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Entry tags:
off piste
short version:
great week, awful start. British Airways, may they rot in hell, gave me food poisoning on the flight over, and I spent a miserable six hours transferring across London with my guts in violent revolt. Recovered by time of arrival in France. Fantastic skiing, mostly great conditions. Thursday, skiied 20 kilometres down an alpine glacier. Spent weekend in London catching up with peeps. Am now back in Canadia. Agent sent word that she likes the new book but it needs work.
update: pictures of the Vallée Blanche are now available.
Sunday was not a whole lot of fun. For one thing I was puking my guts up every 90 minutes, between lengthy periods of queasy and weary misery. For another, this being London on Sunday, none of the transit was working as it should; the Tube wasn't running to Heathrow, and the Thameslink wasn't running to King's Cross. I threw up on the bus from Heathrow, then just outside Victoria Station, then in the bathroom of the Savoy Hotel, and finally on the Thameslink to Luton, which makes for an entertaining if disgusting combination.
We - "we" being myself, my friends Max & Kelle who I worked with in NYC, Max's brother and sister, and assorted partners and friends, good people all, a total of 14 of us - had a huge chalet booked just for us, all-inclusive, breakfast and dinner prepared for us, a pool table and massive entertainment system, all the beer and wine we could drink. Very pleasantly decadent. The basic routine was: wake early, eat breakfast, ride to the slopes of the day (Chamonix is surrounded by about a dozen ski areas), ski 'til 4PM, have a beer at the base of the mountain, ride back home, wander into town for an hour or two, then eat and drink and slouch around until the witching hour rolled around and it was time to recharge for the next day. Doesn't that sound like a hard life? It was terrible, I tell you, terrible, but someone has to suffer these indignities.
Monday I was a little weak but basically recovered, and got about six hours of skiing in at Brévent-Flégère. I hadn't been on skis since January 2002. On the other hand I started skiing when I was 5, and it is, in fact, just like riding a bicycle; I was bombing down the black slopes in no time at all. Tuesday, at La Tour, was one of my favourite ski days ever - my legs were strong, and I found one of my favourite runs of all time, "Belle Place", and spent most of the day going up and down its variations.
Wednesday, at Les Grands-Montets, started off poorly. "In French," said the man who had just recovered the poles I had abandoned about 50 feet upslope, when I hit an unexpected ice patch, caught an edge, faceplanted into the mountain (bestowing a large bruise beneath my right eye which I still proudly wear) and tumbled for a fair ways, "we call this un jour blanc". Thick white squalling snow, visibility of about 5 feet, which makes skiing extremely challenging and not all that much fun. Fortunately it cleared up at noon, and I even managed to accidentally wriggle onto a cable car i wasn't theoretically cleared for, up to a winding semi-off-piste black run called "La Tour" when ran alongside an incredibly beautiful tumbling river of crystalline blue glacier ice.
Thursday was one of my Grand Days of Travel. We hired a guide to take us down the Vallee Blanche, an alpine glacier that stretches 20 kilometres from a 3800-metre-high peak down to the Chamonix valley. After picking our way down a not-particularly-safe roped-off path above a steep icy slope that woul have sent anyone who fell skittering into eternity, we strapped on harnesses (in case you fall into a crevasse), skis and snowboards (mostly boards - I was one of three skiiers in our group, and the only fairly advanced one) and began. It was a pretty humbling day. I hadn't skiied powder for a decade, and it's a totally different skillset than piste skiing. And this powder was thick, soft stuff - at one point I fell clumsily onto my side, tried to use my poles to lever myself up, and watched with some amazement as the poles easily plunged into the snow, until their tops were below the crust, without giving me any purchase.
There were narrow traverses, there were many crevasses to avoid (the consensus favourite line from our hardcore-mountain-man guide was "Do not go to my right. And do not go far to my left either") some of the slopes we had to descend were worrying clifflike, and the air was very thin and we sometimes had to pant for what felt like minutes to recover from the effort of righting ourselves after falls, but it was terrific fun once I started getting the hang of powder again, and the scenery, jagged spires of snow-streaked rock, seams and boulders of blue ice, the elegant snow-covered ribs and crevasses of the glacier, was absolutely breathtaking.
