Birthday Beer Weekend in Penticton

Do you know what the best part about celebrating holidays/birthdays in Canada? Because we are so far behind (time wise) we generally get to celebrate twice. This works particularly well for birthdays, as you technically age the required number of years the day before your actual birth date. I worked it hard over those two days!

So on Friday in Canada, it was my birthday in Australia and my lovely colleagues bought me cake and sung to me. I also got a huge smiley balloon that is still sitting in my office.

So happy. My balloon and I match!

Unfortunately O'Hara had to work the weekend of my birthday (sometimes a 7/7 schedule blows!), but luckily for me Alexis and Hal invited me to Penticton for the weekend for Fest of Ale. They also took me out for brunch, bought me brilliant "birthday princess" attire and Alexis' parents cooked me an awesome BBQ for birthday dinner.

Now you're probably starting to judge me, as this is the third "alcohol tasting" event I've been to in 3 months, but don't. Fest of Ale is a beer tasting festival that is held every year. They include international beers but the majority are from breweries in BC. Tastings were $2 each, but tickets to the event were only $20. I think in the end I paid about the same as a wine festival. Apparently tastings used to be free, but it turned into such right off that they had to start charging.

There was a kilt... and a princess

Fest of Ale was a bunch of fun. I've decided it's much harder to drink beer for 6 hours than wine. I was suffering from a 6pm hangover for sure.

Again lucky me, I got a THIRD birthday celebration last weekend. We had chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I'm just going to let that one sink in... I really am so spoilt!

Easter at Revelstoke

One hill that we'd heard so much about was Revelstoke. I know a lot of people who say it's their favourite ski hill. Something about having a lot of snow and awesome backcountry runs. They didn't lie.

Some Australian friends from Vancouver had organised a giant house, and invited us to stay for the weekend. Thanks guys! So nice :) I think we counted 17 people all up, with people from Australia (mostly), Canada, Wales, Persia (??) and Norway.

Snowman and sun, there's nothing better

Now Easter weather in Australia, could learn something from the weather in Canada. It was ridiculously nice. T-shirt and shorts in the sun good, though I know a lot of you won't believe me. This was only 2 weeks into Spring, so I am hanging out for an incredible summer. You guys in the southern hemisphere got one, it's now our turn. So some really fantastic weather over the previous few weeks meant there wasn't a huge amount of snow on the hill, luckily a fantastic season prior ensured there was good snow out there it was just a little harder to find.

It's snowing!

Our snowboarding skills seemed to experience exponential growth in the last few weeks of the season. I am hoping that it's like riding a bike, and the start of next season won't be like the start of this one. We went up for a day during the week before Easter with one of O'Hara's friends from work. He had us doing double black diamonds (steep as F), and showed us some amazing runs that we hadn't been able to take advantage of before then.

Standard jump shot

So when our new friends told us about an amazing run at the back of Revelstoke where you had to hike up a small hill and drop off a mini-cliff, we were slightly nervous (for me mostly about walking up a hill) but agreed. As you can probably tell, we survived and had a fabulous time. I fell over a stack, probably only managed about 5 turns, got ran into, experienced a deep burn in my thighs and failed significantly at a jump.

Your snowboard should be under your legs...

It was really nice hanging out with a big group of Australians again, it kinda made me homesick as there seems to be a certain vibe with a group like that. Our drive back was lovely and we found some cool places to enjoy the sun and Greg's birthday. I can't wait for summer!

Grraaww