not a bump

Where was this picture taken...?And this one?How about this?...Or this?And this - the best!Oh wait, that last one is sort of an inside joke. And a pretty funny one, if you happen to be inside...

And the location...Whistler-Blackcomb, considered by many to be the best ski resort in the world, located in gorgeous British Columbia, Canada!

This was the location of the 2007 Keystone Symposia on HIV Vaccines, which I attended at the end of March. Here's the conference center, nestled amongst the snow-capped mountains...What a terrible place to have a conference, eh?

And here's the dump we had to stay in...I am, of course, being sarcastic. The Crystal Lodge was wonderful!! It was less than 100 yards away from the base of both Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains, which are the home of dozens and dozens and dozens of groomed ski and snowboard trails as well as awesome backcountry, if you happen to be skilled enough to venture off of the trails...which...I certainly am not.

I did make some large strides in getting myself to backcountry-level, however. I took a ski lesson one afternoon when there weren't many interesting talks to attend. This was (sadly) only the second time in my life I've been downhill skiing. The first time was great, but skiing is rather expensive, and it is a lot more fun when one can go with other people. For a long time I didn't know anyone else who skied. Recently I met someone who does, but he was never interested in going to the skiing places nearby. He had grown up skiing, which meant he went to such places as Colorado and Tahoe and Utah and the Canadian Rockies (like Whistler!). He said he wasn't interested in skiing "bumps." I thought he was being ridiculous and that any mountain to ski on was better than no mountain to ski on.

However.

As does seem to happen to me more and more often these days, while standing on the slope halfway up Whistler waiting for my turn to ski down under the watchful eye of my instructor I happened to take my eyes off of the snow before me and looked up, and I immediately realized that I would once again have to bite my tongue or stick my foot in my mouth or some other similar phrase. When I looked up, I saw something like this...Now...that is something you don't see every day. That is something you don't get to see on "bumps" in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Ohio or West Virginia or other places around me where one could ski. You can't look up from the ski slope and find yourself utterly surrounded by more mountains. I can't describe what this feeling was like - it was like being inside a circular room with a panoramic picture of the mountains up on the walls, so that no matter where I turned, I was just struck with more and more and more of the majestic, beautiful scenery. What in the world could compare with skiing in a location like this? No bump would ever come close.

So...I was wrong. Skiing these world-class resorts in huge mountain ranges does make skiing at smaller and shorter locations much less appealing. Not that I'm going to never ski bumps myself, but I can at least appreciate my friend's lack of enthusiasm for such places.

There is so much to say about Whistler. I may end up writing more about that trip at another time. So much to be said and learned from the many cultures intermingled at the resort: the ski bums...the ski snobs...the average Joes who somehow ended up amongst all the skiers...the mountain folk...the locals. There was also the reminder that life needn't be all about being the richest, smartest, or most influential. And finding myself feeling ancient as I told college seniors to follow their dreams before they were too old to do so. You'd think my brain would have been filled with information from the HIV conference, but really it was packed to overflowing with lessons about life.

I should also note that before getting to Whistler I spent a day in Vancouver, the major city nearest the resort. I'm not too keen on the West Coast, but this city certainly had a lot going for it that I enjoyed very much. I saw bald eagles soaring too high up for my camera to reasonably capture, I saw very beautiful modern environmentally-friendly buildings being constructed (which I thought would be an architectural engineer's dream come true), I saw mountains rising from the seas, I saw reminders of the native cultures of the lands, I saw ocean liners poised to whisk people out to sea, I saw industrial products waiting to be picked up and sent to a useful destination. So many contrasts, all in one city. Vancouver was great!But still, it's nothing compared to WHISTLER!!!