I got back from Whistler, British Columbia last night. I spent a few days snowboarding at Whistler resort http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com. I had a great weekend - it was the first time that I was truly snowboarding on a mountain, as opposed to the hills around Wisconsin & Michigan.
The trip didn't start off too well - Continental was telling me that I would have to wait a day because my flight was delayed, I would miss my connection, & there wasn't an alternative route to Vancouver. After lots of frustration, one of the Continental employees at the ticket counter found Northwest flights from Milwaukee -> Minneapolis -> San Francisco -> Vancouver. Needless to say, I arrived in Vancouver a few hours later than I had planned. After that fiasco, the bus ride to Whistler was enjoyable (the views along the highway are gorgeous).
I spent a total of three days snowboarding - the first & the last day were the best, as it was raining on the 2nd day. Once you were above 3,000 ft, the rain turned into wet snow. My snowboard wasn't moving quickly in the wet snow, which acted as a catalyst to several spills. After a few cartwheels, I was generally back on my feet. The difference was that I was more wet, and picked up some bruises along the way.
On the third day, I decided to hike to top of one of the bowls - the hike took about 30 minutes, but was totally worth it. The view from the top was incredible, and there weren't many people around since it wasn't serviced by a chairlift. Most importantly, I found a path down the mountain where I was able to make the first tracks. Snowboarding in a couple feet of powder is incredible - the feeling can be described as floating on air. When I went skydiving, I felt like I was moving in one direction - down. On the snow, it was a feeling of gliding over a surface without any imperfections.
From the top of the bowl:
What I just rode down:
En route, I also read a few books: Einstein's Dreams & The Tipping Point. I would recommend both of them to any interested parties. Einstein's Dreams is a serious of vignettes that have to do with the passage of time. The short stories are unrelated to one another, but I could relate to almost all of the stories through my own experiences. I've never thought about time being so three dimensional, and this book made me think about all of the different facets of time. Tipping Point argues that small, relatively minor changes lead to large effects, often in the context of epidemics (medical, as well as social & economic). It was an interesting take on explaining some phenomena (such as teen smoking, reduction of crime in NYC during the mid-nineties, etc).
