0640
BREAKING POINT. i tried napping yesterday afternoon, but couldn't distract myself from packing details so i began to prepare. i was pretty much done by dinnertime - dinner was pleasant, but i sense that my silence is noticeable: this week really took it out of me.
- it's a phenomenally beautiful sunrise -
i chatted with my mum, finished sorting things out and packing, then left for pg's. the only interesting thing that happened from that point was having my trouser-leg run over by a cyclist when i went shopping for hot chocolate. waking up was, as i'd predicated it would be, killer. airport security wasn't too bad, aside from the first guy who wasn't convinced i'm me: the new look is pretty... new. gonna have to renew my passport anyway.
my first trip with pg - with any girl, ever - it's a strange and exciting notion.
13.02.2011
18.05
god - damn. everything hurts, or feels strained, but we both did our post-snow stretches and it's wonderful to shower when you don't need to worry about wasting too much water.
this post is going to include everything from yesterday as well - i began writing in the flaine diary last night and then suddenly remembered that i'd brought my netbook... it would be silly to think of transcribing these things. as it is i still haven't gotten anywhere with my japan / india notes :$
today began on the wrong foot because our shuttle left the airport at least an hour late yesterday. we were told we were waiting for someone who was being held up by passport control, but i understood later that whoever it was had supposedly been on the bus the entire time... go figure. either way, the three / four hour ride was killer. even the four hour flight was more comfortable, but i suspect that's because i was dead to the world for most of it. the shuttle's tardiness meant that we arrived too late to pick up equipment and sort out classes.
organizing the equipment this morning was a real drag. not only does every map here appear to describe a different place and the locals can't make heads or tails of any of them, it took forever to get sorted and pg couldn't find comfortable boots - the boots she eventually left with hurt her so we ended up back there in the afternoon; that was when i discovered that my bindings had been loose the entire session. that explains a certain amount of my lack of control...
and if i've bitched about the ride to austria, let me not forget the large family with annoying seat-kicking brat and two infants. there were thankfully only short bursts of screaming, but i loved the irony of the mother complaining "this ride is punishment!" when we were suffering the same stiff legs, the same impatience to arrive and her family. she left a used diaper in the poor driver's bin. so cultured.
on the other hand, it would have been nice if our shuttle driver could have been waiting with a sign, just like all the other operators. and like it said on the package details :/
we *might* have managed the equipment last night (with rushing and stress) if we hadn't waited for half an hour for a shuttle to take us the five minute walk to our lodgings. they could have just pointed the way :S
at least i can't blame passport control for any of the delay - munich's is obviously understaffed (they have exactly two booths) and inefficiently friendly, but our bags came off the conveyor just as we went through and we were pretty much the last of our flight.
why do people stand so damned close to the conveyor? and then get upset when someone who can see their luggage has to push through to get it?
weather: from the over-heated aeroplane to the cloud-breath outside, a too-warm bus, cool apartment and absolute freezing (okay, three degrees) streets, my body's totally uncomprehending and waking up coughing at 2am wasn't very reassuring. the rest of the day's been fine, though, so i guess i'm okay. it's almost tradition - i always arrive feeling ill and magically hit 100% on the slopes :D
speaking of 100% - i checked mail when the wireless at the restaurant turned out to be free, and was completely gratified to discover that the post-modernism paper i wrote scored me a perfect grade! ^_^
it's a bit sad that the pop-quiz grades will drag me down, but i'm really happy about it just the same.
accommodation: seems like a semi-private home, and it's a little awkward. petra and the strange dude who appears to be her husband are exceedingly polite, but none too forthcoming with advice and instructions. the toilet design is a bit freaky - apparently it's standard germanic. it collects all non-liquid ejections in a shallow upper bowl, and when you flush it it throws whatever's there at the lower bowl. the first time i flushed i thought everything was going to fly out and hit the opposite wall. i still don't trust it.
dinner is a strange affair too. we have a permanent seat kept for us for three hours, and there's a set menu. it's not bad, mind, but it's a bit snarky that nothing off the set menu, like drinks, are listed. that way you don't know until the bill comes that the orange juice costs twice as much as a glass of wine. we were really pleased tonight to discover that if you order a caraffe of water it doesn't cost. pity about the steak being so tough :P
at least they do let you know (if you bother to bring a calculator) that a bottle of wine is five euros more expensive than the equivalent volume in glasses :P
continued 21.00
my left thigh *really* hurts - i bruised it badly falling off a slide in the snow park. the worst part: i knew what i was doing wrong at the time, and that knowledge didn't help. on the plus side, the reason i was there in the first place is that only beginners showed up to the afternoon session and that left me with a private instructor. she's a french girl from les arcs, and appeared to be impressed with how good i am after only two weeks. i didn't feel like i was doing so well, though... she basically showed me that i've been doing it all wrong. it's a beginner's mistake to control with the back foot, and i don't use my whole body which keeps me perpetually *just* off balance.
