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Today we return home. Will and I returned Sue and my rentals first thing, so as not to get billed for an additional day. We had a nice breakfast and packed all our stuff for the journey home.
It was with sadnesss in our hearts that we had to leave this beautiful place and our friends. Even though I have known Julie for 10 years through work, this was really our first chance to get together as with our spouses. Sue and I both felt that Julie and Will were awesome individuals with whom we had an immediate bond. It was like we had been best friends for years and we were just getting together for an annual event. I think based on this vacation we will be starting a new tradition. Plans are already in the works for next years skiing adventure.
It would be nice to say the journey home was uneventfull, but alas this was not the case.
The drive back through the mountains was pleasant and having left around 12:00pm we arrived Calgary about 3:45.
We used our GPS programmed for shortest distance and this lead us through a somewhat staggered path through Calgary’s West End.
It was nice to drive by Olympic park and see people skiing down the hills.
I had been to this part of Calgary before and I had that feeling of uncertain familiarity as we passed various buildings and roads.
We stopped at a drive through to grab some quick dinner to hold us over on the flight back and gassed up the Honda Civic before returning it.
The GPS Guided us straight into the airport and into the departures areas, then around to arrivals so we could return the car. Technology that works is so nice.
We returned the Car with no additional charges and made our way to the baggage check area.
We had used a new check in via mobile browser to check in for our flight already and we were given a digital boarding pass on my iphone that we just had to show to the various airline people at the requisite checkpoints.
The self service baggage check in had a huge line that went past the westjet counter by twice its lengh. We waited for about 30 minutes in line to check our bags then headed back through security.
The security line wasn’t too bad and after the usual protocols we cleared security and headed for our gate.
We arrived at our gate with about 45 minutes before our scheduled boarding time.
I grabbed a cappuccino and checked email while sue did suduku puzzles.
I wondered around the airport and picked up some munchies for the flight and also found this area called the chinook lounge that I wish I’d know about before sitting at the gate for an hour. This place had nice comfy chairs, computers, TV’s, beverage dispensers and fireplaces. There was hardly anyone there. Note to self, remember to look for lounge areas sponsored by your airline when you first get to the airport if you have more than a 30 minute wait.
Our flight was delayed by about an hour for unexplained reasons and we boarded about 18:50 and took off about 19:10. The flight back was quiet and I had the usual Gin and Tonic and we ate our previously purchased munchies. WestJet has Satellite service on the plane provided by Bell Expressvu. This was kind of cool, and we could watch our favorite shows while flying home. We watched Supernatural and Battlestar Galactica.
After touchdown in Toronto around 12:30am of the following day Toronto time we headed to baggage.
The baggage had already stared appearing when we got to carousel 4 and it wasn’t long before we had snagged our smalled of two bags and waited for the other. And waited, and waited and waited. Our other bag somehow managed to stay in Calgary. We went to lost luggage reporting area and answered the requisite questions. By the time we got out of bagage it was about 1:35 am.
Now it was time to see if our pre-paid, pre-arranged Airport Limo service was waiting for us. As you have probably already thought, no of course it wasnt. We had to call them. Normally this would have been an easy task, but when they gave us a ride to the airport the driver didn’t have any business cards and neither of us could remember the name or phone number of the company. Think, Think, how can we find the number.
Luckily we have vonage voice over ip that records all incoming and outgoing calls.
I used my IPhone to login to our vonage account and lookup the phone records for the day before we flew, found the number and called the Limo company. I got the answering machine. I left a message, but before I finished call waiting was beeping in my ear. Some unrecoginized number was calling me back. I hung up the first call and answered the call waiting. It was a rep from the limousine company. They had no record or our pre booking. I insisted they better find it. They said they would call me back and they did about 5 minutes later. The Airport Limo was on its way in about 15 minutes and they would pick us up at pole 29.
