Goings On

I've been very slack in updating but this post should bring things up to now.

Mind you, it's gonna be long and contain numerous photos so I apologise now.

Things here have been pretty good... Still shit all snow, but they're still making a heap so there's a few runs open... Haven't had a chance to go boarding for about a week... It's the busy period and things are hectic...

Had a good Christmas... About 30 friends from the Timber Creek locale at a big Christmas dinner... It was a dress up dinner too, so I donned some sweet tweed, some bowling shoes I purchased for the grandiose sum of $1, a pair of nasty looking slacks and a tie with tiny tennis players on it... Ugly as hell..
Was good fun though and I enjoyed myself until I was awoken by my alarm clock at 6 the next morning ( I had to work).
So somewhere between Secret Santa, turkey, ham and a few quiet drinks I'd ended up passed out, fully dressed, face down on my bed.
Yep, I'm all class...

Been working long days, sitting in the spa, drinking, eating and being generally pretty chilled...
Working with some cool people, so the days go a little quicker. Seeing tiny children have massive skiing accidents also helps my day pass quicker... It's like ten pin bowling on the kiddies slope except with blood...

Anyways enough boredom, here's some visual stimuli:

The view from the top of lift 28 which is on the kids slope and is generally where I spend most of my days. Working. Not hanging around in a creepy old man kind of way. Note the imaginatively named "Clock Tower". All the snow in this shot is man made... Out of paste, toothpicks and aluminum foil. Or water, I'm not sure.

The complex life of a liftie...
Red = Stop
Blue = Start
Black = Reset
Green = Fast
Orange = Slow
I often wonder what happened to the monkeys that used to do this job... hehe- Arctic Monkeys!! They probably went to eat bananas. Or sing songs about looking good on dancefloors.

Me in my lift shack. I am wearing a name tag and have a tassel on my beanie. Cool as hell.
Also tired as shit...

Christmas up close.

Umm what?? Things must get pretty err... interesting.. on school buses over here. Naughty kids. They probably vomit sometimes too.
These are on the MOOvers, which are the free buses and only form of transport around here... They're painted like giant cows as you can see below. You don't get off the bus, you get sucked out it's udder into a giant vat with all the other passengers. And then pasteurised and homogenised.

A MOOver. Weird idea if you ask me. The orange posts you can see are a fence to keep the MOOvers in their herds... No one likes a wild MOOver.

Me busy at the top of the "Magic Carpet" Which is just a conveyor belt that carries kids up the slope. Nothing magic about it... I sometimes throw snow on it and tell them it's Magic Powder Fuel . They believe me. The gullible little bastards.

Sunrise on the Mountain. The only good thing about being up this early.

Me building my first ever snowman. Not all it's cracked up to be. Plus I only had shitty supplies (ie. Some pebbles and dead grass), so he's a bit of a down syndrome snow man... He died soon after this photo was taken. Which was good cos he was pretty unfortunate looking.

Hopefully things should quieten down here soon, so I'll be able to get some shots of us boarding and stuff.

Gotta go get some sleep now as I have to work another big day tomorrow and I'm already tired and sick of little shits on skis... Tomorrow may be the day an unlucky child discovers how hard snow can be when you get thrown off a lift halfway up.

It's new years eve back in Aus, so happy new years all and I'll be in touch again soon, providing my fingers don't fall off due to frostbite.

J

Several Bad Puns Later

OK, So It's been a while since I last posted.. A couple of weeks even...
Been busy with work and stuff...
Shite all snow around here... Icy, raining and the next week is meant to be the busiest of the season... There's probably only about 10% of the mountain open... So there's going to be thousands and thousands of people concentrated on about 18 runs....
The mountain will look like a colony of ants trying to all simultaneously climb a sugar cube.
In multi-coloured one piece ski suits.
Been having fun though, had a few days of good boarding, got to have a few runs through one of the parks, so it's all going quite well.
We're having a dress up christmas which should be fun... Probably about 20 or so of our 'local' crew to be in attendance.

In other news, I went to the local op shop today. I bought a par of pants.
Pants with a 64 inch waist.... It looks like they could be used to insulate a milk tanker...
They're crazy. People can be fat.
I challenge anyone else to honestly say they've bought themselves a pair of green 64 inch waist pants.

Taken heaps of photos, so I'll upload them once our internet is back up ( I'm at the local 'country club' which we get membership too because we live in the same little village)
IN other communication based news, our phone doesn't work which is so retarded- Merry Christmas Jeremy, you're now isolated from the outside world.
Thanks Santa.

Anyways, must be off... Will post more soon. And more often...
Merry Christmas to you all. Or 'Happy Holidays' as they say over here... Wankers. :)

JC

Before I forget..

