2013 was pretty good... 2014 will be better!

Wow!

So... I didn't post anything since March 2013! What happened since then? Well, a lovely new lady entered my life (actually she entered it a bit before March but she stayed in it for a while and is kind of still there, in spirit if not in person). Actually we just returned from a lovely trip to Italy where we had a weekend of shopping in Milan and a sunny ski trip in Cervinia. A few trips to see ballet at the Royal Opera House and Teatro alla Scala, nice food and nice smiles; It was great. Sadly she's had to return to her own country, much to my dismay as I need a visa to go there!

We also had a few other nice trips. Several road trips to France, where we discovered some wonderful places in Normandy, another ski trip in Italy and a road trip in the UK to Wales and the Lake District, which was just as lovely as Normandy but in different ways.

Many gastronomic delights were discovered, many beautiful sunsets observed, and many good times were had.

Long may it continue :)

What else has happened?

Well, I tried mountain biking for the first time.

I bought this cool mountain bike in 2007 with the intention of using it abroad, but it's not been used off road much at all, only the occasional forest trail. It was a bit like buying a Range Rover to use on the school run. I have a group of friends who try to get me to go to the Alps every summer but it's always my birthday, but this year they were away the week after so I joined them for a long weekend. It was awesome! We were in Sauze D'Oulx where I've been a few times for skiing. It was really nice to see the place in summer, especially as my first mountain experience was in the summer in the piedmont region anyway. I'm hoping to go back this year, maybe for a bit longer this time. But it depends on holiday allowance, which is massively constrained due to my next topic:

Lots of politics at my last employer, a public sector transport organisation which is the most wasteful place I have ever seen. Individually everyone seemed quite reasonable but as a collective it was trying to move a herd of drunk rhinos through a swamp. Pure madness. Eventually politics killed me off as the part of the organization I was in got absorbed into the parent company and the project I'd spent the last year working on got cancelled. £2 million of public money wasted on what would have been a fantastic project if only people would listen!

And then I was enticed to work for a fresh fashion brand company where so far everyone is lovely and the office is grey on the outside but sunny on the inside. I've only been here a few weeks but so far I'm enjoying the work and the people. If only I could do something about my evil commute in the morning!

What else? Oh yeah, Amsterdam. 30 people came with me to Amsterdam for my birthday where we did the Friday skate and spent the rest of the time enjoying nice sunny weather and relaxing. I was surprised how many of them chose to stay in the Hilton DoubleTree hotel with me. We had a good deal on the pricing and it was right next to Centraal station so well located for the city. It also had a skybar with awesome views!

And I bought Mr Wolf, my ongoing restoration project:

He's a 1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 which to those in the know is a pretty special car. I might post about him later :)

What's coming in 2014?

Well it got off to a pretty good start with a nice New Year celebration enjoyed with some close friends. I've just come back from a ski trip with my wonderful lady...

...and I went to France last weekend for someone's birthday. I haven't seen her for 10 years and her husband asked me on facebook if I could come. Last time I saw her it was a surprise for her 30th birthday also secretly arranged by her husband. It was pretty cool :)

I managed to take this cool photo from the plane on the way back... Wish my iPhone camera was a bit better!

And next week I am off on an absolutely epic ski trip to Tignes, with a group of about 45 people. I've arranged the whole trip and it's getting pretty stressful at the moment but I'm hoping we have good snow. Good snow makes everyone happy, regardless of what goes on après-ski!

I suppose then, that my next post might be about the ski trip.... though at the rate I'm going it will probably be about 2 trips and an entire year worth of adventures compressed into a few paragraphs.

Bring it on! :)

Organising Groups

Here are some rules to consider when trying to organise group trips:

1. If you offer people a choice, you will never come to any kind of agreement.
2. Assuming its too late not to offer a choice, prepare for a huge headache as you try to please everyone and accommodate their obscure requirements.

The result of offering people a choice on my last trip is that it ended up costing more than it needed to, but because I am a badass I've managed to arrange flights and accommodation such that we will get 8 days on the slopes and not have the pain of a Eurostar trip.

We'll be returning to Sauze d'Oulx where we will hopefully have a little more snow than last year.

It should be a good trip, and will be the last of my long holidays until Christmas...

I'll write more later, and the gossip will be a lot more juicy if things go well!

