So here it is, the one you've all been waiting for: the explanation of my crazy bikini ski run. Brace yourselves, it's a long story!

So as part of our ski course we had to take an avalanche safety course. For a weekend we had a lecture on the friday night, skied during the day on saturday and practiced spotting avalanche triggers and digging followed by another lecture and then more practical on the sunday.

The course itself didnt particularly interest me as I am definitely a down hill skiier, which involves little to no hiking and also I don't have the desire to potentially get buried in an avalanche. This course confirmed, and mostly just added to, those fears so I'm gonna stick to patrolled routes. At least now I know what to do if there is an avalanche and how to spot them I guess (but I wouldn't be carrying the equipment so I guess it wouldn't be super helpful anyway!). Also, the guide we had was pretty mean about Emma (who was in our group for the course, yay!) who had a cough but was completely fine other than that.

So yeah, needless to say I wasn't too excited to be there that weekend and it also happened to fall on the weekend of the Superbowl! So for those of you that don't know the Superbowl is normally on very late on a Sunday night for those of us in European time zones but for me here on the pacific coast it started at 3:30pm, bizarre!! It was great to be able to watch it at a normal time of day, so I was super frustrated that we had the course on that day too!

Our whole house, and assorted guests, made plans to ski down as fast as we could to make the 3:30 kick off. We raced down and just missed the first couple of plays, not too much of a big deal in a game that lasts 4 hours! Of course it wasn't long before we all got swept up in the mood of the event and were vehmently supporting our respective teams. I chose the Sea Hawks as we're closer to Seattle here, so there were a lot of fans in town that weekend and also because their kits were better :p

Fortunately the suport was divided pretty evenly with myself, Ben and Raph supporting the Sea Hawks and Luke, Emma and Jay supporting the Patriots. The longer we were watching this never ending game the more each side got confident in their chosen team (and the more beer helped with this!). We decided to make things interesting and decided the losing team's supporters would have to do a challenge of some sort and it was decided (and we have Ben to blame for this) that the forfeit would be that the losing team's supporters would have to do a run in bikini tops.

Feeling pretty confident at this point with the Sea Hawks in the lead, looking pretty strong, and many beers in we all agreed to this. Now, for those of you who didn't watch the match: we were robbed. For those of you that did, well you know what happened: they should have ran the ball! There was a last minute interception that messed up the game for Seattle resulting in a very distraught trio of Seattle supporters (and a very gloaty Luke and Emma -who are possibly the most competitive people I've ever met!).

I know what you're all thinking, "But wait, isn't Emma in a bikini too?" Yes, yes she was. The thing is, in between the superbowl and us actually managing to find a day we were all free to do the bikini run was almost 2 weeks, and in that time was our Level 1 exam. We decided that the perfect day to do the run would be the day after the exam as none of us had training or exams and Raph had that day off work. Sweet, the date was set and the bikinis were prepared.

HOWEVER, the night we found out we all passed our Level 1 there was, naturally, a huge party. Of course at this party there were drinking games and as I have mentioned, Emma is crazy competitive. Unfortunately, that day her confidence was misplaced and her natural Australian-ness (yes, that's a word) let her down and she lost match after match of beer pong. Normally, this wouldn't be anything to write about but she was making bets whilst playing and one of the closest matches she played was for high stakes: participation in the bikini run. She lost.

She wasn't the only one betting, Jay managed to lose a game and had to ski with just one ski with us on this run and a different day Luke lost a bet and has to now ski in his boxers - so yes.

So the day after our celebration we collectively made it up the mountain, bright eyed of course. We went up to the top and picked our route, we decided to stay pretty close to the chair lift (I can't remember why, this wasn't our best idea) and we stuck to green and blue slopes, no one wanted to fall in the snow. We also managed to pick one of the only days in February that it actually snowed, so it was freezing. The four unlucky ones got to the top and derobed. I trusted my clothes with english Emma who was sensible enough not to make any crazy bets and just enjoy our foolishness. With go pros and cameras ready we made our speedy decent.

The snow was, shockingly, freezing! The faster you went the colder it got and the harder the snow felt on your bare skin. Within seconds of us setting off a group of snowboarders covered us with snow and we had several comments shouted from the lift. We skied down, stopping occasionally to regroup and despair at our life choices together but we didn't hang around for long.

Fortunately, the bet had only been for one run so as soon as we made it to the chair lift we put all our layers back on. Unfortunately, mine were still with Emma who was still skiing down as she was a little weighed down by all the clothes she was carrying. So let me paint you a picture, we stopped by Emerald chair, which is one of the 2 big ones on Whistler, in bikinis. There were many stares from the queue! The worst of it was that my level 1 examiner happened to be in the queue and called over to me to ask what was happening!! (fortunately, he's a sweetie and had actually come to our party the night before - only when skiing, right?)

So that's that (sorry it was so long), but enjoy the pictures!

xxx

P.S Don't worry, I've learnt my lesson - betting on sports never ends well, even if it's just beer pong!