my nemisis...

... les petite chien (small dogs) have struck again!

I came back to my apartment this afternoon to find a fresh steaming turd in the corridor, in the god damned corridor for christs sake!

France is the only nation in the world where this could happen, The streets and pavements of Val are littered with dogs eggs. Because of the sub zero temperatures and lack of rain they just sit there frozen until the next snow when they get buried, like bloody land mines only to emerge in the thaw. Come the spring Val is literally going to go to shit.

I also saw the little dog that Ed and me scared the living daylights out of. It obviously has a good memory 'cos it was bounding along the snow apron in front of the lifts (an area where dogs are banned, incidently) being it's usual obnoxious yappy self when it spied me and immendiatly ran off to cower behind it's owner. he he he, tremble little dogs of the world for I will lay my vengence upon thee....

Anyway, part from being plauged by tiny french dogs the BASI coaching stuff seems to be going well, I'm off in a minute to get some feedback on how I'm doing (fingers crossed).

the best things in life....

.....are free, or so it's said.

Bollocks! The best things in life (cars, holidays and women) cost a packet!

I should know, I'm know skint after spanking an obscene amount of cash on a new board.

How did this happen?

Well.....

After the affair with the ESF I was left with a few days to kill. So I thought I'd try some new boards out.

I thought I could do with a more free style board to help me jump around a bit more.

So off to the local shop I went to try:

Burton "Dominant" - good all rounder, pity it looks like you're riding a handbag
K2 "Darkstar" - alot of board for your money
Volkl "Squad Flex 3" - R.A.F (Guy will know what this is), awesome board

To cut a long story short I went for the squad. I haven't had so much fun on a board for years! And as a bonus it's loads easier to do my instructor demos on.

The first time I tried it I was in a lift queue and thought I'd have a go at a tail press to pass the time. So, used to the rather stiff nature of my old board, I wound up, rocked back and flexed on to the tail, and just a little bit beyond, ending up falling over the tail and looking like a right prat, nice one Brian!

On the piste it's really soft and allows you to get away with murder on the landings.

The upshot of all this is I'm now a little skint...boo!

European Cooperation

Today is an unexpected day of rest. I was supposed to be continuing with my "shadowing" of french instructors in order to learn more about the wonderful methods of french teaching, but it appears our activites have not gone unnoticed....

The ESF, the guardian of the high quality of french snowsport instruction, have been taking a keen interest in our shadowing.

It appears that tere are numerous rules governing the teaching of skiing/riding in france. These are all hangovers from the glory days of french ski instruction where the primary skill a potential instructor had to demonstrate was french nationality (the ability to put kids off skiing for life and make grown men cry were merely skils that were thought useful).

Anyway the ESF have complained that the ski schools were are shadowing are employing unqualified and, more seriously, english instructors.

The basis of this accusation is we are seen hanging around the back of children's classes picking up fallen children, rounding up strays and generally looking after them whilst the instructor(s) piss off and have a good time.

Possibly the ESF were merely confused and thought we were a pedophile ring as the concept of assisting young children seem alien to them.

Anyone cynical would say that ESF are unhappy that brit instrucors working for private ski schools are starting to poach customers as word spreads that it is that their instructors have not learnt their teaching methods from "Full Metal Jacket".

Anyway the long and the short is that the police were called in (I said this was serious) and the frightners applied to the ski schools involved. The end result is everyone is to scared to let us shadow them. This obviously makes it exceedingly difficult for us to get our required hours of shadowing in. At the moment we are talking with BASI about a wavier.

The other effect is that we are at a loose end as all the instructors are booked to help in the half term rush so there are no instructors.

Just to add insult to injury our food allowance has been cut to a truly crap breakfast (it can only be described as a "continental" breakfast due to the fact it is served on the continet, everyone else would describe it as cereal, bread and jam) and a single course in the evening (last night was rice and unspecified meat in a gerkin sauce - gerkin sauce for christ's sake! who the fluck thought that one up?)

The reasons given for this are that Base Camp Group have cut the ammount of money paid for our meals. WTF? Needless to say there is some restlessness in the ranks.

And yes, I don't think much of the ESF

stupid is as stupid does

well the weather here really closed in yesterday with 100mph winds, zero vis and huge patches of ice. Only a total idiot would have gone out in those conditions, a sensible man would be sat indoors with a cup of tea and a good book (or in the bar with a pint watching us taking a beating from the french, 1 sodding point!)

Unfortunatly I am not a sensible man, I spent yesterday alternating between digging holes in the snow and riding around in conditions that could only be described as "shit". At one point the vis was so low that I couldn't see my board, thats less than 6 feet!

Still I survived (barely - I only managed to avoid a potentialy disastorous trip off piste by colliding with a piste marker.

