Totally Dehydro

I’m afraid I’ve been a bit rubbish recently. Not been terribly excitng. I’ve been out riding every day which has been sweet. It has been bright blue skys and blazing hot sun every day. Perfect riding weather but no more snow. Went over to Tignes yesterday and we sat outside in our t-shirts drinking vin chaud. Such a hideously hard life. Totally abnormal weather for end of january.

Haven’t been out at night at all. That’s not what I’m here for though.One of the guys from head office is out on holiday with his wife. We managed to persuade him he had to take us out to diner last night. Chose the blingyest restaurant we could get away with.

Woohoo! day off again. Heading over to Tignes to learn more tricks. Or rather try to master the ones from last time. Don’t exactly have them down yet. Thankfully I have mad skills yo in falling well.

Have a great day in the office.

Everyone’s idea of a ski resort is that it’s jam packed with wind swept and interesting people. Intelligent travelled people. People of similar a mindset. Weather beaten hot guys and beautiful snow bunnies. All rapped up in a quaint slightly hedonistic mountain village. Hmmm? Not so much. I have an awesome group of chums. We of course are all of the above. Out there it’s a whole other story. Don’t seem to have that much in common with many people. Everyone seems hell bent on getting trashed or being stoned 24/7. I can make small talk easily enough but you start to lose the will if you have to do that every time your out. DULLARAMA! As for hot people, WHERE? They are like the snow has been for ages, thin on the ground. I can’t say a thing wrong about Val D’Isere and the fun we have on the mountains. Nothing will ever compare to that.

Rant over.

Hurrah! The snow is back. It’s been dumping for 3 days. Sadly it’s nothing like Canada with there 30 feet but hey-cant complain. Heading up the mountain tomorrow. Day off! Woo-Hoo! Hopefully to learn a few tricks. Starting with a backside 180. Blah, wotever, big woo’s I hear Alex say but it’s an exciting one for me. Gona try and get some footage seeing as I’ve not added any action shots yet. Think they will mostly be of a Sarah shaped hole in the powder but its all good.

Forgot to mention another Kath story.

We came off the top of the Borsat Express chair which after a vertical mogul field
brings you to the top of two nice greens . To the right of the run there’s a little area that’s not steep, for beginners to get down. G and I headed down the piste of doom, through the mogul fields of Moria. Kath headed off to the right, we figured we would meet her at the bottom Craig and I got there, no sign of Kath. Turned around to see a cloud of snow with arms, legs and skis flying towards us. When she finally stopped she explained the chaos. Just behind the ridge there was a ski school group of about 15 lined up learning to side step up a narrow run. She tried to avoid them but to do this she had to go off piste, which was extremely chunky and icy. Losing control she headed back towards the piste but the run was no wider than their skis. So to avoid death the only way past was a comedy run straight over 30 skis. Don’t know if any of you have ever met a French ski instructor. Their entire vocabulary consists of swearing in a way otherwise unknown to man. They also have a gay little song that goes “Bend Zee knees, mind zee trees. Oui! Zee skiing comes with ease.
Anyway I digress. The guy went ding-dong. Totally nuts, but Kath was long gone by then. Hee-Hee!

As I mentioned in an earlier entry you only get a ribbing for a week before someone else is caught with their pants down. Our friend bonnie was in this weeks Mountain Echo.

‘Shhh!’
‘Tora (Petit Danois doorman) and Bonnie (Europe Transfer) have already had complaints from neighbours in Les Oreades about the amount of noise coming from the apartment. We hear the Danois’ main man is being quite the gentleman though. Having won the skis at the Pacific Bar raffle he swapped them for the snowboard because Bonnie didn’t have one. Ahhhhh’

HeeHee!

The snow is once again crapolla and we don’t really fancy ice-skating down vertical drops. Rather than lazing around in the flat we’ve been checking out some amazing walks around the valley. Barbara and I came across a tiny abandoned village, which used to be inhabited by Shepard’s and farmers in yester year. Just up from that we found a spectacular frozen waterfall.

This is the grossest thing EVER! Emily’s arm had mostly been ok. She’s pretty tough. Until one day she gets up extremely scrunchy faced. Her arm is absolute agony with one specific area that has shooting crippling pain. I sent her up to the medical centre to get it checked. BLEUGH! They took her cast off to find…two of the pins actually poking through her skin. EUGH! Annoyingly we don’t have any photos of that. Here’s a photo of me and Bonnie with Ems and stookie.

If you look at a piste map here you’ll see I tiny drawing of an igloo. You’d think it was going to be just big enough to get inside, WRONG. You go underground into a massive ice cavern. Inside there are life sized ice carvings of a mammoth, a gorilla and some kind of gigantic dinosaur. The keeper of these spectacular carvings is a poor wee Chinese lady who has to sit there all day, everyday with a thousand layers of bear skin on.

Bienvenue Gees’s. Had the best time ever with Kath and Craig. Aside from the off piste areas I think we pretty much covered the whole resort.
I couldn’t go up the mountain on the first day so I gave them a map and explained how important it is that you look at your map to check gradings. Val D’Isere is one of the worst resorts for under grading. Some blues are more like reds etc. It was a white out day but luckily kath had come dressed to be found in 100 feet of snow.(see photo). In typical Gee style they went up, left there map and came down a red, which is the entire side of the mountain and more like a black. Needless to say they didn’t object when I suggested some blues for the following day. Hysterical.
In keeping with our hardcore rock and roll lives back home. I promised a big night out. Starting with nice cocktails in Victors on to our favourite bar Blue Note then out to Dicks until 4am. The reality was, barely two cocktails in Victors and we were all falling asleep in our seats. Tucked up in bed before 12. Living on the edge.
On our visit to Tignes we came across a spectacular rock formation called The Eye of the Needle. Again kath’s grace and coordination overwhelms us all. While climbing up towards the eye which granted it pretty steep she loses her footing and slides down the slope straight past her ski’s and on towards the piste which was packed with people going a million miles an hour. Craig and Nigel being such gentlemen stood and laughed until they peed. Nice.