came across on the BBC website this morning. I'm not one for lamenting the state of society on my blog very often - I tend to leave that to my dear friend Silas, as he's far better at it than me - and I can't hope to better Clive's turn of phrase, so I shall instead leave you to read the words of another that happen to mirror my own thoughts.

Another 10 things I've learnt in Canada

1. If you wear your iPod out when it's below freezing, the earphone cable becomes stiff & rigid almost straight away.


2. The Northern Lights, in all their glory, can be seen this far south.


3. Good bread, like a good man, is hard to find.


4. A roadtrip is worth every penny and all the effort.


5. It is possible to tell, without checking a thermometer, if it's below -20, by breathing in deeply and feeling if your nose hairs freeze.


6. a) Ski boots are easy to put on and difficult to walk in. Snowboard boots are difficult to put on and easy to walk in.


7. b) Skiing & snowboarding are totally different, requiring different techniques and using different muscles. Skiing is far easier to pick up but harder to get really good at.


8. c) The constant strapping and unstrapping of your bindings when snowboarding quickly becomes tiring and irritating.


9. Canadian mobiles phones are expensive: you get charged to receive as well as to make calls, there are lots of 'added extras' to pay which back home come as standard (such as the facility to make emergency calls) and the monthly amounts vary wildly for no discernible reason.


10. Badgers out here are different from badgers back home. They look weird and scary.


11. The most irritating sentence in the English language is: "Hi, I lost one black glove somewhere on the hill about 3 weeks ago, not sure what make it is, do you have it?"


12. The second most irritating sentence in the English language: "Hi, I think I'm on a list...?"
    
    

Board to tears

What is it with me and trees? Today I had a go at snowboarding for the first time and, naturally, I managed to fall into a tree well, from which Gravy helped me out as soon as he'd properly documented the occasion. Oh, and laughed at me alot. It was enormously comfortable incidentally. The snowboarding went fairly well - I was linking turns by my 3rd run - though I fell over a lot and was immensely grateful for Laura's impact shorts, knee pads, and Zander's wrist guards. Of course, the one part of me that remained unprotected was my elbows, so I now have a massive bruise on my left one. Good work. Here's me in action when it was going well:



And when I was somewhat less successful:




Oh and one of Chelsea's friends (Natsuko Katashima) who was in another part of Banff when the Aurora happened took these photos, which are incredible. I'm posting one here so you can see how amazing it really was.

Ambition achieved

Was happily sleeping in my bed tonight when my flatmate Laura burst in and shouted that the Northern Lights could be seen outside - I jumped up and joined everyone in the house out on the terrace in their pyjamas to watch the Aurora Borealis swirl and flicker and snake its awe-inspiring way across the sky. Naturally this photo does it no justice whatsoever but it's the best we could do (thanks Chelsea for your picture).

This is one the main reasons I came to Canada: to see the Aurora. I've waited all my life to see it. I'm not ashamed to admit I had a little cry.

Quick addendum to the above now I'm properly awake. You don't see the Northern Lights this far south very often, and rarely in town because of the light pollution. Even the locals were talking about it this morning. I certainly didn't expect them to be as bright and vibrant as they were. I've been bouncing around all morning on a high and feel immensely privileged to have seen them. They certainly didn't disappoint; they were as beautiful as I'd hoped (and thanks to Gravy for this picture).

Say what you see

Ever wondered what colour blind people see? My friend Zander is colour blind and got sent this link from his friend recently, which recreates what red/green colour blindness does to your perception of the world. We sat and looked at the pictures together and he genuinely couldn't see any difference in them, which I found fascinating. This morning while waiting for the bus he remarked that although he wasn't that bothered about it, he did feel a bit sad that he couldn't see how pretty Christmas trees were. All together now: ahhhhhh.

Roadtrippin'

Firstly, let me prefix this post by telling you my proud news: that I am now a fully qualified Level 1 Ski Instructor! Who'd've thunk it? I didn't mention I was taking the course because I was worried I'd fail. However, somehow I managed to blag my way into CSIA membership with my, frankly, barely adequate skiing abilities. I was so proud when I got my badge that I blubbed like a baby.