the weirdest thing we discovered afterwards: both of us have what appears to be silver paint on the shoulders of our ski jackets. that shit doesn't come off :(
today pg and i celebrated being together four months. and still all good! we were treated to our first sight of snow as it's supposed to be; neither of us had, until today, seen individual snowflakes. freakin' cool, and they float everywhere ^_^
last night we slept beautifully - we were both exhausted and i don't think either of us has had a proper good night's rest since before the exams began. now hitting the sack again, and this time we (think we) know what tomorrow will bring :D
14.02.2011
20.10
happy valentine's day! yep, most valentine's valentine's day i've ever had. including spending the late afternoon eating sweets in bed because pg didn't have the energy to get back on the slopes after siesta and my ski jacket was at the dry-cleaner's - at the expense of the guys who run penkenbahn - to get the silver from yesterday off. it turns out that my instructor and i were on a freshly painted ski lift. bizarre! although to be honest, it was hot enough that i was keen to go out in just a t-shirt.
the day began with a boiled egg - too soft, and unpleasantly so. it does irk me a bit that it seems that our hosts don't offer us anything because we don't speak german, so we only know to order what we see the other tables getting :/
we were both sore this morning, and i was *so* tired that until i was on a slope i wasn't too sure i'd have the energy for anything. getting up there was a hassle - everyone was pushing, but in particular a group of russians who split us up, and i ended up chatting for the fifteen minutes with some dutch guy whose girlfriend was travelling in the same car as mine :P
otherwise - it was a stunning day. beautiful, hot, and only some of the slopes were too icy to handle. i joined a dutch instructor's group; they were doing reds and a bit of jumping, but were easy enough that i could spend the morning practising all the things i learned yesterday. i think... i think i got it ^_^
pg and i shared a long lunch at the bottom of one of the slopes, then hit a few reds together. the pace is mostly okay - i don't need to wait too long for her and i'm beginning to get comfortable with high speed moguls. and flats! whoo hoo!
we spent the evening window shopping: seriously? ski fashion is the most awesome shit around. the crazy hats and shoes and jackets are brilliant, and goggles simply rock. always. even though i've given up on mine - they look amazing but they're always misted up. my combo silly rainbow bobble hat and bright green jawbones are all i need. i was amused when two of the littler kids in the group giggled every time they looked at me :)
the hot chocolate we had before dinner wasn't so special, and quite frankly i prefer the nesquik i just made in our room. dinner was... alright. our waitress isn't all there, i think, and we suspect we may be tipping too much with our ten percent at every meal :P
now for another early-to-bed: this reading and sleeping thing is awesome, it feels like it's been a long time since that was possible.
16.02.2011
21.05
there have been some amazing moments during this trip, not least of which being today's sudden return to snowboarder mode. i went a little crazy, got back into the swing of picking up speed and careening over edges, jumping big and small (even though the one big jump landed me straight on my bum - the same bruise is starting to get ugly) and generally feeling it.
what's beginning to get to me, however, is that pg seems to be miserable. i don't get it - i don't understand if she even likes skiing. she told me today, when i asked her if she was enjoying it or not, that there's a point in the middle: apathy. in my book, that's not enjoying it. she doesn't dig the classes so we travel together instead, and she's too anxious about every - single - turn to just let loose and enjoy the ride. i haven't seen her smile on the slopes. not once. i wouldn't mind waiting for her so much if she was at least having some fun.
yesterday began as my first day of "good" sore - my body was hurting but it was all healthy using-new-muscles pain. pg woke up saying "i wanna go home". she was specifically complaining about not wanting to wake up so early for classes, but that kinda dampened my enthusiasm.
i walked out into the freezing cold in my ski pants and a t-shirt (with my board and boots, of course), to pick up my jacket from the cleaners. i must have been a strange sight. i was well impressed by the clean - they weren't completely done but for such slight damage (it merely looks a little damp) i wasn't going to hand in my jacket a second time. it was a *cold* brisk walk :P
the guys who were behind us on the plane were behind us in the line up to the ski lift. they cursed so much and so freely that it was difficult to distinguish their hebrew from arabic (most israeli curse words are stolen from arabic), and we would have said something about it if that language wasn't such a solid indicator of the type of people we would be dealing with... how we *love* arsim.
my feet really hurt yesterday morning, and a little today. on one of the slopes i wiped out pretty badly, and almost took a little girl out with me. not cool. at the same time, in spite of what appears to be a weak left leg my control's improving dramatically. as i mentioned earlier - i'm feeling it again. and it feels good.
