Alright, i'll start by saying that by Friday end, I was in pain. ALOT of pain. At least top 10, if not top 5 pains I've felt in my life. But I didn't cry, and I don't.
So we started out reasonably well on Friday morning. Breakfast, got ready, and we were on the slopes by 8.40 or so. The pains I had gathered from the day before had subsided, my stomach was fine, my arm was fine, I was, for lack of better words, fine. We took a Black run at the top of Ichinose and discovered fairly quickly that Conrad doesn't like the steep descents. Not surprising it being his 4th day of snowboarding. It was sort of funny in some respects because I was watching from further down as he sat on his heel edge, and when that didn't seem to slow him down (he had good sideways pace) he fell over and slid on his butt for about 20 metres before coming to a stop. Having realised that heel edge wasn't giving him the desired effect, he slid down the rest of the way on his butt, until he got to the red section and then went slowly on his feet. He didn't get injured, not that I know of, but maybe his confidence was a little worn out.
Off to Yakebitai-yama. We had barely touched this area last time we came, only doing 1 run, so this time we were making a concerted effort to explore as much of Shiga Kogen as possible. So we crossed the road from Ichinose to the bottom of Yakebitai, and made our way up the first lift. After realising we didn't have the right angle to take the green run we planned on, it was a quick trip to the bottom via a red run, not too difficult at all, and back up an appropriate lift to try out the missed Green run. Waste of time nearly, as it was just less angled then the red we had taken, so to allow for novices to get to the bottom. Not worth the lift ride up.
So after getting back to the bottom, we took a big lift to the near top of Yakebitai, and proceeded to take a few runs to reach the bottom. WOO! Conrad was in much better form on this mountain, transferring from edge to edge extremely well, and keeping up with Steven and I in some areas. WELL DONE CONRAD!!! He is getting the hang of this Snow-thingy quite well. Once we reached the bottom we took a nice comfy gondola ride to the top. Well, the top wasn't much excitement, probably offering a few hundred metres of extra ride from where we exited the last lift. Not a bad thing though as the ground here was fairly fluffy and must have somehow avoided the onslaught of many a ski-schooler. Even though they are only green/red runs.
Having arrived at the bottom we were getting hungry. 20 to 12 and we stopped at Prince Hotel (something or other, apparently there is a north south east and west Prince hotel....?) to order some food. Not very good price, and the Chicken and French fries Steven and I ordered were a little dry, no doubt sitting there for half an hour before hand. I'll be honest though, 2 of the girls they had working here were quite cute, so I'll let them go this time, but I still don't like dry fries.
Alrighty fueled up and ready to go, we made for the gondola again, but not before a toilet break. We had seen on the map something labelled "Terrain Park" and wanted to go and see what kind of jumps and stunt areas this held. Well wouldn't you know it, after making our way down and across to the lift that connects to the terrain park, we see everyone leaving, and people stuck on the lift. Borked. Fortunately there was another gondola not to far away, and I must say it was quite nice. It held 8 people and looked newer then anything else I'd ridden on in Shiga. Which means I guess it was installed after the Nagano Olympics in '98.
Up the top it would have taken a few Black/Red runs to get to the Terrain park, as opposed to the lift that drops you right at the top of it (the one that broke), and Conrad-chan wasn't up to tackling anymore blacks, so we ran down the same run we had done 2 times already, and thought it would be best to head back over to Higashitateyama area. So after another lift ride, and some traversing, we were back in Ichinose, and making our way back to the Terakoya side of the mountain. We took our regular Green Tree run, and this is were things got bad-ish. I fell over 1/4 the way down, and had barely enough speed to make it throught some flatter sections. I finally caught up to Steven when he had fallen over in the downward hairpin sections.
Now the hairpin sections had been receiving some bad treatment from the ski-schoolers over the past couple of days, and rather then be nice and flat through here, instead it was hollowed out in the middle, meaning doing S turns was EXTREMELY sketchy through here. Steven had already fallen over, and because I had some pace through here, stability started becoming an issue, when, wouldn't you know it, I fell.... HARD. I landed on my back, and it winded me slightly, and because I had tensed my abs for the impact, I tore the same muscle in my stomach that had plagued me the day before. And I was in PAIN.
Making it to the bottom was difficult to say the least, I fell over more times then I care to remember. So having finally made it to the restaurant at the bottom, I grabbed a beer and sat down. I was in pain, but this was only the beginning. After we had all rested up for a while, and gotten some Mocha Chocolate Almonds (they are AWESOME), we headed over the Nishitateyama runs and onto the back of Takamagahara. Now, between the Nishi and Taka sides is a road, with a bridge over the top, and I didn't have enough speed to make it to the top, and because of the angle, I didn't skate across, I shuffled up and over, much to the displeasure of my stomach, by the time we had reached the top of Takamagahara, I was getting seriously sore. After a run through the tree section again, taking things slowly to protect my now collapsing Abdomen, we made it to the Higashitate gondola, and that's when the pain REALLY kicked in. I was having trouble just sitting up for the the tear in my abs/pelvic region (not groin I should add).
We travelled all 3 of us in one of the gondolas to the top of Higashi (usually only 2 people would fit comfortably with their snowboards, however the young man insisted we should all get in, and it wasn't comfy) and I couldn't take the pain much more. Conrad had gone to get a Hot Coffee to warm the cockles of his little body, and I told Steven I'd see him at the hotel. I needed to rest, and badly. I made my way, without incident to the bottom of Ichinose from Higashi, with some grumbling at some people who ran out in front of me, and caused me to skate until I reached a down section, and believe me, skating was the last thing I wanted to do. So I traversed across to the Road, unstrapped, and walked down to the hotel, unloaded my stuff, stopped at the store in the hotel to grab some Canadian Dry Ginger Ale, and went to my room. I poured myself to large Whisky and Drys, and waited till their medicinal effects kicked in.
Now as I mentioned, this was INTENSE pain, definitely top 10 of my life. I couldn't sit up, I could only roll and hope I didn't tense my stomach to get up. It was like this for a few hours, and I used my anti-inflamitory gel to subside the pain, though I believe the Whisky was doing a better job. So after laying down for a few hours we headed out to dinner, at Kimoshika to get some Nipplegreastion food (Nepalese). I ordered the Chicken Tandoori and Chicken Tikka, but it was the beer I really needed. Trying to sit up at a table to eat when your ab is torn is an incredibly painful way to eat. So needless to say I wasn't much fun to be around, that, and everytime I laughed it hurt immensely. So after dinner, I went straight back to the hotel to lay down, and grab another drink. I should point out that as we have no fridges in our rooms we have taken to hanging/sitting things outside the window to keep cold. And that where I grabbed the Dry Ginger Ale from and poured myself a strong one.
The rest arrived back and joined me in a drink, and I got some healing heat packs (they have a smell of deep heat in them) and some weird black little balls Steven had gotten from the guy at the front desk. Now, as I said I thought his nickname was Ganja when we first met him, I was a little concerned as to what these little black things were, if they were hallucinogenic, or if they really would help my muscles as claimed. But I took 3 anyway, and after another 2 whisky and dries, it was lights out. However I didn't sleep very well, and I woke up regularly from the pain. What a bad nights sleep.
Do you trust a guy called Ganja?
Would you eat his little blacks muscle pellets if offered to you?
I think the walls just melted. WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
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