The Orsum Adventures

Only 3 more days of the Lake Louise season. Even though we just had another 20cms of snow in the last 2 days. However, I did hear exciting news today, that they have decided to open for a bonus weekend. So technically, I have another 6 days to get my 180 grab and 360. There is still crazy amounts of snow considering they are closing! Nothing like the old Ruapehu season where you have to download on the lift to get to the bottom, after your 5 days on the hill, just paying off your season pass. I have done 45 days this season, and that only started in January. As I mentioned before though, it’s not the snow disappears it’s the people that do. Oh, and the bears come out. Haven’t seen one yet, but there have been lots of videos of them round the place. The ski hill has set up their bear fence to stop the bears coming down to the village. Although from all accounts, it’s sort of a token effort, the bears still get out and scare the pinic’ers.

And the picnic-ers have definitely arrived; tour buses of Asians are starting to arrive. Apparently this is nothing, Summer is crazy full of tour buses. It’s the change of seasons at the moment though, so it’s a bit lacking for things to do for the tourists. In Winter, Lake Louise has snowboard and ski, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, skateing, ice-climbing, back country touring and the ability to generally look at the beautiful scenery. In Summer, you can hike, tramp, camp, hire bikes, climb, play tennis, baseball, watch the wildlife and generally look at the beautiful scenery. However in Spring (which is usually one of the nicest times of year in a lot of places) there is a slushy hill to ride, roads to walk on (this may seem like an odd thing, but they are finally not covered in snow, ice or puddles), sporadic snowstorms and hotch-potch scared barren landscape to look at.
I still love it. There is nothing like the Rocky Mountains with a blue sky behind it.

We spent some time in Jasper recently, and unfortunately there wasn’t super blue sky, but it was a pretty amazing drive down the Icefields Parkway. This road, between Lake Louise and Jasper, is one of the 10 top cycle tours you can do in the world. I can see why… apart from the sore arse part of course. The scenery is spectacular. It stretches 232km through the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site, and through 2 National Parks. If any cyclist out there has the incline to do it, I can definitely recommend. It offers access to a vast wilderness of pristine mountain lakes, ancient glaciers and broad sweeping valleys.

Iain was there for work, so I went for a wander round the Lakes at the Jasper Park Lodge. There are some perks to Iain having a big kid job – sweet accommodation wherever we go basically. And at the moment, most of its for work related tasks, so its free. Then in the afternoon we went up to the Marmot Basin, which is Jaspers ski field. We met up with a couple of kiwi’s who are both working over here, Eve used to work at Wilson’s and Lou, her friend, who is now based in Invermere. We had a very fun day riding the park and hitting Marmot’s features cause the snow was a bit rubbish to do anything else, but it was fun to hang out in the sun and play in the slush.

So at the end of the season, we didn’t manage to make Whistler – I know people are letting out a gasp in horror. But when you have Louise in your back yard, for free basically, it’s hard to tear yourself away. Louise used to be considered biggest standalone mountain resort in Canada. Whistler-Blackcomb joined in 1997 and is now considered ‘one’ mountain resort because of its Peak-2-Peak gondola, so it now holds the record for largest skiable area in North America. But we still claim Lake Louise is the largest standalone. So anyway, history lesson over, no Whistler for us, but I guess all the more reason to come back to Canada. We may get to their mountain bike park though, now that we have the bikes for it. And yes Tim, specifically now that I have bike that the bolts are not going to fall out of them before I get to the bottom of the hill.

So this season Iain and I have got to Silverstar, Marmot, Revelstoke, Sunshine and Louise. Kicking Horse was a comedy of errors and we never made it, even though we tried, and Big White, Fernie and Red Mountain were just a bit far with no wheels. Great season, my knees are tired and need a break. Here in Louise we have had the biggest snowfall since records began! So can’t complain, it was a great year for us to choose to come.

So I know the reason most of you have come to the blog is to find out what’s going on. I think I have stretched it out enough.

Well after 30 months, I finally have no stitches in my finger. Yeah I’ve had a little spot on the inside of my finger, and then this morning a little blue piece of thread finally came out. I saved it on my dresser. Oh that’s not the story you wanted to know? Oh well, its true anyway.