have i mentioned the scenery? this place is magnificent. it even looks awesome when the weather's shitty. the biggest problem i have with this place is that it's totally overcrowded...
that reminds me - i must be grateful that the iphone has good enough speakers to provide musical accompaniment without headphones. i can't snowboard with headphones, and having a soundtrack kicks ass :))
we shopped for chocolate and sweets at the spar, then hit the coffee shop for hot chocolate and free wireless. pg and i had a fight over a miscommunication, which made the hot chocolate taste less than good and highlighted the waitress' bad service and less than unappreciated tone of voice when asking us to move to the bar.
dinner afterwards was alright, maybe mediocre, but uncomfortably quiet.
today:
i went to bed after reading wired's article on inception theories. i slept horribly and dreamed frustrating inception dreams. the whole gorram night :(
i woke up aching. everywhere. breakfast was standard although i suspect that the germans who always sit at the table next to us aren't so fond of us any more (they didn't respond when i wished them a good morning, and for the first time didn't say goodbye). visibility was shocking at breakfast time, and when we got up to the top of penkenbahn we needed our face masks to deal with the cold.
after a couple of decent warm-up runs, i joined the group again. there was more snowfighting than snowboarding, but it was a great class and involved jumping and speed trials.
pg and i did a couple of runs before stopping for lunch, then another couple before coming back down to the room. i couldn't deal with her being so miserable, even though i was doing brilliantly for the first time in two years. i don't remember ever feeling so confident!
she slept the afternoon away while i read - makes me wonder if she's unhappy because she's sleeping too much or if it's the other way around. that leads me to wonder if the reason so many people suffer from depression is that very few people exert themselves enough physically these days to warrant the amount of sleep they get... where did i read about napolean saying that nobody needs more than six hours' sleep? and i think i'm going to buy the four hour body
. apparently according to the author's gathered evidence einstein's twenty minutes every couple of hours is enough, although i think that's a bit extreme even for me :Pis it normal to be so pleased with one's hair when one looks in the mirror? i'm constantly and pleasantly surprised every time i see myself, especially now that my hair's starting to show from behind my ears :)
dinner this evening: pretty good. my steak was bloody: bloody tasty, but was it dangerous? there's too much fear-mongering in the news. the new waiter - he's been around since last night - tries really hard but just doesn't have that professional edge that one seeks in the service industry. when the brits next to us all ordered wine, i could hear "ka-tching!" going through his head every time he poured :P
i wanted to respond, but it would've been rude to interfere: one of those brits made a snarky comment to a couple of his fellow travellers: "when you kids grow up, you'll see that skiing is the way forward."
he's absolutely right! snowboarding, on the other hand, is about enjoying the way.
17.02.2011
21.21
good news, everyone! no, it's not delivering cargo into the sun. both have me really excitable too, but the first even more than the second - item number one on the list: no more italian wearing a hat! except maybe for seminar counselling, where i take my paper to him so that he feels useful. i just discovered that i passed his course with a grade no more than two points lower than i needed (85 - meaning i scored a 92 for the final), and after the meeting i had with the professor last wednesday that means that i passed it without needing to do any work for extra-credit! whoo hoo!!! and that got me thinking about the second semester, where i have one horrible course (but we have all the notes and advice from the second years), one i-shouldn't-be-taking-this course (the intro to poetry, when i just completed an advanced poetry course), one cool course (shakespeare, with a lecturer who's apparently brilliant) and the slapping together of the seminar paper, which is basically cramming in a whole bunch of examples that we've already read in class to make a point that's neither here nor there.
so i'm all good academically ^_^
the second item on the list: pg and i had it out before going to bed last night, and it appears that the two of us simply keep miscommunicating. we spent the whole day together on the slopes today, and it was a lot of fun!
aside from the damage, of course. i went a bit nuts, and although i'm much more confident at high speed on dangerous curves and with low visibility, my balance disappears as soon as i stop and i've had a couple of bad falls on the same damn spot. and one terrible fall on a new spot; isn't my bum fatty enough to absorb the impact?! if tomorrow wasn't our last day i would actually consider buying a protector.
this morning began with me waking up to the revelation that i'm officially a bad boyfriend. pg doesn't agree with me, and when i gave her free reign she chose reds over blues most of the time, but according to the first "welcome to the snow" speech i ever heard, if you take your girlfriend on runs she's not ready for...
he proceeded to show me, and it wasn't particularly impressive.
the warmup runs were red 3 and 5, and we hate those. steep sheets of ice, which means sore bums and ankles :S
the first blue we hit was amazing, though. i zoomed past everyone, catching a fair bit of airtime on the way :D
so aside from a serious bitch about a ridiculously long t-lift, a very sore upper left arm from a few bad landings and a blue at the end whose stupid lengths of flat expressed perfectly to pg why i hate blues, it was a fantastic day. such a pity we only have one left! noooooo!!!
