Jan 8 - more travels; to Whistler

The journey continues -- this time without incident !

Well, it's a good thing that we left on the early flight.  Whistler had a snow event yesterday, snowfall warning and all.  When we walked to dinner we were plowing through about a foot of snow, light fluffy stuff, but we got here before there was too much accumulation.

There was accumulation, however.  Once we got north of Squamish the snow started sticking to the roads as the Sea to Sky Highway, as Highway 99 is called, turns inland and does some climbing.  Traffic was light and I pulled over a few times to let people through as I didn't want to push it.  This Kia Solar doesn't have snow tires and I had no need to be waiting for my turn for the emergency vehicles tending the in-the-ditch guy a little north of Squamish.

The roads are much better than when we first started coming to Whistler about 30 years ago, much much better.  There are still some 2-lane sections south of Squamish and north of there a lot of long 4-lane passing sections but predominantly still 2-lane.  While they did improve the road for the Olympics a few years ago, car traffic was not allowed up to Whistler; you had to take the bus or train during the event.  I believe that was so that they could handle the people; there's no way that they could have handled all the cars, from a parking standpoint.

We were up at 4am and out to the hotel lobby before 5.  There were already a few people waiting and, as it happened, we couldn't get onto the first shuttle (they depart on the hour).  Leaving the hotel at 4:55, the driver was true to his word and back in 10 minutes.  We, our 4 bags and skis and a few more people left next, leaving another two full trips, I believe, for the driver.

Everything was ultra efficient.  We were flying Westjet for the first time and although we already had our boarding passes, we did not have our luggage tags.  The machines allow you to print both and an attendant fastened the tags before we even got into the non-existant queue.  He weighed our bags, 38 pounds for my wheeled duffel and 42 for Sandy's.  She has some lotions and 1.5 pounds of trail mix to make up the difference :).

Sandy also checks her small red duffle; I carry mine.  The skis, together in one bag, were our fourth checked bag.  I'd paid the excess baggage charges (2x$20) when doing online check-in the day before, since we're only allowed one each.

I carried the skis to the oversized luggage area, dropped them off and we went through security.  There was no queue there either.  We found a little restaurant inside, thankfully open so soon, and had bacon & eggs & potatoes.  That would keep us going for a while, since we weren't planning on eating during the flight.

We had had some cereal in the room before leaving -- just a little -- need that fiber !  The hotel manager had left us bagels etc etc in the room as promised, since we wouldn't be there for breakfast, and we'd brought the bagels along.  I ate one during the flight.   Sandy's slightly squashed bagel is here on the table beside me, still in its ziploc.

The flight was uneventful, departing just after 7am and arriving about 20 minutes late at 9:40 Pacific Time.  The flight attendant, as usual, asked people to wait for a certain group with a tight connection to get off first.  Lo and behold, people actually did that.  I've never seen it happen before.  Canadians are so polite !

The baggage took about 15 minutes to start coming out on the carousel and our bags were well spaced out.  The oversized luggage came last -- many pairs of skis and, if I remember correctly, 4 dogs in kennels.  I helped one lady with a large kennel containing a large dog man-handle it onto a luggage cart.

We made our way to the car rental.  I love Vancouver and Seattle airports - you don't have to take a shuttle to the car rental.   That's much more civilized when you're dealing with lots of luggage !  We were soon on our way in the Kia Solar.  Everything fit in nicely.  It's sort-of a hatchback; sort-of an SUV.  It actually handles quite well on the road.  No, I won't be buying one ... although I loved the lighted rims on the speakers that constantly change colours ... a nice touch !  That can be turned off !

It was pouring rain.  Snow at Whistler generally means rain in Vancouver.  The flight attendant, in her welcome to Vancouver speech, said something to the effect "if this is home; welcome home; you won't have to water your lawn".  We drove through the city, our usual route, and across the Lions Gate Bridge.  Just on the other side of the bridge there's a mall called Park Royal.  When we were here before, there was a Starbucks and a sandwich shop.  Now it's a fully enclosed mall with a food court.  We chose a cook-in-front-of-you Japanese food place and had veggies, rice and chicken (for Sandy).

