GREENS! PUSH FORWARD!

Hello readers and welcome to a short blog. I can't sit here typing as I have had the day off work with a cough and a sore throat and I still feel quite terrible.

Let's begin. The sooner I type this, the sooner I can have a lie down again.

I left you wondering why I needed to be up so early last Monday. Well Father needed his car taking to Atlas Garage in Birmingham for a service and I had to follow him to drive him back. I was up for 6:30am and down to Fathers for 7:00am. We set off and got to the Garage for about 7:30:am. After saying hello to Hazel, who runs the place, we set back off for home. I got in at 8:00am-ish and got changed for work and set off at usual...

I finished at 3:30pm and came home. In the evening I went to Adams where we...

... Oh sod it... I'm too ill. I'll have to give you the amended version of the week and focus on the weekend...


Tuesday: Possibly went to Adams again.

Wednesday: Xbox cable arrived. Tried it... Didn't work. In the evening I went to Fathers.

Thursday: Went to Packhorse. Drank Guinness.

Friday: Could taste the weekend. Met up with Kate, who I haven't seen since Christmas. I met her in Solihull and we had a good chat and a drink.

Weekend: Main highlight was the paintballing. Me, Dan, Lank, and Jason went to Bassetts Pole Paintball Fields with some of Dans work collegues. We were split in to two teams which just so happened to have me and Dan on one side, and Jason and Lank on the other. Unfortunately our side included a bunch of kids who obviously thought that the aim of the game was to sit in a trench at the back of the field and watch the rest of us have a game of paintball, while they let off a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy every few minutes. The result was that, of the 6 scoring games, the Heroic Greens, of which me and Mr. Bennett were proud members, only won 2 and drew 1. While the Pestilant Reds won 3 and drew 1. After the days games had finished we were put into the "Grand Rumble" all the teams were merged into 2 armies and we had a 70-a-side game set in trenches...

... Yes, you read that correctly... Seven Zero... 70

Our batch of 70, with the Bennett-Evans and Thomas-Heales teams now united along side 66 other people pretty much owned the other team.

At 4:30pm we left and drove through rain that can only be described as "biblical" to get home. Lank dropped us off and I squelched in to have a shower and relax.

Right. That is just about as much as I can do... Time to dope myself up on Veno's and Strepsils again...

TTFN readers

Chalk-up another kill for Microsoft

Hello readers and welcome to a Tuesday blog... And by "Tuesday" I do of course mean "late"

So lets get down to business. I will begin, as always with last Monday. After leaving work I came home And played a bit of Call of Duty before heading of to Adams with John (I think). We watched a bit of telly and messed around on the Xbox before coming home.

Tuesday was exactly the same as Monday, though I don't think John came with me... Or it could be the other way round...

Wednesday evening was spent at Fathers house watching TV. At about 10:00pm I left to go and meet Donna in the Swan and help them lose the quiz (?)

Thursday... Was interesting!

After work I decided to get my hair cut, and came home to trim the face-fuzz since my beard gets itchy if I let it get too long. In the evening I met up with Kate, a friend of mine, in The Horse and Jockey for a drink. After a pint I drove us to The Man on the Moon, where I have never been before. Unfortunately the heating was broken, so it was freezing inside, and they had a quiz on done by the loudest, most ghastly woman imaginable! She wouldn't shut up... Seriously she's either single, or her husband is deaf... Question, Question, Question, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Screech, Screech, Screech! We decided to leave and go to Kate's local... But I can't remember what it's called... (Could be "The Woodpecker" but possibly not!) And after a lengthy chat, and the promise of meeting up again soon, I dropped her home and then came home myself...

Friday came and I could almost smell the weekend! After work I came home and played some Call of Duty.

Ah. Saturday. I went with Adam and Jenny to Redditch. Now Reditch is somewhere I don't usually go, but it meant getting out of the house for a few hours so I went along. We had a good mooch round the shops and I ended up buying as new Tshirt. After making our way back to Wythall, we ended up playing Guitar Hero 3 for a bit, before Adam and Jenny set off for home.

