Serenity New Year, 2007, Ohinata (大日向), Nagano. Day 1

This was quite an eventful few days. Plenty of japes and stupidity. The original thing I did was a bit of a saga on how the days progressed. Not sure if I will be able to recreate it very well here but I will have a crack at it.

Day 1 started sensibly enough. Rob, Sean and Siobhan arrived at serenity just before 4 pm in the afternoon on Thursday, no snow in sight. But within 2 hours Rob was in trouble, requiring a big woolly jumper, the big woolly puff. The hairy man of Coventry requires no such artificial coverage however.

So anyway, a few cans later there was in fact a 3 inch layer of snow outside the house where previously there was nothing, so we’re pretty chuffed.

And the excitement caused us to stay up until 5 am testing our beer. It was OK, thank god, but it did delay our departure for the slopes this morning. We eventually headed off about 1 this afternoon, December 29th, for a couple of hours boarding, and it was surprisingly good fun. About a foot or so of powder in the remoter areas, and although there is still grass poking through, a few night’s snow should get it all sorted.

Had a Ramen stop on the way back, just up the street from the house. Just what the doctor ordered. The excitement of the noodles was nothing, however, compared to Rob’s heightened state of glee upon returning to the house to discover his new Flow bindings had arrived. Once the technical difficulties of telling left from right were overcome (see picture from the confusion Cam, below) it was obvious that the board had to be waxed and upgraded, so a beer assisted maintenance session ensued.

Of course, with all this activity something had to give, and inevitably enough it was the washing up that got postponed. I know what you’re thinking, that doesn’t look to bad. Well.... Take a closer look!

Later that evening we decided to play with the camera flash as it seems to be capable of some pretty crazy stuff. For instance, we were able to, in order below, make Rob look a lot less scary than normal; spookify ourselves; electrify a bottle of Champagne; and, bewilder the hell out of Rob again. This is getting too long so I will have to make another post for the next days action.