its good to be back in vancouver. hailed for its natural beauty, its majestic landscapes, and unmatched ski resorts, i find the city is still living behind a mask. besides spending the weekend at whistler, this time i had a chance to spend some time in urban downtown. my first impression of downtown on the outside is its cleanliness. vandalism, littering, and other pollution is at their minimal, but what i find beneath it all is the problem of the people. on vancouver's main streets, i witness countless number of people without direction lingering on street corners, huddling outside of closed vendors, or sitting in groups on stairways. on the other street, i see prostitutes lined up in groups of 10, looking barely 20 years old. you may call these people homeless, but on the outside, they look like normal people, dressed in clean clothing. but as i drive through the same street in the late hours of night, i still see the same people standing around doing nothing. compared to the homeless in Los Angeles, the homeless here still keep their composure and a friendly attitude. what a wonderful city, with a dark interior.
vancouver's airport is designed like an oversized indian lodge. there are totem poles, tribal insignia, and waterfalls everywhere with green carpeting and wooden hues. i felt as if i was in a forest when i exited the gate. these feelings of refresh ended, when i learned that my snowboard was not on the same flight i was on. as nice as these canadians were trying to console me, i was still bummed. the previous night i spent hours waxing, tuning, sharpening my board just to spend a fraction of a day on north america's #1 ski resort and now someone is telling me that i may not receive my board in time. well, i cant do anything about it and being angry wont help either. ill try to make the weekend the best i can. that night, my brother and his friends picked me up in this brand new, fully loaded, rental ford explorer (that turned to shit when we returned it). we drove to the holiday inn in north vancouver which this time, looked like a french chateau with stone walls and blue roofing. inside were pictures of celebrities that have stayed on the premises and to my surprise, i see a picture of shania twain; one of my favorite entertainer. after dropping all our luggage off, we head to downtown to find dinner with our trusty GPS that came with the rental car. for some reason, the GPS had a mind of its own and started to lead us to the wrong destinations. thanks to the wrong directions, we wasted about 2 hours and that by that time, everything was already closed. luckily, we ran into a place called Earls and had a nice dinner with canadian red wine. when youre vacationing, its always better to eat at unique place by chance.
the next morning, my snowboard was on my bed. my brother told me he picked it up from the front desk at 5am. i was excited like a kid on christmas day. so that was cool. like always, it was raining. it isnt normal for vancouver to not be raining. the drive to whistler is one of the most breathtaking of all north america. the road is treacherous at times, but the views of greenery and unending masses of conifierous trees makes up for the 1.5 hours. by noon, we arrived at whistler, the mecca of snowboarding and skiing. mammoth looks like a city park playground compared to whistler being disneyland. with its famous 7-mile run, and backcountry skiing, i was sure not to waste my time. whistler has racked up 38 feet of snow just this season alone, and with this amount of snow, avalanches arent rare. everyday, whistler experiences a miniature avalanche at its higher elevations, but that was the least of my worries. i was worried that i wasnt gonna take advantage of all its acreage. on the first run, all of us took the gondola up to the peak. it was so high that it was passed the treeline and we were above the clouds. we stepped off the gondola as if we were on an ice planet since the only color as far as my eyes can see is white and not even trees can survive on this elevation. the weirder thing was, when you are actually snowboarding down, you dont know how fast you are going because you cant compare anything like the matrix. all you hear is the wind getting louder in your ears as you accelerate. so sometimes i would hit a soft mogul that i couldnt see and eat shit. so off we go on our 7 mile run and it took us at least 45 minutes to get to the bottom where in our local mountains of LA, it would take me about 2 minutes max. to get a picture of how much skiiable area there are, for the 4 hours we were at whistler, we only took the lifts 3 times and the rest of the time was spent riding in heaven.
that night was spent recovering in the hotel's jacuzzi and eating fresh sushi. i cant tell you how good the feeling is when the outside temperature is snowing and you are in a cozy hot tub. vancouver is also famous for its fresh fish. with all the abundant rivers and unpolluted ocean waters results in abundant sushi bars. it makes sense. we indulged in sweet sake and sashimi the size of porterhouse steaks and the best thing yet, it they came with a small price tag. i will definitely miss the sushi and snowboarding of canada.
sporting the canadian colors
chair to heaven: this is what i meant when everything is white
down in whistler village
