A long weekend beginning
Yeah it’s Friday!
I must say, ‘Good Friday’ is an aptly well-named holiday 🙂 Any three day weekend is a welcome reprieve from the grind, especially when one gets paid for it.
It’s kinda interesting working for a whole whack of Dental Hygienists around Easter time. I wasn’t sure if I’d be getting mini-lectures on not eating too many sweets and about proper dental etiquette, over this weekend of typical sugar gluttony. However, I was the one making jokes upon leaving the office. A bit of a dry crowd, I must admit.
It’s always amazing to wake up naturally, in the arms of my beloved. No alarm clocks or places to be. Only a luxurious day of planned nothingness. Bliss absolute. In trying to decide what to do over the next 3 days, slaDE expressed an interest in skiing. I must admit, I am a supreme chicken when it comes to the potential of shoulder dislocation. This is the main reason behind why I haven’t jumped over the past few years. With the mention of hurling oneself down the side of a mountain on skis came the uneasy queasiness that I feel when thinking about re-injuring myself. Not a fun thought, to be honest (go figure!). So in deciding to head to the mountain for the next few days, I opted for the idea of cross-country skiing whilst slaDE was going to fine-tune his snowboarding skills (his 2nd time). With a plan to go to Lake Louise, we called up my step-sister Lindsey, in Banff, and asked her for some advice on making the most of our two available mountain days. She was more than gracious in her offer for us to stay at her place whilst she was housesitting for her Karate instructor. Wicked! Gotta love a place to call home, even if for a short while, in the midst of breathtaking beauty and grandeur.
We savoured our sumptuously lazy day before heading to the mountains …
Once arriving in Banff, it was our intention: to pick up a key from Lindsey at one of her favourite haunting grounds; the reality: started drinking like a fish, exchanging stories with her wild co-workers Freddie (from Quebec, with heavy accent to boot) and Mark (from Switzerland). We had a rIOT! It was most amazing to hear Mark’s famous story of falling off one of the local mountains a year ago (tripping on 100 metres of climbing rope) where he was rescued by helicopter, with a crushed leg, 36 hours later. The human spirit in times of great duress and adversity is quite phenomenal. After hearing Mrk’s remarkable story of risk and survival, I decided to take the risk with opting to alpine ski rather than cross-country ski …. the forecast for Saturday was divine, and I wanted to experience the mountains in all their spring-skiing glory.
After moving to another watering-hole, we immediately pounded back an uncanny mix of cocktails and shooters. Anyone that knows me realizes how totally out-of-character this is of me to drink, let alone drink with wild abandon! However, with an ever-persuasive Freddie at the ordering helm, I kinda just went with the flow. But thankfully, I knew my limit and stopped accordingly. Several hours later, after much laughter and rambunctious dancing, slaDE and I made a silent departure, wanting to get a fairly good night’s sleep in for our day of skiing at Sunshine.