This post is a little icky... readers of a delicate constitution probably shouldn't read it.
I have one more resolution. Never, ever eat chicken pasta at the Whistler roundhouse again. It was all going so well - another day of lessons in the hope of transforming myself from a talentless amateur into a talentless amateur with marginally less money but a nice shiny badge with my forename on it.
After a morning of not falling over we retired to the roundhouse for lunch. Since I can count the number of 'proper' meals I've eaten since arriving in Canada on the fingers of one hand, I elected to actually eat something while trying out my new grasp of the Canadian language on the solitary local in our party.
"Fer-sher-ay?" I volunteered. She looked at me strangely and asked me which part of Australia I came from.
The chicken pasta began to work its magic on the chairlift to the summit. As I slid off the chairlift I was painfully aware that last night's snack and lunchtime's meal were about to do a comeback tour through any available orifice. And the nearest bathroom was a long, long way away.
"You ski good today, yes!" called the instructor in her thickly Japanese accented voice, "Very fast! Very good!"
We'd reached the first waypoint, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to wait for the rest of the group and still maintain my dignity as well as the virgin whiteness of the snow. I explained the situation to the instructor replete with actions for the words she didn't understand (I'm damn good at charades), locked my skis parallel and rocketed down runs I wouldn't have dared tackle an hour earlier.
I spent the solitary journey on the gondola back to the mid-station curled up on the floor and then did something of which I'm rather ashamed on the final gondola run. By coincidence, I was sharing a gondola with a paramedic and an unfortunate child with a broken arm (snow-boarders, tch) The medic peered at me: "Are you ok, man?"
I cast dignity aside - my pasty face and the frozen sweat on my forehead had betrayed me: "No. I'm not. I ate something at lunch that hasn't agreed me and if this gondola doesn't get down NOW its going to get messy..."
This started the kid puking (shock of the broken limb, I guess) and the medic hauled open the door and held her over the edge. My delicate stomach decided to join in - I did say I was going to try following the crowd, remember?
When we'd finished the medic peered down at the damage.
"I wish you guys had waited until we'd got over the trees" he sighed.
If you were skiing down from mid-station to the village this afternoon, I'm really, really sorry, ok?
