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After experiencing the ocean and beaches the last two weekends, today I went up to Lake Mountain with quite a few people from Christian Union for “Snow Day.” I got up early, as they were wanting people to be there by 8, but we of course didn’t get going until close to 8:45, oh well. But it was raining all morning on our way up there (Lake Mountain is a couple hours northeast of Melbourne), until we got to a high enough altitude, at which point it switched over to snow. Part-way up the mountain park officials made everyone pull over and put tyre chains on their cars because the road conditions were slushy and very slippery, especially when you throw into the mix that most Aussies have little or no experience with snow. It took Kieran, Simon & Brad awhile to get the chains on right. Let me say that I’m very glad that we don’t bother with those things back home, they’re really more trouble than they’re worth. But they’re probably good for inexperienced snow drivers to have. Kieran, who was driving the car I was in, was seeing snow for the very first time while he was driving on it! And Herman, who is from Colombia, also saw it for the first time today, along with a couple of the other Aussie CU’ers, so it was cool seeing their reactions to it. They love visiting the snow, but they can’t believe how we can possibly put up with snow and cold for 5-6 months of the year, hehe. It was snowing like crazy up there today, with a good deal of wind making it feel rather chilly. But once we started tobogganing we warmed right up. What they call a toboggan I think would be more aptly described as a plastic sled, but they were decent sleds. The run we were on had all sorts of jumps on it, and a couple of times I made it all the way down the hill and even crashed through the snow fence, it was great fun! So was the time I accidentally veered off into the trees, especially since I managed to weave my way between trees on a newfound path, hehe. And it took a great deal of coaxing, but we finally got Paul to go down the hill a few times, since he was actually really really nervous and worried about sledding, as he’d never done it before. He was all worried that it was dangerous, lol! You can tell he’s another one that hasn’t grown up with snow being a fact of life for half the year every year. But in addition to all the fresh-fallen snow, there was a pretty decent snowpack already on the ground, of about half a meter (roughly 18 inches), continuing what’s been the best snowy season in the mountains of Victoria in several years. All the heavy wet snow also made for excellent snowball-making conditions, hehe. When we tried to head back to Melbourne around 4, we were stuck at the resort for awhile, because Kieran managed to bog his car in a snowbank in the car park, hehe. That, and even if we had been pulled out right away, we couldn’t have gone anywhere, because the road down the mountain was blocked by a car accident and a downed tree (unrelated incidents), which had traffic at a standstill for 30-45 minutes. We were all soaked and pretty cold, so it felt good to get into some dry clothes when we stopped at Marysville. But it was a really fun day, one that actually made it feel like winter at long last!
I was supposed to go over to Stuart’s place in Blackburn with Rowan, Mars and a few other people when I got back from Lake Mountain, but I guess the weather was so cold and rainy for the soccer game that the three of them today that they decided just to go home and sleep or whatever. Oh well, it’s probably alright, because now I’ll be able to get to sleep at a more decent time, especially considering I woke up early this morning. I’ll probably play a little more “Return of the King” before I go to bed.
I just discovered The Australian‘s News of the Weird page, and it has some fantastically strange stories on it, including: the British man who enjoys walking blindfolded across a tightrope between hot-air balloons thousands of feet up in the air; a superstitious Romanian who requested to stay home from work on Friday the 13th, only to die of a wasp sting in his kitchen; an English cricket club was burned to the ground by a bunny; and how the communist “president-for-life” of Turkmenistan requires his nation’s citizens to pass a philosophy test before being granted a drivers license.