Thanksgiving Trip Day 2: Whistler

In the morning, I met the other 2 members of the group, danny and vincent, while having toast with peanut butter and coffee in the other room. At slightly after 8am, we took a 5 minute walk from our hotel to the whistler slopes.

Walking to and reaching Whistler Mountain


By the time we sign up for ski lessons and get our gear all rented, it's already slightly past 9.45 am. Jeremiah was already an expert and didn't take any ski lessons and could already go to the black diamond slopes. The rest were all beginners and were taking the level 1 ski lesson, except Elvin who took level 1 snowboarding. I wanted to join the gang for lessons, but I already skiied before and the gal at the counter told me level 1 would only be wasting my time. But since my previous experience was entirely on my own, i had no clue of the terms she was using on me. I kind of survived on roller blade style, by instinctively shifting my weight around.

Girl: Do you know how to do wedge turn?

Me: Huh?? What's a wedge turn like? I never took lessons, so I dont know all these terms. ah... I can turn left and right and make it down safely..

Girl: okay, so I guess you can do some turn. Can you do a parallel turn??

Me: Eh... Actually I dunno all the terms for all these turns. .eh.. My turn goes something like dat.. I duno what its called. And somehow I make it down the hill.

I Start wiggling my hands to show her how my turn goes, looks like twin fishes swimming.

Girl: Okay..but you had no problem skiing down the slopes b4 right.. if i put you in level 2, you can only do the green slopes, but if I put you in level 3, you can do the blues as well. I think you can just try for blue.

Me: OK..

So after getting my ski equipment, I line up under group 3 until the instructor approaches me and we introduce each other.

Instructor grp 3: Hi Li, So I guess you skiied before. So do you know how to do the wedge turn?

Me: (thinks: Here we go again) Eh.. I don't know what turn I can do. I just went skiing and did some roller blade style.

Instructor grp 3: Eh..Okay then, so when's the last time u skiied? Last year?

Me: (thinks: wah.. far longer than that. what am I doing here!?!) eh... I skiied once. (pause) about 7 years ago.

Instructor: ahhh.. Okay, let's put you into grp 2 first.

I follow him and he introduced me to frank, group 2 instructor and explains my level of "ability"

Okay, we will put you into grp 2 and see how you do.

Proceeds to say: some people in grp 2 were in grp 1 yesterday, we will go to the slope and see how we do. If people cannot keep up, we will put them back into grp 1 cos we dont want to hold back the group. If we do, we most likely will transfer a quick learner from grp 1 to grp 2.

Me: *gulp*

The rest are in group 1 and I'm the only one from our group in level 2, so I have no one to take photo for me. I only took some photos when I was on the ski lift and while at lunch, cos its quite weird to be the only one taking photos while the rest are listening to and keeping up with the teacher. Ended up having to self-take my photo on the ski life. Grabbed a few photos of how the others spent their time on Whistler from Xin 'en though. =)

There are 6 of us in the group. When we go down the first slope after he demos what should be done, I know I am sooo not doing what he taught. Anyway, he hardly taught, it's more like, everyone show me your wedge turn. I assume you can do it cos you are level 2. But okay, he more of less describes it. So off I go.. Frank: Li, you are not doing the wedge turn. me: Die.. I am going to be demoted. Feel not quite in control on the slopes, wonder if I did think too highly of myself. Once down the slope, I felt very demoralised, I told him straight away instead of waitin for him to bring it up.

Me: Ehh.. If you think I am too slow, just put me into group 1, because I think I missed a lot of basics, but I want to join my friends.

Frank: Yeah. okay... You are not getting it right yet.

=( =( =(

So we go down the practise slope again. Luckily, this time, it's a lot better, and so yeah.. in the end, another gal went back to grp 1, and I passed. Yippee.. we go to the olympic slope instead for some more practise. While getting down, another girl, Karen started struggling with the slopes. When we were down with the slope, we recessed for a quick lunch, took the gondola up to the 2-thirds point of the moutain and it was really beautiful up there!

During lunch, I asked Frank if we could ski back down. Frank said he would like to, but Karen is not ready and wouldn't let her. THen Karen, said she definitely did not want to but she didn't mind taking the gondola down and waiting for us halfwa. Frank said we could do that as long as Karen was ok, which she was. The rest of us were game, so that's what we did!

It was pretty fun. It felt good to start so much higher up on the slope, although it did take us quite long getting down, because we skiied section by section and always stopped to wait for one another and to listen to some pointers from Frank. I fell a few times too! As we went down, Pearl was falling a bit, and halfway down, she was already saying she was tired.

I was thinking, "This means I am quite fit, I'm not even tired yet."

And then... I feel like 2 times in a short time, and suddenly I felt the weary in my legs set in too! Man!! Falling totally zaps the energy out of you. It's like when you play those warrior games or something, where your health level depletes slowly as u fight, but once you get injured by the opponent, your blood level drops by a whole chunk. it's kind of like that. You're not tired from the fall. It's just so tiring trying to stand up, or pop your skis out, or press the lock down, or to click your skis back in place while trying hard not to let your skiis slide down the slope. Man!! I started falling a lot more, when I was trying to get his technique, instead of doing my own nonsense. Trying to shift my weight, so that my skis cut into the snow and tryign to keep my skiis parallel after a turn.