So, I've been a-roadtrippin' again. A last minute drop out proved fortuitous for me, when I got the opportunity to join 2 of my flatmates, Kate & Chelsea, along with 3 of my fellow Sunshine employees, Jono, Marlie and Brianna, on a trip to Fernie and Castle Mountain; Jono was doubtless excited about the prospect of being the only male escort to 5 lovely ladies.

We were picked up at 5am on Monday - there went my much looked forward to lie-in - and began our drive to Fernie, around 4 hours away. We arrived super excited to discover that they'd had a good few centimetres of snow overnight, with yet more
falling. The cool thing about Fernie is that it feels so open and varied. At Sunshine you pretty much go up, do a run back to the village, go back up, do a run back down to the village ad infinitum, whereas with Fernie you feel like you can go anywhere - up this lift, down that run, up the T-bar, traverse across, back up - and don't need to go all the way down to the base until you're good and ready. We found a fabulous run across a powder-filled bowl, down a tree run to a natural half-pipe etc., which we did over and over, and it was snowing so hard that by the time we got back up our tracks were covered, so we got fresh tracks on every run! So nice. We stayed at Fernie for day 2, because even more snow had fallen and we didn't want to miss such a good powder day.

Now, skiing in powder is very different from skiing on packed snow or groomed runs, requiring a totally different technique, and it's not something I've had much experience of, and thus I found I skied like a total gimp. I fell over all the time, lost one of my skis under 2 foot of powder at one point, and generally struggled to keep up with the others I was with - all of whom are snowboarders incidentally - but had a ball nonetheless. As Megan pointed out to me when we caught up on the phone: it's all about getting from point A to point B and having fun. Whether you do it with much in the way of style and grace is largely irrelevant. The really good thing about powder is that if - or in my case when - you fall it in, it's virtually impossible to hurt yourself!

Day 3 we went to Castle Mountain, which Gravy and Laura et al. had visited a few weeks ago on a massive powder day (something like a foot and a half of fresh snow overnight) and had had (and I quote directly) "the best day's snowboarding EVER". My expectations were therefore high, so I was slightly disappointed to find that it was a little too sparse on the snow side and a little too generous on the ice, particularly high up the mountain. We began our day doing the Chutes - oh yes, excellent choice guys: start the day with a double black diamond wind-swept sheer drop covered in ice, when we'd all been skiing/riding for 2 days and were aching and bruised. Nice. After only an hour we stopped for a drink and Marlie, Kate & I decided to go and do some nice easy runs off the Huckleberry chair. At one point we went to get on the lift and as we shuffled forward we collided with each other and I dropped my pole. As I bent to retrieve it I ended up getting my ski caught in Kate's snowboard binding and we all toppled over. They stopped the lift to avoid hitting us with it. If this wasn't embarrassing enough, the next time up the woman asked if we wanted her to slow the lift down for us? Giggling, Marlie replied "I know it looks like we've never done this before, but it's my 7th season and she's an instructor!"

On our penultimate run I found the most amazing route through the trees, with lots of fresh powder to be had. I grabbed the girls for our last run and urged them to follow me to find the good stuff. Somehow - and I still have no idea exactly how -
I managed to stack it on a tight turn around a tree and fell over, ending up face first in the snow, with my legs and skis tangled upwards behind me in the tree. I saw Marlie approaching nearby and tried to call out to get her attention, but was laughing so hysterically I could barely speak. By some miracle she spotted me and came over. I asked for a little help and in reply she gave a one-word demand: "Camera!" We carried on laughing all the way back down to meet the others.

The 3 day's hard physical exertion and a 4 hour drive back found us exhausted and I was desperate to collapse on my bed, have a shower and an early night. It was not to be: on entering my bedroom I found that the Beaver Boys had had a little a fun at our expense whilst slighty inebriated the previous evening. My bed had been turned upside down, as had my bedside cabinet (scattering its contents liberally across the floor) and my chair. Thank goodness my wardrobe and computer desk had been spared; the sofa, microwave, toaster and television (now unwilling, or unable, to show us any red, rendering all persons bright blue) had not been so lucky. Kate's room had been similarly violated. Suffice to say, the 'hilarious' reaction they had been expecting was not forthcoming but, being the nice person I am, I've forgiven them now.

All photos from the trip available here.