After the lunch hut - which came none too soon, as I had foolishly taken the word of the chalet's stoner owner that it was only a two-hour trip, and had neglected to bring water - the route smoothed out into a vast near-plain that eventually came out at a grotto carved every year into the blue ice of the glacier. We unbuckled, unstrapped, hopped on board a convenient train back to Chamonix, bought our guide a few drinks, and headed home. Four of us went for spectacularly good starters at an ancient restaurant called L'Impossible, followed by a spectacularly bad game of bowling (I am pleased to report that there was no one worse than I) and a huge, somewhat sodden meal at a place called Goophie's. Collapsed around midnight, very content with the world.
Not least content because I had gotten word from my agent the day before regarding COYOTE SNAKEHEAD KING. I was more than a little worried that she would write something to the effect of This is unpublishable crap, throw it away and start something else. But no, to my great relief, she actually wrote It's great - needs work, but it's great! Which was followed by a lengthy list of the work that it needs, but I think, even working on it only half-time, I can have the next draft knocked out by end-of-March.
Friday, headed back to England via pretty-but-sleepy Geneva. Saturday and Sunday, caught up with various peeps, watched Arsenal rightfully defeat Chelsea, and saw Dogville, which I thought was extraordinary, with the caveat that a large number of people are going to absolutely despise it, and a further large group will call it pretentious crap. Avoided any medical complications on the flight back. On the way over, I finally read Watchmen, and was hugely impressed. The way back, I read Neverwhere - the first Gaiman I've actually read, unless you count Good Omens, though I have five books of his in my possession - and while I liked it, I was sort of expecting more. (I was also slightly irked by the subject matter, as I'd had vague unformed plans to write something unsettlingly similar. This might have informed my overall opinion.) Also A Short History Of Nearly Everything, which surely hits some kind of maximum combination of "informative" and "interesting". When I grow up, I want to be Bill Bryson.
Thus endeth the tale of my winter break. May your assorted weeks have been anywhere near as good as mine.
great week, awful start. British Airways, may they rot in hell, gave me food poisoning on the flight over, and I spent a miserable six hours transferring across London with my guts in violent revolt. Recovered by time of arrival in France. Fantastic skiing, mostly great conditions. Thursday, skiied 20 kilometres down an alpine glacier. Spent weekend in London catching up with peeps. Am now back in Canadia. Agent sent word that she likes the new book but it needs work.
update: pictures of the Vallée Blanche are now available.
Sunday was not a whole lot of fun. For one thing I was puking my guts up every 90 minutes, between lengthy periods of queasy and weary misery. For another, this being London on Sunday, none of the transit was working as it should; the Tube wasn't running to Heathrow, and the Thameslink wasn't running to King's Cross. I threw up on the bus from Heathrow, then just outside Victoria Station, then in the bathroom of the Savoy Hotel, and finally on the Thameslink to Luton, which makes for an entertaining if disgusting combination.
We - "we" being myself, my friends Max & Kelle who I worked with in NYC, Max's brother and sister, and assorted partners and friends, good people all, a total of 14 of us - had a huge chalet booked just for us, all-inclusive, breakfast and dinner prepared for us, a pool table and massive entertainment system, all the beer and wine we could drink. Very pleasantly decadent. The basic routine was: wake early, eat breakfast, ride to the slopes of the day (Chamonix is surrounded by about a dozen ski areas), ski 'til 4PM, have a beer at the base of the mountain, ride back home, wander into town for an hour or two, then eat and drink and slouch around until the witching hour rolled around and it was time to recharge for the next day. Doesn't that sound like a hard life? It was terrible, I tell you, terrible, but someone has to suffer these indignities.
Monday I was a little weak but basically recovered, and got about six hours of skiing in at Brévent-Flégère. I hadn't been on skis since January 2002. On the other hand I started skiing when I was 5, and it is, in fact, just like riding a bicycle; I was bombing down the black slopes in no time at all. Tuesday, at La Tour, was one of my favourite ski days ever - my legs were strong, and I found one of my favourite runs of all time, "Belle Place", and spent most of the day going up and down its variations.
Wednesday, at Les Grands-Montets, started off poorly. "In French," said the man who had just recovered the poles I had abandoned about 50 feet upslope, when I hit an unexpected ice patch, caught an edge, faceplanted into the mountain (bestowing a large bruise beneath my right eye which I still proudly wear) and tumbled for a fair ways, "we call this un jour blanc". Thick white squalling snow, visibility of about 5 feet, which makes skiing extremely challenging and not all that much fun. Fortunately it cleared up at noon, and I even managed to accidentally wriggle onto a cable car i wasn't theoretically cleared for, up to a winding semi-off-piste black run called "La Tour" when ran alongside an incredibly beautiful tumbling river of crystalline blue glacier ice.
