Saturday 29 December 2007

Airports

Just returned from the airport after dropping off our first guests. Now follows and insanely hectic day as we make the chalet ready for the next 13 guests! Feel like coming over and lending us a hand?

Tuesday 25 December 2007

I Must Be Taking Crazy-Pills

Seriously though, why did no one think to tell me exactly how hard this would be? You, my so called friends... are useless! You should have talked me out of it!

This is the first time i've touched the Interthingy in 9 days. NINE! i don't even want to check my emails for fear i'll never get through them all. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel!

Given the lack of blogging, you've probably gathered that we're a little busy. That's an understatement. Up at 06:45, bed, if we're really lucky, by 01:00. Today we were lucky because our guests wanted their Christmas dinner earlier (15:00) which meant that after 4 hours of cleaning up we were able to get "home" at 21:00 tonight.

Here's a list of disadvantages of being a seasonaire:
1) Ridiculously long hours,
2) Ceaseless never-ending menial tasks,
3) Really limited ski-time,
4) Constantly sore back from standing craning over kitchens all the time,
5) Looking at the mountains but not being able to go up them.

Here's a list of advantages of being a seasonaire:

And that's it. Well, we are doing a bit of skiing but nowhere near as much as i'd like, which is all the time. I think it might be easier if we didn't have to practically build our own chalet, but that's another story.

i nearly gassed the guests tonight by trying to get a fire going in the recently and hastily installed wood-burner. But they have failed to install the chimney properly so instead the smoke just filled the room, which is, as you'd imagine, less pleasant than watching the flames flicker in the grate.

Tomorrow is our day off and its now three weeks without a break. We've still had no more snow so its getting icy but, since it's warmer, the snow that is already up there is softer. Tomorrow we're off skiing the whole day on Natalie's new skis (not both on hers at the same time). I'm thinking Morgins, but we'll see where the snow takes us.

Please do a little snow dance, we need it!

Monday 17 December 2007

Long day

Spent most of the day (yesterday now) skiing, which was fabulous, as usual. The pistes are getting harder as we're five days away from fresh snow now and the snow-cannon snow is just awful - slippery, sugary and generally yucky. However, on the upper slopes its still good except where various boarders* have scraped it off and left shiny ice behind. There's still plenty of fun off piste though where there's still a smidgen of powder (although crusty) left behind.

Got more new guests in now - a father with two children in tow. Tomorrow morning should be exciting as i try to get all six of our clients up to the slopes in time for their lesson at 10am.

Getting a bit weird not sitting in front of a computer all day and doing something that doesn't require an awful lot of brain-power. i've done a bit of IT tech support as is the norm but i have a nagging suspicion i'll be re-writing the website before long...

Anyway, video uploads to follow as soon as the batteries have recharged.

* Ok, some skiers may have contributed slightly to this too.

Saturday 15 December 2007

Lack of Skiing Today

Saturdays are the worst days for seasonaires - rooms to be changed, people to be fetched and carried, and a zillion other tasks to do. So today i drove past the slopes looking longingly at them, but that's as close as i got.

Got 3 South Africans in now, our first "proper" guests. Soon we will own the place.

I had a chance to practice my extremely poor French today with Mr Lanavchy at the hire shop. i told him how much i love my new skis. And he understood me! Great progress. Oh, and i received some post today, so if you want to send me money or something, we're at:

c/o Allez-Alps,
Chalet la Moussierre,
St Jean de Aulps,
74430,
France.

Also, my UK phone is still working (the work one) so call/text me on that if you want to.

No snow forecast for the next few days, but it's going to be really really cold (-15C) so the snow that is there, which is now compacted and a touch icy, won't be going away. I can testify to how hard the snow is because i had a high-speed fall yesterday. Must have been doing 50km/h when i hit a chunk of ice and spun out - Hermann Maier style - in to the netting. Confidence bruised but nothing worse, luckily.

Friday 14 December 2007

Right now

Had our first sunny day out skiing yesterday. Compacted, slightly icy pistes, but a gorgeous day. We're heading off with Jeff and Steve and John and Sheila this morning on their (Jeff and Steve's) last day before i take them to the airport later today.

Yesterday we were in our new chalet for the first time getting it ready for guests.

We're leaving imminently, so more later.

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Steer clear of the yellowish-green snow

After a long much needed lie-in yesterday, we made it up to the slopes for a very short, high-speed ski. i think the altitude and panic and stress of the last few days really caught up with us and about 11 hours of sleep seems to have somewhat cured it.

Pity we couldn't have been out for longer yesterday because the conditions were excellent. Fresh, deep powder everywhere and no one around. We only managed to fit one run in (Bleue de Lac) but it was worth it. After that Natalie prepared the meal while John took me on a tutorial run to Geneva airport to collect some work colleagues. On the return trip we did a tour of the rapidly closing DIY stores of Annemasse in the rush-hour traffic in a dark, ice, snow, hail, and rain. It was... educational.

