Sep/060
Flying Solo
I went flying with Summits again this afternoon. There was a group of students flying solo and they invited me down to fly a canopy that I’m thinking of buying from them. We flew at Plaine Joux, about half an hour down the valley from Chamonix.
So I flew my own canopy, pretty much solo (I was still in contact with the instructors by radio on this flight), which was very exciting. It wasn’t frightening at all, just a really fun flight with an easy takeoff and landing.
It’s not a cheap sport this, the kit is going to set me back probably a thousand pounds or so, but I can feel how addictive it’s going to be. The only thing at the moment is that I still feel like there’s so much knowledge and experience to gain before I can make a good, informed choice about whether the conditions are good enough before I fly but already I’m confident in the air and starting to look for ridges and thermals to soar off.
This time, I actually did take my camera and here’s a few of the shots up on flickr to make you jealous.
Sep/063
Podcasts
I’ve suddenly got into podcasts again after about a year or so without listening to them. I’ve got no internet radio at home, just an ipod connection to my stereo, so podcasting is the perfect way to get a bit of news in the flat in the morning while I’m having my coffee.
The quality of podcasting has gone up hugely in the last year. The BBC, guardian and other big players have really started to consider the medium as a valid, mainstream medium. Which is great. The problem with podcasting before was that the content was made by numpties. It was all part of the lure of the technology, the fact that the people could broadcast to the people. Unfortunately, I don’t want to hear the views of plebs in their spare rooms. I want to listen to the most highly paid, most professionally edited, and best content available. If the indie podcasters haven’t got a proper job in the broadcasting industry, then there’s probably a good reason for that. They’re not very good.
So every morning there’s a vaguely up to date BBC news show stored on the ipod ready for me to listen to before work. I don’t care if it’s a day old. It’s not like the people I hang out with in Chamonix are news hounds. In fact, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who knows that there was a coup in Thailand recently. Still harder pushed to find anyone who cares.
Sep/061
Best day in the world. Ever.
The sun’s out in the valley today, a crisp autumn day. The garage rang to tell me the golf was ready just as I was about to wander up to the bus stop to go into town. I stopped into the bank on the way to collect the car and deposited a big check into my account from some dopey yank who has paid 6 months up front to live in my flat in Deptford. My lovely bank manager, Beatrice had my new bank card ready for me which I lost last week.
Leaving the bank I ran into a friend who I had thought was out of town and she invited me to dinner. Shhhhhh-veet.
Then down to the garage to pick up the golf. I like the guys at the garage. They’re good mechanics and I trust them. It’s one of the many things you really need to have sorted in life, that. A garage you can trust. So they’ve refitted the steering completely, and also a few nice little touches like tightening up the handbrake and fixing the flashing heather light that they saw were broken. OK, so it cost more than the car is worth, but that golf is 20 years old and has done nearly 300,000km. You need to replace things like the steering parts now and again. It runs like a dream, now, though and feels really solid. I reckon it’ll do another 100,000km easy.
So all these things have combined to make today sweet as. I’m sat in the office watching some Simpsons and tinkering with the Chamonix Valley website, trying to avoid doing anything that might piss me off and ruin it.
Sep/060
French Dells
Dell computers have always been a favorite of mine. Mainly because they’re just such great value. The first laptop I ever owned back was made by Dell, although I’d bought it second hand. It’s amazing to think that I paid around £800 for that computer, whereas you can now get an Inspiron 1501 direct from the company starting at £349. My friends in Chamonix were equally impressed with the prices, but forgot that ordering a computer from desktops would mean that they ended up with a French operating system, and a French keyboard layout. In the end they got used to it, though and even said that it helped them to learn to speak French a bit better.
Sep/061
Winter’s in the post
We had an Indian summer at the beginning of September, but the weather’s changing now. It’s starting to feel wintry. This was the view up the Aiguille du midi from the office when I arrived this morning. Fresh snow at the top is exciting to see. I’m so excited about skiing. For the next couple of months I’ll be watching the snowline slowly descent down the valley until the start of December when, with a bit of luck, the lifts generally open around the 10th.
Sep/060
Solved
Solved the problem of how to get home last night. I didn’t. I went to a party instead, got thoroughly pished and stayed on the office sofa bed. Staying in the office isn’t as awful as it sounds. Except for the lack of a shower.
Sep/060
Getting Fast Funding for your business
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Sep/062
Sunday
I don’t have much on today. I quite fancied mooching down to the office and getting some work done, but with no car I couldn’t make any solid plans. So I plugged in the ipod, cracked up blur’s parklife and wandered up to the bus stop. Not promising turns out that today, the 24th is the first Sunday of the season that the busses stop running on a Sunday. Well, heck. Looks like I’m stuck in the Houches then.
So wondered down to the Christiania café near my old flat, bought the English weekend papers and a coffee and mooched about a bit. The French husbands were all popping in for their aperitifs before lunch, so I decided to pretend to be French and drank thimblefuls of cote de Rhone with them.
I wasn’t thinking to hard about the day. Just letting things take their course. All of a sudden my friend Claire turned up. She was on the way back from a Geneva transfer with Cham Shuttles whom she drives for and had a drop off in Les Houches. A coffee and a catch up and I grabbed a lift with her into town and here I am in the office, only a couple of hours after leaving the flat.
If you want to enjoy living here, you have to adapt. You can’t be fazed by plans changing. You have to relax, have a drink and wait for the answers to present themselves.
Sep/061
Internet Outage
Had another couple of days without internet. Valley wide, everything went down. Strangely it didn't stress me out so much this time. Couple of days without internet. It's not the end of the world.
Sep/062
I can. Actually. Fly
So my car is in the garage, I won't have it back for half a wek. That's quite critical. It's hard to live here without one.
But I don't care. Because I flew solo today. The weather was perfect. I took off from Brevant at 2100m straight away and flew down to the landing zone on my solo, smaller, 90kg canopy. No worries. Went like a dream. Landed perfectly. Then back on the lift for the second. The second I rally flew. Caroline, l'intrusctrice, at the bottom and she let me. She told me I knew the way and the conditions and just left me to it. Flying. Hundreds of metres above the valley floor. Solo. It's really something different.
So I landed the second badly. I'm learning. I know not to let go the brakes when you're landing. And I've taken the thing off by running off a cliff.