Racki was working a lot in the hotel and so I had a lot of time.
My main activities: snowboarding, making music and hanging around with Racki in the hotel.
After a couple of days my snowboarding improved rapidly and soon I was discovering the whole mountain and all the tracks and off track areas.
Especially riding in the fresh deep snow in the morning was awesome! It was so awesome to go up with the lift and see all the untouched snow and minutes later to ride on and through it.
After some more practice, I started to do little jumps and riding fakie which was a whole new world to me.
When Racki had nothing to do in the hotel, we rode together and it was absolutely awesome!
Our cars had been stuck in a parking lot for weeks when a massive excavator came and cleaned the masses of snow in the parking lot.
The massive machine had a lot to do with it and in the end I gifted the driver a bottle of wine.
Living in Gudauri at 2200m during winter was an interesting experience. Things change a lot with the cold. Of course Rosinante’s heater was running a lot. And I had to clean our cars from the snow because sometimes the layer of snow was nearly a meter thick after a night of snowfall.
Once while cleaning the cars, a tourist family from India came by and asked if they may clean parts of the snow because it looks interesting and they never had to do it in their life. I was happy to let them do so and they had a lot of fun.
We couldn’t open Rosinante’s roof because the heater was not able to maintain the warmth with the popped up roof and so our living space got much more limited and we had to deal with humidity and ice on the inside of some parts of our camper cabin. But we did very well and it was adventurous.
In the beginning we tried to use the heater as little as necessary, but next time I’d just keep it running all day and night and regulate the temperature by opening the windows more or less.
And the route leading to Gudauri was crazy. After Gudauri this road leads to the only real border between Georgia and Russia and so all the trucks have to take it.
Because of the changes in temperature, the trucks and everything else, the condition of the roads got worse. One of the sharp corners broke so much that trucks got stuck for hours blocking the whole road. Other times the mountain pass leading to the border or the border itself got closed and all the trucks got stuck in Gudauri on the road. No chance to turn back or go further.
Whoopy’s refused to turn on after some nights with about -18 degrees Celsius and so she had to wait until the temperatures had risen again. But then it started without any problems.
And from time to time we had the best pizza in all of Georgia!
After Christmas, Whoopy had to leave with the Marshrutka and leave her camper van next to our cars because it was stuck in knee-deep snow.
She had left her snowboard and equipment and so I was able to make my first snowboard experiences.
I talked a little about how to start snowboarding with Racki and Whoopy and had watched some YouTube videos. I felt good about it, walked up a little slope to check if I felt that I would survive going down the whole mountain, bought a season ticket (for about 260€), and took the gondola up.
The beginning was tough and it took me about 45 minutes to “ride” down for the first time. So the first day, I did three descents and felt done.
It was super interesting to learn this new sport from zero. And it was awesome when I managed to turn and ride slalom down the mountain. It felt like freedom and a totally new world to me.
I did not push myself hard in the learning process and mostly just let it flow. It felt more and more natural to me and I had so much fun conquering more and more of the mountain.
Whoopy came back on the mountain for New Year’s Eve and to get her car and so we could do some snowboarding together.
Racki had to work during the day but of course we all went together to a New Year’s Eve party. It was hilarious! We danced for hours to electronic music and then rock music and had a lot of glint wine.