In the evening I was invited by Donna to a Birthday at Wythall House. Her next door neighbour had turned 18 so he was having a "do" on. He is also one of the youngest Royal Marines in the country and was there in full "passing out" uniform (that doesn't mean he fainted...)

Sunday... Was a bad day! I turned my Xbox on to discover the worst possible thing imaginable... Blinking at me, as if mocking my very soul...

Three.
Red.
Flashing.
Lights...

I was looking at The Red Ring of Death.

Basically 3 flashing red lights around the power button means "critical hardware failure" or, in laymans terms "Naffed!"

I decided to phone the helpline... Then I realised that the service would be based in somewhere like Krapistan, so I decided to phone John... Who told me, after some comforting words, to phone Krapistan... But they'd be Swedish... (Crepe and a Pancake, anyone? Smoke and a Pipe?)

I phoned and sure enough, after waiting for a few minutes:

"Thenkyuh fuurr kyalling hex-boorx coostem'r supoort... Mya nyem iss Bjorn, hyew myay ey hyelp yhoor?"

And so began a lengthy process of spelling, using the phoenetic alphabet, my email, gamertag, and address. He diagnosed the problem ("it wasn't working" being the verdict!) and so I am at the start of a journey which will probably take a good few weeks to get my "hex-boorx" fixed... More on that in the blogs to come.

I went to the legion, depressed, had to endure the football... Which is depressing, and then came home to my ex-xbox... DEPRESSING!

Anyway I went down to my nans for tea as usual. After a while I came home and watched some TV before going to bed, as I had to be up particularly early the following morning...

... But that's for next weeks blog!

TTFN readers!

T3S all the way, baby!

Hello readers and welcome to a rather shortish blog... It's short because I haven't really been anywhere for the past week...

I will endevour to keep you entertained though, so lets begin...

Last Monday I went to work, but after a good first day back, thee vening was spent playing Call of Duty 4... Until 1:00am.

On Tuesday, I did the exact same thing, though Kieron wanted to take CoD4 to a new level and formed a Clan! We played until 1:30am!

Wednesday... Work passed as normal, and in the evening I went down to Fathers and we took a trip over to Solihull so that he could get an electric motor off a collegue who had one for him to fit to a forklift. After we got back I watched The Apprentice and came home to play a bit of... Yep' you guessed it... Call of Duty.

Thursday was a good day... In the evening I went with Mr. Thomas to the Packhorse. A good time was had by all but at about 11:00pm-ish, we had to call it a night.

Friday. I was looking forward to the weekend, and after work I was invited down to Selenas as she had bought MarioKart for the Wii. Now I have been a fan of the MarioKart series since I had it on my SNES many many years ago and I am pleased to report that the Wii version lives up to the hype... So much so that I now really want to go and buy a Wii... But unfortunately I don't have £200 to frivously spend on another games console so I will have to wait.

After unlocking several challenges, we had to leave as we were going for a curry in Kings Heath for my aunts' birthday! I drove myself and Selena to fathers, picked him up, and headed off. We arrived just as my cousins, aunt, and nan got there in a co-incidental accident of epic good timing.

After being seated, we got straight in to the business of ordering the food (one chicken balti for me!) and the drink. (though we had some bottles of our own, I fancied a bottle of Cobra) We ate and chatted until quite late but eventually left. After dropping Father home I went back to Selenas to find Kieron watching From Hell on DVD. I watched a bit before coming home to bed.

Ah, Saturday. I spent most of the day on Call of Duty... Actually, thats a lie... I spent ALL of the day on Call of Duty... Seriously, I haven't really got much else to report!

Sunday I spent at the Legion, and after 2 games of football being force-fed to me via the magic of Cable TV, I was ready to gauge out my eyes... Fortunately at that point it was time to leave, which I did. I then went down to nans for tea as usual. I stayed until 9:40pm, by which time I had watched as much golf as I could take and came home, had a game of Call of Duty, and went to bed!

