up to speed

I'm obsessive about posting stuff in chronological order. It's getting a bit ridiculous because I left New York over two months ago now yet I'm still writing about my first day in town.

My map is up to date. I'm hanging out in Vancouver at the moment. My plans changed somewhat once I arrived. Originally I was going to spend Christmas with my family in here before joining the rest of Australia at one of the bigger ski resorts in the Rockies. I'd work the winter, hit the slopes, and kill time before meeting some friends for a trip through Europe. However, speaking to a mate who went to Banff after harvest, it dawned on me that this would not facilitate the $$ saving that I needed to do before I landing in Europe.

By all accounts, if I'd joined Dan 'Sniffa' Phelan in Banff I would have had the time of my life but, by now, I would have run out of the money I'd earned holding up merchandise at a Persian rug auction, called my folks for a loan, bought a ticket for a much more economical holiday in Mexico, only to be robbed by a couple of cops on arrival (I miss the crazy adventures that arise simply from being in close proximity to an Australian farm boy).

No, I am living like a miser now so that I can live it up in Europe in a couple of months time. Greatly due to a lot of help from my aunt and uncle here, I've found some work and a little basement to live in for the next couple of months. I'm living in an amazing location at the foot of the mountains that look down on Vancouver from the North.

By day, one of these mountains is my office - I man the lifts at Cypress Bowl. By night, I sell popcorn at the candy bar of a local cinema (or the 'concession bar' as they call it here). My supervisor is 17. He's not sure what to make of me, but I do what I'm told without complaint in return for $8 an hour.

Those who have followed my blog will have picked up that I can get quite fixated on something when I set my mind to it (the post about my coffee quests throughout New York is a timely example). As such, when I went into saving mode, I'd look for every opertunity to save a dime here and few pennies there. I completely lost focus of why I was here, and with that, all of the enjoyment of what it is that I am doing. In many ways, accepting the cinema job was a reminder to me that I am not here to earn the big bucks or advance my standing on the corporate ladder; I'm here to get a feel for a place by living in a community and meeting some of the locals (moody 15 year olds included).

I guess the more 'normal' of my two jobs is up the mountain. Working as a lifty is potentially mind-numbingly boring. I turn up at 8 in the morning (an hour before the public hit the slopes), I get a assigned a lift with another operator, one of us goes to the top station, the other to the bottom, we do some checks, open the lift, and stand there for eight hours helping people on and off, stopping and slowing it every now and then for the odd rookie passenger. Ironically, the inactivity and repetativeness makes the job strenuous.

Each day when I start to contemplate bludgeoning myself to death with a snow shovel, I have to remind myself of where I am. My favourite lift is called 'Raven's'. It's an old high speed quad that you need to arm wrestle in order to load people. This means you're kept quite active down the bottom, making time pass a bit quicker. It's the opposite at the top. Most people riding the lift know what they're doing - i.e. they don't fall over when getting off - so there's rarely any action for the operator at the top. However, the top of Ravens is also one of the highest points on the mountain and provides what has to be one of the best vistas in Vancouver - an amazing aerial of the city and harbour.

One of the other ways I pass time is by taking stupid photos of myself around the lift - I'm perfectinng the art of the 'selfie'. The best is when you set the shot up, hit the 10 second timer, strike a pose, only to have a customer some swishing out of nowhere. The second photo unfortunately turned out like a cheesy professional portrait, but the idea was to capture the view of the city from the top of Raven's (over my left shoulder).

The other adavantage of working Raven's is that it is quite isolated. To get in and out we get a lift on a snow mobile. Awesome fun! I took a video of my ride down the mountain this afternoon (the ride in and out are the highlights of my day). The lift we pass under is Raven's.



So there you go, I broke the chronology (and I survided!); an up-to-the-day update! Plenty of back dated stories still to come, but I'm sure y'all survive if they're a bit out of order.