We Gotta Go Back II: Son of We Gotta Go Back!

You might be curious why we're looking at an air conditioning van. Alternately you might be curious as to what possible demand there could be for air conditioner maintanence in Whistler. Finally you could even potentially be trying to figure out what nefarious dealings this air conditioning company was a front for since, clearly, air conditioning is not a big demand item in the winter.

But I promise you that there is nothing you can think of in relation to that van that Furlak, his Sinister, and myself did not at some point contemplate in the three or so hours we sat behind this van on the road to Whistler. See the day started well enough, up at five am in the morning (Hi Jill!) to drive the 3 hour or so drive to Whistler. And what a terrifying drive that is by the way. Whipping along crowded crappy highways through Vancouver in the pitch black of morning. Fortunately I didn't have to be afraid since I was napping while Furlak drove, but the bits I was awake for were maddening. Oh, and did I mention that it was basically blizzarding/raining the entire night and morning. As we drew nearer to Whistler the snow fell in thicker and thicker waves. Yes indeed, it was gonna be some glorious riding that day.

IF you could actually get to Whistler. See we had to turn back after spending the aforementioned three hours immobile on the road behind the Air Conditioner Mafia. I finally got out and walked ahead along the line of immobile vehicles before coming to some trucks putting chains on their tires. There I was informed that one of the vehicles coming *from* Whistler had reported there were at least two accidents snarling the road as well as snow so deep that chains were required. His advice was "If you don't HAVE to go to the mountain today, turn back. You won't get there before dark anyway". So we turned back.

Oh and this is me pretending to drive blind. We were on that road a looooong time.

On the way back to Chiliwack we stopped at Grouse Mountain since we'd heard that they were having record snowfall. On the way we passed (and regrettably did not take a phot of) a billboard with "Grouse Mountain We're Waiting For You!" with two large and not friendly looking grizzly bears on it. Sadly there are no images on Google search of it either. At the time this was perplexing but it turns out that Grouse Mountain is a preserve and has two orphaned Grizzly Bears living there...so it kind of makes sense (note: I learned that today when I was trying to find the billboard) but still...aaah! Sadly Grouse Mountain had record rainfall over the last couple of days and it was icey and "the worst conditions in years" according to the staff memeber we talked to. So we went home. More Rock Band was played and there was much joy and merriment. The next morning we set out for the mighty US of A!