Escape into the Whiteness

in july '08 sometime - myself, and 3 boys from work at G.U planned a trip to Perisher for a few days of intense snowboarding.. and dayum wassit intense! my butt cheeks were throbbing by the end of it haha

Day 1 - The Mighty Treck, Tuesday
day 1 actually started the night before at laser skirmish, darling harbour at around 8.30pm or so with the rest of the G.U crew. I went to the place expecting it to be pretty shit considering id already been to paintball twice, thought of it as some sort of downgrade, think about it from paintballs that'll give you lifetime scars.... to lights .... lol ... however to my surprise laser skirmish was pretty damn fun! - soaked in sweat - but fun! there was constant running and i annihilated both rounds coming first! hahaha props to meeeee!. after the second game we played a game of bowling and i sucked shit at it ..felt even more useless evn more coz half the people playing were already drunk or tipsy .. tsk tsk. it was quiet a messy night overrall with some interesting drunken conversations held... they were VERY interesting just to point that out.... By midnight us azn boys (the ones going on the trip) found ourselves at the local internet cafe playing hero siege, and yes we were so sad do to that but i thought it was pretty damn funny... net cafe in the middle of the night haha... we took about 2 hours there and after getting food we were finally on the road heading out of town....... current time was around 3.30am.. James was the man behind the wheel majority of time with laurens subbing in for abit of the journey, it was sucha freakn long drive ay? but evn then none of us boiz could get some decent sleep, we got around 1.5 hours worth of power naps all up during the drive. most notable thing to mention during the drive was getting lost at canberra for a good two hours or so.. other than that i was getting more and more geed to see some damn snow seeing as though ive never seen some before ! at 12pm-ish we finally arrived at the town we were stayin at called Jyndabyne... and what a hole that place was lol... thankfully our lodge wasnt so bad.. 3 bedrooms, 2 with a queen size bed in each and the 3rd room with 4 bunk beds.... i shottied one of the queen size beds obviously. Know why i was disappointed at this stage though? I STILL HADNT SEEN ANY DAMN SNOW! grr.... after trying on sizes and all of that crap i finally got this sxc az black/red board with this nice pic of a diablo like fella.... accompanied with some mega big boots with trackies/jacket/goggle to match.. oh yea i also bought this thermal gear AKA tights! haha they felt so weird ! just thought i drop that in somewhere...... anyway once we had our gear together we went straight to Smiggin Holes at Perisher and got in some attempted snowboarding down in the flat-ish area... and guess what? WE FAILED haha it was 3pm-ish and for the nxt 2 hours we looked liked a group of 20 yr old jackasses... on our asses (or arses* for you out there that are real anal about being correct =D SMILE! haha ) .we really needed a lessen. at about 5pm some snow started to fall and everyone left the premises so we decided to as well.... headed back home to drop the boards off then straight into town to stock up on supplies haha know why this place was a hole? ALL THE YOUNGENS WERE THERE HANGING AT WOOLWORTHS.... wat da hell man haha.. it was like.. woolworthz was the shizzay for everyone to be at. =S... meh wateva we got in, got our shit together.. and went home... we payed of course =]. wateva happened in the nxt few ours of getting home was all just a massive blur to me i think theres a pic of me on facebook inda process of conking out on the couch... wateva it is the only thing i remember is EVERYONE was K.O'd by 9pm... and we stayed down haha
at last it was the end of day 1...

Day Two - The Essentials, Wednesday
Day two started at 9.30 inda morning or something and we got some quick breaky then lazed about for an hour or so lol wateva it was we headed to Perisher for a board lessen but ended up catching a shuttle bus back to Smiggin Holes for an almost missed start to a much needed lessen at 12.30pm.. it was definitely what we needed coz by the end of it about 2 hours later we could actually MOVE the board down a slope and actually STOP using our feet instead of our butts.. ah the joy ! we used the j bar lift for the remainder of the afternoon and got in some good mileage down from the top of the hill... afterwards we shuttled it back got the car went to woolies again, bought wateva and went home to enjoy the rest of the night watching some videos on james ipod, poker and some hot dogs for dinner.. haha
.. lights out for everyone at about 1am
end of day 2

Day Three - Taking a Dump..... Thursday
At this stage into the trip the amount of snow in the resorts surrounding the mountains was somewhat lacking but this day turned things around, we woke up inda morning gazed outside and saw massive storm clouds hanging above the snowie mountains, switched on the tele to find out that there was an expected blizzard during that day early arvo, so we all decided to do kill time and home instead and hoped that it would actually snow.. sometime inda arvo i fell asleep.. waking up to laurens pointing out that it was snowing right outside our lodge.. haha what a dump of snow it must of been at the resorts.. those snow clouds reached all the way out to jyndabyne ! we were suddenly geed again and prayed the blizzard would have stopped by the nxt day.. we waited out the rest of the day.. AGAIN visitin woolies.. i think we bought a blender this time round? lol so random but i was serzly inda mood for making some frappiatos - whats that u say ? its gods gift to us mortals... for the rest u already know buying a new blender is worth it! haha..... no fraps were made that night however =P.. more movies, more junk food, more hot dogs and lights out again just before 12 or something
end of day three