So we decided seen as Iain has got such a good job here and we are still technically saving money, that we should just stay a little longer. Since we arrived in January, people have said to us on a regular basis that Winter is nice, but Summer is amazing. And our thought was, “well if the Winter we just experienced, was only considered ‘nice’, Summer must be incredible, and its worth sticking around for it, before we get to old, hagged and caught up in real-life to enjoy it”. So after a number of discussions with career managers, (thanks Mike you are a star ☺) and the travel agents (boo, Flight centre you are less of a star, more like a black hole, if we are going to stick with the astronomical references) we decided to stay for the Summer season too. So to celebrate, we brought bikes. Although Iain has a sweet ‘big kid’ job, my job has more than enough perks. Our bikes cost about $800 NZD each, (although you can’t get Devinci bikes in NZ), and I got them for both of us for about $800 NZD. Buy one bike get another one free! Haha, love it.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. So as of a couple of days ago, Iain and I will now be pushing out our year-long honeymoon, to an 18month honeymoon… with the possibility of a second ski season somewhere in Europe. But that is still undecided. Basically what is happening, from our end is that we will stay in Lake Louise until the end of the Summer season, probably October and then travel back to Vancouver to then fly to Montreal. Grab a car and travel all around the East coast of Canada and the States. Fly out of Montreal and then head to the ‘Motherland’. Although this is all dependant on Flight Centre pulling their finger out and actually providing a smidgen of support, I friggen paid enough for it. Apparently we are currently being ‘supported’ by the manager. I’m not sure what she’s managing, apart from my anger. But, she will get to enjoy a stern conversation with Iain tonight, and then probably a more effective angry conversation with me after Iain finishes discussing cupcakes and lollipops with her.

Pretext: Most of this is just rants loosely disguised as a blog. So, my old English teacher, Mrs. English (no piss take intended here, here name was legitimately Mrs. English), would be appalled that there is no linkage between paragraphs. But I thought it was easier to alert people to the appalling literature, than actually make an effort to correct it. Isn’t that the Generation Y way?

So much for Spring conditions. Yesterday in Lake Louise I considered wearing my goggles just to go to the market for bread. I was already wearing snowpants and boots. Sounds stupid, I know, but I definitely regretted not wearing them within about 100 meters from my house, when I attempted to make a peak out of my beanie just to see where my feet were going. Someone said the other day to me that the ski hill doesn’t close because it runs out of snow, its just that everyone else in the country starts enjoying summer and summer conditions and they stop coming to the hill. What? Am I meant to believe that the only things that do decide to come out here in Spring are bears? Oh yep. That’s it. No Calgarian weekend warriors any more, just bears and bus loads of Chinese tourists that perform their best impression of bears when it comes purchasing key rings and souvenir nicknacks.

I was going to mention the positive temperatures that we have been having. Which trust me, is pretty exciting when you realise that we have been in the negatives since January. It’s really hard to get used to saying…. ‘Its 4 degrees today’ and not having to add an ‘oh, I mean minus’, to every sentence. You just have a mutual understanding between all locals that the temperature will always be below zero, so you don’t make an effort with clarifying it, but now its such a novelty.

What is not a novelty, are the puddles that arrive from such warm weather. I have seen NZ puddles, and tropical Singaporian puddles, but this is another thing all together. These are not created by torrential downpour, like the above 2 places. These sneak up on you. Like a ninja-puddle. They lurk round corners on bright sun shiny days, ready to drench you without warning. You walk round the corner of a snowbank and there it is… 2 meters wide and the entire width of the carpark, stopping you from getting home to your house during your lunch break. Now what about your flash gumboots, I hear you say. Well friends, they are working a treat to combat against the terrible case of ninja-puddles Lake Louise is currently experiencing. However, the sunny-ness and warm temperatures lull you into a false sense of security, making you think that the brief 5 minute stroll will be fine, no need for gumboots on a day that would give Wellington Summer a run for its money….

And then, with nun-chucks in hand, the ninja-puddles cause your sneakers to slip and your socks to be the last line of defence against the icy water. And then as if it wouldn’t get any worse, the driveway wide puddle still stands between you and your delicious ham sandwich. You do the only thing you can think of, (without turning back to retrieve your rubber friends), you begin a 5 step process. First, you assess the puddle, find the narrowest part. Secondly, you take 3-4 steps back onto the road. The third step is to assume the Olympic track sprinter position and start running toward the puddle. Then like Chantal Brunner (come on, don’t pretend like you don’t remember her), step 4 is the long jump of you life, flying over the ninja-puddle, soaring like an eagle over the water, only to end in Step five. I think you can imagine what step 5 is. A short 20 metre walk to your change your shoes, socks and pants.