We brought our Garmin NAV.  When we got in the car at the airport, it said that we would arrive at 12:30, an hour and a half drive.  By the time we left Park Royal, it was saying 1:30.  It was well after 2pm by the time we got to our hotel -- Legends -- at Whistler, Creekside.

Halfway to Whistler, before turning inland, we go through Squamish.  When we first started doing this trip, it was a small town with one gas station on the highway.  Now there are many along with ... Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Walmart ... you get the idea.  It's now Metropolitan Squamish !  It's an amazing transformation.  is this progress ?  I guess so.

Checking into our hotel, we unloaded the skis, still in bags, putting them into a locker.  We then drove into the underground garage and got a luggage cart for the rest.  We spent a few minutes catching up on email, me on my laptop; Sandy on the IPAD; and then walked to the grocery store here at Creekside.  Our kids wouldn't recognize the area it's so huge now.  Loaded with essential, we made the necessary stop at the liquor store, picking up some wine and beer.  Now really loaded down, we made it back to our room.

We'd already decided that we weren't going to do any more driving that day; would eat here at Creekside.  There's a few places, ranging from a couple on the other side of 99 to Boston Pizza and Zen Whistler, however the latter was no more.  There's a little take-out/eat-in sushi place -- Samurai Sushi -- that we'd never tried before.  It is hugely popular, it seems.  Like a Subway, you queue up for your order and then can sit down or take out.  Unlike Subway, you sit down and a waitress brings the order to you.  That's because, of course, sushi takes more time to make than a Sub.

Sandy had the Nigiri Sushi combo & a California Roll; I had the combo with an Udon Soup.  The portions were large but we managed to eat it all.  I didn't even have raisin bran for desert after getting back to the condo.

We'd had some wine before going out for dinner.  After all, our bodies are still on Eastern time, so that entitled us to wine sometime after 2pm.  It was later than that, but before 5pm Pacific.  There's also the "we're on vacation" excuse.  No matter.

Sandy had another glass of wine after we got back to the Condo -- we'd had nothing at dinner.  I was already wined out.  I hadn't had to wait for my red wine to chill as Sandy had with her white.  We had nothing to drink at dinner.

We both diddled with our internet-enabled machines, but I was fading fast, even though it was still before 7pm.  I hit the sack; have no idea when Sandy came to bed.  I managed to sleep in until 3:45 -- pretty good for me, since that's almost 7am according to my body.  Sandy is still asleep.  She is capable of adjusting to an east-to-west time change much better.  I'm much better at a west-to-east change, since I can always go to bed earlier and can always get up earlier.

I managed to get the Granite Anvil stuff going before I faded, using Open Office to update the waitlist and Cyberduck to upload the list of Registered Riders.  It took some searching to figure out how to change the print area with Open Office Calc and also some fiddling to get it to cross-update from different files.  There must be an automatic way; I'll check that out shortly.

Speaking of which, we now have 6 on the waiting list, 2 of which are going to do the pre-ride, I believe.  I'd fielded a number of emails the previous day from Renato & about Renato, assuring him and others that the waitlist would be managed on a first-come, first-served basis, without any favoritism, queue jumping, slot swapping etc.  A proposal came to me that we would exchange slots and my response was no, we'd do this properly.  In fact, I didn't say so, but if someone was going to over-rule me, I would hand this over to someone else and have no part in it.

I know, I can be an A$$ sometimes ... some would say all the time ...

Beep, beep, beep -- I don't know how Sandy can sleep.  The snow removal team is out there on the roads and their machines are doing their grinding on the road surface and beeping sounds.  There's more snow on the ground than I've ever seen before; huge snow banks.  We'd walked through almost a foot of snow going to & from dinner and it continued to fall after we got back.  It has stopped now.

I'm looking forward to my first time on skis in three years ... yay !  I'm not going to think about car issues when we return !

Onward !