Wednesday night, Ming and I drove up to Whistler (5 hour drive) where we met up with kids from work (Katrina, Andrew,...). Thursday morning even though Whistler just opened for the season we hit Blackcomb which turned out to be a big mistake since Wednesday it poured and the mountain was literally a sheet of ice (with a ~75cm base). After lunch at Longhorn we switched to Whistler where the conditions were still pretty weak but much better than Blackcomb. The chair to ski was Big Red since the crowds were at Emerald chair.

Thursday night we had what appears to be a tradition in all ski groups, the $100 steak dinner, at Hy's. We then partied briefly at Savage Beagle; Whistler, like Seattle, like Waterloo, suffers from a bad ratio.

Friday we skied Whistler, had to wait two hours to download off the mountain (since you can't ski out), waited forever for space to open up in our hot tub, ate pizza, drank beer, played Karaoke Revolution for Xbox (which despite my strong aversion to karaoke was actually a lot of fun even though the computer cut me off every time. Apparently years of choir in junior high does not mean I can sing) and ended up at Tommy Africa's.

Saturday we got on the mountain early to beat the crowds from Vancouver and enjoyed being among the first few up the Harmony chair when it opened for the season. Of course the chair wasn't open more than thirty minutes than the chair line up ballooned to at least a twenty minute wait. When this happened Ming and bailed down to Longhorn for lunch and beers and then hit the road to Vancouver. Had we waited it would have taken us two hours to download off Whistler to the village (we had to wait that long Thursday and Friday..) and traffic would have sucked.

Once in Vancouver we hooked up with Ming's friend Andrea, ate some sushi and then hit the town; Section3, Lucy Mae's and Au. At Lucy Mae's we met up with some our Seattle crew, Francis and John, as well as some Waterloo folks like Brian and Peter. At Au we met up with Angie, Robin, Rayne and some other EA-ers (who confirmed that the tails of long hours are true). A big thanks to Andrew for letting us crash on her non-existent pull out couch. Next time we'll be staying at the Mariott with Francis :).

Sunday I engaged in some retail therapy along Robson though while I have more shirts, I don't believe it helped. For dinner we had some Japanese tapas and then watched Shrek at Andrea's while waiting for the border wait time to decrease from ninety minutes to five and then it was back to Seattle.
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