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I spent all last week in Whistler volunteering at the IBSF World Cup races as an official. There were three days of official training, and five races (W-skele, M-skele, W-bob and 2M-bob (x2)) over two days. It was really tiring (I spent 48 hours at the track in five days!) but it was also really fun and cool.

I did a lot of temperature taking, runner wiping, sled marshalling, bobsleigh weighing, icebox timing, scabbard heaving, and many more behind-the-scenes tasks. In between I got to watch a lot of the action and hang out with friends. No cheering though! Officials are neutral.

Me and Martins Dukurs! The Usain Bolt of skeleton. He has won 6 out of 6 of the races so far this year, and is on track to win his 7th World Cup title in a row. He has something like 50 World Cup gold medals in his trophy collection. Basically he is my (and everyone else’s) hero.

Women’s skeleton! I got to do one of the pre-race jobs so that during the race I could actually watch. I started up top, so I could watch one of Jane Channell’s famous extra speedy starts, and then slowly walked down to the bottom watching a person or two go by at every corner. Normally the whole track isn’t open like that so it was cool to watch people’s lines through some of the upper corners.

I watched the last bit at the bottom right beside the finish line where (some) girls were smashing into the wall extremely hard (like me).

Tina Hermann smashed the hardest and she won… so I guess it is a “good” line. Jane came 4th, after setting a new start record.

 

Men’s skeleton! Again, I finished up my tasks early so I could watch the race. Scott, Rosemarie and Liz came up to meet me too. It was SO COOL seeing all the ultra fast guys run. Some of them can run soooo far!!

Martins hadn’t had much luck in Whistler in the past, he lost the last World Cup in 2012 to a German, and lost the Olympics in 2010 to Jon Montgomery. All through training he hadn’t really been doing that well, so I actually started to doubt whether he could keep up his gold streak.

Buuuut… that was foolish, because as usual he blew everyone away. He even set a new track record on his first run. His brother Tomass set a new new one in his second run, but Martins still had enough of a lead to stay in first. Good day for the Dukurs family!

Jon Montgomery was there, watching. He held the track record since the Olympics until that day! Nice guy. I asked him if it was weird for him to be there not as an athlete and he said it was just nice to not have to deal with the pressure.

Sunset view on a mini break to the icebar and VIP tent with the volunteer crew. So pretty. So needed at that point. Rosemarie and Liz got to go in too since they did some volunteering for guest services too. :)

The bobsleigh races were hella exciting. Super duper close races, track records galore, crashes, the atmosphere up top, holy moly it was awesome. I was “working” but still managed to somewhat follow what was going on.

Photo by Charlie Booker.

Scott, Rosemarie and Liz had a blast cheering and hanging out at the finish with the bobsleigh guys. They all had raspy voices from screaming so much. GO GO GO GO GO! That’s Chris Spring and Lascelles Brown (who Scott is hugging hahahaha) who won gold for Canada!

Then afterwards Scott and I went out to the Longhorn for the afterparty with all the other officials (and a lot of the athletes). Scott talked to a lot of them. I am too shy. He got an awesome terrible picture with Martins where Scott looks like this :D and Martins looks like this >:( hahaha. Fun times.

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Just a quick update before I head to my work Christmas party and then back to Whistler.

It’s been a busy few weeks since the NAC races. I went back to Whistler for a couple days to volunteer for the ICC races, which was pretty fun. The volunteer crew is a great group of people who do a lot for me as a slider, so I try to help out when I can. Plus watching all the good athletes is very inspiring and exciting. Can’t wait for World Cup (January).

Then a couple days after that I went back up with Lauren (C.) so she could watch me slide. It snowed A LOT. I thought we were actually going to get stuck up there because the highway got closed right as we were about to leave but they actually managed to clear the accident pretty quickly. It was a slow drive back to Van though (THANK YOU LAUREN FOR DRIVING). I missed the dinner part of Scott’s work Christmas party, but he saved me a plate of food. Tru luv.

We played games with Lesley and Ruana (and partners) and Lauren stayed with us for a night on her way back to Ottawa. Her and I had a delicious breakfast at Jethro’s on Fraser.

I’ve been working here and there, but not a lot, to be honest. Bit of a slow month, but it’s kind of convenient because it’s such a crazy time of year.

So thanks to Rosemarie being assertive/complain-y, 14 of us got free lift passes for Whistler (long story), so we skied last Saturday and it was FUN. There is SOOOOO much snow up there compared to last year. It was pretty windy, so a lot of the lifts were closed, but it didn’t matter because the snow was so soft and fluffy and lovely and we all had a great time. Lauren (B.) is a better skier than me now!! He is braver and has more stamina than me, haha. Anyway so Rosemarie, Lauren, Scott and I are not THAT different in skill levels now so we can all go together, which is pretty awesome.

The drive home that night was awful though. OMG. It looked like this all the way to Squamish:

I think it was Scott’s first time experiencing snowy warp drive. He said “THIS IS THE MOST AWAKE I HAVE BEEN IN MY LIFE”.

Scott’s birthday was last Sunday. We had a quiet day, but I made breakfast and we relaxed all day and then went out for a drink at Alibi Room and then to Ask For Luigi’s for a delicious Italian pasta dinner, which I’ll post about later.

This weekend is BC Cup 1 & 2, and I am busy tonight so I did my 2 official training runs last night. Well actually I did 2.5 runs because I crashed on my first run!! I haven’t crashed in over a year!! The first crash since I changed sleds last year. I think what happened is my first 5 corners went so well I thought the track was slow, so I understeered in corner 6, and ended up rising too high and falling off my sled. The track wasn’t slow at all!! It was a fairly smooth crash though, I didn’t hit my head or anything and I only slid down 2 more corners before I was able to stop and climb out of the track. I saw my sled right beside me after I fell off but I didn’t decide quick enough to try and grab it and get back on. I don’t know how people do that. Anyway so then I had to break my personal rule of only doing 2 runs a night and after checking my sled and talking to my coach I went back up to the top to try and do my 2 OT runs. I definitely did them a lot more cautiously. The drive home last night was terrible again, it was snowing all the way to West Vancouver!

