Ruka 2005 Miniwhumpacon

To try and report this miniwhumpacon day by day would be impossible as it was a blur of powder snow, speed, stargate, and in my case falling over. I'll try to recount things in the order they occured, but don't be surprised if i start getting up before i've fallen.

My journey started on Boxing Day, at Stansted airport. Having spent the previous two weeks moaning extensively about the ten hours i'd have to wait there for my flight, i was more than slightly miffed to find that almost the entire population of Europe also turned up to endure the same stay. The only difference between them and me was they had thought to bring sleeping bags, and probably hadn't complained as much.
At the point of going prematurely insane with exhaustion and boredom i made friends with two strangers who were in all probability crazier than me, and together we wandered the silent corridors and later watched some Johhny Depp on my laptop.

Transfer at Amsterdam was not difficult, despite a stewardess informing me my flight company didn't exist, and my eyes continually telling me i had no right to be out of my coma thankyouverymuch. I laid down to get some rest before my second flight, and was instantly confused for a vagrant (you should see my jeans, they're only 40% present) by a lady who set a bottle of water and an orange by my head as i slept. How adorable, i thought, as i kicked them across the concourse and whispered profanities at her under my breath.

My arrival at Helsinki only added punctuation to how tired i was when i discovered i had been on the same flight as Corine and her family, and had infact stood right next to them whilst waiting for the bathroom. They had the excuse that my hair had grown from 2mm to 7 inches, but i had none at all.
The next day after a strangely inapporpriate tour-bus ride (it was all a lie i tell ya), some snow-climbing and church desecrating we all departed from Helsinki airport and flew to Kuusamo airport in Lapland.
Arriving to bitter cold and 40cm snow, we took a quick group picture. Me, WOnky, Elizabeth, Martina, Ellen, Steffi, Thomas, Corine, Raoul, Nerissa and Kevin had finally arrived at Ruka Ski Resort!

WOnky saw fit to lead us up a steep snowy (hell everything was snowy, i think i can stop using that descriptive word now) hill to our apartments, leading to much dissention later on in the week when we discovered the easier route. Mwah. We bagged our beds, stuck our noses in the sauna room and Martina decided the crazy stairs were going to be more harmful to her than any ski-ing accident.

Wednesday brought daylight, an unforgiving early morning (for my next holiday i shall be hibernating alone in a hole somewhere) and some cheap but brilliant hotel breakfast. Ellen won the prize for most-organised-plate.
Then everyone except WOnky, Steffi and Martina (the seasoned, and frequently amused, professionals) took the skiing lesson with a teacher who looked chillingly like Major Davies. He taught us how to do the snowplough (no relation to the timewarp, luckily) and the airplane (helps turn corners apparently) and i learnt how to fall over all by myself. Clever Pheral!
Directly after the lesson me and Ellen headed for the first ski-lift that came into view. When she had the intelligence to get off half way up, i just hung on for dear life and terrified myself witless coming down a Red slope - sideways and as slowly as possible. Colour denotes the difficulty, Black being the worst and Red being next. Soon WOnky found me and accompanied me down, and i heard later that Thomas succumbed to the same fate. We both developed a sort of twitchy response when anyone mentioned Red slopes, but i still managed to defeat a couple over the course of the week - admittedly once by walking.
It was also immediately apparant on that first day how little sunshine Lapland gets during winter. We had only a few hours of daylight each day, and with the skies filled with snow and clouds there was little direct sunlight to be found. There was one day of truly glorious weather, with blue skies, and in the whole week the coldest temperature reached during the day was -10 degrees C. It was however cold enough on the top of the slopes where the wind was flying past, sending tiny granules of snow into tender faces.

Ski-ing proceeded to dominate much of the holiday for everyone except Elizabeth, who after a good few tries decided it wasn't her thing and retreated to the apartment to suffer a miserable cold. ::pats Elizabeth:: She was our writing slave, and we tried our best to bury her in a drift of white fluffy plot bunnies. She's currently working on an idea WOnky had, involving ski-equipment. I was similarly inspired (or infected, however you want to think of it) and have bunnies frolicking through my hair as i type.

