Out and Aboot

I'd been letting the world traveller team down a bit recently, with a large, work-shaped void where the requisite island hopping, mountain hiking and snow chucking should be. My wallet has made it off the saline drip and is back on solid foods again, but about the most authentically Canadian experience I'd had recently was Tim Hortons doughnuts, and that's never going to make great storytelling material for the grandkids.

So, I got my butt up to Whistler for a day of spring snowboarding. The snow isn't as good as in the middle of winter, but in a place like Whistler, it's still pretty decent. My partner in crime was an old school friend of mine, Cam, who had just finished a season as a ski instructor out at Big White. His snowboarding skills were still relatively unradical though, which meant that we could trundle about on the green runs all day without him getting too bored. We had a great day, spending about five hours on the mountain, before utter exhaustion claimed me. Although I'd avoided any major crashes, my legs had completely turned to jelly. Luckily we had only planned the one day boarding, since I was basically unable to walk after that point. We grabbed the bus back to Vancouver, and were playing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 on my couch by 10pm.

My legs actually felt worse the day after our outing, and even worse the day after that. The technical term for this strange situation is DOMS (Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness) and tends to suck pretty badly. I can see that it might be useful trait on the prehistoric savannah, where surviving two days beyond being chased by a large wild animal would mean that one's body could finally catch up on its healing, but it made my Monday morning pretty brutal. The boarding was well worth it though, and there will be a picture gallery soon.