Photos from the going away party.
Kudos must go the the almighty Gav who whilst not bringing his foosball table, did bring some visual entertainment.
I present for your viewing pleasure, Swan Lake as interpreted by Mr Gavin OBrien and Nathan Carter and presented in the medium of fire:

And the crescendo!Awesome stuff.
Cheers Gav!

Getting There...

So we arrived in Mt Snow a few days ago.
Nice place, although it is somewhat inaccurately named, I thought when I arrived.
Apparently this is the latest start to the season they've ever had. (Insert global warming rant here)
We got here around midnight on the Saturday after a 3-4 hr bus ride...
We then got dropped at our houses and have spent the last couple of days doing orientation stuff and sorting out administrative type things.

Anyway... boring boring boring...

So we got here and there was no snow. Except for a tiny bit of man made stuff... So I decided each night I'd take a picture and see the progress. So, from the last three nights, you can see we've had a heap of snowfall starting to occur.

4/12/06:

5/12/06:

6/12/06:

This is the view from our balcony. Which is also our beer fridge.
-10 degrees C makes for cold cans of beer.

I'll add more of these as the days pass.

Our house is pretty sweet... But it's kinda dormy- I have to share a room with Trento and we are going to have 8 people living in 4 bedrooms by next week.
Currently have a Brazillian girl and her boyfriend and one of his mates, as well as Trento, Pip and I... 2 more to come apparently...There's a bit of a language barrier with the guys, but it's probably our fault.
I mean, asking someone " Oi do youse want anyfin for dinner n shit? We're cookin up some sketti if youse wanna", would confuse even the most scholarly South American.

Had first day of training for Lift Ops today... quite interesting/cold... Should be good to see how long it takes us to get organised..

Apparently have a 7.30am start tomorrow, so I better go cos this is starting to drag on...

Will update again soon.

Enjoy the warm weather for me!

The trip so far... In pictures.

As you may have guessed, this is the view from the plane. Or it may be what an ant would see if it was taped to a boomerang.
Note the clouds. Yes... cloudy.


Sunset above the weather.




















The stock standard photo of Los Angeles International Airport landmark.... It's actually a restaurant called 'Encounters' so it's pretty insignificant... I guess by photographing it I'm just perpetuating the stereotype that it's something important




















Another wingtip picture. This time it's of the desert just out of California.
Riveting stuff. Looks much cooler from the plane.




















And finally, this is Boston College. I can't get over how much college here is completely like the movies... Everyone in their BOSTON COLLEGE sweaters. (Yes, sweaters) and the whole setting is so movie-like it's bizarre...
Here we can see Trento and Pip, simultaneously in different seasons, with Pip sporting summer threads and Trenton going for the Siberia chic look. It's actually really humid here today, so it's been quite good.

Just back at the apartment now, waiting for Trento's phantom baggage to get couriered here.

Gonna have me's a nap before heading out later this afternoon to see the Boston CBD.

It's begun...

So...
I'm overseas.
Flew out of good 'ol Melbourne on Thursday the 30th... Mum, Dad, Alex and Charlotte saw me off... Said goodbyes... Which was horribly, horribly hard...
And then we did the flying thing. In a plane.
Was a loooong flight, especially considering the United flight we were on didn't have much in the way of entertainment... the 'radio' channels repeated after 2 hrs, which is extremely repetitive on a 13hr flight...
Stopped in LA, which was really warm.... And people didn't understand what we were saying which was funny-
"No, we are trying to find somewhere to get something to eat."
"What's that sir"
"Fuck it, don't worry."
"Have a nice day sir."
So we finally found our connecting flight and then waited around for about 3 hrs.... Which was fun. In the way pushing a pen in your eye is fun.
Arrived in Boston at midnight. Trento's bag didn't. He's angry.... Useless airline....
We then got a crash course in Boston PT, with us rushing around frantically to get the last bus and train
("So we catch the T-line to the blue line, then we go inbound to the green line, then catch the T along the B line." Umm... ok.)
We made it to our destination, got some quality Pizza from Fast Eddie's who we realised worked even faster if you tip him an extra dollar or two.
Which reminds me, paper money is gay... 50's look like 1's... Who has notes for 1 dollar anyway? Global Superpowers apparently.
Also, cars come at you from the right, not the left. This was learnt with the assistance of a kind horn-beeping American.
Slept at a friend of a friend of Trento's, had a big cook up of bacon and eggs this morning. Going to check out Boston College today and have a look round the city... Will post some photos shortly.
Anyways, have stuff to do so will update again soon.
Have to remember to call thongs flip flops too..... Pip got a very strange look from a customs official when asking "Can i put my thongs back on now?"