Bob and I began Week 03 with a new-found enthusiasm, and spent Monday riding on Blackcomb then exercising in the gym. Blackcomb's best run was Wishbone, using the Jersey Cream chair. We spent the whole day there, gaining confidence and beginning to practise riding switch (backwards) and popping off the moguls.

Andy was still recovering from Saturday, but kindly acted as taxi service, meeting us at the bottom of the mountain and delivering us to the gym. We joined for a month, hoping to see how the commitment lasted, then had a good workout before relaxing in the sauna, steam room and hot tub.

None of us rode on Tuesday, as we were expecting the ADSL engineer. We spent the morning finalising the major update to the website that we were going to implement once ADSL was in, then in the afternoon Mike, Andy and Bob went to the gym while I waited for the engineer.

A couple of hours passed, and the guys returned, telling me that they'd found a card from the engineer claiming he'd got no response. Andy rang up and sorted out an engineer for Wednesday morning, and I went to the gym and took my frustration with Telus out on the rowing machine.

The engineer appeared first thing on Wednesday, before any of us were dressed, and by 11:00 we'd torn ourselves away from our new connection and were on our way to the slopes.

We spent another day on Wishbone, this time with Matt, Bob's friend from Cheltenham. We continued practising switch, ollying, and 180s, with varying levels of success. Bob was definitely leading the way, confidently pulling off three of the four possible 180s, and flying down the run riding switch.

In the evening the three of us headed off to the gym for another workout/stretch/relaxation.

Thursday was much the same as Wednesday, except that the riding began much earlier and went on much later: we were at the bottom of the mountain by 09:30, and didn't leave until the lifts closed at 15:00. We met Matt on the mountain at around 11:00, then paused at the Rendezvous restaurant for lunch. While we were there I bumped into Stan, a friend of my old housemate. He's here doing a season with a wife and 11-month old child, so was riding on his own, while his wife looked after their child. He joined us for the afternoon, and lead us up the Glacier chair and T-Bars to the top of the Blackcomb Glacier. On the way up a micro-snowstorm took the party by surprise, and provided about 3mm of fresh snow - not really enough to make a difference, but hopefully the beginning of some serious snow.

The three of us weren't quite so keen on Friday morning, but still made it to the Wizard chair by 10:00, and met Matt and Stan on the slopes. The day was again divided between the Jersey Cream and Glacier chairs, although this time we were never out of touch, as we'd finally managed to charge our radios which had been refusing to work with the Canadian power supply.

On Friday night we met up with Matt, Paul, Mike, Jer and Eric, and headed out to the Brewhouse for some food and a pint or two. From there we moved on to Blacks (an Irish bar) with the hope of meeting some more Canadians. Unfortunately we bumped into a huge group of English lads, and spent most of the evening talking to them, before heading home and watching the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring, ending at around 04:00.

Saturday was our day off, but we were woken at about 09:00 by Andy, who was keen to get us to a pub in time for the kick-off of the Man Utd vs Arsenal re-run. We watched the match at Gaitors: Rob and I enjoyed a large cooked breakfast, while Andy leapt up and down, screaming at the TV and getting told to calm down by the waitress.

We headed into town in the afternoon to find out about lessons, buy Bob some goggles, and visit the Passholders' Party, where we were promissed food, drink and bargains. We made the most of the food and drink, but the bargains didn't really live up to the promise.

We headed up Whistler for the first time on Sunday, but were disappointed to find it much busier than Blackcomb. The snow conditions weren't very different to Blackcomb, but the number of ski lessons scattered over the two or three runs made it less enjoyable than the days spent on Blackcomb. We did try out the helmet-cam though: I filmed one run down the Emerald Express chair, getting some decent footage of Andy and Bob - some may appear soon on the website.