On the left is Natalie just outside the chalet this morning in the clear sunshine.

Today was fabulous, partly cloudy, compacted pistes with plenty of (slight-heavy) powder off-piste. We got a taste of everything today, steep mogul-skiing off-piste (off les Tannes); freshly groomed, wide-open perfectly flat pistes (Bleue de Lac); very steep wide reds (unnamed run down to the bowl of Avoriaz), and a very very steep narrow red (something like "Veuines"), which was the home run in the near dark and heavy fog. We tried to make it back to the carpark at les Prodains, but my excellent navigation ended up with us fording a steep ravine. Don't follow me anywhere.

The car... in snow!

We also went round to the new chalet today to help assemble beds and the kitchen, but unfortunately it was still a building site so we just had to go out skiing instead. We're going to try again tomorrow.


This is for you Paul :P.







This is me. I'm somewhere near Geneva looking very suave. Je suis chaud!





Monday 10 December 2007

First day out on the piste!

We finally made it out skiing today after collecting our skis from Lavanchy Sports at la Grande Terche. After assembling all our new gear we only made it up to Avoriaz by midday.

What was the skiing like?

It. Was. Awesome! There were probably only 100 other skiers and boarders out there in total today. The visibility wasn't great in parts, but the snow. The snow was awesome. Fresh powder and we got to lay fresh tracks on the runs in the resort that are usually ice by the time you get to them.

There are only about seven runs open at Avoriaz and none of the connecting lifts over to Chatel or Switzerland were running. That didn't stop us having a fabulous afternoon bouncing around in the powder off Les Tannes (a red run going down from Avoriaz to Lindaret) or speeding down on of the only open run at the top (Bleue de Lac).

It was about -6C at Avoriaz, but i think it was a lot colder at the top. Can't wait to go out again!

Sunday 9 December 2007

Passes: Check. Skis: no... :(

Well we almost got out there. The ski-gear man - Mr Lavanchy - was not open this afternoon. Fair enough, it was a wet Sunday late afternoon in early December. We're hoping he's going to be there tomorrow morning as we plan to spend most of tomorrow out skiing. Really this time.

Spent the afternoon over in Seytroux helping Dan and John get there house ready for the season. Quite nice to do a job for a change that doesn't need to be compiled.

Oh, and i'm finally on the network.

Nous sommes arrivés!

Arrived in St. Jean d'Aulps at about seven last night. It's raining really heavily here now, but apparently snowing at altitude. That's really good because we're planning on skiing this afternoon!

Been to see "our" chalet and it looks awesome. There's still a lot to do, but we should be on Sunday. We're going round on Wednesday to help set it up.

Right, lunch now, then we're off to the hire shop and then to get our lift passes for our first day in the (fresh!) snow.

Friday 7 December 2007

T-16 hours

Just about packed up now. i'm leaving myself several hours to put the "assemble-in-minutes" roof racks on the car. We leave tomorrow morning at 5am. We have an 8:20am train at Folkestone but Eurotunnel happily allow you to travel on the next available train if you arrive within 2 hours of your departure time. So hopefully we'll be on the 6:50am train.

Today is our 4th Anniversary! Been a really cool day, but very rushed. i think we're both pretty excited about the trip tomorrow. Northern France is slightly dissapointing from a driving perspective. Very flat and very straight. It gets a bit more interesting once you get to Dijon, and about an hour from Geneva you start to get to the foothills of the Alps - which is fantastic driving. Unfortunately, there's heavy snow and even rain predicted for our destination so the last hour may be a little tricky. i'm not worried though because we have awesome snow-tyres on the car now and even more awesome chains - so we'll be fine.

If i figure out mobile blogging, expect and update from some GPS location in France tomorrow.

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Lofts: where dust goes to die

Sheesh, just defied death from either falling through my ceiling or dust inhalation but i'm happy to report that most of our stuff* is now in the loft. Also, i bravely packed the Wii which means no more Mario for a few days. Not sure i'll cope. While i accomplished these enormous tasks, Natalie did, errr, everything else. In fact, she's still doing everything else as i sit here and talk to myself. That reminds me...

Bed time.

(* things we'll never use again and should probably throw out but don't for some inexplicable reason. One day i'm sure i'll be using that twin auto-reverse cassette deck again.)

Tuesday 4 December 2007

My countdown now has 3 exclamation marks

26 hours and 29 minutes now. Got to bed at 3am this morning after trying to untangle at least 17km of AV cabling for all the electronic gadgets we have to take out to France. Oh, and i might have got a couple more (30 now) stars on Super Mario Galaxy...

Monday 3 December 2007

There's 51 hours and 53 minutes until work is over for 2007. Then the real work begins as we set off on our great Alpine Adventure!