We went outside to wait and while we were standing there, some fellow gave out a gut wrenching scream and collapsed banging his head off of the luggage carts.
Sue ran out to see if she could help him. she didn’t have any rubber gloves so she couldn’t touch him, but she tried to get his attention as he seized violently his head still resting in the luggage racks. one of the limo attendants called 911 and the metro police and the airport inspector EMT showed up within minutes to help the poor fellow.
By the time they got there he had stopped seizing and was awake but somewhat groggy. Sue had assesed that he was alert and didn’t have a concussion and he was responsive to voice when the Police and EMT’s took over.
A few minutes later our Taxi arrived and we loaded our bags (minus one) and headed home. The driver was very nice and appologized for the mixup. We told him we understood and our flight was late anyway so no harm done. He explained he lived close to the airport so he was able to get there in 15 minutes and he was glad he was up and not out partying….lol.
about 30 minutes later 2:30am or so we arrived home and collapsed. 12 hours of travel starting with driving then flying and lots of waiting really tires you out.
Thats it for this Journey, can’t wait till the next.
Writing has been a long time love of mine since my first introduction to creative writing in highschool and I’d like to give thanks to those individuals who inspired me along the way. This being my first attempt since University other than the technical writing I have been doing at work for 10 years I think its appropriate.
The first person I need to acknowledge is Owen Gray, my grade 13 English teacher. It was through his guidance I first realized that I could write things and that just because I was a techy didn’t mean I couldn’t better my writing skills.
Secondly, my longtime friend and school chum, Ed Bagares deserves a mention. I have lived vicariously through Ed’s letters of his travels for years. He has been around the globe and experiencing different cultures and people since our early days at University. It was with his writings in mind I embarked on this new hobby.
Third I should mention Brian Peters. Author of Hypersonic (his first novel) Brian is an IT specialist like myself and good friend. Brian’s ability to work a full time job but explore his passion has prompted me to give this a try.
Thanks to all of you for being who you are. I have felt an awakening of my creative spirit and I hope to propel this into a hobby career.
Cheers.
PS. Our Missing Bag arrived safely to our door in the evening of the next day. Thanks WestJet.

Today we went to a real mountain. Julie and Will impressed upon Sue and I that Fairmont is just a hill really and that before we finish our trip we have to ski a real mountain. The mountain of choice was Panorama. Will was telling me about how cool it is if you stay on the mountain in a time share. You can walk from your door to the lift, and there is gondola that takes you down to the shops and back. The nice thing about this is you don’t have to drive anywhere.
The temperature was cold again in the morning about -13 C and the Panorama website was reporting the same conditions they’ve had for a week. No new snow. After the comments from the people at Fairmont resort I was a little leery. Fairmont had been ok because of the groomed surfaces, but I was dying for some deeper softer snow to fall on.
We decided to leave around 11:30 and hit the slopes of Panorama for a half day.
The half day starts at 12:30, and we made it there right on time. The drive from Fairmont to Panorama was a pretty one. We headed toward Invermere then veered off the highway just before to make the trek through the mountains to Panorama Mountain Village.
As we neared Panorama you could see the snow getting deeper along the highway and it looked like it had a nice top layer of powder. The roads were very clear and Julie had no problem with the roads.
We arrived at Panorama around 12:00pm, unloaded our gear from the truck, and donned our boots and helmets etc. It was a short walk up a few flights of stairs to reach the lift ticket booth. This served as a warm-up for my already exercised thighs.
Panorama Mountain village has everything to offer the vacationer. Besides 120 runs on a 4000 vertical foot mountain, there are places to shop, restaurants to eat in, pubs to tell tall tales in and hot tubs within easy access of your rooms to soak those tired muscles after a day of skiing. They also have packages for multi days of skiing that work out to be a better deal than purchasing individual days of skiing, in fact they work out to about half or less of the price multiplied by the number of days you want to ski.
Lift tickets purchased (Half Day is $56.00 per adult) we headed for our first run.
