My trip to BC

I realized that I haven't posted anything about my trip to BC yet. Well, I'll rectify that here and now.

Everyone's always like, "Ohh British Columbia's sooo beautiful. You're never going to want to come back..." well, yeah, it's beautiful, but it's just a bunch of mountains. I don't understand why you need to live near a bunch of mountains to feel happy. There's plenty of beautiful scenery not too far outside of Sudbury.

I can see if your life revolved around snowboarding and skiing, how you would never want to come back though because Whistler/Blackcomb is incredible. Cameron, Carter and I ride pretty fast and it still took us half an hour to get from the very top of the hill to the bottom. The snow conditions weren't the greatest due to lack of snow, but it was fun just being able to turn left and right for once.

Due to lack of powder, on our second-to-last day in Whistler, my brothers and I decided it would be a good idea to go down the back of the mountain through Garibaldi Provincial Park, which was out of bounds but also full of untouched powder.

While it was the best run of the whole entire day, eventually we reached an impasse and the trees became too thick to continue. So, we unstrapped and began to walk to the left because that was the direction we came from.

First, Carter was complaining because he thought we were lost (which we were). Then, when we happened upon a trail, he was complaining because he was wasting his money walking when he should have been snowboarding (Carter loves getting his money's worth). Then, after we had been hiking for about two hours, he started complaining about hiking for so long. Carter complained a lot for some reason the whole entire weekend and basically acted like a giant baby a lot of the time.

All told, it took us about three hours to hike back to the resort, but we were able to hike through awesome forests full of gigantic trees!

Vancouver as a city didn't really impress me all that much. Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, I've been to all these places and I'm still entirely unimpressed by large cities. I don't see what the big deal is. Sure, there's a million places to eat or whatever but who can afford to eat out all the time anyway? I maintain that it's the people you surround yourself with and the activities you engage in that will make you truly happy. Cities just provide a bunch of distraction and shiny lights so you can forget how sad you are.

Anyway, I will say this for Vancouver: I ate the most delicious burrito I've ever had at Budgie's Burritos, and there are a lot awesome snowboard shops where I spent a ridiculous amount of money. Also, on the way back from Whistler, I bought a one-piece snowsuit with a dice pattern on it for just $100. You can't beat that.

On our last night in town, Cameron and Carter and I went to an open mic night at this place in Vancouver called Cafe Deux Soleils. When we walked in, to our surprise, there on the stage was Diggery Do Guy! When we were on tour at the end of last summer, Diggery Do Guy opened a show for us in Brampton. We didn't say hi to him at the cafe though because he is a dick and didn't stick around to watch our set when he opened for us. Diggery Do Guy beatboxes and plays Diggery Do at the same time. It's kind of shitty.

However, following Diggery Do Guy, there was an amazing 2-piece band! One guy had a giant gong, a tiny cymbal, a bunch of pitched bowls that he placed on the ground and played with a mallet, and a jambe. The other guy had a wood flute, a weird four-stringed box sitar thing, and a conch. Basically, they went up and just jammed. Half the crowd left but I thought it was awesome. After opening with a free-time percussion jam, the one guy started playing the wood flute and then switched to making impossibly low noises with his voice, and then blowing into the conch.

It was the most passively confrontational stage performance I've ever seen. I high fived them both afterward.

Anyway, following are some pictures I took on my trip. There are no snowboarding pictures because my camera is too expensive and bulky to bring on the hill.

This is Cameron and I in the shuttle from the parking lot to the airport at 4 AM after 2 hours sleep the night before.



This is Cameron in Vancouver outside Sushi Yama, looking suave, wearing the blazer and ornate collared shirt that for some reason he refused to fly without. In fact, we nearly missed our flight so that Cameron could change into this very jacket prior to leaving:




This is an old ARP electronic piano that I found in a pawn shop in downtown Vancouver. It was in a bad state of repair, but I'm pretty sure it's a rare keyboard. It doesn't sound that great.



This is Carter stretching in the hotel room prior to our day of snowboarding at Cypress Mountain, which is a hill just outside of Vancouver. We like to call it Cypress Hill though, and all the way to the hill we were shouting "A to the Motherfuckin' K Homeboy!" I don't think our cousin Alanna liked that too much.

Also, you should know that Cameron and Carter love to stretch. They stretched every morning before snowboarding and every night afterward. I found the hot tub at our hotel to be sufficient to soothe my aches and pains.



This is a photo of Carter, Alanna and Cameron on our way up to Cypress Hill. This is a spot where you are supposed to stop and take photos. Not wanting to seem like total dicks, we obliged.



This is a shot of Van City from the same spot:



This is a shot of the sunset on our way out to Whistler from Vancouver. If you look closely, you can see a fat man dressed all in black. We took this while we were moving, along a stretch of highway that was pretty far removed from civilization, which leads me to believe that we have here captured an image of the legendary Sasquatch:



Here's a picture of a fuckin' mountain with a car whizzing by it. Carter took that shit. Carter took a lot of really crappy photos with my camera. There's mountains everywhere in BC. No big deal. BC's got mountains, Ontario has Tim Horton's:



I should mention that, while in BC, we basically lived the life of total ballers. We were staying about 40 feet from the gondola in a five star hotel, and we spent lots and lots of money. Take that, economic collapse! Following is some photo evidence of our luxurious lifestyle:

Our ballin' fireplace:




Our ballin' kitchen:



Our ballin' king-sized bed. (Ballin' poses courtesy of yours truly)



Our ballin' jacuzzi tub and shower:





Cameron and I ballin' near the ballin' rims on our ballin' Chrysler 300, and then making use of our ballin' sunroof and power windows (manual windows are for suckas):





This is the view from the balcony of my room. I told you there were mountains everywhere!



This is some graffiti that was in the washroom of the gas station in Squamish, BC (about an hour from BC). It says, "ALL YOU SQUAMPTON FAGETS!! FUCK YOU + ALL YOU POSERS COME TO EAST VAN And we'll see What's up!"



Some more fuckin' mountains (T-shirt idea: "I went to BC and all I got was this lousy MILLIONS OF PICTURES OF MOUNTAINS"):



Carter and I near some mountains and some water:



This is a very sensual extreme closeup that Carter took of me while I was washing dishes after we got back from BC: