Happy birthday to my dad today. :-)
Not sure I can accurately describe the weekend's fun and emotional content - it was certainly loads of fun. But emotions are mixed. Mixed, because we've made good friends with Momo and Jo and all the snow crew. Especially Mike. And this was the last ski weekend with Momo and Jo before they leave to go and live in the UK (Jo to return home and Momo to a new, exciting country and a new job in Glasgow). And happy, because the skiing and company was superb.
Celia and Vanessa were also punters on this trip - and Jason managed to get time off work to come too. So it was a great mix of people - all friends.
Let's see... How did it all unfold?
Friday saw Toby coming to my work and us meeting Mike at the carpark next to our work (on Boulcott St) - that was an inspired choice of carpark by Mike. We got onto the motorway, only to get an update from Celia, ahead of us in the traffic, that an incident at Seaview had snarled the traffic.
Yes, indeed it had. Mike weaved through motorway exits and found Celia at a park, on the Alicetown side of Hutt Rover. Celia walked to us over the rail bridge with all her gear to save us negotiating traffic chaos. She's wonderful!
And - we were off. Over Paekakariki Hill Road, super easy, and into the night. Sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song.
We ate at Maccas at Levin (I think I am so over Maccas brekkies now - I choose them whenever we go to Maccas) and continued driving. Up at the lodge at a decent hour. Maybe just around 10pm. Settled into the custodian room and after a few hellos, I tried to sort out Toby's skis with his boots. He has now got my old skis and his boots are significantly larger than my boots. While I got them in, Mike realised I did it wrong. So he googled the front binding adjustment, and ended up taking it off and moving it that way. Anyway, upshot being: Toby now has Mike's ski boots and my old skis. He is set.
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| Saturday off to a great start! Twins - Celia and Vanessa |
Caught up with Vanessa, Jo, Momo, Melissa, Janine and all the rest. Everyone was pretty tired after the long day though. Off to bed. I slept well and was up pretty early. Brekkie, and got ready with Celia and Vanessa. We tackled the ticket queues, and I left Celia and Vanessa to get their ski gear.
I got up early with my First tracks and enjoyed the Valley T without any crowds. Eventually I joined up with people. Skied mostly with Celia during the day. She had a lesson though at 2pm so I skied with others then. Toby came up in the afternoon and I skied with him all afternoon and had such a good time.
The snow was lovely - the bitter wind from the morning dropped away. They have 3.2m still and it is glorious conditions.
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| Happy skier finds clear skies higher up the mountain. |
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| Bye Jo... Sad face. |
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| Toby skiing with me on the West Chair |
Back to the lodge and dinner and party time. Stew and strudel for tea and then party games. We played some game a lot like Heads Up. Everyone put three names of famous people in the hat (real, fictional - didn't matter) and we split into two teams. We had a minute to pull as many out of the hat in a minute and try to guess what the name was from either a description without using the word, a charade and in the third round, one word.
Our team lost. But what a fun game! Thanks for organising that, Jo. It's hard to come up with a game that is fun and kept 18 people entertained for quite a while.
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| Hilarity on Saturday evening |
We also got a glimpse of our talented members - with a car karaoke session. Jo, Momo and Melissa doing an "In the Jungle" rendition. Mimicking the PartyWagon road trips.
The start of daylight savings means we lost an hour sleep. And getting to bed at 12.30am did not help. But I was awake by 6.30am and eventually got away with Celia to buy her lift ticket.
We skied together all day. Such fun. Gorgeous again, although viz did drop on occasions and made navigation tricky. Elaine lost the track and thumped into a gully and gave herself a good headache. Cracked her goggles too. I hope she is ok. We were worried about her. She just disappeared when she was right behind us. Mike stayed at the lift queue and Celia and I went on the chair to try and spot her. But as we got up, she walked up out of the gully. Phew!
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| Sunday was another great day! |
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| Celia on the chair! |
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| Mike looking mighty fine |
Caught up with Jo and Melissa for the last few runs of the day. Did the Far West T bar and took Celia up there and enjoyed the best runs of the day.
Headed down the home run to the base from there. And packed into the car, and headed back home. Toby DJ'd the whole way and didn't do too badly.
What a great weekend. Such fun. I can't believe this time next week, Jo will be gone though. I'll let that sink in.
Thank you to all that organised it. I had a wonderful time.
Love,
Angela
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