Our first culinary experiences in Ruka were soon to follow our arrival as we set off to a restaurant to sample the joys of Reindeer meat. Mine looked like beef, smelt like tuna oil, and surprise surprise - tasted like beef in tuna oil. But hey, i loved it, and they served it with mash so how could i complain? Nobody ordered the Bear Beef due to the price, so satisfied ourselves with cowering under the stuffed one instead. The other restaurants in Ruka offered everything from jacket potatoes to pizza, and a small general store supplied everything we needed for meals in the apartment.

Soon the beginner ski-ers found the joys of the Blue slopes. Blue means goodness and fluffiness and no screaming or limb-loss. Whilst the grownups gained confidence and speed every time we went down, the kids fired down like rockets right from the start, Kevin partcularly just shooting down without a thought for the brake. Nerissa resembled a little orange star-fish in her warm suit and snowplough position. I don't think i saw the kids fall down once, even when Kevin went with WOnky on a Red slope.

The best ski-ing fun began when WOnky took me, Steffi and Ellen down a route through the woods between two Blue slopes. It was deep snow, steep bits and bumps and slopes, turns and twists, and i do believe i had more fun falling than i did ski-ing. I attacked various inanimate objects with glee, flying into trees often as WOnky perfected the speed with which she could whip out her camera and take photos of me entangled. Help Pheral get up? Hell no, lets take a photo instead! And then laugh. At length.

With us in action the woods were a cacophany of whoops and yells as we hurtled through the snow. Ellen revealed a rather strange yell before she would crash. It sounded a bit like a Llama being punched in the stomach, or perhaps an ostrich in labour? Later on in the week i did it alone twice, uncaring of the aloof snowboarders sitting on a peak and no doubt laughing at me as i screamed and whoopeed my way up and down hills and dips. You know the shirts that have 'no fear' written on them? Mine should say 'no dignity'. I didn't so much ski through those woods and fall over frequently, as much as i just fell over in slow motion at the top and landed at the bottom of the route. There wasn't really any ski-ing involved. And i loved it!
In other areas, Thomas had an interesting first ride on the chair-lift when he decided to stay on a little longer and then fling himself off once the ground had disappeared. I helped him carry the torch with my disastrous attempts to go up the T-Lift with other people until i discovered it was ten times easier on my own. I had to flatted Kevin a couple of times to come to that conclusion, but i got there eventually. Guess i'm a Lift-loner too... >:D

Other delights of the Finnish lifestyle included sauna's, of which we each had one in our cabins. Me, WOnky and Elizabeth were the first to brave the heat, and subsequent cold of going outside in the minus temps once we were good and char-broiled. We stood in towels and walking boots in the cold air. Later Corine and her family bested us by lying down in the snow bank during their sauna.

While the ski-ing continued, Elizabeth provided a couple of wonderful dinners at the apartment, Martina continued to pass me on the slopes at high velocities and we booked some other acivities for New Years Day.
The night before, New Years Eve, saw some spectacular fireworks, and a less than spectacular torch-slalom down a blue slope. The Finns proved their insanity by proceeding to let fireworks off within five feet of onlookers, and i hunkered down in a small BBQ-cabin thingy, estimating when was the safest time to make a run for it. My escape was followed by a nice night in, eating rediculous amounts of chocolate and drinking coke. Later the hardcore crazies watched Stargate well into the night and the hardcore sleepers went to bed.

New Year's Day was a brilliant day. We set out at first to the Safari Hut to meet our instructor for our snowmobiling session, something i was slightly concerned about due to my previous ineptitude on Go-Karts. Oh how i should not have worried... speed, whooping, snow skiffing away from crazy drivers... it was the most fantastic thing i have ever done, and i know most of the rest of the group agreed it was a great time. After the briefest of lessons on how to drive the thing we paired off, and i swallowed my fear to go with WOnky the speed-freak. The speeds were in excess of 60kph, the screams were loud and often, and i had the best fun i have had in a long long time. Our first whumping event was provided by Thomas (quickly becoming a legend) as he drove himself and Steffi up a hill in front of us and we watched him tip almost in slow motion to the side until they landed upside down in a snow drift, half under their snowmobile. They scrambled free and we all stopped our engines to shout conflicting instructions about safety. Our sense of drama was soon extinguished by the skillful and untroubled way our guide merely restarted the upturned snowmobile engine and gunned it upwards, upright and out of its position. He was rather a gorgeous guide too (all guides and trainers seem to posess these qualities in Ruka), and carried two knives on his belt and a small axe in his backpack in case he needed to chop down trees to free a stuck snowmobile! We drove at high speeds over several frozen lakes - large expanses of ice and snow, WOnky and myself waiting til the others had a head start and then flying along at rediculous speeds to catch them up.

