The Ski Fiasco (soon to be followed by the wallet fiasco)

So, our hero's friend Rene snowboards a lot at a ski mountain near here. Free shuttle from Wonju to the resort....only an hour away etc.

Our hero joined him last weekend....for some night skiing...our hero had a coupon for a $10 lift ticket....and rentals are also dirt cheap in Korea...also like $10....as long as you rent from a shop not affiliated with the resort itself.....sounds great right? $20 skiing!Super cheap, close to home right? Nope.

Starting things off on the right foot...the shuttle was packed to the gills....included packing the aisles full of skisuit-clad snowboarding carrying people who stood the whole way. The air quality was appalling. Good start.

Next up, the shuttle failed to stop at the cheap rental shops, which it usually does....and being at the back of the bus our hero couldn't exactly get off anyway....so our hero's rental price just doubled. Boo.

Following that auspicious start, OH got into the too long line of Koreans all trying 57 different credit cards to see if they get a discount by using that card...(the discount system here is a blog in itself...OH's $10 ticket was also by using my special visa card) When our hero got to the front of the line, our hero pays and the cashier is mumbling to herself about the discount only being during the day(keep in mind this is all in Korean).....she was about just give our hero the discount because she didn't want to try and explain when some idiot, I mean, nice person behind our hero decided to offer to help translate. Thanks a bunch loser. So our hero's ticket price quintupled.

Moving on to the rental shop, where apparently you can't actually rent, you have to go back to the lift ticket place and rent from them. Back to the uberlame line of discount seekers.

Next up, the skipants rental shop...where they bizarrely take your Foreigners ID card for a $5 item (this turns out to be rather key for my wallet fiasco story) . Back to the rental shop where they request your foreigners ID card even though their idiotic sister store next store already has it. How stupid are we? If you answered quite or above you are on the right track.

The rental shop plays their part perfectly, twice the price of the other shops, complete with the worst skis available and bent and rusty poles. Seriously. Our running total for the supersized serving of idiocy is now pushing $80.......

Idiocy forgotten, optimism restored, our hero heads out into the snow. The skis take about ten minutes to snap in place. Our hero notes something feels weird with the ski binding. He also notes it is like -20. Way too cold.

They head up to the top of the mountain and successfully ski a couple runs....back at the top, heading down for the third run, our hero cuts hard and randomly his right ski comes loose with no impact....sending him on a slalom ski death spiral, culminate in a 200m (at least) headfirst bumslide. Ski nowhere to be found. After shaking the snow out of his pants/jacket, our hero's ski is returned to him by a stranger. He attempts to put on said ski...but it is not possible.

Our hero begins the long descent...half walking, half sliding down on his boots.....carrying the skis. No ski patrol in sight. With more than one face flop/bum drop.Every ten minutes for sanity's sake, trying to put on the ski again. To no avail. If you've ever tried walking down

<--this in ski boots carrying skis and poles than you know how our hero feels.

After about 30mins, our hero finds his friend walking up to look for him, who assumed our hero had broken a leg or something.

Our hero makes it to the next ski lift, and asks for a lift down. First worker says "ok, ok" second worker says "nonono, you...um...walk" Of course. He would say that. How could he say otherwise on a day such as this?

All told, our none too pleased hero made it back to the lodge after an hour of walking. (for those of us keeping count...we are now at $80=ten minutes of skiing+one dangerous fall+ one hour of walking)

On closer examination by our hero's friend, who worked at a ski shop in Whistler for a season...the ski shop had made a very dangerous error, on top of the skis just plain sucking.

You see below in the picture a ski binding...both back and front pieces are adjustable to fit different sizes.

For those aspiring ski bums out there....when the maximum setting on the back piece is 275mm and your customers boots are 285mm you DON'T...that's right...DON'T just push the back part past its safety catch and hope that it works. That would be a don't. Write it down. What you should do is move the also-adjustable front piece. Wow clever.

Anyways, our hero proceed to explain to the ski shop in broken flawless Korean how bad this was, and how he almost died and how he had to walk for an hour and how skiing time was almost over. After about 30mins of haggling and ticket changing etc. our hero got good skis for free and extended his lift pass until 1am (not free). Our hero did not really want to ski that late at night....that would mean returning home at about 2am....but anyway, that was the best offer he received. Our hero also had to buy gloves because it was Soooooo cold and after all this, retiring because of cold hands would be a sad ending wouldn't it?

Anyways, skiing itself was pretty good...our hero is getting quite good at skiing now....but when our hero tried to return his pants and reclaim his ID card....the clothes shop was closed. (!??!?) With my ID card taped inside the door. Apparently every shop is independent, closes at a different time, and has zero communication. The morons at the ski desk said they couldn't open the door. Apparently never heard of a janitor?? Our hero had no choice but to write his address and leave his card behind (illegal by the way, O.H. must carry either that or his passport at all times) and run and catch the last bus to Wonju.

To add insult to injury...this place can't even do lockers right...our hero's locker number was l l P l. And yes those are all numbers. So, slightly deranged but looks like 1191 right? Wrong. After trying ever locker known to man...it turns out the number as 1091. Since when do zeros look like this --> l??????? What a joke.

One week later our hero has not received his card in the mail yet. And after the wallet fiasco is plotting the destruction of a certain ski resort. More on that later.