After dealing with NZ banks for a very long period of my life, I thought no other group of banks could be more incompetent. Well, thank you Canada. You have proved me wrong. Now to all of you who are out of work or looking for new employment, lets see if you could get a job in the Canadian Banking industry. The answer to one question will indicate whether you have the intellect to look after hundreds of thousands of peoples money. If I was in Canada, working in Canada and set up a Canadian bank account with a Canadian EFTPOS card in Canada, what country would you send my bank card to? If you answered New Zealand, then congratulations the Royal Bank of Canada will be contacting you for an interview. Actually lets be honest, if you answered any country other than Canada get your visas sorted, they’ll still want you – maybe even more!

A couple of weeks ago Iain and I took a trip to Calgary to partake in a kiwi experience, in a Canadian way. We jumped in our enormous (rented) truck (read huge ute), donned check flannel shirts, drove through Timmy Hortons and made our way down the Trans-Canada…. To play netball. It was an interesting experience. I played for 3 different teams but mostly was there to help out their U23 provincial team. It would be an awesome thing to get involved in if I lived closer to Calgary, it’s a bit hard being this far out. But because they only have about 4 ‘A’grade (yep, the inverted comma’s are intentional), in all of Alberta, they get to be involved in some pretty sweet trips. One of the mixed teams that is a mixture of Kiwi’s and Ozzies, are on their way to Las Vegas for a tournament later on in the year. Sweet huh?

What else is on the board Miss Ford? Iain is still in plaster, but has been riding anyway, still avoiding the dishes. I am off to a Roxy Ride Camp this weekend, I intend to get a 360 by the end of the weekend. Its making me mad now, just want to stop wussing out. The camp is this Saturday, and is for girls to learn park, and in my case, for someone famous in Snowboard circles to tell me to hurry up and stop being chicken.

Oh, went back to Brunette. Not 100% how I feel about it. I know I am a brunette, and spent probably 23 odd years as one. But I did really get used to being a blonde. Well, dirty cheat blonde. One of the biggest impacts it has had that I didn’t consider is the extended period of time it has been since I have seen a suntan… well, other than the 5 o’clock goggle shadow that I am slowly acquiring. The consequence of this hair choice is from the bridge of my nose up, I look like I should have been cast in the 6th Sense.

Today Iain and I had a wonderful date day - it's wierd to have to have dates when you're on honeymoon. But for the time being I work Sat-Tues and he works Mon-Fri. SO today being Good Friday, we had a wonderful day chilling out. Riding together, beering together, pizzaing together and getting into trouble together. It was great. Photos to come, promise.

Happy Easter to all, don’t work too hard. I finally realise the whole Spring-Easter-bunny, thing. I never realised that it was odd to have it in autumn. I guess I just thought we always have problems with the rabbit population.

Just when I thought my life in snowy Lake Louise was being replaced with spring puddles and mud, I have stood corrected. Although the days have been getting to a balmy 0 degrees, it is still filled with snow flurries and massive snow dumps overnight. In the last week we have had 61 cms of snow and the week before we had 91.

Unfortunately this tends to fall whilst I am at work and Iain free to ride to his hearts content. However karma caught up with him today. After dropping into a bowl this morning he decided to try and snowboard through a rock and tumbled until his wrist broke his fall. Literally. A little trip to Banff and a bright blue cast later, Iain will not be practicing his 180’s for another 3-4 weeks. I know I should be a sympathetic wife, but my sympathy only extends to feeding him nice food, and trying not to laugh while he attempts to do up the zip on his jacket.

On a lighter note, we have mostly spent the last 3 weeks working and riding. Every day off we have been up the hill. It’s a pretty tough way to live. Ride, ride, ride, earn, earn, earn. Last week I woke up to 26cms of pow overnight and I rang work and said, “You know how I start at 10? How about I start at 1 instead?” Canada, eh? Can’t complain. Definitely didn’t have that sort of flexibility with my YDU critters. Jeez, if I tried to have 3 hours off, there would have been only 2 trainees left when I came back.

My boss had an idea the other day to go into the campground after work, drink beer, make hotdogs and smores on the fire in the hut. The only difference from a normal NZ version of this is that we had to snowshoe there. Awesome, and of course, the Orsum’s don’t follow the path, we trek our own. It was hip deep in places. I still am not sold on the usefulness’s of snowshoes. I’m pretty sure getting a piggyback ride from Ronald McDonald would be more effective.

Iain and I have both had trips to Revelstoke in the last couple of weeks; Iain with Cammy (our best man), and me with a group of ski instructors from Norquay. Iain and Camm had some massive pow and I think we broke Camm. I had less pow and I definitely broke myself… been to the massage therapist this week and her response was, “I’m going to need significantly more than 45 minutes to fix you”. At least I found out my numb foot is not nerve damage, which is a positive start, doesn’t make it any less numb though.

