Now that I’ve had time to get settled back into the real world—you know, work, doing laundry, and all that jazz—I guess I’ll finally write up my recent trip to Whistler.
Warning: this is really long.
On Christmas night, I packed up my bags and went to LS’s place to crash for the night. I was pretty stoked about fitting all my crap into just two bags but dreaded having to navigate through the airport with my big honkin’ snowboard bag. A big shout-out to GE for letting me borrow the Victorinox luggage that played double-duty as a rolling bag and a backpack. It was super-convenient.
Here’s a photo of all my stuff—my cute-cute snowboard bag, the borrowed suitcase, and my helmet+goggles (with my travel pillow tucked inside):
It took me so long to pack and get ready that I didn’t even get to sleep until well after midnight. We were planning on leaving around 4:45 a.m. to have plenty of time to check in for our international flight, and I woke up around 3:30 a.m. to pee and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I basically took a bit of a nap that night.
I don’t want to see this on my watch again anytime soon, unless I’m getting ready to hit the sack after a stellar night out. 
We made it to the airport and I scored the most rockstar parking spot ever in my favorite secret parking lot. It was literally the second-closest spot we could possibly get in the lot. I was so excited, because that meant less distance to travel to check in with all my crap.
Check-in was weird. Delta recently renovated the International departures check-in area and they added kiosks, which LS and I tried to use. I got denied because the name on the front page of my passport didn’t match the name on my ticket (even though its been amended with my current name on the last page of the passport, the machine only reads the front page). LS got denied for some reason we never figured out. So we ended up having to stand in line to check in with an agent, which is when things got ugly.
The check-in agent who helped me asked me if I knew the measurements of my snowboard bag. I thought it was an odd question and told her I had no idea. She then proceeded to whip out a measuring tape and measure the height, width and depth of my bag. I asked her if it was a new thing and she said no, it’s always been a rule that you’re allowed a total of 80 inches for a snowboard bag: height+width+depth. When she finished measuring and adding, my bag came to 90 inches. She told me it would be a $100 charge.
“Roundtrip?” I asked, already getting steamed.
“No,” she said, “one way.”
That’s when I freaked out. I mean, 200 bucks just to take my snowboard bag on vacation?! I wasn’t even checking another bag! And why had I been able to travel with it so many times before with no issues whatsoever?
The agent informed me that she had worked for Delta for 10 years and it had always been that way. She said that I had just been lucky that no other agents had ever charged me for the overage. I was pretty pissed, so she called over another agent to explain the rule to me (which I totally understood, I just couldn’t believe it). The new agent took the tape measure and re-measured my bag. As she was measuring the length, the first agent asked, “Did you get the handle? I measured the handle.” That’s when I freaking lost it. The handle, my friends, is a piece of cloth that literally folds flat onto the end of the bag. It was only standing up because I had been carrying it, and I exclaimed, “You measured the handle?! It’s just air, for goodness sake!”
The new agent shot me a nasty look and declared “Eighty-eight inches.” So her measuring technique, which did not include the handle that the first agent measured, saved me two inches.
But I was still a good eight inches over.
By this time, LS had finished checking in and was watching the whole thing go down in disbelief. We decided to try to remove some of my gear from the bag to see if we could compress eight inches out of the depth. I had packed an empty duffle bag in anticipation of bringing home souvenirs, so we stepped to the side and started to unpack my bag and repack some of the stuff into my duffle bag, which I could check along with my snowboard bag.
As we were doing this, LS had a brilliant idea. “Why don’t we go to another agent and try again?” she told me in a hushed voice and I rammed stuff into my duffle. So we quietly got off the floor and simply walked to another line, where the agent asked furrowed her brow after looking me up in the system and asked if I had already checked in. Because I knew that the first agent had checked me in except for my bags, I blurted out, “Oh, I tried to check-in at the kiosk but it wouldn’t let me.” The agent said, “Oh….”, hit a few keys on the keyboard, and printed out my luggage tag and boarding pass. She put the tag on my snowboard and told me to take it to the oversize baggage drop-off. That was it. No tape measure, no fees, no bitchy staring contests. Whew…what a relief!