Meanwhile here's a photo of an awesome sunset :)

To ski, or not to ski

I had a fairly busy January. The first random tidbit of information is the £1070 BMW 330i touring that I bought on ebay. This proved to be a bit of a logistical problem, as the car was located just outside Edinburgh and I am in London. Having agreed to pick up the car at Edinburgh airport, I promptly booked a flight to go up there on morning, with the intention of driving back down the same day. I mentioned this to a friend when asked what I was up to at the weekend, and instead of me driving, she went up to Edinburgh with a friend and drove it back, Thelma & Louise style. I flew up too, but unfortunately on picking up the car it wasn't the bargain I thought it would be. It was in pretty bad condition and was suffering from a number of problems including the speedometer not working correctly. It's in the garage now, being seen to :)

We also had an epic ski trip to Peisey-Vallandry. A little resort in the Les Arcs/La Plagne ski area close to the main lift that links the two areas together. In a similar vein to my last skiing related post, here is a list of lessons learned:

1. People you think will make the best flatmates sometimes make the worst.
2. The upgrade to first class on eurostar is only worth it if you're the only one doing it. Too many people, especially too many large and loud people, completely negate any benefit.
3. Some people can behave very childishly, often without even realising it.
4. The people you often think are the most level headed, can become the most crazy given a few drops of alcohol.
5. It is a stupid idea to try and transport a 40kg snowboard bag with lots of equipment in a single bag.
6. It is a stupid idea to take 40kg of equipment for a one-week holiday.
7. Don't roll down a snowy hill without first inspecting the other side of it.
8. Happiness comes from pleasing yourself, not pleasing others.
9. Snowboarding on ice moguls shortly after a fresh layer of snow has fallen is not a nice experience.
10. Snowblading on sheet ice is ill-advised.
11. The Ruroc helmet range has a dangerous design flaw rendering the helmet rather useless.
12. The group discount on a Paradiski area ski pass for 8 days is about £50.
13. It is a stupid idea to try and walk down a hill that is covered in sheet ice without impact protection.
14. Bourg St Maurice is a very boring place on a Saturday night.
15. Leaving behind a messy apartment makes it very unpleasant when you get home.
16. Snowboarding on hard packed pistes gets boring after a while.
17. My skiing has considerable room for improvement.
18. A powder day can lift even the darkest mood :)

My last ski trip filled me with mixed emotions. It was very stressful, and one of my friends isn't talking to me anymore after I called her a stupid child. In my defence she'd been behaving quite childishly all week, and snapping at me all the time. I snapped back on the last day, and the fact that she's not talking to me proves my point.

My next trip is proving quite stressful too, and I haven't booked it yet. That's because of different people having a variety of requirements that are difficult to accommodate. If it keeps up I will just book a holiday for two and go without them.

For next year, I am going to make inquiries about chartering a plane. That would be so cool :)

Happy New Year!

I've done a fair bit of driving the last couple of weeks (about 1400km). Here's a list of lessons learnt, mostly for your amusement...

1. It doesn't matter how early you leave, you are not driving fast enough to get to the airport on time if there's a car keeping up with you.
2. The collision damage excess waiver on an Audi A4 Avant is 300€, and is a waste of money.
3. Hire car companies will remove the navigation CD from a navigation equipped car just so they can charge you to rent a navigation off them.
4. It costs the same amount to rent snow chains for a week as it does to buy them from a random motorway service station.
5. Snow chains are recommended in certain circumstances if driving to a ski resort on all-season tyres, however with a bit of forethought (usually spurred on by hindsight) they aren't necessary. In fact I'd go as far as saying people are mad going on about having to get winter tyres and being stuck in the snow.
6. The highest rated navigation software on the iTunes store has no concept of mountain passes being closed in the winter and turned into skiing pistes.
7. Neither does the Garmin navigation system my friend brought along.
8. At 39€ the Frejus tunnel is pretty expensive.
9. Whilst the French will build scary roads that follow the curvature of the mountains, the Italians just build viaducts and dig tunnels resulting in a straight motorway that goes through everything in its path.
10. Italians are mad drivers, especially on the motorway.
11. An Audi A4 loaded with 5 passengers and their luggage handles like a boat and steers only slightly better than the Titanic.
12. The cruise control on Audis is really confusing.
13. The Audi A4 is rubbish and I am soooo glad I bought a BMW instead of an A5 convertible.
14. Although the Audi A4 is crap, it does have a much smoother ride and lighter steering than my BMW, which I only really noticed upon my return to London.
15. Watch out for speed cameras in France, especially when you reset your navigation to default settings in a futile attempt to get it to direct you through the Frejus tunnel instead of over a ski piste. Twice.
16. There is an admin fee for changing your flight on easyjet.
17. If you purchased speedy boarding, you lose it when your flight is changed, and you only find out when you're at the front of the speedy boarding queue and the guy has a go at you for not having speedy boarding.
18. Don't forget you bought speedy boarding when arriving at the airport and queuing with the plebs.
19. There is a bit of road between Turin and Milan where you're driving pretty fast and a train passes you as if you're standing still.
20. Don't go shopping with girls in Milan during the sales.
21. It costs £15 per day extra when you're late for picking up your car from Gatwick airport valet parking.
22. Don't forget the mess you made at home in your rush to pack for your ski trip at the last minute.
23. Although O2 text you telling you that for £1.99 per day you can use your phone abroad as you would at home, the next day they will text you a warning telling you that yesterday you used 70MB and your limit was 25MB and if you do it again they will put you back on the standard tariff. This is more annoying than not having data at all.
24. There is absolutely nothing to do at Milan Malpensa Terminal 1 when waiting 8 hours for a delayed flight from Moscow to arrive, apart from marvel at the variety of taxis waiting at the taxi rank outside. Everything from a Dacia Duster to a Citroen C6 to a BMW 1-series.
25. The French don't know how to make coffee, especially in fancy looking motorway service stops.
26. The Italians do know how to make coffee, even in really dodgy looking motorway service stops.
27. The flat fare from anywhere in Milan to Malpensa airport is 90 euros. Whilst this may seem excessive, it is a 45-60 minute drive, depending on traffic conditions.
28. The closest petrol station to Malpensa is a dodgy and super expensive automated place that has a machine which accepts only cash pre-payment for fuel. It's still cheaper than returning the car without a full tank.
29. The GPS on the iPhone is not fast or accurate enough to give good driving directions in complicated junctions, due to the 2 second sampling interval. Only a fool forgets the two second rule!
30. The french for breathalyser is ethylotest. Don't forget that from next spring if you're not carrying a reusable one (or two disposable ones) while driving in France you can get an on the spot fine.

