After an excellent holiday I am back at home with the dogs who are far too exuberant for this early hour. Yesterday's -40 windchill and my lingering tiredness truncated our walk and now I am paying the price with a 7am tug of war / dog wrestling display.
Our trip began on for me on Thursday February 23 when I flew down to Ottawa to join Blaine who was there attending meetings with AFAC and AANDC. He picked me up from the airport and then back at the hotel I enjoyed a draft beer or two then we dined on sushi - both unavailable in Iqaluit. Friday morning he went back into meetings and I set off for a day of rampant consumerism, starting with a 9am hair cut and colour. Keen to get my fix I lunched on sushi, then more shopping. I emerged from Loblaws at South Keys with a trolley heavily laden with goodies to find a heavy wet blanket of snow covering everything and no sign of it easing up. Not good for driving back to the city, and not good for flying. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and dragged Blaine over to the Rideau Centre to look at a snowboard jacket and Sorel boots on sale. He found a snowboard jacket too, and a few other things. We celebrated our shopping success with a bucket of KFC and a couple of glasses Jameson's in the hotel room, then re- packed our bags ready for our early start.
The 4am wake up call came far too soon and we dragged ourselves to Ottawa airport where I endured the line ups and hated self check in kiosk. Blaine dropped the car off and got a cab back before I had made it to a human being at the check in counter where we were informed that our 9am flight from Toronto to San Francisco had been cancelled and that we should go Lin e up for ticketing to be rebooked. I noted that this would cause us to miss our 6am flight to Toronto to which the charming Air Canada staff responded there was no point boarding that flight as we couldn't fly on to SFO until the evening. We joined the fray of disgruntled passengers in yet another line up so that we could be subjected to more surly unhelpfulness by charmless Air Canada staff. Through security we settled in for the day on a couple of couches at which point I examined our boarding passes and noticed we weren't even sat near each other. Miraculously a helpful AC employee got us seats together and gave us a $10 meal voucher each. I went back to the couch and watched some TV. A couple of hours later my brain got going and I pessimistically checked the AC website to see if our flight to SFO was cancelled yet at which point I saw seats for sale on the noon flight. Back to the AC desk where I found the other helpful AC employee who worked her butt off to try to get us to Toronto in time to catch the noon flight. Had we been allowed to board the 6am flight then we could have made it, but we didn't. Instead we got to run around Ottawa and Toronto airports trying to make flights and re-telling our sorry tale. Eventually we arrived in SFO around 1am and rented a car to drive up to Tahoe. By the time we arrived Dom and Tim had woken up so we and a few beers then got about an hour of sleep before our bodies woke us up again.
The next two weeks were much more enjoyable. Living in a big house backing on tho the woods near California base we spent our days snowboarding and our evenings BBQing, drinking and hot tubbing. We rode Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood mountains and even got free S'mores at Northstar. The weather was a little crazy, ranging from +4 on top of the mountain sunny days to wild winds that shut down all but Powderbowl chair. We took advantage of the free Epic Mix photographers to get some photos, unfortunately some of them didn't show up on our accounts so we don't have the group shot on the rock at the top of Powderbowl chair. The photo of me falling while wearing a bikini top did make it and is now my Facebook profile picture. On the last day I was struggling with my leg so I was escorted to Sky Deck where I sunbathed and sipped Shock Top while the rest of the group rode over to Stagecoach lodge.
Saturday morning we got up early and packed the cars then breakfasted at the Lakeside Casino before driving back to San Francisco. After saying goodbye to the others at the airport Blaine and I headed over to Pacifica for some Gorilla BBQ. As always we were defeated by the delicious stack of meat and tasty sides. Next stop was Infineon raceway then on to the Napa Premium Outlets for more shopping. Back at the hotel we enjoyed a refreshing bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc and In n Out burgers.
Sunday we got to the airport super early so we had time to check in our oversize bags. So glad we chose to fly at lunch time not the first flight of the day. The return flight was moderately uneventful, just the usual rudeness that we have come to know and expect from AC. By the time we got our bags and the car it was almost 1am when we checked into the hotel, then I re-packed ready for my flight home in the morning. Another early start but this time the First Air check in agent was super nice so the day started happy. Blaine and I had a coffee together then I went through security and he went back to Ottawa for three intense days of meetings with the CAFC.
The dogs went crazy when I got home, both jumping around and circling me furiously wagging their tails. I was supposed to be moving offices but while we were away there was a small fire in the empty room that was to be my office. It is now being repainted and I should be able to move in later this week, excitingly it has a window!
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