the birm*

First big powder session/ouch my quads!

As RC was heading to the states for Christmas, we thought we’d better head out for a wee sess. So Caleb, RC and I got up early and ready to hit the lifts as soon as they opened…

The first run on “l’échine” was painful: deep, deep, champagne powder, steep slopes and freedom…only problem was that we were straight out of the lift and not warm at all, which meant stopping every 3 or 4 turns because of legs catching fire.

The second and subsequent descents were amazing (and still quite painful), despite not having the width underfoot to deal with such deep powder…I’m glad I only got a half day! After a few hours of powder skiing I left the boys and headed down the mountain, sticking to easy runs to work on my switch skiing :)

Light stories (part 1: engagements)

Ever since being “interested” in Candide I thought that Lyon, during the lights festival, would be a great place to ask her to marry me. it would be specially meaningful, since that’s the place/night it all started last year.

The evening went well, we had dinner with her best friend Marie and her husband Olivier (a great couple!), then hung out with them and Mica (Cand’s cousin). The lights were beautiful, it wasn’t raining (but pretty chilli!) and there were less people than last year.

After a couple of hours of walking around, we headed up to the cathedral, where there’s a superb view of the city (most people go to the left side, as there’s an open space, but the right side has the same view with less people…). as we were walking to where you can see the city, I pulled the ring out of my pocket and put it in her hand (we were holding hands at the time), saying that I had another gift for her (I’d given her ear-rings a few hours before, in a small “ring” box) but that if she accepted it, there were consequences. She stopped, looked what was in her hand, then looked at me. and that’s when I asked her…

It was really weird, although we’d been doing a marriage prep course, unofficially talking about future plans and she knew I’d asked her dad a few weeks before (he called her up and told her!), it was still quite a emotional, scary moment! Part of me is glad that I won’t have to do it ever again, but at the same time part of me wishes I could do it again and again…

Light stories (part 2: hassles)

While we were heading up to the cathedral we knew that we wouldn’t be back at the tram station by 12:45am, as it was already midnight. But, we ASSumed that these tram times were only “ordinary” ones, since the metro was running all night on this particular week-end, plus it was too late to turn back and...we’re still young, we could do with a bit of adventure!

We got to the tram station at 1:15am and saw, with horror but without great surprise, that the last tram had indeed been and gone, half an hour before. My car had been left at Marie and Olivier’s place, about 5kms away…

So I shed some layers and started to run towards the car (not knowing the city but following the tram line), being the only option at this stage.

After about 15 minutes I realised that there would be a better way: a bike (in Lyon you can rent a bike from an automatic locker and put it back in another one. If you use it for less than half an hour, it’s free, if not it’s a euro or two). I did the necessary transaction (obviously there’s a 150 euro deposit on the bad boy, refunded when you rtn the bike) and was away a few minutes later.

I got the tram station where the car was parked, parked the bike right next to the car and drove off into the unknown (note for later, driving in an unknown city full of one-way streets can be slower and more frustrating than running/riding a bike…).

I eventually got back to where the others were (after frustration, many phone calls, driving on tram tracks and taxi/bus only lanes) and we made it back to Mica’s place by 2:30am… needless to say, the 7:45am rise-to-drive-to-G-town-to-select-a-potential-future-women’s-French-handball-team was rude.