Aussie Day
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2011
1
80
113
Trip End
Jun 11, 2012
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Friday, January 27, 2012
Well its been a busy couple of days here in Banff. On Wednesday, Steffie, Dave, Christian and I went up to Sunshine for a bit of snowboarding action. It had been snowing pretty heavily and 28cm's of fresh powder presented itself for the taking. Steffie hadn't been in a few weeks so she was a bit nervous, but soon found her footing. We mainly did Strawberry runs, but after lunch we decided to do the ski out which Steffie hadn't done before. Instead of catching the gondola down to the carpark, you can literally snowboard all the way down the access road which brings you right at the entrance of the carpark! The only catch is that you have to take a short chairlift after you leave the village in order to start it. We managed it pretty well and it was a good thing too because the gondola was shut down due to high winds.
We didn't go up on Thursday because it was Australia Day. It started snowing a little bit in the afternoon and you could barely see Tunnel Mountain through the window. We walked down to the Legion and met Adam at 4pm. Our taste of Australiana was everyone walking around in thongs, draped in Australian flag capes and green and gold facepaint. The girl sitting next to me offered to do my face as well as we sat down for a Coopers Pale Ale and a meat pie following by a lamington and a Toohey's Extra Dry. Steffie was fond of the pale ale which tasted 'like a real beer' unlike the Canadian variety. Very Australian indeed...
We went to Wild Bills early to share some appetisers which were more Canadian including deep fried pickles, tumbleweed onions and nachos with pulled pork. We were there for the Snowed in Comedy tour which was basically 4 comedians going around all the ski hills and doing shows. The only comedian I knew was Arj Barker and he wasn't that great. I had heard some of the jokes before and its never nice to hear them recycled if they are a bit old. There were a couple of Candian ones as well and they were pretty good.
Today while everyone else went to Lake Louise too see the ice sculptures, I went up to Sunshine by myself to practice snowboarding. It was my 12th time up and I was practicing my goofy snakies i.e. going down right foot forward in a 'S' shape. I even tried a couple of small jumps not too successfully. It was so windy that it wasn't worth going on any of the bigger runs because my nose and ears were cold despite the fact I was wearing a ski mask. I managed to do the ski out in record time despite the heavy traffic.
Back to work...
