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Published: January 20th 2020
Welllll what a day. We originally set the alarm for 6am, snoozed til 7am, snoozed til 8am, realised the sun wouldn’t come up til 8:50am, so then officially woke up at 9am.
We got the shuttle down to the village (also I asked how we get the shuttle back and they’re actually drop off only, so every time we go to the village we’ll have to do the gruelling, icy walk home) and headed straight to the rental store. We got fitted, paid (which by the way, holy MOLY skiing ain’t cheap), and did the gruelling, icy walk home, but this time carrying skis, poles, boots, helmets and pants. Once again, in freezing, -16 degree weather, it got way too hot.
We had to organise a few things before we left, like our lift passes and proper gloves etc, and eventually headed down to the free shuttle up to the mountains at 11:35. Turns out, the last shuttle to any of the three mountains we have access to left at 11:30.
11:30!!!!!!!
So our two options were to stay at the hotel and waste a ski day, or pay a $60 taxi up to the closest mountain. There was absolutely no way I wasn’t skiing today, so we caught the taxi. At first I was pretty bummed out, it felt like the worst start to the day, but our taxi driver was absolutely hilarious and honestly made the whole day better. The conversation went as follows.
Driver, after loading our skis into the boot: okay so I only have one working seatbelt beside the drivers seat so one of you will have to get in with the skis. Who is the smallest?
Me: oh, uh, okay, I guess I would be the smallest. But, in there?
Driver: yes
Me: in the boot?
Driver: yes
Me: really?
Driver: of course not, what the hell?
We all had a bit of a laugh, and then I fell for it again a little later.
Driver: so why have you guys decided to go to Mt Norquay instead of Mt Sunshine?
Adam: well we just want to get on the slopes as soon as possible and Norquay is the closest, but we’ll head to Sunshine tomorrow
Driver: oh...well Mt Norquay usually the closest but not at the moment. There was an avalanche and a huge tree is blocking the path, normally it’s fixed easily but the electrical wires on each side are creating issues. So there’s a lineup of about 700 cars.
Me: oh, is it too late to go to Sunshine?
Driver: yeah I don’t go there. You should have gotten a different taxi
Me: oh gosh oh no
Adam: Lucy, he’s joking.
It’s safe to say I wasn’t doing very well with the jokes today. He also asked us if we were on our honeymoon, to which we replied no, and then he asked what we did with the little ones at home, to which we replied we didn’t have any, and then he told us that marijuana was now legal but we’d need an adult to buy it for us. Because he thought we were 16 and 17. And married with kids. But he was funny and kind, so we gave him a good tip.
It was a bit of a rough start to the ski day though. Adam didn’t get the hang of it as quickly as either of us had expected, and refused to pay for lessons, so the first two hours consisted of a lot of swearing and giving up. But by the end of the day he was heaps better and we had so much fun! We fell into a pattern of starting off the mountain together, and stopping each time Adam had a fall. He told me to go ahead, but it would be a bit of a pain if I went ahead and then he broke his ankle or something, so I stayed around.
However, on our last run Adam was doing pretty well, so I sped ahead quite a bit and waited on the side for him to appear. But he took a while, and I started to get worried. As I stood there, stomping my skis to warm up my toes, getting increasingly more worried, I suddenly saw a little figure hurling towards me. It was Adam, sitting on the back of his skis, flying down the mountain full speed ahead. My jaw dropped, and as I debated whether or not to ski in front of him to stop and help him he grinned at me and yelled “see ya loser!”
It took me 5 minutes to stop laughing and make my way down the mountain, and when I got down there Adam was laying on his back in the snow, clearly exhausted from his huge run.
We did end up making the shuttle back to the hotel, and we went to the local convenience store for dinner (oh yeah, we ended up having the pizza for breakfast. We’re really not good at food management). I got a turkey salad sandwich and Adam got a vegetarian quiche, and we also got Budweiser’s and reese’s peanut butter cups.
We suddenly realised back at the hotel that we would need to heat up Adam’s quiche, so we texted the hotel. Yeah, for some reason the hotel is giving us VIP treatment because we’re staying for an extended period (7 nights) and so far they’ve delivered bear claw cookies and a letter asking us to text whenever we needed anything. So we texted and asked if there was a microwave anywhere in the hotel, and they said they’d bring one to us. 10 minutes later a knock at the door handed over an entire microwave. That can’t just be crazy to me right? They just handed over a MICROWAVE. Isn’t that strange?!
Anyway, the next few days are going to be quite similar so I’m just going to group them all together at the end of the week. See ya Wednesday!
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Fay Florence
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Brilliant Banff
Oh Lucy, your hotel is a fairytale. I’ve just been drooling. Loved your description of your first day on the slopes. Adam was lucky not to have fallen off during his swift descent. Just showed Grandpa the conversation at the Biscuit B place. He thinks you write really well. Why would that be a surprise??? Love N