Day Four - Powdery Snow, Storm Clouds, Wicked Winds, taking level 2 lessen amidst all that..... Friday
By friday all of us boys were geed up to hit the slopes again and we certainly did when we got the chance, we started off by taking our level 2 class.. we learnt how to do an "S" turn when we were coming down a hill which gave us control of the board instead of flying down the slopes with only prayers going through our minds. We rocked up to smiggins hole once again at around 11am to get in round 1.5hours of practice before our class at 12.30.. class ended at around 3pm and we continued our countless runs down the slope and back up again. This day was so hectic to be out on the slopes as the blizzard was still semi around the place, winds below 0 degrees were constantly blowing throughout the whole day and i was having trouble getting out of soft snow i decided to stack it on top of. Unfortunately this day could of been better for everyone as a couple of boys bindings decided to freeze up.. so the straps wouldnt stay on for one of the boots... DAMN RENTAL EQUIPMENT... after about 6 hours of snowboarding we all called it a day and proceeded to this cafe that sold real nice Ice chocolates.. hmmm.. obviously since we were in town we headed into woolworths (i think im starting to get why its the place to hangout now as i keep typing this entry) to buy frapiatto ingredients and wateva else it was... fraps are the most important thing just so u know. we had another night of junk food, movies, so on and so forth it was pretty much the same story.. hmm i think this is when i discovered Wilson shedding his pubes on the bathroom floor.... hmmm other then that the first sort of dnm started with wilson in the lounge area but i was pretty tired and conked out soon afterwards newai

Day Five - The fucked up body and the back country.... Saturday
I woke up inda morning to find james in my face... or was that friday morning? i cant remember!, newai this was a perfect day to snowboard, sun was out, snow from the previous dump was still relatively fresh, wind had died down and we finally got to explore alil bit of area OUTSIDE of smiggins hole. our actual plan was to travel from Smiggins to perisher by snowboarding it all the way to the place via lifts and all of the jazz.. it was a great day, we had many runs down the hill and at one point we chilled at the top of one of the T Bar Lifts at the place. the view was amazing and we took many photos with phones and cameras. You could see the valleys and mountains where it would transition from snow to grassy land - with other distant blue mountains in the distance.. damn it was a great spot to be at, i broke my want to keep sydney out of mind for the trip and tried callin' someone to share the moment with.. but they never answered ... ahhh REJECTED! hahahahaha! it was about mid arvo at this stage so we decided to hurry along before all of the lifts closed.. and u know what? we got to the last stretch of land we had to cover before the last lift... then about 50metres away the dude running it decided to say it was closed.. mothafocker saw us coming but stil closed it.. its coz we azn ay?? anyway that pissed us off coz then we had to WALK the remaining distance to perisher ... we were inda middle of a valley so that walk was abit too much.. either way we accomplished a few things that day so all was not so bad..
oh yes my body was aching from the friday the day before since we went hardout.. anyone wana give me a massage im still needing it right now! same old story wen we got to perisher... we never actually got to snowboard AT perisher! haha... once we got home i made the fraps as usual, chilled and did some cleaning before heading to bed.
end of day 5

Day Six - Near Death Experience.... Twice, Sunday
After an eventful week it was finally time to checkout and head back to civilisation, after making some lastminute friends with the azn neighbours and some lastminute gold class style - house cleaning we decided to head up the mountain one last time to check out another of the sites... dun dun dunnnnnn it was mistake

... There is this place called Guthega behind one of the mountains at perisher where hardly neone visits, the road to it was long and windy and took about 30mins to get to the lodge but the view was spectacular... the edge of the road lead to a pretty steep drop into the valleys below so that was an interesting thing to keep in mind. anyway 20min of the journey had normal roads whilst the last 10min had roads covered in snow and ice..... hmm.... can u get the idea of where our near death experience is now???.... on the way back from Guthega the dirt track that led back onto the main road some 30min away were on a decline.. we were all happily minding our own business when all of a sudden the car seemed to start drifting down the mountain pass - our car decided to take away any control we had and it started to slide down the icy road slowly facing side on. to put some perspective on this situation just remember these roads were very windy and the only thing over the edge of road was a steep drop into the valley below... we continued drift on the iced up path for about another 20 metres wen it decided to slide towards the edge of the path......*FUCK*is wat was on most of our minds... the ONLY thing that prevented us from a sure death was a snow wall about a metre high passively built up by the works of a snow plough machine pushing snow off the main track... we were lucky in every way possible i tell u. had the snow been any softer we would of just went right through it... it shook every one up and james the man driving naturally drove alot slower... but u know what? it happened again about a few hundred metres down the track.. this time we headed front on into the snow wall... wtf man... we must be blessed i say... we were travelling at 20kms down that road and it still made the car slide.... ahhh thankfully im able to be here right now to type it all!!.. after a real nervous ride towards the PROPER path we were
back onto the road heading home and also what was to be the birth of our "tribute" video clip (which is found on my facebook account.... if ur bothered enough of course... ) unlike our mini mountain adventure earlier inda the day the travel back home was typical, alot of kareoke style singing going on, pokemon, and the constant wondering of whether or not "we are there yet" ...

back onda road to civilisation

**** Heres some interesting things i couldnt be bothered slotting into my little story
-- I started and almost finished Pokemon Diamond Version during the trip with Laurens' DS
-- James Drank about a quarter of a 3L bottle of milk on the same night we bought it
-- I had the joy of drinking most of the frappiattos
-- My best stack job involved an intial faceplant, 4 consecutive rolls after with whiplash for some good measure
-- James Smelt my foot while he was asleep
-- I drew half a moustache and 3 freckles on wilsons face the night before we left back home
-- Wearing Thermals which are basically tights was a very new and interesting experience
-- There was a massive asian influx during the weekend
-- We never got to build a snowman
-- I bought a sxc azz blue hat and jacket
-- Wilson' pubes were shedding... thought id mention that again
-- of about 10 movies we watched, we only started and finished about 3 of them
-- Lauren' didnt take me serzly when i told him to not let him get a hold of his nintendo ds lol
-- i realised snow is something you could make halo-halo out of
-- hmm ill add more as i think of it

and guess what guys??

That was the end of the trip!

damn
C