Canada Week Three: Lake Louise, Lottery and Lindsey Vonn

We went to watch the Winterstart World Cup this weekend, and we ended up chilling with loads of the professional skiers! It is so mental that you can sit down to have your lunch and there is Bode Miller putting his boots on 20 mins before he is going to scream down the course at 140km/hr! My lucky moments came in meeting Benny Raich at the top of the lift (Yannick was shaking when we spoke to him as he is his boyhood idol!) and grilling Andy Weibrecht on the chairlift from his favourite run (incidentally its Beaver Creek) to what the atmosphere is like at the start gate. I asked him what his best position was.. and he casually let off that it was third, he only forgot to mention that it was in Vancouver 2010 for the Bronze medal! It was a great weekend, and the atmosphere at the finish area was crazy. There was loads of media and sponsors giving free stuff away so I now have a life supply of chapstick, cuddly hippos and cow bells! Plus there was free marshmallows ... ooo yessss!  

This week we had Mike as our instructor. Haha the instructors are fantastic ... quote Jonny 'skiing slowly is like faking an orgasm!!' The snow hasn't been too great but the lessons have been just as amusing. We have been starting to teach each other which is kind of great until you get Tony, a retired chemistry teacher, who kind of sucks the life out of you, the rest of the group and the bears hibernating in the trees. If hes not careful hes going to kill of an entire sub species as there are apparently only 50-80 bears in Alberta! I have developed an SAS (or SBS for Crendon) mindset for getting the buses... its too dangerous to hang around in one place for too long, so I have been running for the buses, tripping over my boots, slipping on ice and charging reindeer on my way, but touch wood I haven't missed any ... yet?!

On Wednesday we had our orientation at Norquay. It was great to meet some of the people I'm going to be working with, but God Almighty it was a tedious day. In the morning we had two talks from Banff Life and Crazy Woman (I have forgotten the name of her group as I was so preoccupied by her erratic wavings and cringe worthy jokes). But in the afternoon we had a bit more of a productive talk from Gord about work etc .. it seems like there are an awful lot of fireable offences! But hopefully I will be alright as most are for being a totally raddd ski dude with salopettes around ankles, spliff behind your ear and enough swear words to put Gordan Ramsey to shame.

Thursday night = BINGO night woohoo! It took me back to primary school days with Mrs Curnow except in primary school you don't win $10! Partially because we use sterling currency and partly because kids shouldn't gamble, but regardless for the first time in my life I actually won money :) ..WINNNER!!! For the millisecond when I realised that I'd won I must have been the happiest person on the planet, excluding Lindsey Vonn's husband (for obvious reasons), Richie Macaw (just been named IRB player of the year plus he is going out with a Strictly Come Dancing pro mmm) and Dobby the house elf (always happy plus he has a massive facebook group). 

On Friday we decided to blow some steam after a tough week skiing, gyming and having a bit of a laugh at every available situation. We started with Ring of Fire, then went onto Tequila 'S**t in your eye!', basically they are just like tequila slammers but you sniff the salt, and squeeze the lime into your eye instead of licking it, bloody Glaswegians leading me astray. We ended the night in Dancing Sasquatch where Tim almost ended up in a fight due to a stolen cap, but a timely intervention from yours truly managed to defuse the situation :)

Today and yesterday we have been watching the women's world cup, and I seem to have accidentally formed a little crush on Lindsey Vonn. On Friday lunch I was munching away on my sandwich as she performed her pre race rituals less than a meter from me; I wanted a photo so badly but I didn't want to disturb her as she was massively in the zone! Its the Super G tomorrow so maybe I'll get my photo. The British girls have done us proud, on Thursdays training run one broke her leg and the other came last .. by two seconds, ahh dear!

On the job front it seems I'm going to get much more instructing work than I first thought, although some of the time it will be helping snow patrol, or in the shop or anything else. I had a very brief interview at Monods but nothing came of it as I couldn't commit enough time, but just today I received an email from Ultimate Ski so maybe this will produce some better results, fingers crossed. Also my face mask post finally came today, just as its warmed up now, ahh well its certainly going to get cold again. I can't believe that you have had so much snow, its been too cold here for us to get any flurries :( Ohhh and also my boot has finally been fixed so I can get some better performace now hopefully.

Missing you guys, Peace out