DANGER: Dumb passengers on-board.
August 28th, 2008
Although it was over 12 years ago that I worked as a tour leader for Top Deck in Europe, I’m still in the game. For the past 11 years I’ve been ‘leading’ day trips and weekend trips up to the Victorian snowfields. Yesterday I took a day trip up to Mt Buller. Some things never change, though. Passengers still ask you silly questions. Back in my Top Deck days I had questions such as: ’If I ring Australia now, will my mum be home?’ (No, I think she’s out shopping with my mum.); ‘Will my brother like this shirt?’ (No, I think he’d prefer it in beige”) and, at the money exchange at the Swiss border, ‘How much Swedish money do I need?’. Yesterday, just as we were about to leave Mansfield after getting ski hire, a young fellow wearing his ski boots came up to me as we were about to get on the coach and asked, ‘Do I need these for skiing?’
‘Um… yes,’ I said.
Halfway up the 45-minute drive to Mt Buller he came up to the front of the coach and asked, ‘What do I do with this?’ In his hand he had a ski hire voucher. He’d only used his ski boot voucher. He thought that all he needed to ski was a pair of boots. In his defense he was from Saudi Arabia, which is a bit light on for ski resorts in the desert. He decided not to ski anyway and hired a toboggan up on the mountain. I passed him later in the day trying to snowboard in his ski boots standing on the toboggan. I couldn’t bear to watch, so I skied away before he spotted me. That reminds me of a joke…
Two dyslexic skiers were sitting on a chairlift. One was telling the other how he’d just zig-zogged down the mountain and the other one said, ‘I think it’s zig-zagged.’
‘No, I’m sure it’s zig-zogged,’ the first skier said.
They couldn’t figure out which one was right, so they decided to ask someone when they got off at the top of the lift.
‘Sorry, I don’t know,’ the person they asked said. ‘I’m not a skier, I’m a tobogganist.’
‘Oh,’ said the skier, ‘can I get a pack of Benson and Hedges then.’
Boom, boom!