After grabbing some breakfast and clearing security, LS and I were on our way. As we were boarding the flight to Salt Lake City, my boarding pass flashed “PASSENGER NOT CLEARED” when the gate agent scanned it, so I had to go stand in line while everyone else boarded the plane. Of course, I immediately thought they were going to charge me the hundred bucks after all. But no, it was just some random glitch and I eventually got on the plane. Whew!
Our layover in Salt Lake City was uneventful except for LS encountering a different random message when trying to board our segment to Vancouver that prevented her from boarding the plane. After waiting in line, she was finally cleared to board. I’ve never had anything like that happen before. What are the chances that it would happen to each of us on two flights in a row??
After landing in Vancouver, we only had about 40 minutes to clear immigration, get our luggage, clear customs, and make the 1:30 p.m. shuttle departure for Whistler. It was really close, and more than a bit stressful and chaotic, but we did make the shuttle…yay! We were finally on our way to Whistler!
After a 2.5-hour bus ride down the Sea to Sky Highway, we were dropped off at the Hilton Whistler Spa & Resort. I was using Hilton HHonors points for the six-night stay, and we checked in without incident and were so glad to finally get to our room!
That evening we ate dinner at Citta’s and shared a $10 plate of edamame, which we laughed about since we were used to edamame appetizers costing around $5 back home. Granted, it was ten Canadian dollars, but that still works out to about nine U.S. dollars.
The next several days were full of snowboarding, food, drinking, and shopping. RJ joined us the evening of the second day, and he ended up playing paparazzi to me and LS as we were constantly asking him to take our picture. While RJ and I snowboarded, LS would shop, work out in the fitness center, and otherwise hang out. We all met for lunch and then all hung out in the evenings. We hit my favorite bath products shop, Lush, several times over the course of the trip. They had an awesome promotion going where you got one free item of your choice that was made before December 2006 for every CAD$35 you spent. The point was to clear out their older inventory and start off with fresh product in the stores in the new year. The great part about it was that pretty much everything in the store was made before December. So LS did some great investigating and found the most expensive item in the store, a facial moisturizer called Gorgeous which retailed for CAD$85. We both scored a pot of Gorgeous for free as well as a few other items over the course of our trip. Lush was definitely my favorite shopping experience of the trip, and I had been looking forward to visiting the store again for the past year!
LS and I kept telling each other “you’re gorgeous!” after we got the Gorgeous moisturizer. It was hilarious…at least to us it was. 
We went to a few clubs in Whistler. The first club we went to was Maxx Fish. We went on hip hop night which wasn’t very exciting. They have a staff dancer who was pretty bad. She did the same three moves over and over, and when we kidded that LS could show her the “snake arms” move she learned in bellydancing class, we cracked up when the bad dancer ended up doing the exact same move a few minutes later.
We had to somehow sneak a photo to remember her by, so we sauntered onto the dance floor and got this shot:
Can you tell which one she is?
Another club we hit was the Savage Beagle. That was actually a total blast! We saw DJ Fluid and I could not stop dancing. The crowd was, er, interesting. But it was a good time.
We ate lots of great food. We had breakfast several times at Hot Buns Bakery…it was super-cute and cozy. We had great meals at Sushi Village, Earl’s, Crêpe Montagne, and Elements. We also learned that mixed drinks and shots in British Columbia are about 1/10th as strong as they are in the states, if that. Seriously, folks…I’m a total lightweight these days and one evening I had the equivalent of 10 or 12 shots and was stone-cold sober. That’s just not right. We did discover the joy that is Canadian flavored ciders though. They are clear, sparkling, and are served over ice, like Sprite or ginger ale. They even come in 2L bottles in the liquor store! LS and I sampled all kinds while we were there: apple, pear, peach…yummmmm. They really do taste like refreshingly light sodas and contain 7% alcohol…more than beer. Fun.
We went snowmobiling one day. That was a blast! It was harder than I expected at first, because the snowmobiles are so heavy. They weigh several hundred pounds! I also had a hard time getting used to squeezing the gas with my right hand and steering into hard turns at the same time. I would often find myself totally gunning it into a turn…not a good idea! The scenery was magnificent, and it actually snowed on us…big, fluffy snowflakes. It was like being in a winter wonderland.