I have been doing a snowboard coaching clinic every week, which has lead me to drop my first 6 foot rock, and stomp my first 180 off a jump.

Iain’s job has been going well, but he has been definitely chucked in the deep end. There have been some serious techy issues since his arrival on the scene, which have meant a couple of late callouts, but that’s the life of an LET I guess. Unlike an LET though, Iain and I have enjoyed the perks of his Fairmont gig. Discounts on food and wine, free nights in the Banff Springs… mmmm… perfect. Maybe the Defence force morale would be higher if everyone got some port at a discounted price. Oh they do? Oh… don’t know I’m all out of ideas then.

What else has been going on? Bugger all to be honest.

Yesterday a man came into work, and he was… to put it nicely…. A jackass.
Everything I told him or explained to him was apparently wrong, and then after I decided to stop talking about the products he was looking at, and just be polite, I was still wrong. I asked him where he was from and he said Calgary. I explained I went there recently for the first time, and he said “How could it be your first time, obviously you would have flown into there…. Jeez”. To this I explained, yes actually it was my first time. Although it may seem completely far-fetched to him in his Calgary-centred universe, I actually travelled from Vancouver, across to Lake Louise. I thought this might have put him in his place. However he managed to get one last kidney punch in before he left. He asked me if I enjoyed Calgary (which I didn’t, but I was still trying to be polite), so I said, “Yes it was nice, I actually really enjoyed your Zoo, we spent a few hours there” and his response was…“ What are you? A child?”
WTF? Who gets so old and grinchy that they stop loving the Zoo… little did he know my love affair with the Zoo. Since then we have decided we should have a sign in the store saying that if you are rude, impolite or just plain intolerable you will be charged a $5 douchebag tax. I think it is only fair.

Anyway onto the subject at hand. Today is the first day Iain and I are both working! He has jumped out of the house-husband role and straight back into a shirt and tie. Ha! And while he is wearing that, I’m wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Vampires are the new black’ to work today… ah bless I love the chilled outness of the civvy world…. Well at least the chilled outness of Wilson Mountain Sports world.

Since we spoke last, yep I have been sleeping more, and not feeling the need to write blogs in the middle of the night. We have spent a fair amount of time at the hill, although we have had 11 beautiful sunshiney days. Which is nice for the tourists, but rubbish for the snowpack, most of the backside is unbearable. Unless you enjoy snowboarding in what I can only describe as the hard mashed potato still left in the bottom of the pot after you leave it out overnight. Although this judder bar effect has meant that both Iain and I have spent a lot of our time perfecting switch and starting to hit the park more regularly. Don’t worry mum, I have a rule that I don’t hit any jumps that have metal in the landing area, so no rails or tabletops… its just tempting fate really, and I enjoy having a full mouth of teeth.

As I mentioned earlier, we decided at the last minute last week to go spend a couple of days in Calgary, as the snow was not really worth going up the hill for my whole 3 days off. So we drove out of the rockies to find the plains. Crazy. What seems like just round the corner and over the crest is the end of the mountains and a long flat brown expanse. Calgary is a fake city; everything seems generated to let people reside in a location in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and the horizon.

We went to the Olympic Park, where the Winter Olympics were held in the 80’s. It still exists, and is probably still a reasonable money maker, however to see snow just off the motorway, when the rest of the land looks like Waiouru in summer is an oddity. It is fully decked out with a full park arrangement including 2 half pipes, ski jumps that are built into towers (as it lacks enough altitude to get a jump high enough for Olympic standards), and a bobsled track. For those of you who may have watched the movie Cool Runnings many years ago and may have not been old enough to read the small print, I recommend you sit down. Cool Runnings is based on a true story! Well not the lucky egg part or having John Candy as your coach but the whole Jamaica going to the Winter Olympics’ as a bobsled team was real, and all played out in the Calgary bobsled track. Crazy huh? We even spent time looking at the corner that they blew out on in the final. Jeez, I would have fallen down and rattled my little head around the tin can too! It’s one of only 6 tracks in the world that have a corner that goes most of the way around a circle.

