Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

Gone Fishin’

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

The middle of the inter-season in a ski resort like Chamonix is a strange time. After many months of high-adrenaline winter sports it can be quite a crash to suddenly not have anything to do except pick up the pieces of your life that you dropped during the winter.

I’ve been feeling that crash, and I know some of my friends have too, so the other evening my mate Mark and I did something different. We went fishing. There’s a small lake calledChavant up in Les Houches. It’s stocked with a zillion trout and people can pay to fish there. To be honest we were assuming that the game-keeper geezer wouldn’t be there and we’dyoink a few trout out of the lake for our dinner for free.

The grumpy old bugger was there however, and came over to give us some grief and make sure that we knew we’d be paying EUR 8 per kilo for the fish we took out. No bother, though - we were happy to pay for what we caught. The lake was heaving with fish - they were flapping about all over the place and all we really had to do was cast a baited hook into the middle of the feeding frenzy and yank ‘em out. The hardest bit was not spilling our beers.

So in an hour we had 2 perfect eating-sized trout - 650g in total. We paid the grumpy old git his 5 bucks and were off home to make dinner. Mark gutted ‘em I prepared ‘em with an improvised chili-Cajun dressing with plenty of lemon and coriander ready for 20 mins of baking in a hot oven. Eaten with a few vegetables and nice bottle of white it was delicious. A proper delicacy.

So thank you, fishies. For providing me with some great entertainment and then dinner too.

Gone fishin'

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So. What’s next?

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

So the skiing’s nearly done. The lifts are still open, but the snow is like glue now. There’s still good snow up high and the touring is good, but to be honest…. I think I might be finished skiing for the season. There’s the end of season party at the top of Grande Montets next weekend, and who knows…. perhaps I’ll find a bit of time to go touring at some point, but I’m really I’m done. I’ve started to think about going diving down on the Cote D’Azur in May, surfing in Mimizan on the Atlantic coast later in the summer and obviously there’s plenty of climbing and mountain biking here in Cham over the summer.

Now it’s time to work. I’ve been flat out for 3 or 4 days now, cranking out a website for a client who is exhibiting at the Internet World Expo early next week so until that project is done I reckon I’m going to be pretty busy working. It’s a great site though - my first proper commercial site using a flash display layer linked to a drupal CMS system. I can’t wait to show it off here on the blog when it’s ready.

Other than work there are still the parties. There’s a gap at the moment, which is probably just as well. Fred’s birthday the other night turned messy & there’s plenty more where that came from.

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And now for the parties

Friday, April 18th, 2008

I’d forgotten about the parties. There I was thinking that there was just a couple of weeks of quiet, calm skiing at the end of the the winter and a slow winding down of the Chamonix bars and restaurants. But of course…. after working so hard for 5 months, the seasonaires are up for it. Starting last night with Fred’s birthday at Le Delice from where I got in at 8am. The La-La land party on Saturday and then the big end of season bash at the top of the GM next week. I feel like hiding.

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The end is nigh

Monday, April 7th, 2008

The end of the ski season is nearly here. Since Easter, the tourists have started not turning up in their droves. Officially there’s still a month or so before the lifts close, but there’s definitely a feeling that things are winding down.

Which is good and bad. It’s slightly depressing when the town starts to pack up and the seasonaires start to talk about where they’re going next. But to be honest, my knees could use a break from the battering of an entire winter’s skiing and I’ve got work piling up round my ears. It’s almost time to stop skiing. Almost. I think there’s probably a few great days of ski-touring to be had before the lifts close and Monday we’re going heli-skiing in Italy. So it’s not quite over yet.

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Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

Archive for the ‘Hooning about’ Category

Gone Fishin’

So. What’s next?

And now for the parties

The end is nigh

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