The chair lift was a 1 mile Quad Chair that makes it to about the half way point up the mountain. Panorama is utilizing today’s technology to gather statistics on their visitors so they can tailor their services to meet demand. Their lift tickets have two pieces. One piece is a barcode that rips off the bottom that you can hang onto just in case you loose your lift ticket from your jacket. The other piece has the same barcode and a punch-out where it can be attached by means of a vinyl strap to your zipper for display and scanning by the chair lift attendants. I guess with the strap instead of the typical wire that is sandwiched between two folded glued edges its easier for the ticket to come off when you wipeout, so they advise you to sever the bottom barcode and hang onto it just in case you loose the main part so you can have it replaced if necessary. (Quite smart really)
After being scanned we lined up in gates to board the quad and begin our ascent to the first level of runs. The lift is much more comfortable than the 3 person lift at Fairmont and has a padded seat and slows down before you get in so it’s easier to board.
The lift flies up the hill at a good clip and the protective bar that comes down has a place for your feet (and skis) to sit. I learned you should hold your poles outside of the bar and bring the bar down inside the poles otherwise you get sandwiched and have to lift the bar again to get them out. Will learned to move your arm fast before the new guy tries to close the bar on it…Sorry Will.
We arrived at the end of the first lift and opted for a green run down to warm up our legs. Julie and Will did the blue to the right of it.
It became immediately apparent that all the talk of icy conditions at Panorama and how Fairmont had the best conditions, was overstated but that the ice was present in some of the more challenging runs at the black level. For the novice to intermediate skier, the conditions were great. The run down was awesome. Using my new found skills I easily shooshed my way down the hill. The base was much softer with a few inches of softened snow to make turns easier and only a few icy spots to watch out for. Julie and will played in the moguls on the blue run to the right of us on the way down the first run.
First run completed I was feeling confident and ready for the summit.
After being scanned by the handheld telxon or symbol scanners we boarded the 1 mile quad again and went back up. Once leaving the quad we had to go to the right and ski down to the champagne express quad, then get off that and ski down to the summit quad. Now this is a long way up.
The view atop the summit was almost indescribable. I guess the best description that comes to mind would be breathtakingly awesome. You had the view of 1000 peaks in one direction and mountains in every other direction as far as the eye can see. Clouds danced about the mountain tops obscuring the view of the mountains behind. The roads at the base of Panorama looked like pencil lines drawn on a map.
A few pictures for posterity and a look down the Double black diamond runs (and a shiver of fear) was enough to prepare us for the decent on the non-black slope. I found the run I wanted. It was aptly named “Get Me Down”. This is a blue run that is basically a 12 foot wide road that wound its way down the mountain switching back from time to time.
I started out snowplowing my way down, and then my thighs were getting tired so I began to practice my shooshing and controlling my speed.
At various points down the run there were blue and black slopes cutting across the road and down to the next intersection of the road and the slope. Will found his spot early on and he was off finding his way through the trees and moguls down the hill on the intermingled black runs. If I had done them they would have been black and blue runs…ha!
Julie stayed with Sue and me for the most part, venturing off the road here and there to hit the moguls and shortcuts meeting up with us again at the various intersections.
Sue skidded out on one turn and ended up on her but, then struggled to get up and get moving again. I was already ahead by a bit so I waited and took the opportunity to change my lense in my goggles from the tinted lense to the clear lense. The sun was disappearing and reappearing and I was finding it hard to see with my tinted goggles but it was too chilly on the face when you were moving to not wear them.
I managed to get the lense replaced and sue managed to get up and ski down to me. We set out again and met up with Julie a short while afterwards. We stopped to wait for Will as we hadn’t seen him and Julie had lost him too. In the process of lining up beside each other to wait for Will I managed to trip and toppled over into Julie so she went down like a domino and we ended up lying in the snow laughing about falling when we weren’t moving. I was laughing at Julie trying to get up. You can tell she doesn’t fall much because she’s out of practice getting up. I on the other hand had mastered both the art of falling and getting up with skis on.