Anyway, apart from working, going to Calgary and snowboarding up the hill – what else have we been doing I hear you say. Well, Iain and I have been practicing our cross country skiing, waiting for the snow to come back (we had a bit of a dump this afternoon) and all round just experiencing the life of Lake Louise.
We went to a charity event up at the Chateau to win ourselves some pretty sweet prizes, we have had an evening drinking hot chocolate with rum outside around a fire, sitting on a snow amphitheatre in one of my workmates back yard.
My boss organised a Lake Louise Resort familiarisation for me and my work mates up the hill on Friday last week, its pretty awesome to have a day of snowboarding with instruction with free lunch and drinks all day, don’t mind if I do, thank you very much ☺

So from here on in we are back to being big kids, earning a wage and paying taxes. Although with 3 days off a week, I will definitely be making the most of the snow, even if Iain is back to 9-5. And with snow in the forecast, it’s hard to wipe the smile off my face, even when I have to deal with special people from Calgary.

Here are some photos from the last little while

Welcome folks, 

To another installment from Kayleigh "the bread winner" Orsum. Writing the blog has been on Iain's "househusband" list for over a week, but it turns out snowboarding on bluebird days is more important than letting our friends and family know about our travels. Buh! So here I am at at 5:43am putting together a few snippits of the last couple of weeks before the day starts. 

So what's been on the board Miss Ford since we left you last I hear you ask. Well, last week we moved into Lake Louise Village. After 4 weeks in Banff looking for work and enjoying the touristy part of life, we are finally settled in a house, with drawers and an oven. Small things I know. But when you haven't had any of these in over 50 days, you start to appreciate the little things. 

After the last blog we were based in the B&B in Banff for another week, however this was mostly just to hold our stuff as we went road tripping out to Revelstoke. This is a mountain resort about 3 and a bit hours west from here. Deep powder and the largest vertical drop in the Rockies was calling out my name. It didn't disappoint either, we had 2 fantastic days there. Although the irresistible powder and glades were hard work. Also due to a one on one with McStabby the tree (which I lost), everything was a little more painful than it should have been. But all and all, a good trip which I imagine will be repeated  again soon. 

The next part of our journey was meant to be to Kicking Horse in Golden - about an hour from here - before returning home. However as things often do, this did not quite go according to plan. Instead of snowboarding on one of the steepest mountains in the Rockies, we learnt how to dig a car out of a snow drift with someone else's skis. We also learnt to not bother being courteous to Canadian drivers when crossing a snow covered pass, as they will not be courteous to you by coming to help when you have beached your rental car. I thank Neil Muncey for teaching me all of these facts in life, very much appreciated. Instead we reached Golden at about 2 pm and boarded.... a bus back to Banff, instead of the hill. 

We arrived back in Banff to hire a rental car and move out to Lake Louise. For those of you who haven't experienced the magic of this place let me enlighten you. It is a protected National Park about 57 kms North of Banff. The only people who can live in the park are those who work there, so it's a wee little community surrounded by snow and free transport to the biggest mountain resort in the Rockies. Woohoo. 

Why did we move into the 'whops', instead of staying in Banff? Well one of there reasons was that I was offered a job at Wilson's Mountain Sports. I hear you saying, "but Kayleigh, weren't you also offered a job in Banff in retail?", and yes you would be right. It was an assistant manager position at a place not unlike Portmans or Max. For those of you that know me, can you really imagine me being diplomatic and sincere enough to work in a place like that? The manager told me one of the benefits of working there was the free samples from Lush next door.... To quote any of my ex-trainees "Yeah, nah".

So when I received an email from Bill at Wilson's asking if I was still looking for a job I jumped at the opportunity. With one email, I had a job and a place to live for both Iain and I. Done and done. It's a deal, a steal, a sale of the blimmen century too. $400 a month (that's right, you did read that correctly, a month) fully furnished with power, sat tv, heating, everything included. Pretty good huh? Can't complain - hey as I said earlier, I was excited about drawers! 

I work 40 hours a week, 4 days on with a 3 day snowboarding weekend every week. It's pretty awesome, and there are always people to ride with as the shop is full of fun outgoing, sporty people who are here in Lake Louise for the same reason Iain and I are. 

Since then, Iain has been offered a big kid's job at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise just up the road. Look it up on Google images, you will be impressed. He is working as the Systems Manager and is in sole charge of the computer systems and techy stuff at the hotel. However he doesn't start until next Monday, so he's still got a few more days to be a househusband and cook me dinners when I get home. If it wasn't for the salary he was bringing in against my hourly wage, I could get used to him slaving away in the kitchen for me. 

Anyway I best fly, one more hour of sleep now before I get to get up and earn the bacon. I'm sure Iain will read this blog and add another one with the things I have missed, considering I am typing this on an iPhone, I'm sure there will be lots of additions. Although i think the next blog will be mostly an attempt to reinstate any of his man cards, I assume.