Tidbits
Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…
Photos
Tremblant: Good and Bad
December 19, 2005, 7:54 pm
The Good: first major snowstorm of the year = awesome conditions
The Bad: Tremblant staff was on strike...
The bus trip there took almost 11 hours, we left at 7:30 am and didn’t get there until 6 pm. I think we had three or four stops along the way, all at a McDonald’s. Urgh. The highway was relatively clear for the most part, but we did see a lot of cars buried and abandoned in the medians on both side of the highway. Stop and go traffic around Montreal area during rush hour. Thankfully I was asleep for most of that 11 hours..
Checked in, met up with Krystal’s group (she drove from Ottawa), and had dinner at the little town of Tremblant. It was a pretty small place, the commercial area is just a small strip down a single road, much like St Jacobs downtown. Picked this place that looked very fancy and expensive, but turned out not so much, mainly because we didn’t order wine, and stuck with smaller entries and appetizers. I had a salad that consisted of almost every type of salad avaliable (baby spinach, lettuce, grapefruit slices, grapes..) with smoked duck. Even tried rabbit (tastes like chicken, *really*), and bison (tough beef). And liver (Ack, so those little meat things in chinese congee was duck/chicken liver??) Little bit of liver is fine, but a giant bigger-than steak plate of liver? Just gross. Oh, and had poutine that didn’t use gravy but some unidentifiable sweet sauce. Wasn’t overly impressed.
So back to hotel for some much needed sleep. Woke up at 7:30 to the sound of people protesting outside. Hmm? Why are there picket lines outside our hotel? Learned that the Interwest union workers are on strike, and only two lefts were operating on the entire hill: the gondola, and a midway lift on the North side. WTF? The lineup for the gondola was *insane*. I think most of the local people left after seeing the line, because afterwards, once we got up the mountain, the rest of the hill was pretty empty. So Saturday was pretty good. Manageable lineups, pretty good snow. But a lot of the trails were closed.
Sunday was not as good. All the people who left on Saturday come back on Sunday because the strike was only suppose to be on Sat, but then the workers extended the strike. The trails were icier, and the lineups a lot longer, everywhere. Wasn’t too bad though, since I was pretty tired and sore from Saturday anyways, so took it easy on Sunday. The new board is nice. Lighter than my old one so less stable, but it lands really well. Helmet was definately a good investment!
The Good: hotel comes with outdoor hot tub.
The Bad: it was out of order on Sat night.
How can a hot tub be broken?? It was just so wrong! People suspect sabetoge from the union workers. Our hotels has two main buildings (towers), and so we had to all go and use the other tower’s hot tub. When we got there on Sat night, people were packed in it like sardines.. Looked sort of gross, so we went back to our tower and used the dry sauna instead. It was nice since there was nobody else using it. We heard later that the water in the “working” hot tub was cold. Sigh, one of these days, I will try an outdoor hot tub in the middle of winter!
Drive back to Toronto was only 7 hours. I didn’t sleep much during that trip at all. It seems I can only sleep during the day…
Overall, I guess the trip was okay. It could have been awesome, but other factors made it just okay. Oh well, maybe Jays Peak would be better…
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