Daily Archives: January 11, 2004

None of us can be bothered to eat out tonight. We had big lunches,
and there’s bread to toast and wine to drink. I continue reading
Spike’s diaries. Bed at midnight again. Outside it’s raining,
not snowing. Bah.

Chef arrives back at the apartment as we do. I shower, then lie
flat on my back for a bit; no reaction, good! Yes, I’ll have a glass
of wine, thanks.

We sit, talk, doze, listen to iPods plugged into stereos, and
watch TV. We surf for Des Chiffres Et Des Lettres (the French version
of Countdown), eventually remembering that it’s Sunday so unlikely to
be on. We end up with CNN International, where Wolf Blitzer has
escaped from Father Christmas’s reindeers to present something called
Late Edition.

Chris has another run down so Melanie can take some photos of him
in action. I don’t think I should do any more today, I want to make
sure I don’t overdo it – I might get a delayed reaction. We do a quick
ski down from the cafe to the bus stop (I sit down to put the
snowblades on, but it’s no easier. I’ll get used to them. Hopefully.
I’ll keep them for tomorrow anyway.)

Lunch at the cafe, spag tom bas. Big plate, nice.

On-piste again. Melanie goes up and down once more then decides her
cold has beaten her for the day and retires to the cafe again. Chris,
Andy and I go round and round a few more times. I don’t seem to have
any back problems; I’m enjoying the snowblades. I’ve brought my
camcorder, and take some footage while skiing down. Much easier to
film without poles!

We take the button lift to the top. First run of the holiday!
It’s slightly odd with no poles, but easy to turn, and easy to stop. Me like.

Andy and Melanie are both a bit hesitant. Neither has skied since
Courchevel two years ago; Andy’s still very much a beginner, and
Melanie’s recovering from a nasty cold. Chris and I are both roughly
equivalent intermediate skiers – at the lazy rather than adventurous
end.

I keep an eye on Andy, Chris on Melanie. As Andy and I reach the
bottom of the run, Chris rings me from part-way up to say they’re off
to the piste-side cafe for a vin chaud. Andy and I go up and down again
and join them.

The bus takes a few minutes to wind its way up to Les Esserts,
intended for “beginners and children” according to the local
radio. There are no green runs in Verbier, just blue, red and black,
so this is a blue. Elsewhere it’d certainly be green.
It’s not that busy this morning, there are no ski school crowds.

As I expected, I have a hard time attaching snowblades to
boots. It’s not so much the technique or relative complexity as the
bending over. I get there eventually.

We squeeze into our boots. Andy swears at his. Grabbing our skis
and poles, or if you’re me, natty little snowblades, we walk up to
the nearby bus stop. The bus arrives as we do: the number two to
Médran cable car station. There, a big sign is covered with
Os and Xs indicating open and closed pistes and lifts. We don’t have
much choice if we’re going for an easy day: Les Esserts is the one
to head for.

So how do we get there? Chris asks in the information office. We
want the number two bus, er, the one we just got off. We wait for the
next one – they’re pretty regular.

Chef’s already gone! The weather looks OK. Today’s going to be an
easing-in day for the rest of us in the apartment, due variously to
beginnerness (Andy), illness (Melanie), laziness (Chris) and
spinelessness (Avaragado). We’ll look for an easy piste to play on.