Of course, the big question for the first half of the trip was what we were going to do for New Year’s Eve. After researching the various parties at clubs and restaurants, and poo-pooing the steep entry fees that merely covered a champagne toast and a tiara (I’m talking CAD$100 to CAD$150), we decided to go to the Hilton’s New Year’s Eve dinner and celebrate afterwards in the hotel bar. We stocked our hotel room “bar” and actually ended up having a blast. The dinner was great, and the bar was packed with all kinds of young, fun people.
Dessert:
Our “bar” (notice the 2L cider on the left):
LS and RJ:
Having fun in the hallway:
Happy New Year!
RJ was scheduled to leave on New Year’s Day on the 3:30 a.m. shuttle back to the Vancouver airport for his 7:15 flight (remember, it’s a 2.5-hour trip), so imagine my surprise when I woke up to hear him on the phone at 5:10 a.m. Apparently the hotel’s wake-up call service had gone down, and they hadn’t called to wake him up. He missed his shuttle, and even though the hotel paid for a CAD$200 cab which hightailed it back to the airport in a record hour and 45 minutes, he missed his flight. He ended up crashing at the airport Fairmont to catch the 5 p.m. flight, which would get him back into Atlanta around 7 a.m. the next morning…just in time to go back to work. Ugh.
Meanwhile, I woke up later that morning trying to decide if I wanted to go out for one last time or not. I was leaning heavily towards sleeping in after the celebration the night before, but when I looked out the window and saw quarter-sized snowflakes just dumping on the village, I knew I had to get out there. I geared up in record time and asked for late checkout on my way to the slopes. Apparently everyone else was still hungover because the gondola line was non-existent and the runs were empty. So it was fresh tracks for me and just a handful of other people! It was actually kinda tricky to ride on the powder…it was so heavy and dense that I kept getting stuck and toppling over at low speed. I’m so used to the powder in Utah, which is lighter and fluffier…not as heavy. I met a guy from Kentucky—I recognized his southern accent—who tried to give me tips on leaning back and keeping up my speed). It was fun though…I’m so glad I went out there one last time. The only bad thing about it happened when I was getting one last shot of me and my snowboard. A kind tourist took this photo and, as she handed my camera back, I heard the lens grind to a halt. Yep, it broke. I wish I had been able to take more photos of the snow…it really looked like a shaken snowglobe the way snowflakes were falling and swirling.
After getting cleaned up and packed up, LS and I had quite an adventure catching the shuttle back to Vancouver, where we planned to spend the evening before flying back on January 2. First the shuttle bus driver told us that some other bus was supposed to pick us up. Then a van came to pick up us and another couple who were headed to the same drop-off point in the city, but he said he was just taking us to another bus. Then, when we got to that bus, it started driving off and we thought we were going to miss it. Finally, we were on the bus. Then, we stayed on the bus. For freaking ever. I’m talking five hours!! The snowfall was so heavy that the roads were a mess. Traffic was horrendous. We literally went about 5 miles an hour for the first 2.5 hours. It was nuts! You can imagine how glad we were to finally reach our hotel in Vancouver, which was really cute and comfy.
By the time we got there, since we were running so late, we didn’t have time to do any sightseeing. It gets pitch-black dark by 4:30 p.m., and when we checked in around 6, we were starving. We walked to Moxie’s on Robson St., where we proceeded to have an incredibly delicious meal. We were also impressed by their music selection…we noticed them playing Muse, The Killers, and The Dears. After dinner, we just walked back to the hotel and spent a few hours watching MuchMusic shows like “The Hottest Women of 2006″ and profiles on Kelly Clarkson and Lindsay Lohan.
The next morning, we partook of the free breakfast at the hotel before catching a cab to the airport. I specifically told the dispatcher that were two adults, two suitcases, and one snowboard bag. Of course, we ended up getting a regular old cab, and the driver did some crazy stuff to get my snowboard to fit between me and Lydia in the backseat. The seats of the car didn’t even fold down, so just try to imagine it since I couldn’t take a photo!
