British Airways Deal - do it!

Hi there,

Another flight post here. Sorry if this is annoying. It shouldn't be though, because you...yes YOU...should be always on the lookout to visit sunny London.

Anyway, looks like BA has some deal going on, so check it out www.ba.com



I've said before that British Airways is my favourite airline these days and that was confirmed by my recent skiing adventures. They are the only airline I've traveled on which doesn't charge for bringing skis. So I'd usually be willing to pay a bit more for their excellent service. And I'm definitely willing to pay less!

Cheers,
Dan

Val Thorens continued...

Hi everybody,

Sorry for the delay there in this follow up post....very busy these days! Yikes!

Anyway, I wanted to tell...

Dan's Top 5 Silly Val Thorens Stories

5) Broken Binding

I'm not quite sure when it started (years ago?), but I had a tendency to have one ski pop off during small falls. I also had one ski wobble when I was going quickly down a slope. Strange. So Tom and I thought it was because my binding wasn't tight enough and decided to tighten it. Seemed a bit better, but I took my skis in to get them waxed and asked the guy about it. After thinking for a bit, he looked down and said, "your binding is missing a piece."

It seems a small piece of my binding that slides under the toe to allow for my boot to come off more cleanly had broken during one of my many falls over the years. Luckily they had a spare of the exact piece I was missing and I was back in business. I have spent way too much time putting my ski back on because of that little piece! Bugger!



4) Broken Binding Again

Later that afternoon...I was quite happy with my new piece and sharp skis and feeling pretty good about the guide Tom and I had hired for the next day. Unfortunately, as we were getting to the top of the small hill above our chalet, I took a turn, leaned back a bit, and POP!!! Off comes the binding that was just fixed that morning. Arg! So I ended up walking down the 150 yards back to our chalet with my skis strapped to my pack. Walking in powder after a day of skiing is quite tiring if you haven't tried it. Poor Dan. Here's me with my piece of binding in my hand.



3) Off-Piste Try

Luckily, the guys at the ski shop were quite surprised about my missing binding and promised to get it fixed for me by the time the shop opened the next morning. I think they just used really strong glue. Great stuff.

Anyway, Tom and I had hired this cool French guide to take us off the back of the mountain. Everyone else went left towards the ski run, we went right towards the open snow. Wicked! Before that though, we had a mini-lesson to make sure we knew how to ski in powder. I don't. And still don't. And the instructor basically said I needed to relearn how to ski. Super. But I stuck with it and Tom and I tried this new ski style. Lots more edging, no more turning of the body. Yeah, easy.

But we get up there and we are going down and all's good for a bit, until my ski hits some heavier powder and just stays. I do a Superman dive and eat about 4 feet of powder which goes right down my coat. But it didn't hurt because of the lovely powder and I got back up, put my skis back on and caught up. As they say, rinse and repeat...about 30 times. That's a lot of snow to carry around.

But when I wasn't trying to find my skis, it was quite an experience. Being off the map in a ski area which has 600 kms of pistes, 200 ski lifts, and 25 mountain peaks makes you feel like you are a skier like none other. And because of my dramatic falling technique, I think I am a skier like none other.

Here's our guide coming back up the hill to help me get my ski which is sticking out in the back. He was super nice and never lost his patience with me, even if I lost my patience with myself. Now I just need to learn how to ski.



2) Toboggan Renting

On our last day, we decided to rent toboggans. This is no ordinary toboggan run, it's "Le Toboggan" -- the longest toboggan run in France. Unfortunately, it's in France.

To get a toboggan, you have to stand in "Le Toboggan Queue of Pain." Basically everyone just crowds to this little window and there's no order at all. The guy picks people at random and works very very slowly. It took me 45 minutes to get to the window. With 10 people in front of me. In 0 degree Fahrenheit weather and strong winds. But that's fine, let him take his time.

When I finally get to the front, I say to the guy that I want 5 toboggans. He puts up his hand and tells me to hold on. Then looks down for a bit. Then randomly over to his left for a little while. Then down at the phone. Picks it up. Calls his buddy and says in French, "Hi. Yeah just screwing around with another American who wants a toboggan. Yeah it's really really cold out there. I know I might be the meanest person in the world, but I'm French so that's what people expect!" Hahahahaha. Then he decides to serve me. 15 minutes later I'm finally on the toboggan.



1) Toboggan Chasing

But what the French toboggan salesman didn't tell me, was that the ragged piece of rope on the front was a leash. Particularly useful for when you fall off your toboggan and it tries to slide down the side of the mountain. Not that anything like that ever happens to me. And before I finish this story, please note that none of the other 4 people put on their leashes either. I think our brains were frozen.

So right near the top, my steering falters (a plastic stick on ice, very scientific) and I decide to roll off to make sure I don't go flying off the mountain. Unable to grab my toboggan in time, it slides about 200 yards down a lovely little slope. The trouble was that it was waist deep snow, so getting back up the slope took a long time. My very nice companions waited patiently for me and Tristan even came along for part of it to help. And laugh a bit too.