At one point, i drove with Martina on the back and we took a steep turn on an ice lake, lifted onto our right ski entirely and wheeled our way round the bend, narrowly avoiding turning over. I have found the speed-freak within, and i love it so. ::hugs speedfreak within::

The snowmobiling took us to a husky-farm very close to the Russian border, and out next activity for the day. We also met up with Corine and her family there and joined them and some other tourists in a huddle around a husky-sleigh and a man called Mr Wolf as he instructed us on how to hold on for dear life and not lose our dogs. He wore Reindeer skins and their fur made into huge warm mitts for his hands. After a brief lesson we went out onto the edge of a huge frozen lake, all the huskies howling and whining with eagerness to get going. The second the sleighs were released the dogs were silent, all their effort and energy going into pulling. We watched the first lot go, they circled the lake and arrived back through the husky farm. Then it was the second teams turn and WOnky started driving while i sat in the sleigh. It was lined with Reindeer fur and very comfy. The jolt when you start is hard, and the strength with which the dogs are pulling is incredible, our team was going so fast we were breaking almost the whole way to avoid crashing into Corine in front of us! It wasn't the most interesting route, which was a pity, but the novelty of the experience made it worthwhile anyway. By the end me and WOnky were desperate to race them, given how fast our sleigh had been.

After we finished we had plenty of time to snuggle the dogs and for them to share some dog saliva with us (dog-snogging, yummmm) before we retreated into a little hut they had set aside with a fire burning, hot coffee and specially baked buns. We had the oppurtunity to ask Mr Wolf any questions we wanted, and then it was back on the snowmobiles (with no small amount of glee on my part) to speed back to the resort. Corine, Raoul and the kids set off to the Reindeer farm, something they had also decided to do that day, and did some Reindeer sleighing there. The day was finished back in Ruka with some afternoon ski-ing on the Blue slopes, the orange slope-lights gradually taking over from the dulling sun.

When we got back to the apartment WOnky led us in some typical Finnish New Years celebration consisting of melting tin on the stove and then dropping it in cold water so it solidified fast and took on shapes. Each person did their own, and it was supposed to indicate some aspect of our future. Nerissa got a beautiful bird in a tree and Kevin got a cobra while Steffi's turned out looking like a disaster and mine was completely unidentifiable. Oiy.

Tuesday came all too fast, and i was hankering after new experiences (i like to torture my bank manager too) so i booked a snowboarding lesson on the morning before we left on the plane. My instructor was worth the money alone, being a gorgeous blone-haired Finn. I fell into his arms alot during that lesson, i can tell you. I also fell in love with snowboarding, and i used all 3 hours of my ski-pass that day, going down the blue slope with WOnky after my lesson and then still going when she got cold and went for food. I did the slope until i could do the whole thing without falling over, snowboarding is definitely on the cards for the near future. Snowboarding also provided my one true self-whump moment, when i fell from an upright position straght onto my ass, and robbed myself of the pleasure of sitting down comfortably for the following few days. A few minutes later i fell onto my wrist and buggered that too, bending my ring in the process. My fondest memory from Ruka may just be me lying in the snow, my gorgeous instructor looming over me with a grin as i yell "MY ASS!!".

Back at the P. restaurant we had nakit ja ranskalaiset (chips and sausages, and exploded sausages no less. they looked a bit like Goa'ulds) and then settled down later to wait, and in my case sleep, until the bus arrived to take us to the airport. The flight was a rather hysterical one for me and the WOnks, and everyone came together for a group photo in Helsinki airport.

We parted a group much closer together than we were at the beginning, i am personally so grateful to have gotten the chance to get to know the people i met for the first time in Holland last year. There was much laughing, our fair share of whumping, a whole loada snow, lots of stargate, plenty of snow-wrestling and some fantastic memories. I have never had so much snow in my underwear.

Next year, anyone?