Road Trip part#2

After a long week of work, the urge to hit the road was strong again in my soul. I was in need of a fix, and I knew exactly where I had to go.

Back in November I had attended the snow-show at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, where they had ballots to win a day pass for two at Fernie Mountain Resort. Three people won and I was one of them!

It's been 5 months and I had yet to use this pass that expires at the end of the 08-09 ski season. Did I mention that the end of the season is tuesday April 14th?

In other words, it was time for a second road trip.

The cast was different for this event. Barbie and Bikini Barbie were out, Mark and Random Aussie Karin were in.

But first, it was Easter in Calgary!

This Road trip began on Saturday night. The youth from church were having a hockey night in Canada party, including poutine, pizza, road hockey and the flames vs. Oilers game. They've heard of my love of hockey and asked if I'd like to attend. An invitation to which I joyfully accepted! The night was great, even as we played through the cold rain. My team took an early lead to start, but then they did the unthinkable... A goaltender change. The new kid was a superstar. Nothing worked on this kid! I tried deaks, shots through screens, pulling him to one side with a drop pass to a team mate for the open net... We couldn't beat him. We had to focus so much on offense that our defense fell apart.

We lost 10-8.

But that was just the start of the weekend road trip. Now I was off to Calgary. I made it to Jerry and Nancy's just in time to see the girls plucking their eyebrows...

I went straight for the hot tub.

The searing pain of 104 degree water! Perfect to relax my aching muscles after the arduous hockey match! Ahhhhh.

Easter Sunday Morning, Church. I was sad that I was missing Church in Banff as my pastor had been preaching through John for the last... Well, quite a while, and I was sure he'd have a great sermon prepared.

Instead I listened to a pastor talk about how we miss Jesus in our lives... His passage to base his sermon on was the resurection from Mathew, and how Mary Magdaleen went to the tomb and didn't find Jesus's body...

In ther words, I wasn't impressed with the sermon, I thought it wasn't even bassed in scripture and was a waste of time to listen to, as others in the congregation must have felt as well, as I looked and saw 6 men either sleeping or just resting their eyes!

David, I read your blog and here is one thought of mine: our generation is looking for a reason to believe the Bible is factual and truth, as we have been bombarded with political correctedness and acceptance of others and their religions. We have been taught to challenge authority and question why things are the way they are. We are in the y generation... Because we ask "why"

Now, I think many pastors out there are great speakers, but as this pastor did this past Easter, he talked about nothing from the bible, but from his own experience. Now, I don't doubt that he's been through some great adventures that I'd love to hear about, but I'm at church to hear God's word.

I think many Pastors need to get back to the word and open it up for the church. The Bible is so intricate and detailed that if you just take the time to reveal what is already writen, the sermon will write itself and our generation will understand why and what is in the bible. We don't need to argue theology, just dig into the word and see what is there.

Anyway, that's enough of a tangent when I'm supposed to writing about a road trip! (I also agree that there needs to be more relationships between young and old)

So, back to my story.

After church it was time for the Annual Easter Egg Hunt, which this year I was privilaged to be a part of! It was Boys against Girls in the ultimate battle of the sexes, challenging wit, endurance and stamina. We were given clues to locations around the property and we had to find our way around.

Now did I mention it was boys vs. Girls? And I live in lake louise, Dan lives in Red deer and Jesse, (Mels bf) well, he doesn't live at the farm either. So, we were at a serious disadvantage!

We went through the clues slowly, made sure we thought about them and worked our way from one clue to the next. Eventually we came to a clue saying "find me in the onace, no - not the ocean"

We couldn't solve it.

We starred blakly at each other. I thought it was the make of one of their tractors or some equipment... But wat is a uneco? Or an eco-na?

We decided to re-convene in the barn. In the barn is a whiteboard, so we started writting out all the 120 ways the 5 letters can be arranged...

Have you figured it out yet? Jesse gave up and started calling Nancy to see if he could get another clue. Just as he was calling, I figured it out: canoe...wow... Did I ever feel... "Slow"

Off to the pond we went to find the final clue, all while hearing the heckling from the girls. We finished the challenge a full two clues ahead of the girls! We celebrated by eating our chocolates on the deck watching the girls finish the hunt!

After dinner it was time to get on the road to fernie. I drove to the otherside of calgary to meet up with Mark and Karin and we aimed the car for fernie.

But we've got bad aim...

An hour later we were only at the south end of Calgary, still 4 hours from Fernie. As I write this in the car on our return trip, we just made the turn that we missed on the way to fernie. Like literally... As I typed... How ironic? I know that's the wrong word, but I'm short on vocabulary today.

But... With the handy google maps that comes with a blackberry, a tim hortons coffee and a number of mixed cd's, we managed to make it to fernie around 11:30pm. At this point we weren't even sure if the hill would beopen as we heard on the radio that it was Fernie's last day! We were a little nevous that we just did a 4 hour trip for the joy of eachothers company.

In the morning we rose early to venture out to see what Fernie has to offer. It was open!!! We discovered that it's a big hill, not nearly the vertical or size of Lake Louise, but spread wide with a lot of challenging terrain.

The days have been warm, and there was some really heavy, packy snow that had fallen overnight.

This possed some problems for my posse.

I managed to get through the day with-out falling. I had a few close calls, and lost a ski once... But that's nothing compared to Mark and Karin who managed to fall 3-4 times every run! One of marks last falls was simply spectacular!

We were cruising pretty quiickly down the hill on one of the last runs of the day. The conditions were the best we had all day. So we let lose and pointed the tips of our skiis at the bottom of the hill. It wasn't long before we were going, as some describe it, Mach 10!

That's when it happened. First I saw a ski left behind. How can mark stay up a this speed on one ski? Well, he couldn't.

Another ski left behind.

You might ask how can Mark survive with-out a ski at Mach 10, well, we don't know! All I can say is that I couldn't see mark in all the snow. It was a big plume of snow everywhere! When it settled back down, there were two skiis on the hill, and a completely white body far off down the hill, he was completely covered in snow, save the biggest smile I've ever seen on his face. Somehow he survived the crash, and he seemed to enjoy what happened!

We did one more run and called it a day. It was time to drive the 4 hours back home.

More coffee and music for the return trip, but this time we don't need the google maps!