We continued on down the run in the same manner as before. Sue and I decided to take a mogul run in once spot that skirted across the ski road in a couple spots. This was cool. I almost lost control having a hard time turning in the moguls, but regained control and stopped slicing the top off of one.
We met up with Julie again just before another 3 person lift that took us back up the hill a bit where we could ski down to the 1 mile quad and then down from there. We skirted across the infamous Fritz run then down one of the blue runs near the one mile quad.
We found will at the bottom. He said his legs were wiped and that he had ended up in ice in various spots and he really had to work not to wipe out. He decided to go into the T-Bar Grill and order some Beverages for us while we did another run. We checked our watches and our lazy decent stopping to gab and look around had taken us 2 hours and 45 minutes. Wow now that was skiing.
Back to the 1 mile quad and backup to the first level, and then back down a blue run again.
Sue and I thoroughly enjoyed these runs; we all found the surface much better than what we had been skiing on at Fairmont. You could feel the cushion under your skis more and it was easier to turn if you looked for powdery snow.
I started practicing the quick turns two and fro and shedding my speed that way rather than long S turns across the slope. I finally had it down and had my balance.
Sue had one spill no the way down, so I stopped to make sure she was ok before proceeding. It wasn’t a bad fall, so she only got a two rating for that one. (We had been rating our falls on the Julie scale from 1-10. I had a 7 a couple days ago, but thankfully that was as high as I got because I think a 10 meant something got broken.)
We decided on one more green run so we boarded the 1 mile quad again and made our last decent. My legs were feeling fatigued so I stopped quite a few times down on this one so as not to get too weak and risk ruing my perfect record today.
After finishing the final run we removed our skis and headed to the T-Bar grill to recant our experiences while enjoying a refreshing beverage. My beverage of choice is usually Guinness. “Let Darkness Reign!”
We ordered a nice artichoke and crab dip that came with small sliced up soft tortilla and a plate of nachos.
I met a couple nice chaps from East Anglia in England (just North West of London) and found out one of them had just arrived for a two week vacation from England. The other, his friend was working at the resort and had been from the beginning of the season. He was a snow board instructor and told me I had to give it a try if I had ever skate boarded, water skied, or wake boarded behind a boat. I told him I had all the learning I could take for one season, but next year if he was still there, I would look him up.
A few beverages later and our bellies full from the tasty snacks we headed back down to the truck, loaded up our gear, and made the journey back to the time share.
The drive back was pleasantly uneventful and before you knew it were relaxing and playing Euchre till we hours of the morning. Thus ends Day 6. In my opinion this was the best day of skiing we had for the whole trip.
Tomorrow we begin the journey home.

Today Started off really cold. -15 C and all the resorts were reporting icy conditions. We decided to wait till afternoon to allow the temperature to come up and soften the snow a bit. We had been planning to do Panorama today, but opted for Fairmont instead because of the ice.
We arrived at the hill about 12:30pm ready for the half day. Lift tickets purchased and skis on we dawned the chair lifts.
I started off on the green run to get my legs back. I found it much less difficult and that I was able to control my decent much better. My muscles were a little sore, but not so much as to hinder my skiing.
After one green run I was ready to go blue for the remainder of the day. Having perfected the art of falling and speed control it didn’t hurt so much.
Today I did more runs than I had either of the previous days and didn’t have any really bad falls.
Sue was starting to get her legs back and was going faster on the runs to the point where she was passing me. I could definitely tell she has been skiing most of her life.
One exciting run we both ended up on our butts. Sue higher up than me on a steep slope. She was just out of reach of her one ski. Two more experienced skiers went right by without stopping and we thanked them sarcastically. Finally a teenage snowboarder stopped and retrieved her ski for her. We thanked him sincerely and continued on our way down the hill.
