Come up and ski me, sometime

Firstly readers, let me appologise. I wanted to blog a little fare-thee-well more than a week ago, telling you all that I would be going skiing, but I didn't get round to it. Last Saturday I went to Salzburg in Austria for a week. At 5:00am on Saturday morning I got up and had brekkie and headed down to my dads house for 6:00am with sister. I parked my car on his drive and we waited for the taxi. Now this is a story in itself...

Father had ordered the taxi the day before, stating quite clearly that we needed a vehicle that could hold 2 sets of skiis in the boot, and we needed the taxi for 6:15am. At 6:30am there was no sign of a taxi so dad rang Able Cars to complain. They appologised for the mix up and said that they didn't have the booking on record but they could send someone round in their mini-bus thingy. As father was ending the conversation he told them not to bother and he would find another taxi firm. Just then the taxi pulled up outside... It was an A2B. What the nitwit had done is book the taxi with A2B, and when it didn't show, phoned Able Cars to complain! (which is why they didn't have the booking on record.) However, it gets better. A2B had messed the booking up as well and had sent us a short Indian person driving a 1994 Rover 416.

Let me show you the mathematical formula for this equasion:

Skis = (185cm x2) x2 pairs.
Boot space of 1994 Rover 416 = Hight x Width x length.
Intelligence of short Indian = negligable

boot space = shit.
skiis = long.
I.Q of Indian = fuckwit.

I.Q of Indian / bootspace = problem

(I.Q of Indian + skiis) x bootspace = bigger problem

problem x bigger problem = Everyone involved wishing the stupid bastard would just put the skiis down, fuck off back to wherever he came from, and let us deal with it!

Well eventually he came to the conclusion that the skiis wouldn't fit in the boot (duh!) so he left. Father then had to get back on the phone to Able Cars and ask them if they could send their minibus thingy. They did and it arrived at 6:50am. We dived in and got to the airport for 7:15am. Our flight was at 8:30am...

... Or so we thought.

*Bing-bong* "flight BE170 to Salzburg will be delayed 1 hour. *Bing-bong*

Fan-bleedin'-tastic! (and it doesn't end there!)

Because of weight restrictions what we do is put one ski boot in out hand luggage and one in our suitcases. This is because if you check in a boot bag they charge you excess baggage, even if you are within your weight limit of 25kg (they do this to rip you of and make a bit of extra cash.) So at 9:10am we were called through and had to go through those blasted scanners. Father, sister, and I all put out hand luggage on the conveyor belt (each bag containing one of our ski boots) and walked through the probeulators of doom. (one little beep and it's rubber glove time!) The head honcho on duty was a skinny African dude with aspirations of invading poland one day. He stopped us and said that ski boots were not allowed on the aircraft and they would have to be checked in. (Oh Joy) By this time sister was bored with the situation, father was about to lose it big-time and I wanted to knee everyone in the crotch. We took the boots back down to check-in and just walked up to the front, not caring about the queue that was checking in for the flight after ours. (Since technically, if we have already checked in, then that puts us in front of them anyway!) We explained our situation to the short Indian girl on the desk. (I wonder if she was any relation to the taxi driver?) The first question she asked was what we were going to put them in. We hadn't got anything and she said that the airport didn't have anything it could give us. We had to go to one of the airport shops and BUY a cheap hold-all bag, big enough for 3 ski boots, for £10. We took them back to the desk ready to be checked in...

... Where we were told that because the bag now counts as excess baggage it would be £60 extra. We politely told her to get stuffed and that because it was the airline's fault for not being detailed enough in what can and cannot be taken onto the aircraft, then the fee does not apply. After several threats of legal action she decided to check them in with no fee attached. (sensible.)

We ran back up through the probulators, through the waiting lounge, through passport control and got on the aircraft.

The flight went well and we landed in good time at Salzburg airport at 12:30pm local time. (11:30am GMT.)

It was a 20 minute drive to the hotel (Hotel Werdenberg) in the village of Eben, south west Salzburg. The hotel had sent 2 mini-buses since our total party added up to 17 people. We got settled, had a walk in to the village (to check out where the best bars were) came back, got showered, and went for the evening meal. After we all went to bed since everyone had been awake for a good 16 to 17 hours.