My rather unique "robot" style came into it's own, enabling others in my group to recognize me from my silloute on the ridge line.

Today I have been shadowing a french instructor and learning the tricks of the trade.

I can now exclusivly reval some closely guarded secrets of french instructors.

a) lead the little nippers into a snow storm
b) hope the english guy you have to lug around with yopu has the sense to round up the nippers you left behind
c) when the nippers complain of being cold (usually less than an hour) head to a mountain cafe to "warm them up"
d) negotiate with the waitress a discount for your breakfast as you have brought in a large number of paying customers (less if step "b" has not gone to plan)
e) smoke a fag
f) have a hot choc
g) flirt with the waitress
h) flirt with female ESF instructor
i) have an expresso
j) repeat step "e"
k) all being well it is nearly lunchtime so head down for lunch.

soon, a Jedi I will be.......

dog tired brian

Hello one and all!

Again I have been massivly slack in the blogging dept. I have an excuse, I'm bolldy knackered! Today is the 19th day on the trot that i've been boarding and it's starting to tell. I've got avalance training this weekend (so more boarding, plus some digging) then a week of shadowing some instructors. By the end I'll have managed 26 days non stop.

Anyway we have yet another instructor. This one is Domonic and thankfully hes not a ragge ginger brummie twat. In fact........



....his nick name is "Mick" as we think he looks alot like Mick Jagger. He's been snowboarding forever. When he learnt snowboards still had fins!? So his style is a little "old school" to say the least, following him is like watching an 80's Warren Miller video. However he is pretty damn good and is totaly awesome in powder. Speaking of which, he seems to have some kind of sixth sense for finding the stuff. over 2 weeks since it last snowed and he was taking us to untracked poweder (and none of the crusty stuff either, this was silky smooth) only a few yards from the pistes.

Yesterday he took us down an untracked couloir in tignes. Admittedly the reason was that it took some serious moiuntineering to decend to it. At one point I was edging (board on) along a rock ledge with a 50 degree rock slope below me when the rock I was on decided to join it's brothers in the valley below. Thank god I ride a long board. The tip and tail kept me up but the base took a beating. Still the snow on the other side was definatly worth it.

Spotted this chap at the top of the Olymipc bubble the other day. He'd obviously lost a bet in the bar last night.......



Anyway as I mentioned before i'm pretty knackered so this morning I took in a few rund before tired legs and flat light made me decide to pull stumps and go home.

And the reson for the flat light......it's started snowing again! horray, not that I mind bluebird skies but we were starting to get to the poinbt were snow was desparately needed. It's pretty light at the mo but more is forecast and it should bring the pistes back from the icy edge that they've been on for the last couple of days.

On a sadder note we had our first major (and pretty grisley) injury on monday. Phil (who some of you have met) was hit by a skier who was jumping onto the piste. The impact wasn't too bad by all accounts, unfortunalty the skier's ski cut through Phils outer layers before neatly severing the major tendon just below the kneecap. Blood everywhere. They stitched him back together but he can't move his leg for at least 2 weeks and then he faces the prospect of a long haul back to fitness. Poor sod.

Right I'm off to get some fodder.

Later monkeys!

Photo Frenzy!

...no I'm not dead yet!

This week was a busy week, with Guy, Will,Neil and the hodge clan decending on Val. Unfortunatly I was unable to get in as much riding with them as I wanted as I had to go riding off piste with our insane french instructors (sucks to be me heh?. Anyway I got a snap of some of the boys. If they were a band this would be thier album cover, note how Will looks like he's about to go scuba diving...



I also managed to snap this great picture of the posh chalet we can see from our cramped apartment.....bastards

The lights in the background are the snow makers going full tilt, it was bloody cold that night, we were out on our "balcony" (a phone box bolted to the side of the apartment) and Jim's Fanta froze in the 10 minutes we were out there



anyway, our guides were tasked with giving us a proper going over this week. On day 1 all 16 boarders were grouped togeter and we headed off like some barbarian horde to terrorise the slopes. The froggies idea of a warm up ride is to go from the top to the bottom of the mountain as quickly as possible. The combination of hangovers, cold limbs and tight pistes resulted in carnage on an unprecedented scale with riders crashing into eachother, rocks, trees, the piste and ski schools. After that warmup we were split into two groups and sent our separate ways. Our group went to the "lost valley". Riding the lost valley is akin to caving, there are several points where the run is more rock than snow and the gaps get down to less than the length of my board making turning an interesting proposition.

Anyway on thursday we went to Les Arcs for more off piste. The day started with a leg burning hike up to 2900m



Then we decended the "Grand Col". To be honest it was a bit of a ball breaker but some of the views were amazing.



after that I hooked up with Guy and Co on the Sat for some general riding before packing them up and sending them off to Borg to catch the train home to the real world.

I like this one