The Dynamiters cause an explosive punch up in Section O!

Saturday 27th Dec, not sure was too busy worrying about vocabulary.

Oh My God! Liana calmly mentioned last night that I had a request private this morning. What she forgot to tell me was that it was with French speaking people who are at level 2 riding standard!!!!! With 15 minutes before class started I was running round the resort looking for a french speaker who knew the word for snowboard, ah it's "du snowboard" that's ok. But what about bindings and edges and "transfer your weight onto your front foot" and all the other posture related sentances I never had use for in Bordeaux. Agggggggggghhhhhhhh, HELP! This was going to be another "stoopiid ingleesh" moment, and I thought that was all over when I finished my placement year.

Well Mary-Lou and Jeremie turned out to be very sweet kids and were hugely helpful where my vocabulary was lacking. We all had a good time and my level 2 training out in Fernie came back to me enough to give a lesson on balance. My heart was still beating ten to the dozen as the hour finished though, and I was terrified to learn they wanted me to take them for the following 2 mornings!

The rest of the day was less stressful with two Canadian boys that only wanted me to explain things to them in English and were learning to slide on their heel edges (what a doddle!). Christian had a three hour lesson that bridged lunch and as my last shift of the day was free I went off for a ride down the back side of the hill with Trevor and Jackie. It was cool to see more of the resort, ride the other lifts and to find powder (something the main run is lacking as the volume of riders work something like a windscreen wiper on ice, removing all the fun stuff and turning all the steeps into ice sheets).

This playtime was not, however, without it's moments of tension. Approaching the Easter chair for the first time, Adrian rides down with a class of Kruisers and asks me to take one of them up the lift. "Sure thing" I say with the confident cheerful grin of an instructor. "Hey there big man, are you gonna ride the lift with me?" I say as we approach the chair lift. Lined up and ready to get on I'm smiling away at the thought of another powder run when the liftie says "You'll need to lift him up, the chair is too high". Now had I known this more than 2 seconds before the chair appeared behind my kneepits I would have been fine, however I did not. The little skier was stood behind me and so with my board strapped to my right foot I had to twist 180 degrees and lift him up at the very second that the lift scooped us up. I was sat down but as the lift left the ground my little lift mate was still dangling without his bottom on the seat. Fortunatly he wasn't heavy and so dropping him was no risk but Trevor had to reach across me to get him onto the seat. Phew! Close one!

On the lift the 3 of us played, catching snowflakes in our mouths and wisely as we approach the top I remembered that I probably ought to lift him down too. I twist round to pick him up and place him down on the run out. He slides down perfectly, no worries. I however had not got off the lift and was now suspended 6 foot in the air with children pointing, saying things like "Mummy look, there's an instructor who can't use the chair lift". Trying to still look cool I jump off the chairlift landing in a pile of powder. I was so pleased to find a group of my friends free riding who had decided to stop for a rest right by the lift. I won't be living that one down!

Powder Riding with Trevor and Jackie

Jackie and I picked up Christian after his lesson and got one last run in before the day was over.

Tuesday 30th Dec, around -10 and pleasant

The past 2 days at the resort have been super busy. Everyone is out on the hill. We have had full days of lessons and are always tired at the end of the day. Lunches are not sacred here and Christian and I have sometimes forgotten who each other are by home time. Despite this mad rush, we are still enjoying teaching people (even the French ones) and we know we will be grateful for the wages in the quiter periods. We treated ourselves to a take-out pizza from Grubstake last night, as the Frenchies gave me a tip, and it was very yummy and there's even enough left for a couple of lunches.

This evening we had all arranged to go to the community center for the ice hockey, to watch the Kimberley Dynamiters in their local grudge match against the Fernie Ghostriders. Initially Christian and I were torn as to who to support, having watched the Riders in Fernie last year, but it doesn't take long before you feel part of the community here at Kimberley so there wasn't much competition in deciding to back our new local team.

We headed down to the Sully to meet the others for a pre-match beer and were surprised to find that the ski school had turned out quite a crowd of supporters. As their pub dinner was late in coming, Chris and I were sent ahead to save seats. With about 16 other colleagues hanging back at the pub it was going to be a job to save that many spaces. I had images of 2 benches covered in coats, hats, jumpers and jeans with 2 cold, naked English folk shivering at the end of the rows.

Chris and I in our seats

We arrived and stood in the long queue outside to buy a ticket, I wish I'd worn my longjohns! Hoping we hadn't chosen the away side, we found a couple of empty rows and tried to look rather angry and slightly unhinged in the hope that people wouldn't sit next to us and in preference to the naked option.

The game had just started and the Dynamiters were already 1-0 up, a good start. The others began to arrive and the first quarter (the first quarter out of three, go figure!) ended with us 3-1 up. In the first break we were entertained with what appeared to be a regular game of Puck Toss. This involved a sign on the ice and then all the fans throwing their lucky numbered pucks at the sign and the one closest at the end of the game won. What us British folk didn't understand is why the winner would want to hold the title of Puck Tosspot, the Canadians didn't seem to find this a problem. This weeks lucky tosspot kindly donated some of the winnings back to the Dynamiters.

Anna, Kathy and Chris at the hockey

The Puck Toss Pot!?!

The second quarter was less interesting with no further scoring, but I was sat next to a couple of Canadians and so tried to learn a few of the rules. In addition to the 3 quarters, ice hockey has other rather odd rules: your team can get a penalty if they let the puck go icy (quite problematic in a game played on an ice rink one might think). However, we found that this is when the puck crosses the two blue lines on the rink without a pass. There are 3 referees but I never quite worked out why they need so many. Players change on and off continually for no better reason, as far as I could work out, than that they have no stamina. And if people misbehave, (which can include tripping, slamming and full punches in the face from what we saw) they get put in the sin bin, but they can put as many of their team mates on to replace them, so not much of a punishment if you ask me.

Some of the action

The third and final quarter was the best yet! We had sat back down with a bowl of poutine (chips, cheese and gravy) to watch Fernie fight back for the game. And they got it back to 3 all with only 9 minutes to go! Kimberley weren't going to sit back and take it and their players (with awesome names like "Gutfriend") fought hard to save themselves from the inconvenience of a fourth quarter (you only get them if the third quarter ends with a draw). After lots of slamming into walls and referees, the Dynamiters pulled it back, 5-3 and only 1 minute to go!! The Ghostriders were furious and started smacking the glass at the taunting fans. Empty beer cans were being thrown on the rink and then a call came over the tannoy " Security to Section O!". The Fernie and Kimberley fans had kicked off and were having a fist fight in the stands. The fight grew, more announcements came "Security to Section N!". It was great, it was like being at a football match in London, and there was me thinking the North Americans were too proper to make sport any fun.

By the time security had visited most of the second half of the alphabet and double checked the vowels, both teams of players had been removed from the ice for safety and with 15 seconds still remaining on the clock they cut the game short. What fun! We went home to bed, very pleased that we had gone to the match.