Right, on with the rest of the week: After brekkie on Sunday morning, it was on to the slopes. The local resort is Flachau and it's neighbour resort is Flachau-winkel. (jokingly named by our party as "Flash-yer-winkle.") The hotel run a shuttle bus up to Flachau so we got on that and were skiing by 10:00am. The weather was fantastic and we all had a good time. After coming down at about 4-ish, I was looking at some skiis on special offer at the local sport shop. They were blue and white Blizzard X04 "Spiders" with tech-II sports bindings, all on offer for €180 which is about £130 (ooh, get you with the euro symbol on his keyboard!) I wondered if anywhere had them cheaper so didn't buy them just in case. That evening we all stayed up in the hotel bar getting to know all the staff. (the hotel is English-owned, so all the staff come from here, it's great!) The one guy, Kieron, used to work at the Barnt Green Inn with the daughter of one of the couples who had come with us. Incredible! (It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, It's a small wor... Oh, sorry.)

On Monday the weather took a bit of a turn and we had snow and quite a bit of cloud. It didn't stop us though and we all had a good days skiing. We also found the first real jump of the holiday. Flachau is a big place and we found some nice jumps to the side of one of the pistes. All the men had a go (as well as a few of the women) and thankfully no broken bones appeared. When we came down after the days skiing I went back to the shop to look at those skiis again. They were looking tempting so I thought "what the hell" and bought them. The guy in the shop fitted the bindings to my boots and set the release arc* to what I prefer (which is about 6.5 to 7.0)

*For non-skiiers, the release arc (or "release grip") is the screw you adjust to lift or lower the binding head. bindings that are set to 10.0 push hard on the lip of the ski boot and the ski is very firm. If you fall over, the chances that the bindings will release are minimum, meaning the ski stays on your foot, but you increase the chances of shattering your legs (since it's safer for the skis to come off because if they dig into the snow during a fall, it means you can't move your legs very well and the result is that you can shatter your knees or tear your leg muscles. The plus side is firm skiis respond to your feet better and perform well at high speed, since they don't rattle as much) at the other end of the scale, bindings set to 1.0 do not push as hard on the lip of the boot, and will come away easily if you fall. (but you sacrifice some control since the skiis can move slightly and this makes for tough high-speed corners.) In summary think of it like this:

Beginners should use a release of 1.0 ~ 3.0
Intermediate skiiers use 3.0 ~ 5.5
Advanced use 5.5 ~ 8.0
Proffesionals use 8.0 ~10.0

Right. On with the blog.

Tuesday morning we got up and went back up to Flachau. It was a bit cloudy but there was no snow....

... until about 11:30 when a full scale blizzard set in (ironic, since it was the first day I was using my new Blizzard skiis!) We skiied on the back runs of the mountain staying out of the wind and 70% of the snow. It did clear up in the afternoon and it stopped snowing long enough for us to get on the front side of the mountain and have a bit of fun* When we got back to the hotel we all had hot drinks and a nice warm shower (not all together, obviously.)

*Sub-story alert: We had found a huge jump to the right of the main run at Flachau the day before and wanted to have a go. I shot off the end and landed the other side without incident. The problem was that Selena saw me do it, and thought that if she went slow enough, then she could do it too... Which, to be fair, she probably could have. However, on the approach to the jump she seemed to pick up a fair amount of speed. Actually she was rocketing down and had no time to scrub any of it off. She hit the jump at a good rate and sailed over it about 6 feet off the ground. She also hadn't figured that going over a jump propells you UP as as well as OUT. the jump had a 4 foot drop, but Selena managed to get half that much again just because of the rate she hit the end of it... Then she did a rather spectacualr thing. She landed it. Both skiis on the snow with a bit of a thud go go with it.... spectacular! Then she did a rather predictable thing. 0.8 seconds after landing, the momentum of her skiis hitting the snow caused her to topple sideways and taste mountain... big style! After she got up and stuck her skiis back on everyone gave her a little round of applause for being the only person to jump it and get that much air-time.

Wednesdays weather was better although there had been massive snowfall during the night. We headed over to Flachau-winkel where the tops of the mountains were excellent but the runs nearer the bottom were awful. It was like skiing on caramelised sugar. I tested my skiis out further by pelting down a long straight run, just to test the flat-line running speed. The answer was "bloody-quick." Whilst their we also found a snowboard park with some good jumps. I love pissing off boarders and so some of us went in. We did a couple of jumps while being filmed by one of my dads mates. He got a nice shot of the looks on the boarders faces as well which was good. I don't know why boarders think they are cooler than skiiers. Skis are faster, better at cornering, and can take jumps as easily as a board can. Boards are, however, lighter and can get higher than skis off a jump, but that is a minor issue.

On Thursday we went up to Flachau-winkel again, and had some decent weather. We found a nice mountainside restaurant to have lunch in and set about finding more things to jump off and prat around at. We skiied over to find where the Salzburg Gold Run is (as used in the Winter Olympics in February) but couldn't find it. After coming down and checking the piste map, we realised that Flachau-winkel is split in to two halves that are not connected by ski lifts and the other side is a quick 2 minute bus ride round to another section of the mountain.