that always happens :(
i had the tron: legacy ost
playing on my iphone on the packed lift down, and one of the guys couldn't figure out where the music was coming from but was bopping his head to it and humming along. it's an excellent soundtrack for the slopes :)late afternoon: chocolate, marshmallows and ohmigod-holy-shit-i've-missed-a-lot: i can't believe i haven't made time to read wired during the last four months. so - much - info. so many cool things, and so much inspiration!
our second last dinner was a little less than mediocre, and we have our old waitress back. i don't think i've mentioned the bar next door that's a part of the hotel - it appears to be the only after-piste party in town, and it's incredible how much drunken enthusiasm can be garnered for such horrendous taste in music. every time someone walks through the door we're blasted with 'orrible shit, but i can't help smiling whenever we walk past and see the reverie.
after dessert we went to the coffee shop to check mail (and results) - the smell of fungus-covered old feet coming from the fondue pot of the couple next to us was outrageous. then the temperature rose suddenly - freakishly. we high-tailed it out of there, and now that i've gotten this out i'm going to get back into bed. and read until i pass out. and be upset that tomorrow's our last day. and ecstatic that we're both enjoying this. and deliriously happy that i passed that damned course.
18.02.2011
21.05
last night was dreadful. i barely slept, and what little i managed was plagued by disturbing dreams. my stomache was in disarray and all my muscles ached in a bad way. to make matters worse, i woke up with my teeth feeling loose (not entirely uncommon when sleeping with my guard) and i looked out the window to discover zero visibility.
fortunately, it was only cloud cover in the valley again. i gotta say - this week has been the worst weather for snow sports imaginable. everything was ice for most of it, and by today the situation was so bad that i cannot recall a single slope that didn't give me a bad slide and a hard, thumping sit-down on the same spot on my ass. even worse was falling *really* badly on my left arm in the middle of a long, wide red and with no sunshine - ie. impossible to identify moguls - and it's been uncomfortable since. it took me a while to gather enough will to get up and carry on down.
this morning's riding began badly because i was so sensitive and tired from the night before, and it took me until early afternoon to get my head sorted out. and to get my body to respond to basic instructions. it was far too late in the week to suddenly *get* that the entire time i've either been bending into everything or standing up against everything, instead of mixing it up smoothly like my first instructor told me on sunday. soon after i got that right, pg (extremely bravely) chose to go down the insane black slope that we'd been watching with morbid fascination the entire week. the beginning was too icy for me, but once a bit of sunlight peeped out from behind the clouds and i could differentiate between moguls and ice, i carreened down at high speed and with barely a prayer - it was frikkin' AMAZING. that rush was worth every bit of frustration from the rest of the week, every moment of physical pain, and even made up for the fact that my bindings were all screwy from yesterday and my right foot kept falling asleep on the job.
it would be nice if i had videos for the good rides. note to self: acquire helmet-cam.
hmmph - i suddenly realized that when it comes to snowboarding, i'm actually fairly competitive. unlike everything else i do in life, i can't help but try to out-do other snowboarders even when i'm not nearly at their level of competence. in other amusing news: halfway down that black run, i put some music on and forgot to zip up my jacket. a few seconds later i pulled a massive slide and drove straight into the resulting shower of ice - and it was a lot colder than i'd expected :P
so between yesterday afternoon and today's black run, i remembered - completely and utterly - that i LOVE this shit. if i'm wealthy enough by next year, i'm so gonna buy my own gear so that i don't have to go through the rental irritations again...
lunchtime: i made a bad call when organizing lunch for the both of us... she got me back later by dragging me shopping after we returned our gear :P
after stretching and showering - god, that hot water was an incredible way to end the week - i got into bed with my wired and a decidedly sore neck. of all my aches and pains, that's the one that's really getting to me now. at least i can relax about physical performance for a while :P
dinner was okay as usual; pg's a bit wary about the next semester but i'm all excited. and tomorrow, when we get back, i'm going to phone gco and apologize for ignoring all his phone calls and repeated messages to join him for his birthday celebrations tonight. i still can't figure out if we're friends or not. if i can't, i believe that's an automatic negative. when hinting doesn't work, but stating outright is rude - what does one do? we can't all be zim.
this week, as all good weeks, came to an end too soon. i needed it physically almost as much as i needed it psychologically - *this* was a holiday. as opposed to all the travelling i did from august to october, which was a head-shaking demon-exorcizing anthropological excursion. i feel... complete, again. even more so, with pg. this wasn't a hardcore snowboarding experience, it was a chilled let's-do-whatever experience that happened to have some gnarly rides mixed in. and now i'm mostly packed and going to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.