The White Stuff...

Yes, all that white stuff.  There was lots of it by our standards but a very - very - mild year by everyone else's.  Not sure if we prefer that, we enjoyed watching the extreme cold kick in on the webcams last year, but I guess that's the key to it, we watched, from a dank & drizzly England - let's be fair, it was a dank & drizzly season in our neck of the woods last year... a winter that was pretty non-descript and dragged on for what seemed like an age...

So we only had a few days of lots of snow on the ground down here in the 'valley', ultimately I was thankful for that for practical reasons like I can't bloody drive in the snow, on the wrong side (and yes, it is still the wrong side to me...) never mind that we had to re-sit our driving tests again, the pressure on clear roads never mind if we had ice & snow to contend with, they may as well have torn up my paperwork there & then... yes, mild Kelowna winter worked for us this year, thank you very much.

Up on the mountain it was a different kettle of ballgames altogether.  Lots of the white stuff, plenty of good skiing at such a fab resort, and only an hour away on a slow day... needless to say my ideas of becoming pro-skier this season were rapidly quashed with a couple of very silly incidents that made me lose all confidence on those two planks strapped to my feet.  What is that all about anyway, I ask you...

I did migrate to one board - for about 15 minutes - until I took the instructor's advice in part and disregarded the rest, in hindsight I recall him saying when you want to stop "...point yourself up the mountain and then use your free foot (you learn with one foot out of the bindings) to stabilise yourself".  I got mentally stuck on the last bit & tried to 'stabilise' myself whilst hurtling downhill at speeds of up to, well, it had to be approaching 0.003mph, and my left leg (the loose one) rather attractively splayed up the hill whilst my right one continued going where gravity (and a large snow-board shaped bit of wood) took it. Down. I swear I heard the tear in my groin, I certainly won't forget that rush of hot pain in a hurry.  Mamma-Mia... Still, my teacher was very sympathetic... he laughed.  A lot. In fact I'm not sure he'd laughed quite that much since he landed in sunny snowy Kelowna from Cambridge UK a few months back.  He gave me the accolade of 'position of the season' and my money back... he was very sweet but I think there was a sinister edge to him, probably the comment "I killed one" that he bellowed for all to hear to a fellow instructor as I hobbled around the nursery slopes looking for sympathy...

So, whilst we took every opportuntity to play in the snow, tobogganing, sledding... with Andy & Tom making slow & steady - in fact quite exceptional - progress on their chosen white stuff mode of transport, I chose to find other ways of entertaining myself, snow angels, snow men...mulled wine.

Amelie & Tom, with a day of private lessons with the "Ninja" were rockin' on the snowboards... I must spend all my time & energy blubbing into my balaclava, so proud, so, so proud of my babies.... Tom, well, Tom, what a superstar. He'd already mastered the skis after just a few hours a couple months back & now decided that he'd like to try the board, how fab did he look?  I think I'd probably kill for those stomach muscles and that core stability, and I mean really kill somebody... he may as well have been held up on all four corners and escorted down the mountain with the grace & decorum he demonstrated, skimming the snow (technical term, sounds good eh?)...this boy did good, as ever.

Not to take away from his sister for one moment, the seven year old mini me, except she was a hot shot, all her worries and anxieties funnelled into impressing her teacher & her brother, by the time I caught up with her (tactical absence) she was hurtling down anything that resembled a slope, with a "yeah, whatever Mum..." snow-dude face on. Pass me those tissues, please...

So, the man of the moment, Big A, ground away at his technique, he was labelled quite innocently by a seasoned skier as a "Two Plank W*nk" (I kid you not) to the absolute innocent bemusement of the kids who just know that in England that word is something they'd be locked in a cage for saying... apparently this is not a word in the Canadian vocabulary.... So, he steadily improved, looked hot in his pants and achieved more than I could have dreamt of in the season whose finale is this weekend coming.  He'll make it up the mountain once more, this time alone, to wade through the record 47cm in 7 days and, I'm told, another 15cm overnight last night, before the mountain closes to ski tourism, the lifts get packed away and the shutters go down until next season, although someone did tell me about some funky li'l fish-scales that you can fix to your skis and carry on skiing up the mountain until the green stuff pokes through... I'll pass.

So, we did the white stuff, conquered it all in our own way, Andy & I diversified and went cross country skiing (huge fun and great exercise) as well as spending our 17th anniversary snow-shoeing, we looked very silly and clearly went very late in the season, more like mud-shoeing... but a great, fun & happy time was had by all in this strange wintry land.  It's good to be alone on the top of a mountain, with nothing but a few munching chipmunks, cougars... awakening bears....

Now we have opened the pool, bought our seeds for planting exotic vegetables and are dusting off the suntan lotion in preparation for the next big phase...

That was the white stuff story... next stop, friends & high places :)

As ever, keep commenting, love to hear it....x