Once I fell front first and my skiis criss-crossed and I slid face down down the slope. I think I slide for a loong time, maybe 10 minutes. Of course my poles flew away. As I was sliding, I was thinking

"Cham!! My camera is being squashed and dragged under me"

As I lay there motionless in the snow, unable to move, I actually thought for that short instant, that I broke my leg or injured it real bad. A nice lady and her son saw my spectacular fall and came over to ask if I needed help.

The very loserish me said:" I'm stuck.. The skiis are criss crossed and I can't move either way."

I couldn't turn right or left or get one ski out from under the other. ArghhH!! and those who ski before know how awkward it is to have two long heavy things stuck to your feet. In the end, she helped me pop them out and helped into I got my boots back into my skis. Nice lady!

In the end, when we got to half way to meet karen, frank went to give her individual attention since we left her for so long, and we were told to practise separate things. I was told to concentrate on getting my skis parallal after the turn. More or less on our own. I think I did olympic trial 3 times before the ski lift was closed just as I got to it for my 4th run. Elvin didnt make it either. He seemed to have picked up snow boarding really quickly. with no ski lift, we had to settle with going on the practise slope one last time.

Finally, I reunited with the rest except Miah, who was probably still conquering the black trials. We spent some time taking photos. There was snow all around and everyone was wearing these big heavy coats that I was just so tempted to throw somebody. Weijie was next to me, and I reached out for him. He, still clueless of my judoka status tried to throw me instead. Wahhh.. So I threw him. I didn't expect it to be a big throw, but because he was caught by surprise, he fell hard and hit his head to the floor. Luckily he was wearing the ski helment, but he made a Konk sound. An American lady nearby started cheering for me. Wahaha.. Weijie, Fun right?? =) But he got back at me, with some funny WWF throw. Basically you just ran into me and just threw me with all your weight lah.. Weijie conned me into jumping into a pile of snow for a video and it turned out the snow was actually quite hard and not all that shock absorbing.. =( and turned out weijie wasn't intending to take my video at all..=((( I also got pushed into the snow, but this time it was quite comfortable and I spent a few seconds lying there, since I was all covered in snow already anyway..

I like the photo with pawsie. think the whole composition is just very nice.

happy people in a beautiful place too

The group at Whistler Mountains!

Another jumping shot! It's super difficult to jump with heavy ski boots on. I think I barely managed to lift off the snow.

Resting/surrendering in the snow.

After playing in the snow for a bit, it was finally time to take the gondola down to the foot of the mountain. Most of us took the gondola, but some heros, eg Weijie and Vincent decided to ski down. Note; There is a reason there's a gondola. 1/3 mark is not open to skiing and as told by them later there were a lot of ditches and trees along the way. Weijie ended up sitting on his skis to come down. Hehe...Anyhow whack.. But okay lah.. I applaud your sense of adventure guys.

After skiing, we drove back to Vancouver to look for dinner. Ended up at this chinese retaurant where we had ordered about 6 dishes to be shared among 10 of us. The hotpot tou fu made me miss singapore the most!

good ol chinese food for some very hungry skiiers and snowboarder

somehow elvin squeezed into the photo=)


After dinner, we decided to go check in at our hotel for the night, which is another story all together. We onli declared 4 people, so we couldn't have 10 people appearing in the lobby. However, there was no exit in the carpark like the previous hotel, so we spent a long time discussing the plan in the carpark. In the end, we made 4 people carry in the luggage, while we waited outside. We were still fooling around, saying stupid things and posed for some photo. Then in the end, weijie came out looking quite upset, and told us that there was a big TV in the lobby and the guy could see all of us standing in the carpark all along! Waahh.. Suddenly we dont know what to expect from this guy, but what can we do at this point in time?? So the remaining 6 of us just followed Weijie through the lobby to the lift. Along the day, you could see the indian guy at the counter watching us. He didn't say anyting, but he had a MEGA HUGE SMIRK on his face. As we got onto our level and walked down the looong corridor, suddenly someone, i think gabriel said, eh! He followed us up!. Wah.. it's like a suspense show, I turned around and sure enough he was there lurking at the lift lobby watching us! Arghhh!!! Panick! Everyone scurried into the first room and bolted the door. Then we burst into a frenzy of discussion. First we spent about 10 minutes talking about whether he knew what we were up to. Then we spent another good bit of time discussing what he was going to do to us. Then we spent another block of minutes wondering why he didn't say anything to us. Then we discussed whether he was being nice to not say anything, or being bian tai for just smirking at us. Then we asked ourselves why we were spending so much time analysing the situation. Then we start thinking of what he will do to us in the morning And it continues on and on..

Finally, we bo chap and went out walking along granville street to check out the night scene. Poor weijie was pretty affected by the whole thing and decided to stay in the hotel on pretext that he was ironing his jeans. We didn't enter any pubs, just did some looking around. We did go into 2 convenience stores but that was all. Went back after strolling down the streets.

eh.. we posed for this silly photo outside in the carpark as we were hiding from the receptionist when there was a surveillance camera watching us all alon.. CMI!