blog.mattgoyer.com

We went to Alpental this weekend for opening weekend and it rocked; blue skies, fresh dry snow (and lots of it) and good friends. And no regrets about the new skis. I feel like I’m skiing five times better with them.

Though I wish I had brought my real camera:

After skiing Rob took us to ‘Pour House’ in North Bend. Highly recommend it for cold beer, deep friend goodness and low key.

Of course we partied all night Saturday first at a breakup party for Ben and Bria and then at Havana. I think the highlight of the night was buying beers from some random at the street meat stand for the walk home (not that I needed another drink!). I then proceeded to sleep in until 3pm (I don’t think I slept in at all during the month of November).

Comments(1)

We (a motley crew of friends from Microsoft, Amazon and Redfin) went to Whistler for American Thanksgiving. Drove up Wednesday and skied, apres-skied, hot tubbed, ate and drank pretty much for four days straight. I am now in desperate need of a day off from both working and vacationing.

While there I bought a new pair of skis, a pair of Head Monster IM 88’s (with bindings since tried as they could, they couldn’t get my red and chrome Nordica bindings to mount). I had been planning on buying new skis around Christmas time but with so much snow coming to the north west so soon I couldn’t wait any longer and had to make an impulse buy. There was simply no way I would bother hiking up to closed lifts with my skinny pair of Dynastar’s. But with a pair of fatter skis, hike we did :), and we scored some great powder runs. My new DaKine Heli Pack came in very handy on the hikes but it needs a heated drinking tube since for two days it was -15′C in the alpine, brrrr!

The drive home was epic since there was snow all the way from Whistler to Seattle which is pretty unheard of. Facing a four hour delay at the border, our driver and my co-worker, Rob made the executive decision we would stop at Vijs in Vancouver for a gourmet Indian dinner before braving the conditions in his rear wheel drive 5-series BMW (which is odd since Rob owns no less than three Land Cruisers! (down from a high of five!) Apparently his tabs were expired which is why he couldn’t bring one up). Anyhow, I highly recommend Vijs for Indian fusion and always take your most capable vehicle to the mountain.

For what it’s worth, I’m also burned out on the Whistler club scene. They really need to get some more upscale places where you don’t have to deal with artificial lines because the coat check person can’t keep up with the mandatory coat check rule, where they turn on the heat to make up for the fact that the line causes their door to be open a lot, where they know that Maker’s Mark isn’t a vodka and where the place isn’t full with nineteen year olds.

We were also disappointed the outdoor hot tub at our hotel wasn’t available. While it was functional they lacked the necessary government permits to open it up after doing some renovations. It’s inexcusable they didn’t have this resolved before opening weekend!

I’ll link to photos as others post them…

Update: Ming’s Whistler Photos.

Comments(3)

A random assortment of people, myself included, spent the weekend in Whistler. We took off after work on Thursday and partied hard straight through to Sunday. We had three days of decent skiing and two nights of lots of fun. I’d post more but it’s all a bit foggy.

Photo courtsey of No Friday.com (check out albums for 4-1 to 4-2) (No Friday is Joe’s website. Joe just spent three months living in Whistler. We’re all very jealous and trying to figure out how we too can take a three month leave of absence.)

What I do remember from this trip is that I need to go to Whistler more often (should I go to Telus..?). Two weekends this season was not enough so this April I’m going to buy an Edge pass and load it up with 12 days to ensure I don’t make the same mistake next year.

Comments(0)