I feel a lot more sore today than I thought I would though. I must have jammed my thumb/hand somehow because my right hand is quite sore, and my left hip/thigh area is pretty tender. I think I’ll take it easy in the races this weekend.

Tomorrow is Santa Day, so the gang is getting back together and skiing tomorow. I’m pretty bummed I won’t be able to do it this year since I’m busy with my skeleton races, but it should be another good weekend anyway. Just wait until you see Rosemarie’s Tree 2.0 costume, it is SO AWESOME!!! Fingers crossed the drives tonight/tomorrow/Sunday are better than the last few drives.

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Wolf in the Fog is a relatively new restaurant in Tofino that got super duper popular after winning an award last year. It’s a pretty big restaurant, with a surfy vibe, with mismatched thrifted dishes. They have an incredibly interesting cocktail menu, large sharing platters, and small dishes to choose from.

I had two drinks. The first was the Hanging Garden: gin, martini bianco, sorrel and lemon. It tasted awesome. It SMELLED awesome. So refreshing. Sorrel is my new favourite herb, it’s sweet and a little bit sour when you chew it, like a candy. The second drink was the Cedar Sour: cedar infused rye, lemon, thyme and egg white. This one also smelled amazing, like walking through a forest. It was a bit stronger, but very drinkable.

We ordered a whole bunch of food, hehe. Everything just sounded so good!!

Potato crusted oysters sounded so intriguing, but wasn’t our favourite. It had some kind of thick paste inside of it that was a bit stodgy. The potato was cool, but I think I just prefer my oysters raw.

We got a salad that had smoked trout, beets and a whole bunch of other things that I can’t remember now. Their menu is seasonal and the same salad isn’t on there any more! Oops. Anyway it was a good salad and they were pretty generous with the smoked fish.

We also got a squid dish that had grapefruit, cilantro, basil and sprouts. The squid was cooked perfectly tender, not chewy at all. It was lovely. Well balanced dish.

We also split an entrée. They were very accommodating and split the dish on to two plates for us. We had the halibut with gnocchi, sorrel, peas, pickled onion, and again more that I am probably forgetting. The fish was cooked perfectly and I loved the fresh lemony sorrel.

We were stuffed but still found room for dessert. We had the sticky date caramelized banana sundae and it was awesome. Sweet, salty, bitter, creamy, crunchy, warm and cold. Checks all the boxes.

Overall we were very happy with our meal and experience. They really do have helpful staff, who will help you decide things and get stuff split if you want. I would love to go back and try a few more of their unique cocktails for sure.

Wolf in the Fog Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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After coming back from the hot springs we were a little worn out, kind of dirty, and MEGA hungry. We parked the car in the middle of Tofino and wandered around in search of seafood. The Fish Store and Oyster Bar (that’s the actual name!) was perfect.

I was having MAJOR indecision with the menu. I couldn’t stop flipping between the mussels and clams with bread, and the shrimp and scallops dishes. Like seriously I must have changed my mind 20 times. Eventually I just told the waitress that I couldn’t decide and asked her what I should get. She said that the shrimp and scallops dish was actually pretty small, and if I wanted she could actually get the cooks to make me the mussels and clams dish with a bunch of scallops too FOR THE SAME PRICE. OMG! Made my day.

So that’s my giant bowl of mussels, clams AND scallops, with a butter garlic sauce, and bread. It was SOOOO GOOD. It came with FIVE scallops on the shell! Plus probably 10 each of mussels and clams. Yum yum yum. I was extremely pleased. I love molluscs.

Scott got a Thai salmon noodle dish. He thought it was delicious. I don’t know what else to say about it.

They also have a small shop in the back of the restaurant. We bought a little bit of their smoked salmon to put on bagels for the next day’s breakfast. The guy was nice and rung it up as smoked tuna to make it cheaper too, awesome.

Overall we were really happy. Great service, great food. Highly recommended.

Fish Store and Oyster Bar Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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It costs a bit to do a trip to the hot springs near Tofino, but I recommend it for sure! Here are 3 good reasons you should go:

Firstly, it’s got built in whale and wildlife watching. The boat ride takes about 1.5 hours each way, and they’ll look for whales and other animals the whole way there and back. September is the end of the whale season but we still managed to see a grey whale (no pictures, I was using my brain camera). We also saw a black bear (digging for crabs on the beach), cute floating sea otters, stinky sea lions, and bald eagles.

Secondly, the hot springs are so neat!! It’s about a 25 minute walk through the forest on a board walk to the springs. Then there a whole bunch of pools of (hot) water in between the rocks. The pools at the top are super duper hot, and then as you go down a bit further they get a bit cooler from the tide. There are plenty of places to lie down and soak. It smells a bit farty but not that bad.

Thirdly, there is a HOT WATERFALL!! Almost too hot to stand directly under. I enjoyed sitting half under the water and half in the crisp September air.

After a couple of hours our captain brought us back to Tofino. Everyone was pleased. It really was the highlight of our trip.

Few notes: It’s kinda dangerous, because the rocks are ultra slippery, but still ok. I managed it even with my PTSD from slipping on rocks in Thailand and getting 12 stitches, haha. Water shoes might help. Bring some snacks and drinks because you’re out for a pretty long time! The boat ride might be a bit rough. I was happy we went a calmer way back (but I guess less chance of seeing whales that route). And there are washrooms and change rooms at the hot springs.