Settling into mountain life…
My last blog of substance took us up to Christmas and as we’re in the middle of a week-long dump I have no excuse not to bring everything up to date.
My CM 01/02 has taken a back seat. I took Forest Green Rovers to two league titles in three years and to the European Cup Final where I lost 3-0 to Roma. I’ve lost the bug, for now, and have managed to squeeze in blog writing and even some snowboarding!
The blog has been a bit up the wall recently with no real substance but a couple of videos thrown in. The first one uploaded on New Year’s Day was one I ripped off You Tube whereas the second one was all my own work, inspired by Duncan’s many concoctions. They’ve been fun to do but it’s good to get back to some proper blogging.
Where to start??? We came back from England with more Jet2 airport sadness. We were in the check in queue and when it was our turn the kind lady looked at us and informed us that there were four of us. We already knew this. What she was momentarily keeping from us was the fact there were only three seats left on the plane. I was well up for some paper/scissors/stone but as it turned out it was because the plane was smaller than they had planned but another would come from Leeds to take up the slack. We ended up being a couple of hours late but it mattered not.
We had a couple of days respite before Kev was due to turn up. He had asked if he could bring his friend with him and true to the old equation of ‘More = Merrier’ we were happy to accommodate. It transpired that The Don had a few days break in his schedule so he popped over for the New Year celebrations too.
Everyone arrived on 30 December and we got tucked in to some Vodka cranberries at Loop Bar. New Year’s Eve started great – Stuoobs & I went on the mountain with Kev, Lloyd & The Don for one of those great days where the conditions & skiing are secondary to some good old fashioned mountain banter. The weather was a bit crappy so we didn’t get many pictures.
It was then the turn of the evening. As you can see from the video it was a massive affair with a great atmosphere. We began by sinking a few at the apartment playing my favourite drinking game designed to get things going; it’s called “A Deck of Cards and a Bottle of Sambuca” and gets all participants from nought to drunk in 30 minutes. As it was an outdoor party we wrapped up and took large bottles of pre-mixed vodka cranberry to the Place Du Lac for the highlight of the evening. It was definitely one of my more drunken NYEs and probably the best. Tignes threw a massive party, hired the services of a huge Ibiza club DJ (somewhat lost on us) and a great night was had by all.
We had fully intended to go out on the hill New Year’s Day – for no other reason than to say we had done it but our hangovers took precedence, despite the fact I was up at 7.30am in order to do the radio show. We managed to pull ourselves together in time for apres and went down to Le Brasero where Jack, the young lad who sings & plays guitar was starting his set.
Kev was still finding his legs on a board and on 3 January the weather was nice so Stuoobs, Lloyd & I went to Val d’Isere and made hay for the glacier. We found some still untouched powder a whole week after the last dump and, in the words of Lloyd, got our dicks out and had a phenomenal day.
The day after we all hit the slopes together which was long overdue. Lloyd managed to get the world’s greatest snowboarding picture of Kev…
It was Lloyd & Kev’s final day so they decided to stay out a little longer and the rest of us went home for a little sleep!
Since Lloyd & Kev left we’ve just been playing the game with the weather and heading out when it’s decent. We have started hitting the snowpark but due to the number of falls we haven’t braved the camera yet. As I write it’s been about a week since we were in the park: Stuoobs has a sore knee, the girls have sore ribs and I have minor women’s whiplash!
Stu & I have also taken a trip up to what is regarded as being one of the main landmarks of Tignes, a rock formation known as The Eye Of The Needle. It is caused by weather erosion and involves a healthy climb to the top but it is well worth a treck up there. Later in the season we’ll take our boards right up to it and go through it.
Before this week we hadn’t had much snow but that has all changed giving us the opportunity to have Andy & Stuoobs’ Powder Day!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhcOQjWCUpA&hl=en&fs=1]
I really should write more blogs. I’m conscious of making them too long so I best leave it here but I could waffle on for hours about:
The Radio Station
Plane Crashes we’re allowed to make jokes about
Barry O’Bama (don’t put him so high on a pedestal, America!)
We’ve plenty to look forward to: Tim & Nat are coming to see us on Thursday for ten days so my next blog will hopefully be during that spell at some point. I imagine the next post will mention more snow, the forecast is for another 75cm in the next 5 days….
See you soon.
Andy
xxx
