It had been three or four years since the last time I had spent a day skiing, let alone on a mountain. Needless to say, getting up that second day was literally a pain in the ass. Nothing a little ibuprofen couldn’t solve.

This time we got an earlier start to our day and got out to Silver Star about an hour or so after it opened. The resort was set up sort of like a little town. There were restaurants, hotels, condos, shops, and gift stores. In a word: touristy. But we weren’t there for the shopping.

Again, Louie and I decided to try and start from the top of the mountain. Once again the day began with a black diamond and then a double black diamond. If you’ve had a chance to see my Flickr set, this is the double black diamond I am talking about. Frankly, it was too much for my already worn body. I was exhausted by the time I was only a third of the way down. From then on, I pretty much resigned myself to staying on the blue squares the rest of the day. It was the only way to not tire myself out for the rest of the trip.

At Sun Peaks, Louie and I mostly stayed together, but on the second day, I could tell I was only holding him back, so we split up quite a bit. It had been a long time since I’d done any skiing by myself and it was kind of nice to just take my time. Bringing my iPod with me turned out to be quite a good idea that day. I found that blasting some death metal while flying down the slopes at 50 mph makes the experience that much better.

At the end of the day, Louie met me at the truck and we headed for Penticton. I still don’t think I can say that without screwing up somewhere. It took quite awhile for us to find the motel we had picked out, but as it turned out, it was in a good location. We decided to find a pizza shop for dinner and as it turned out, there was a “Pizzaway” right across the street in a little strip mall. The place was just a small pizza shop with a few counters and tables to sit at, but they had a great menu. There was only one pizza, it cost $14, was large sized, and you got as many toppings as you want. As the man behind the counter put it, “We ain’t no Dominos.” He was quite the character. After doing some quick looking around the mall, our pizzas were ready and we headed back to the room. It really hit the spot after all the activity during the day. After a quick jump in the jacuzzi and a little Internet surfing, I zonked out. Louie stayed up and waxed our skis. What a nice guy.