And it is there I will leave you, dear readers, since that about wraps it up!

TTFN!

I'm Back.

Hello readers and welcome to my holiday blog, just as I promised.

I appoligise for it being rather late, but since coming back on Friday, I haven't had time to sit down and type.

That has now changed and here I am, ready to blog...

I will begin a week and a half ago, at 5:00am Friday morning... Which is when Father arrived to pick me up to head off to Coventry airport. We arrived there for 5:45am-ish and were the first of our party to arrive. After about 20 minutes the others turned up and, after an argument with the woman on the desk about suitcases and how much they weighed, we checked in.

We went in to the departure cupboard (sorry, I mean "lounge") and waited 45 minutes before being called. No sooner were we through the gates and on the aeroplane, we took off on our 2 hour flight to Salzburgh airport.

We touched down at 10:15am local time and got our luggage. we then located the minibus and driver who would take us to Saalbach and set off for another hour and a half. After reaching Saalbach and dumping the luggage, the hardcore skiiers, myself included, got our gear on and went skiing!

We stayed local, and didn't stray out in to the neighbouring resorts, though that is quite possible to do. The areas are all connected by pistes and ski lifts so from Saalbach you can ski to Hinterglemm, Vorderglemm, and Leogang making the milage possible to cover, very high. In fact if you want to see the area just click here for an interactive map with pics and videos!

We kept it low-brow though and did a day skiing the Saalbach side. Afterwards we got in, got unpacked and relaxed. I began reading Richard Hammonds Autobiography; On the edge. It is a powerful book charting his childhood and up to his crash. His wife then takes over the writing in the period where his memory was damaged and they then share the writing from his reccovery up until he was able to fully go home. If you haven't read it, do so. It is very good.

Dinner was at 8:00pm and we went down ready for a feast. The food is always good in Austria and I ate all 5 courses with room to spare. (probably because I had been awake for 13 hours, had done 4 hours solid skiing, and hadn't eaten since breakfast!)

After dinner we sat in the bar for a while before going to bed... Actually this formula would become the norm'

wake > brekkie > ski > lunch > ski > relax > dinner > bar > bed > repeat.

Saturday! The first "proper" day! We got up to some seriously sunny weather and, after people who needed to hire equipment had done so, we got up the mountains...

... Now I'm going to take a moment to show you some pictures. Mr Thomas did a bit of showing off before he went on his round-the-world tour on his overgrown pedal boat, and I realise that the islands of the Carribean, or the bahamas, or wherever he went can easily outstrip any European destination, but I will have a go at "top trumping" him with some scenic photo's I took throughout the course of the week...

On the piste,looking at the valley floor (that light green bit in the middle) just to show you how high up we are (and I'm not even at the top!)

Looking across to the other side of the valley. The centre peak is "Hone Penhab" standing 2112 metres above sea level.

Some lovely scenery that I hope competes with some of lanks sunny, sandy, beachy, pics.

Traditional mountain lodgings. I took this as I though it might look a bit "postcardy." I reckon it would make a nice post card.

Anyway we had our first full day skiing, exploring Saalbach and hinterglemm. At lunch we stopped at a restaurant and had Goulash. Again, this would become the norm' since goulash is high in calories, but isn't a heavy meal. We skiied until 4:30pm and then came down.

After we got back to the hotel we had a quick drink before getting ready for dinner. I had time to read a chapter of my book before going for the evening meal though, and time again after for another chapter before going to bed.

Sunday. Just as before we got up to a sunny day and after a quick breakfast went skiing. We skiied over to Leogang via Vorderglemm along one of my favorite trails. I remember it from last year. It is possible for any skier to enter the trail at "full throttle" and emerge from the other end doing a fair lick of speed. From there the piste turns through a wide right hand bend, but if you cut it tighter you can cut that corner altogether and go about 200 yards off-piste, with a rather good jump at the end of it that lands you back on the run...