About 2:30pm we stopped for a hot drink and a break then hit the slopes again.
I had one more fall, but it was more funny than painful. I missed a turn and flopped into the powder under the lift. It made for good entertainment for the skiers on the lift and one German fellow commented that I did a good Yahoo as he passed over me laying spread eagle in the powder laughing.
We met up with Julie and Will a couple times and watched them doing moguls and the trail below the lift as we made our ascent.
Julie mentioned I needed to bend more and so I did and found it less stressful on my sore muscles and improved my balance considerably.
The rest of our runs were pleasantly uneventful yet thoroughly enjoyable.
We came back to the time share and relaxed for an hour or two then headed over to the Farside Inn restaurant for beer and wings.
Our bellies full and our muscles sore we headed to the Hot Springs for a soothing soak.
It was colder so it made for a chilly walk from the change rooms. We all declined to follow the “All bathers must shower before entering the pool” rule because we figured we’d freeze before hitting the springs if we did.
Soak complete, we ventured back to the condo, and all of us turned in for the night.
Sue and I fell asleep watching Myth Busters and woke up later to turn the TV off.
Tomorrow we hit Panorama for a half day in the afternoon. The weatherman is calling for light flurries, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Today was a healing day. We woke up to a crisp -12 C morning with the sun already shining on the mountain. We didn’t have much on the agenda today but to rest up for another day of skiing tomorrow. We lounged in the morning and watched a James Bond Movie after managing to get the TV out of the snug area it was built in to so that I could hook up a video cable to the laptop. I took a soothing soak in the Jacuzzi tub to help relax my muscles and remove some of the stiffness. I noticed several large bruises on various parts of my legs and that my left knee was swollen a bit with an 8 cm diameter bruise below it. No wonder that hurt so much.
After the soak in the tub my body felt much more mobile and moving didn’t hurt as much. I took some Tylenol to help ease the aches and pains and after a nice brunch/lunch of pasta and spicy sausage with sauce we headed into Invermere to pick up a few supplies.
We stopped at a bakery to pickup some fresh bread and I noticed they had a cappuccino machine, so I couldn’t resist. I had been looking for a real cappuccino since we left but could only find those ones like Tim Horton’s serves.
We found a cool little place called Dave’s book bar that had all kinds of books and crafts and sold cigars etc. We stopped at the local TV appliance store that also had a Source by Circuit City franchise to see if they had I- Phone AC charging cables, but alas they didn’t. I’ve been using Julie’s USB charge cable because I left mine at work. After the smallest Circuit City I’ve ever seen, it was over to the Sobeys for some snack food, Naan and Ibuprophen.
Invermere on the Lake is a small resort town nestled on Lake Windermere between the Purcells and the Rockies. It has the quaint ambience of a small mountain village. There is a large number of condo’s being built near the lake’s edge which will be quite nice and have a breathtaking view once they are complete.
Invermere was established in 1810 as a trading post and now has a population of 3470. There’s a wide variety of activities for travelers seeking a relaxing mountain retreat or for the athletic and thrill seeker alike.
Eagle Ranch Golf Course is well known for its par 71 – 6400 Yard course that is built around the ravines and canyons with greens high atop bluffs offering spectacular views along with world class golf.
Supply run completed, it was back to the condo for a wine tasting at the resort that included some local trivia and prizes along with the usual sales promotions, and then a relaxing evening. Sue made an amazing Quorma curry chicken with rice spiced with cumin, coriander, and cardamom served with peas on the side.
Our bellies pleasantly full, we played a little Wii and gabbed about everything under the sun until bed time around 9:30pm. Will and I planned recording and sending music back and forth to overdub tracks.
We’re hoping for snow tonight so we can hit one of the other mountains that are currently ice covered and haven’t had snow for a week. The weather forecast calls for snow tomorrow, but we’ll see….tomorrow.