Explore europe in a campervan

Sometimes I wonder how we manage to function from one day to the next.  When we woke up today and (eventually) got ready to go snowboarding first Simon tried to open the front passenger door where he’d sat to put his boots on, but couldn’t.  So I tried to open the side, sliding door to rescue him…and couldn’t!!  We really were snowed in.  I managed to push hard enough to make a gap to squeeze through, then got the shovel and started digging Simon out.  The snow plough had been to clear the car park in the early morning and they had just shovelled big piles of snow all around the vans and cars that were parked up, building a wall around us.

We then spent some time clearing snow from the roof.  It looks pretty and everything, but once the van starts warming up or the sun shines down it melts and we’ve got some ominous dark patches on the ceiling where the  water seeps through the joins on the roof.  A small stepladder is on the list for our next trip to a bigger town, so that we can clear the whole roof.

Finally we were ready and headed up to the gondola.  When we got there we realised Simon wasn’t carrying our bag with food and water, but thought we’d go crazy and go to the shop in Avoriaz if we got really hungry.  Once in the gondola and laughing about our uselessness Simon said he felt a bit naked - then we both noticed he wasn’t wearing his goggles!  You can buy a bottle of slightly over-priced water, but you can’t manage on the mountain with no eye protection so he had to sit tight in the lift and go all the way back down again.

I found the going tough today.  After lots of snow you’d think it would be nice and soft and deep, but after the skiers have been through the piste is really bumpy with moguls, which makes turning difficult and is hard on the knees.  Because we didn’t get the clear skies the forecast had promised it was hard to see these bumps so lots of falls on my bum.  Add to this the fact that the pistes were heaving with people and I wasn’t in my very best mood.  Like golf, when you don’t feel good your snowboarding gets worse, which makes you feel worse and so on……

To finish off a less-than-perfect day I committed the ultimate faux pas that I’ve not quite forgiven Simon for doing last year.  In my haste to get out of the way in the busy snow park, where I was supposed to be taking a photo of Simon shredding the rail, I shoved the camera in my pocket and hit the jumps.  Halfway down the run I looked down at my pocket, saw it open and felt no camera inside.  We went straight back to the park and the lifts nearby to ask if it had been found, but no.  So after just two weeks I’ve lost our camera we just bought to replace the one that Simon lost near the end of last season.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 1:50 am and is filed under Diary, Snowboarding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.