A White Easter and the Ski Bunny

Easter was a real watershed this year. It marked the beginning of the end of winter here and the end of my good friend Ed's life on earth, which I was only aware of later.

It was also the beginning of two new relationships in Calgary and my reunion with Giles from New York.

There are several ski resorts on this side of the mountains, the three big ones being Sunshine, Kicking Horse and Lake Louise. Lake Louise was too far to travel to by myself without a car for the day. The same applied to Kicking Horse, with the additional reason that I am a crap skiier and I didn't want to find out why it was called "Kicking Horse". That left Sunshine.

Sunshine. An appropriate name for my new happy place. There was an express daily coach that left from downtown Calgary to Sunshine every day and I decided that Good Friday and Saturday would be good days to go with a recovery day on Sunday with my friend Giles, who would be visiting from New York.

It was a snowy morning in Calgary on Good Friday when I walked the 20 mins from home to downtown to catch the bus. I think I was the only person not carrying their own equipment. If I had any doubt as to where the bus was leaving from I knew I was on the right track when I caught up with a tall, well-built black man carrying his ski gear and wearing comical (but cool) pink bunny ears, also on his way to the stop.

There were not many people waiting for the bus. One of them was a friendly- looking blue- eyed brunette, with a wide-eyed smile for 7am in the morning, slender in her ski gear. She could pass all her equipment from glove to glove and upswing to her shoulder in one fluid motion whilst talking. This was Karen.

By comparison, when I got to Sunshine and rented my gear, I looked puffy in my puffy pants, dropped one ski, hit myself in the head with my poles and resembled a scolosis sufferer with plaster of paris feet when walking in my boots, rather than the casual moon-boot saunter the beautiful Canadians have been doing since birth.

Karen is an amazing woman. Educated, articulate, beautiful and completely unpretentious. We hit it off immediately and despite 7 am being my most homicidal time of day, we chatted easily in her native English. She was from Ontario and could have conducted the conversation almost as easily in French, but from my side it would have been restricted to, "We go now to make shopping/ sleeping/ eating with my red nose and where is the chocolate?". She was completely nonplussed about my crap skiing abilities and helpfully informed me what to do once we arrived to beat the crowds. Oh, she's a black run skiier. Which in Australia alone, would have impressed the socks off my frozen toes.

In Canada they give double black diamond skiiers like Karen an avalanche beacon, a collapsable shovel and a probe and tell them to go off and have "safe" fun. These ski runs look vertical from a distance off the highest parts of the mountains. The only way of accessing them is to trek up the mountain. The only thing more extreme is to be dropped ala James Bond by helicopter.

The avalanche beacon is to set off a radio signal if you're buried under 20 feet of snow so the rescuers can find you. It also acts as a key to unlock the gates to the higher slopes and records your entry. The shovel is to dig your own way out of the snow to avoid the "embarrassment" of being rescued. The probe is to find out exactly how much (trouble you're in) snow you're buried under.

We parted ways at the resort and I got my gear before going up the gondola for the 20 mins to get to the ski hills. I loved the gondola. It looked like a space'n'time capsule suspended on a flying fox cable. I wanted to be shot into space.

In Australia I was just getting into blue runs skiing 2 years ago when I last went. This time it was green all the way. I love the names of the runs. If you're a gumby skiier like me you take the Strawberry Triple Chair (which runs parallel to the Ski School tow) to Sunshine Meadows and you amble your way back to the saloon pub down Meadow Lane. Of course when I got to the saloon pub I heard a bunch of 19 year old male snowboarders ordering beer and saying, "How long did it take you to go down the Goat's Eye? Dude, the Mother-in-Law is bitchin' today with fresh powder, let's do that after lunch".

The Mother in Law. Named so because it is one of the toughest runs on the hill. I'd like to see them even out the score, because there's no run named after Dad. How about on Father's day next year Sunshine names a new black diamond run. I call it, Dad On Porch with a Shotgun, or Dad's Shottie for short.

Skiing is not for me. I am neither elegant enough, rich enough, long limbed enough, Canadian enough or disciplined enough for the boots, which caused me severe lower leg and calf pain by lunchtime because I couldn't straighten my knees. It had never been that bad before. I took the maximum legal limit of codeine, found a hot chocolate and retired gracefully by 3pm to watch the scenery. If there weren't so many Australian staff on the hill, I would've ridden the gondola the rest of the day just for fun.

I still don't know if I am cool enough for snowboarding. Nobody likes a tryhard. But everyone likes someone willing to give a new something a go. I signed up for snowboarding beginner's all-day workshop for the next day and Karen and I reunited and chatted our way back to Calgary on the bus. We cemeted our new friendship by going to our homes, showering and meeting at the old Barley Mill pub for a well-deserved bottle of red. I conveniently chose to forget that I needed to be up by 6am the next morning and stayed out until midnight.

My first Canadian girlfriend made all by myself. I was making progress.

Now you may be wondering where was Laura? Well I did not desert her. That same weekend she took a few extra days off to do her self-titled "Giants of the Prairies" trip, driving around Alberta to see the Big Cowboy Hat, the Big Beaver, the Big Boot etc. It was a strange "to do" list. But the photos are great.