... Guess which one I went for?

... Yep! I only got about a foot-and-a-half in the air though, as I scrubbed off some speed in the deep powder to stop my skiis from bedding down and shooting me out of my bindings!

Anyway, lunchtime came and I decided that pizza was the choice of meal!

Afterwards we skiied on until an impressive 5:00pm. After drinks at the bar, I headed up to the room as I wanted to read more of my book before dinner. After the meal myself, dad, Andy, and Simon decided to check out Bobby's bar, as it is the only bar in the entire valley to sell a certain beverage...

WOOHOO! Yep, Guinness and it's a bloody-good pint, too! I remember my eyes lighting up as I saw the Guinness sign over the door the year before.

After drinksies, we headed back to the hotel for bed.

Monday. We ended up doing a sort of "Grand Tour of the valley" as we skied just about everywhere. We must have racked up some high milage, and at the end of the day the "laaads" (me, father, Andy, and new recruit Simon) decided to ski "Black 1" from the top of Saalbach mountain to the botom (thats 4km) non stop! That IS NOT an easy task but we managed it alright...

Oh, before I forget, during the course of the day, there was a disscusion about a particular run, and whether it was possible to get "air time" of a ridge that wasn't intended to be a jump. Naturally I had to give it a go...

There we go! question answered! A jump... a whopping 4 inches high!

We were extremely tired by the end of the day and I ended up going straight up to the room and falling asleep for an hour. At dinner I was, for some reason, still tired, but woke up when we were in the bar!

Tuesday... Tuesday we got up to an overcast day. The sky was a little dark, but we went skiing anyway.

We spent the day skiing around in the colder air and experienced some fresh snowfall. Always a sign that skiing the next day would be on good powder, unless it froze and we had a blizzard, in which case the following day would be hell.

We got on with it though and ended up having a good day skiing, made better by the fact that the sun emerged for an hour or two in the afternoon.

In the evening we went to Bobby's bar for a pint before Dinner, but it was dinner itself that proved interesting... Allow me to show you the menu...

No... Your eyes aren't decieving you. That does indeed say "kangaroo" as an entree course. Cool, huh!

Wednesday... We awoke to a blizzard. It was going to be hell..

We got up the mountain, but visibility had dropped to around 5 metres. After a while though, it dropped to around 3 metres and we were experiencing what is commonly refered to as a "white out" we battled the elements until after lunch, where it did clear up slightly, though not by much. We came down via an unusual route though weather this was intentional or not, I'm not sure.

We were glad of some dinner later on in the evening and popped back to Boby's bar for a guinness on the night time.

Thursday. The last day skiing. The weather wasn't to bad for us, though a bit cloudy, it didn't snow, and the sun had brief but regular appearances in the sky...

By the end of the day we were quite sad. We had a couple of commemorative photo's though I only have one of just the "Laaads"

From left to right: Me, Simon, Father, Andy.

We left to go back to the hotel knowing that we wouldn't have our skis on our feet for another year to come. At dinner that evening we had Ostrich steaks....

Friday... Coming home day. The taxi picked us up at 8:00am and we headed on out to salzburg airport. I bought some choccs and a T shirt saying "No kangaroos in Austria" as I thought it was ironically funny since there was a portion of one, cooked medium rare, on my dinner plate a few days earlier.

After the usual waiting we got onboard to find that myself and father had been allocated seats 1A and 1B right at the front... (seriously, I thought we'd be doing the flying!)

After a 2 hour flight we touched down at Coventry, got our stuff fairly quickly, said our goodbyes and headed our seperate ways... It was quite sad, really. Father dropped me home, where I unpacked and relaxed for a bit before going to see my nan.

Now I could blog right up until today, but I wont as I will leave this week intact ready for next weeks blog...

TTFN readers!