Murphy's Law is in effect

Well, the skiing in Whistler is good. It is the ONLY thing that has gone as planned on this vacation.

Thursday morning started off with the discovery that I needed a passport to check in for my flight. I realize you need a passport to leave the country- I was not trying to leave the country without a passport. It's just that my mom had my passport and she was flying from Omaha (a flight she was rushed for because my dad turned the alarm off when it rang and she went back to sleep rather than getting up), so I did not have my passport in Denver. Luckily, the intelligent ticket agent at the United Airlines ticket counter was helping me. It turns out that I had lots of company in the area of passport issues- I at least had one (as opposed to the man trying to fly to Sudan, who apparently did not require a passport to enter the US... or the man who had a passport that expired 10 years ago). After sitting at the ticket counter for an hour and a half, the man decided that he would just ticket me to Portland and that I could present my passport once I got to Portland in order to receive my flight to Vancouver, CD.

Then, once we were in Portland, I did manage to easily receive a ticket to Vancouver. I also exchanged US currency for Canadian currency and was not charged a service fee. So, Portland was good aside from wondering if my suitcase (which had been red-tagged since I was not ticketed for the entire trip) would make it to Vancouver.

When it came time to fly to Vancouver, we had to walk across the tarmac in order to get to the airplane, and it was raining (something that NEVER happens in Portland). Then I annoyed the flight attendant with my backpack that didn't quite fit into the overhead bin. Once they served beverages, I succeeded in dumping a can of Coke all over a magazine that I was reading along with the clothes that I was wearing.

We landed in Vancouver and got through border patrol without a problem. I immediately found my suitcase on the baggage claim carousel, and was absolutely delighted at the fact that it arrived, and then I realized that it was missing a wheel and was a little less delighted. My mom was not at all delighted when she discovered that her suitcase arrived in Portland after we had already arrived in Vancouver.

Then we took a coach bus up to Whistler. The experience was interesting to say the least. My mom heard the driver say something about "I couldn't sit in the back row, my driving would make me sick". I thought maybe he was just prone to motion sickness, but I quickly caught on to the fact that that was not the case at all. We would just whip around turns at excessive speed. The fact that the trip started off with the bus stalling twice in an "airport exit" lane did not exactly improve my perception of the bus and its driver.

Once in Whistler, my mom got upset with the front desk guy who didn't seem entirely confident that her suitcase would arrive by the morning. Once we got to the building that had our room, we couldn't get the automatic doors to open (we checked in in one building because it was "after hours" and then had to go to another building to get to our room). It turns out that a room key makes the door open, once you locate the slot to slide it in, in the darkness. Discovering that our 1 bedroom unit had been upgraded to a 2 bedroom unit was a welcomed end to our day.

Friday morning (today) my mom was all excited about getting her suitcase. However, when we went downstairs to ask about it, it turns out that even though she was told she would get her suitcase around 8AM, she probably wouldn't actually get it until around 10AM. We went and got our rentals and my mom and I both ended up with skis/snowboard that are about 10cm shorter than what we use at home. Then someone had to go hunt down bindings that would work with the men's boots I was using (my mom's suggestion to this was: Can't you just use men's bindings? Yes Mom, they could, but they wanted to use women's bindings... but in the end, I received men's bindings anyway). We went back to the hotel room and my mom got her suitcase. Only problem was that somewhere along the way, the 3 digit combination lock had gotten spun and my mom didn't know what the combination was. She and I managed to both get dressed to go skiing with what I had brought for winter clothes. Luckily she skis, because if I (a snowboarder) spent the day in jeans, I would have been miserable after I sat down to put my board on two or three times.

We finally got up to the top of the mountain around 11:15 and decided to wait for the "mountain orientation" tour that started at 11:30 since we had no clue where we wanted to go. At the end of 2 hours, I had a good idea of where on the mountain I didn't want to go.
*It is a very long, flat traverse from the Solar Coaster chairlift to the 7th Heaven chairlift. I do not recommend snowboarders take it for the first run of the day.
*T -bars on a snowboard are almost as bad as Poma lifts on a snowboard.
*The T-bars are not in an enjoyable location to exit by snowboard.

After a lunch break, we got back on the mountain and made a few more runs before 4pm when our legs insisted that we stop for the day.

We then had a rather eventful trip to the grocery store, but that is going to have to be a story for next week's blog because I need to go to sleep so that I have energy tomorrow.