This New Years Eve was a bazillion times better than last year, and 2012 was really awesome for me. Let's hope 2013 is even better. It's got off to a fabulous start anyway :)

Vaujany Ski Trip

Another fabulous trip, this time to Vaujany, which is a small village that has a big lift linked to the Alpe d'Huez ski area.

What was noteworthy... hmm.

Well first, I managed to fit my snowboard in my car, which is awesome. I had the genius idea of putting the snowboard on the back seat and folding the snowboard bag in half, and putting it in the boot. This was brilliant because it meant I could drive to the airport to catch the 7am flight instead of waking up several hours earlier and getting public transport.

Some things about the trip annoyed me, and others were quite pleasing.
I'll start with the annoying stuff.

1. I found I was largely unable to ski well when I put skis on. This inability continued for a number of days. I tried changing skis but secretly knew the problem was the connection between my brain and my legs, causing me to lean back and not have good control. I switched to my snowboard for a couple of days just to feel more comfortable. Had it serviced after a day, then went down a black run that was closed, and now it needs a service again. Had a stint on snowblades which reminded me that brute force is not the way to ski well, so went to change them for some skis again. This time the skis felt a bit better, but that afternoon I had a massive crash after crossing my skis and broke my binding. After skiing down on one ski for a hundred metres or so and my friends helping me to fix the binding, I went back to the shop and the next day finally got some decent skis. A variation of my favourite skis in fact; Dynastar Legend 4800 (my favourites are the 8000 model). I also booked a lesson. More on this shortly.

2. The people I was skiing/boarding with never waited at junctions. They'd just go off, and you had to guess which way they went. This was frustrating and I often felt like I might be better off on my own.

3. My mobile phone wouldn't connect to the village wifi. This wasn't a problem in that I wanted to stay connected to the outside world, but it irritated me on principle. Playing around with the phone did help me understand the problem, however there was no permanent solution and it paved the way for a future post about mobile phones.

4. It didn't snow and was very warm, so got quite icy. Then it didn't snow and got very cold, so it was almost unbearable.

What was good?

1. The weather. It was pretty sunny the whole time. Lovely.
2. Eddie's cooking. As always.
3. The people were a good bunch; mostly skaters.
4. My ski lesson. It was fabulous. I didn't learn a massive amount as most of it was just a reminder, but Phillippe the ski instructor was great, explaining technical concepts and theory very well, and then following it up with practice. He also took us to the snow park so I was jumping ramps, which was brilliant.
5. The private bus transfer.
6. Having sandwiches every day instead of an expensive lunch. This saved me quite a lot of money, and I'll be repeating this option next time I ski.

I want to buy some Dynastar Legend 8000 skis now. Unfortunately they are discontinued so I'll have to look pretty hard for them. D'oh!

The epic journey to the Pyrenées...

It's been a while. A long while.

Over a month.

What's happened in that time?

1. Pas de la Casa Snowboard trip.
2. Another week off between Christmas and New Year.
3. 2011.
4. More Boris Bike shenanigans.
5. Vaujany Ski trip.

Let's start with 1.