Thursday was one of my Grand Days of Travel. We hired a guide to take us down the Vallee Blanche, an alpine glacier that stretches 20 kilometres from a 3800-metre-high peak down to the Chamonix valley. After picking our way down a not-particularly-safe roped-off path above a steep icy slope that woul have sent anyone who fell skittering into eternity, we strapped on harnesses (in case you fall into a crevasse), skis and snowboards (mostly boards - I was one of three skiiers in our group, and the only fairly advanced one) and began. It was a pretty humbling day. I hadn't skiied powder for a decade, and it's a totally different skillset than piste skiing. And this powder was thick, soft stuff - at one point I fell clumsily onto my side, tried to use my poles to lever myself up, and watched with some amazement as the poles easily plunged into the snow, until their tops were below the crust, without giving me any purchase.
There were narrow traverses, there were many crevasses to avoid (the consensus favourite line from our hardcore-mountain-man guide was "Do not go to my right. And do not go far to my left either") some of the slopes we had to descend were worrying clifflike, and the air was very thin and we sometimes had to pant for what felt like minutes to recover from the effort of righting ourselves after falls, but it was terrific fun once I started getting the hang of powder again, and the scenery, jagged spires of snow-streaked rock, seams and boulders of blue ice, the elegant snow-covered ribs and crevasses of the glacier, was absolutely breathtaking.
After the lunch hut - which came none too soon, as I had foolishly taken the word of the chalet's stoner owner that it was only a two-hour trip, and had neglected to bring water - the route smoothed out into a vast near-plain that eventually came out at a grotto carved every year into the blue ice of the glacier. We unbuckled, unstrapped, hopped on board a convenient train back to Chamonix, bought our guide a few drinks, and headed home. Four of us went for spectacularly good starters at an ancient restaurant called L'Impossible, followed by a spectacularly bad game of bowling (I am pleased to report that there was no one worse than I) and a huge, somewhat sodden meal at a place called Goophie's. Collapsed around midnight, very content with the world.
Not least content because I had gotten word from my agent the day before regarding COYOTE SNAKEHEAD KING. I was more than a little worried that she would write something to the effect of This is unpublishable crap, throw it away and start something else. But no, to my great relief, she actually wrote It's great - needs work, but it's great! Which was followed by a lengthy list of the work that it needs, but I think, even working on it only half-time, I can have the next draft knocked out by end-of-March.
Friday, headed back to England via pretty-but-sleepy Geneva. Saturday and Sunday, caught up with various peeps, watched Arsenal rightfully defeat Chelsea, and saw Dogville, which I thought was extraordinary, with the caveat that a large number of people are going to absolutely despise it, and a further large group will call it pretentious crap. Avoided any medical complications on the flight back. On the way over, I finally read Watchmen, and was hugely impressed. The way back, I read Neverwhere - the first Gaiman I've actually read, unless you count Good Omens, though I have five books of his in my possession - and while I liked it, I was sort of expecting more. (I was also slightly irked by the subject matter, as I'd had vague unformed plans to write something unsettlingly similar. This might have informed my overall opinion.) Also A Short History Of Nearly Everything, which surely hits some kind of maximum combination of "informative" and "interesting". When I grow up, I want to be Bill Bryson.
Thus endeth the tale of my winter break. May your assorted weeks have been anywhere near as good as mine.
get outta my brain
ahem.
welcome back.
Now then
As to your athletic achievements. I'm still learning to sea kayak (quite an exercise on our violent coastal waters - Cape of Storms, for one thing). I went out in surf on Sunday morning, filling the cockpit with about 200 litres of water, paddled down the coast, emptied out and came back. Back in through the surf (avoiding about 200 teenaged surfers). Got rolled by a wave and wound up in a sandy heap on the beach. Very glamorous.
no subject
That said, Neverwhere is miles ahead of Lisa Goldstein's Dark Cities Underground, which shares some of its conceits. (I like some of her other work, but.)
This comment should really be rewritten as "but yes but but but," self-containedly.