Tremblant! What a great weekend at Stringer's. Jackie, Eve & I drove up together and arrived around dinner time. Marisha and Erin left later and arrived shortly after 11pm. Julie was coming up for Saturday only since she had to work at her C-fit gym.
In spite of the forecast the weather was great - sunny and just a bit cooler than Toronto. After breakfast, Eve and I went shopping and the others took a hike. They got lost for awhile but eventually found their way home and we spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool. Dinner was at El Diablo and we hung out at the bar to watch the end of the World Cup match - Chile v Spain.  Something I forgot from previous restaurant dinners in Quebec is if you enjoy curry dishes, don't order one in QC. They serve it with a very bland white sauce with a hint of some spice which could be cinnamon, possibly some other spice but definitely not curry.
The next morning was a slow start for everyone. We were waiting for Jules to arrive so didn't make any plans. At some point we got tired of sleeping, lounging, eating, sleeping so Jackie and I took a walk around the village. We saw some of the triathletes finishing the trail run portion. Some of them looked far too fresh to have completed the 56km or whatever the poster said it was so we decided that there must have been a relay portion. When we got home, we made the mistake of turning on the tv just in time to see a police car burning in the middle of T.O. and the group smashing windows, spraying graffiti and stuff. It was mezmerizing (even thought they just kept showing the same clip over and over).
Julie finally arrived and had brought each of us an awesome C-fit shirt. We prepared lunch, cracked open the wine and sat down to a game of phonetic scrabble (which doesn't always work between anglo- and franco-phone players). We went to the pool for a bit, watched a movie and were too wiped to go out again.
After a lazy day yesterday, we decided to climb the mont today. Pretty good hike. We are not dumb people but none of us brought water. Fortunately, there was a restauarant at the top and we rehydrated there. Eve and I decided to take the gondola back down - me because of my knee (climbing up is fine climbing down causes much pain and swelling) and Eve because one of the chemo drugs damaged her lungs and it takes some time to recover . I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the ride! It's so quiet and the view was everything you'd expect. Spectacular! It took us 90 minutes to do the climb, Marisha & Julie did the descent  in 45.
We ran in to Jackie and Erin just returning from the mini-golf. Damn, we wanted to do that to but it was getting to that time where we needed to pack up and head back to Ontario. Not before we had a little more time at the pool though!

We were planning to stick together on the way home but because of a quick on/off of the highway to check our directions, lost the other girls right near the start. We headed back through Ottawa while the other two sent crazy texts from Oka, Hawksbury etc...
Eve took over driving just before Kingston. We had just gotten back on the highway after stopping for gas, when we heard a clunking sound. Or I should say a clunk sound since it just happened the once. Within minutes there was a weird thrumming coming from the front end. Since I'd just had the car in for service on the front end bearings, I thought maybe it was something to do with that. As we went on though, it sounded more and more like a flat tire. It was pouring rain so we pulled off at one of those gas stations with a giant canopy over all the pumps. No flat but when I tested the lug nuts on the front driver's-side tire, found I could tighten them by hand. While the girls dug out the tire iron, I found the wheel locks. We tightened the nuts and did a couple of laps around the parking lot before testing them again. The pimply-faced kid at the cash register asked if we needed help but we declined and decided we'd just stop again a few km down the road to test them again. Whatever, it held and we were pretty pleased with our pit crew.

We should have tuned into 680 before we got on the highway. The DVP was flooded from all the rain and closed at the Bloor-Bayview exit where we wanted to get off. Since we couldn't see any red taillights I decided not to get off at Eglinton as Jackie suggested and carried on. What a dummy. Traffic seemed to be moving along just fine but then stopped dead. Eventually we got to Jackie's sometime around midnight.

Eve and I carried on down Charles where we witnessed a group of loogans fighting. Probably the longest drive home from Tremblant ever. We want to go again but I'm thinking of flying Porter if we do.