If that wasn’t enough, about five minutes into the ride, the driver looked at us in the rearview mirror and mumbled something about “…needs some water.” At first, we thought he wanted to get some water as he pulled into a service station, but then we realized he meant that there was something wrong with the car. He proceeded to get out, retrieve a milk jug of water and some cardboard from the trunk, and fiddle under the hood for a while. He came back to turn the car on, check some dials, and turn the car back off a few times. LS and I shot each other glances across the snowboard bag between us like, “You have GOT to be kidding me!”
Finally, the driver shot us a big grin and told us the car was fine. We pulled back out onto the street and within less than 60 seconds his grin fell into a frown. “No, it is not alright,” he informed us, and then he pulled over to call us another cab.
We were relieved when a replacement cab showed up a few minutes later, and it was a big van…yay! The new driver transferred all our luggage to the van, I waved to the old driver and called out “Good luck!” as I slammed the door shut, and we were on our way.
Check-in at the Vancouver airport was interesting. After the incident at the Atlanta airport, I had checked the Delta Web site for the exact luggage restrictions and allowances related to snowboards. Nowhere on the Web site does it say anything about measuring height+width+depth and charging a $100 fee over 80 inches total. Because the site was very specific about measurements for items like surfboards, I felt pretty confident that the ladies in Atlanta were just confused, and I was prepared to fight it in Vancouver. However, the problem this time wasn’t the measurements. It was the weight of my bag! The agent tried to lift my bag and frowned. “That’s gotta be over 70 pounds,” she said, adding “The limit is 50 pounds.” Sheesh. She was actually fairly nice about it, and I ended up removing my boots from the bag to get it down to 53.6 pounds. She checked my boots through separately and never mentioned a thing about a fee, thank goodness. (Once I got home, I realized that a good five to ten pounds of that weight was all my Lush goodies. Oops!)
I had met a man the day before on the five-hour bus ride from hell. He was from Tennessee and was catching the 7:15 a.m. direct flight to Atlanta the next day. Imagine my surprise when we arrived for our 1:30 p.m. flight and saw him at the gate. Apparently they had cancelled his flight and he had spent all day at the airport. Between his story and RJ’s fiasco, LS and I felt pretty lucky that things had gone fairly smoothly for us.
The flight home went as expected. We were a tad late getting into Salt Lake so we barely had any time at all for our connection to Atlanta. I subsequently had to pee the entire trip home because I was in a window seat and I didn’t feel like fighting through the crowded flight to visit the loo. I watched Scoop on the plane. Even though I love Scarlett Johansson (she’s my only girl crush), it was just mediocre.
We were so happy to finally get home. My car was still in the rockstar space after all that time, which made me happy since I couldn’t remember if I had locked my car or not when we left.
I’m just now feeling like I’m really back in the swing of things. I had so much fun on the trip and want to do it all over again. I can’t wait to go snowboarding again and REALLY hope I get to go again this season! I’m thinking one or two trips to Utah would be perfect.
I wrote something over on the Metroblog about how I felt after I got home, if you want to take a gander. You can also view more photos on flickr.
I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and work as a 
Sounds like you had a blast. Good for you getting around the baggage fees with Delta. I haven’t been as lucky, and always dread checking luggage - waiting for them to tell me it’s too heavy, etc.
Scoop was playing on my flight as well. I made it through about 20 minutes before I had to take off the headphones. I was asking myself what has happened to Woody Allen’s writing.
Glad someone got to play in the snow.
Sab - sounds like you had a great time (even with the few glitches). You’ve peaked my interest in snowboarding. It’s now on my list of things to try. Enjoyed reading about your trip.
Gosh, what a nightmare with DELTA. I must admit, I freaking HATE Delta and am so thankful that I don’t have to use them now that I live in SF. Their customer service, or lack thereof, is the worst that I’ve ever dealt with.
Leo, snowboarding rocks. You should definitely give it a try sometime.
And H., it’s weird…I’ve never really had any complaints about Delta and really hope US Air doesn’t buy them. I need to write a letter to Customer Service to complain about my experience though.