Friday was our last day skiing so we were all ready to make it count. We found a practice slalom course and the Gold Run. The bold and the brave set off down the official olympic run at a fair pace while those who wanted to relax a bit set off down on their own. I was hoping that it was kept in peak condition all year round but it wasn't. It was a bit choppy near the bottom and dissapointing to ski on. Herman Miyer can do it in 2:12. I did it in a little over 5 minutes! Doh! I don't think I'll bother entering for the olympic team... We came down in the afternoon and realised that we had finished our holiday. We headed back to the hotel to start packing and to relax a bit.

On Saturday we got to Salzburg airport and got on the plane at 1:30pm Local time and were home for 2:30pm GMT. Since I had the night off work I phoned Adam and Carl to see if they wanted to go out for a drink. We headed up to Casa in Solihull with Julia (who I phoned last-minute) and were later Joined by Marcus and Steve. It was the first Saturday night out I had in a long while so I really enjoyed myself! I got home at about 2:30am and went straight to bed.

On Sunday I got up late and had roast chicken for lunch (back to good old English grub!) And was in work for 3:00pm as usual. I was working with 2 new people at the legion. Hannah and Chris. They have both done bar work before so they know what they are doing. It was busy because of the Blues v Villa match and so afterwards I was glad to get out of the place (I prefer quiet Sunday afternoons.) We headed down to my Auntie Jans' since it was her birthday while we were on holiday so she made us tea. Me and selena brought her a bottle of wine and we spent the evening watching TV.

I woke up Yesterday (i.e. Monday) morning and got a text message off Selena asking me if me and mum wanted to go to West Midland Safari Park with her and Kieron. I said "yep" and phoned Adam and Carl to see if they wanted to join us. We set off at 11:30 with Adam and Carl meeting us their. We took about an hour getting there (with all the traffic and caravans) and were still about 20 minutes ahead of them in the queue to get in so we got on the drive-around section of the park, knowing that they would do the same. With carls driving, and a traffic jam in the lion enclosure, they ended up overtaking us at one point, and we both got round the trail within minutes of each other, which worked out well. The whole safari section lasted over 2 hours, and I got some good photos (which I will put at the end.)

After parking we got something to eat and went into "The Discovery Zone" which housed, among other things, a room full of bats. Now I dont mean bats that are behind a glass wall, no, no, no these bats were out and about... In a big way! I couldn't see them at first, because they are so fast, but I soon noticed them whizzing in and around people, who themselves had no idea that a bat had just rocketed past their head. It was fantastic to watch. We then headed over to the sea lion show which was the usual cacophany of jumping through hoops, doing tricks, waving at the audience and retrieving buoys, much to the amusement of the kiddies in the audience. We then all decided to get an ice cream and head over to the fairground section. After reralising we had to pay extra for the rides we decided to skip it and go in to the reptile house. We spent a good hour looking around all the wonderful and poisonous things on display. Time was getting on so we went in to the Aquarium and insect section and spent some time looking at all the different fish, crabs, eels, etc. not to mention spiders, ants, scorpions and cockroaches! It was nearly 6:00pm so we quickly crept back into the bat house for another look. Whilst in there my mum peed on by an incontinent bat... lovely! I got talking to the guide... Her name was Claire and had studied bats as part of her animal care qualification at Jersey College. She was about 19 ~ 20 and had a one of those cutsey laughs that always makes people a little bit caucious whenever they hear it... She was also ginger.

We all left at 6:30 and on the way back home called in to a pub for a drink or two. After discussing conspiracy theories and the moon landing, we headed for home at about 10:30... Where I made a mistake. I hadn't used the motorway getting to Kidderminster because of Bank-Holiday traffic, but I was going to do a short hop on the M5 to save time... Except I didn't. Rather than get on the M5 south and getting off at junction 4, I accidentaly got on the m5 north and came off at junction 1, and had to travel all the way back through the middle of Birmingham to get home... Which I did at about 11:30. Adam and Carl came back for a bit too, but I had to drop Kieron off home since he has to get up obscenely early for work.

I made a bolognaise (because I was hungry) and had it for supper, along with everyone else who wanted a bit. Adam and carl left at 12:30 looking dead tired. And I went to bed.

And thats the end of that chapter... Phew. I haven't blogged something of that length in quite a while... If indeed ever!

Here are some of the photo's of the Safari Park for you all to enjoy!









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