And here's a link to a few other pics I thought you'd enjoy. All the pics above were taken by Tom. Thanks Tom!

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZMnLlm1atGTz&notag=1

Don't worry though, I came out uninjured and still smiling...probably just from the beer though!

Cheers!
Dan

Val Thorens, France

A few months ago Jo, my flatmate Natalie's sister, sent out an email floating the idea of a week skiing in the alps. I, of course, jumped on board immediately. But what's a bit less common was being able to convince two close friends to make the trek with me. Tristan, my alpine amiga, and Tom, my old buddy from NY, both bought into this crazy idea. Tom even traveling all the way from New York!



In the end, there was no question for any of us that it was an unbelievable trip and worth any effort to get there.

Val Thorens is one of the major resorts in an area of the French Alps known as the Three Valleys. It's the highest resort town in Europe at 7545 feet. The highest mountain in Europe (Mt. Blanc - 15446 feet) isn't too far away, but it's not part of the Three Valleys. You can see a nice pic of the village of Val Thorens nestled between the mountains of the Three Valleys:



Anyway, the high altitude tends to mean that the snow will be more plentiful. Though apparently the snow in Europe has been gradually deteriorating over the past 30 years and people are starting to really worry about it. Is it global warming? Or just normal changing weather patterns? Who knows?!? This is making places like Utah and Colorado much more appealing - even to Europeans! Anyway, let's not get into an indepth analysis of the historical snow quality. You'll probably hear about enough of this during the Torino Olympics.

The trip was a package holiday where 12 of us arranged with Ski World to get a VERY early Saturday morning flight to Leon and a bus to the resort. We rented out a chalet in a building that had about 30 of these 12 person mini-houses. It was a very cool complex with a pool and sauna. Here's the view from out back porch. You can see our tracks on the left where we could ski down to the chalet!



Possibly the best part, though, was the cook, Jason. Jason the cook. He was great. He cooked for us! When I woke up in the morning, Jason was there scrambling eggs for me and handing me a cup of coffee to help with the hangover. When we got back after a hard day of skiing, Jason had set out fresh baked cookies and tea. Posh! And then at night, he'd come back (after winning some snowboarding competition, dude!), and cook us up a lovely dinner. It made the trip so much better not having to negotiate dinner plans with 11 other people. Funny how I fly all the way to the French Alps and end up talking about our Tazmanian cook most of the time. But it was definitely a huge bonus.

Oh, and we did ski a bit too. Actually, 6 days of skiing in a row. Clearly this was the most ambitious skiing attempt I'd been on, and I loved it. Being up there looking out in the alps about to fly down a wide open slope is a life changing feeling. And then being able to do it every day for 6 days...well...just makes you spoiled. I never wanted to leave.

I've got a bunch of crazy stories that I'll go through in the next post. But I'll leave here with pictures I took of how Tristan and Tom spent most of their time this trip.

Tristan on the ground...



...and Tom getting 5 feet of wicked air!!!



Good luck with the snow out there in the northeast! We could have used some of that in France!

Cheers!
Dan

Judgments?

Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago...so imagine me just having returned from NY...

I'm sitting in the barber chair looking at the aging Eastern European woman (Bulgarian?) wondering why she seems so interested in me. Her blond hair is not very well dyed for a hairdresser and the makeup is barely making her look young enough to flirt with me. Then it comes out, "So if I marry you, I get green card, yes?" Yes.

Seems she's got the States on her mind. She has family in Washington, Virginia, and New Hampshire, and she's the only one still stuck in Europe. In London for 25 years. When she asks why I'm tan, I look at myself in the mirror and realize that perhaps I am tan compared to the Brits. I tell her I went skiing a few times. Excitedly she wonders where and I spill that I spent a long weekend in Austria. It used to be my great story to make the American's jealous. But the Europeans know better. She says, "That's good, it's cheaper there than Switzerland." And then asks how much I paid.

Anyway, she continues to ask probing questions. Where do I live? Oh, Balham is expensive. So what do I do? IT people in NY get paid very well, why would I come here? How much do I make?

That's (obviously) where I stopped the inquiry. Pretended to be shy. But she still wants to know. My father must have been very rich for me to grow up near New York. Do I have a big family? Am I here alone? Bring someone here with me? What's my name? I tell her "Dan." She giggles at my pronunciation (my name is quickly becoming Daniel because of the way I pronounce the letter "a" -- all wrong somehow).

Finally she finishes and I get up with a lot of hair still sticking to my forehead and right cheek. But to avoid any more questions I begin to shuffle off. "You are VERY tall? How tall are you?" She then points to the receptionist and yells to her, "This boy from NEW YORK. He is single. You can get greeeeeeen card. He is 6 foot 6 inch. His name is Daaaaaaaan. Hehehe." The receptionist shakes her head. She is British and doesn't care about my green card.