It was a Christmas trip. As usual, we were due to travel just after the SantaSkate party, meaning not much sleep beforehand. The weather was looking iffy so I subscribed to the BAA text update service so I'd get a text to confirm the flight was scheduled.
It had snowed quite a lot but my text message arrived, saying the flight was scheduled.
So we stayed in Battersea the night before the flight (which was at 7am or so from Heathrow Terminal 5). The Addison Lee cab turned up, and for some reason charged us £100 to get to the airport. From Battersea. WTF?? I will never use them again. A black cab would have been cheaper.
So we get to the airport, all 5 of us, only to discover that all flights have been cancelled due to snow. Great. We were screwed, or so we thought. I stood there for a while wondering what to do. One friend ran around in a bit of a panic, getting annoyed. Another friend was preparing to accept that he'd lost his money, and another friend went to the British Airways desk (or rather the queue for it) to try and find out what was going on. The BA friend also suggested calling the tour operator. This proved to be a genius idea. A quick check of the website got us their number, so I called to see if there was anything they could do.
A nice lady answered the phone at 6am (on a Sunday) and said they'd called the travel agent the night before and left a message asking if we wanted to fly from Gatwick instead, as they had anticipated problems at Heathrow. Unfortunately this message was never relayed to me.
Aaaanyway. She said to me that they had chartered a flight from Birmingham airport, and that if we could get to Birmingham in time for the 1pm flight we'd be on it. I told her I'd call back, ran across the terminal to where everyone was waiting and told them about our new adventure.
We left the terminal the same way we came in, heading for the drop-off point. The queue for taxis was immense so it was out of the question. A nice Polish minicab driver agreed to take us to Euston for £60. A bargain compared to the £100 from Battersea to the airport. We all got on board and in next to no time we were at Euston Station buying train tickets. £40 each later, we were on the train. Things seemed to be going well. Until we got to Rugby. Apparently the train had been delayed not due to snow, but because of overrunning engineering work. We sat there for over an hour, expecting to miss the flight.
We got to the airport with 5 minutes to go before check-in closed, ran to the check-in desk to find that they didn't know about us. They contacted the ticket desk and all seemed to be going well until they noticed a couple of our ski bags. £25 each later and we were checked in, but it wasn't over yet. We didn't have much time before our flight was due to take off, so we ran past most of the queue for security and got to the departure lounge.
But the flight was delayed, for another 2 hours. Eventually we took off, and landed in Toulouse, 10 hours later than we had expected. This was a pretty good job, considering most people were not able to fly at all.
Unfortunately when we got to Pas de la Casa it was apparent that there was more snow in London than there was in the ski resort. There was enough to have a good time though, and we made the most of it. Then the storms came. First a powerful wind blowing most of the snow off the mountain. Then the rain, turning what was left into sheet ice. Then came the blizzards, making the conditions freezing in the air and on the ground. The result of all of this though, was that the last 2 days were 2 of the best powder days I've seen in years. We were snowboarding off-piste, making our own individual tracks in the snow just like you see in the cool snowboard videos in the pub.
All in all it was a great holiday. Yay!
And I've just realised this is a really really long blog post, so I'll write about 2, 3, 4 and 5 in subsequent posts rather than here.

Cripes

I don't know whether to make this a long or short post, so I'll just blurt stuff out until I run out of things to say. That's what blogging is all about, right?

So I came back from my snow holiday. I don't really know what to call them anymore since I rarely just ski. This time I spent 2 days on skis, 2 days on a snowboard, another day on skis and then 2 days on snowblades.

The skiing went pretty well considering I had a fractured rib. I was just hoping it was a bruise but a fall on my snowboard while being cheeky and riding backwards confirmed the fracture when I heard and felt the tell-tale cracking noise. Ouch. The rest of the day was spent struggling to stand up on the board. When I went back to skis I felt better, but sustained another crack when I hit a mogul too hard. I'm not going to blame my lack of skill for this, rather the stupid skis the rental shop gave me. Humbug.

So after that I had a go at snowblades. OMG they are the best thing ever. I felt like I should be given an asbo on those things. For example at one point I felt like I had so much manouverability I tried to ski around a tree (like back up the mountain and all the way around it). Another time I was in a gulley that was a bit of technical off-piste and all I could think was "out of my way, old man!" What a laugh! The downside is they are not great for off-piste. I tried skiing around a steep bowl deep with snow, ran out of momentum and sank. It took 5 minutes for me to dig myself out!

My rib still hurts, especially when I sneeze or cough, but apart from that it seems to be getting better. I was hoping to make a getaway to the mountains again this weekend but I don't think it will happen as it's too expensive and I should be resting really.

OK that's it for now. I've run out of things to say. Well, I probably have other things to say but I don't want to say them here.