SKIING!!!

On Saturday, Garrett, Trevor, Mel and I went to Jasper to ski for the day. It was a marathon day, that's for sure, although skiing in the mountains was really great and exactly what we needed to get away from the city.

I got up at 4am and stumbled into the shower. Pumpkin was pretty confused but decided to get up anyway, so I fed her breakfast. I, however, was not hungry at all so early in the morning, so I abstained from chowing down until later. Garrett picked me up at 4:40 and we headed over to Trevor's, where we loaded up his roof rack with my snowboard and Garrett's skis. Next, the three of us picked up Mel from her place and we were off (with a brief visit to the Tim Horton's drive-thru).

The drive to Jasper usually takes about 4 hours, however it took us a little longer because we hit really bad fog most of the way there. This necessitated slow, safe driving, since we couldn't see much farther ahead than 20 feet. I slept a little at the beginning of the drive, leaning on Garrett's shoulder while the rest of the crew chatted about this and that. We stopped in Edson to have breakfast at the Smitty's restaurant, which was actually served quite quickly, allowing us to continue on without much ado. By this point, the sun was starting to come up and we were all waking up slightly.

We got to Jasper around 10:15 and to the ski hill around 10:30. We skiied down from the parking lot to the chalet and bought our lift passes, whereupon I split up from the other three skiiers. I'm a relatively new snowboarder, whereas Trevor, Garrett and Mel are all quite experienced skiiers and were going to stick together to hit the advanced hills. I was totally fine with snowboarding on my own, because it allowed me to stick to hills I felt comfortable with. I worked on my skills without worrying about slowing others down. Garrett also bought some awesome two-way walkie talkies before we went to Jasper, which allowed us to keep in contact with each other.

I spent the whole day on the green runs, mostly on the runs with the T-bar. I really improved as the day went on, getting more comfortable with going faster and making my turns with confidence. I fell a few times over the course of the day, so my butt and knees are a little bruised, however none of my falls really hurt that much except for one where I hurt my wrist a little. I also became a master of the T-bar, which is tricky with a snowboard, because you have to stand sideways while it pulls you. It took me a number of tries to get all the way up on the T-bar. When I finally did, I was very proud of myself, although I had to celebrate by myself, which was perhaps a bit weird for other people who saw me...

I snowboarded a bit with Garrett in the afternoon, which was fun because I could show him my new skills. The ski hill closed at 4pm, so we all met up at the chalet and started out trip back to Edmonton after changing out of our ski gear. We had a pizza dinner in Jasper, filled up with gas and then started back to E-town. We met fog again on the way back, but not nearly as much, so again we were a little slower than usual getting home. However, I think we all had a really fun ride on the way home, because we rocked out the tunes. Garrett and I were in the back seat and we played music from the Ipod, challenging Mel and Trevor to guess the artist and the song name in order to win points. We actually played this for about 2 hours before we broke down to just playing music, usually singing along. We made it back to Edmonton around 10. Once I was home, I had the best shower ever, took an Ibuprofen to dull my aches and hit the hay. My bed was so so comfy.