Jun/090
Starting my week on Tuesdays
I like Tuesdays. It's when I really get my week started. Mondays are usually a write off for me. Sometimes I've been working over the weekend and take Monday off to clean the house, do my washing & maybe a bit of cooking. That or I've been out and about drinking and being social all weekend, and I take Monday off to er..... sit around eating chips and watching telly. Which is what I did yesterday.
I had a very good weekend. Friday night down the pub was quite raucous, but I managed to escape just before the jaegermeister started hemorrhaging on my mate's tab. Saturday I drove over to Divonne on the other side of Geneva lake to visit my friends. They're a month away from their first baby being born and both waiting, waiting, waiting. What a lovely calm, household they have set up. Made perfect with the arrival of a tiny new kitten, Charlie. I can't wait to visit again later in the summer and meet their new daughter.
But there was a little wine-drinking involved and by Sunday afternoon I was staring down the barrel of a long, energetic night of fete de la musique with a hangover. Much as I love the fete, a few pints in the afternoon,a burger down at the office bar and a few games of carrom with my mate Fred in the evening and I was settled. A crowded, noisy Rue De Moulin seemed too much to bear and I was asleep in front of the telly by 10pm.
Monday was endured, but Tuesday is warm, sunny and smiling. A bit of work this monrning: emails, business generation and a bit of coding and then I'm off to pick up my van.
I blew it up the other day - did I mention that? A catastrophic failiure of the coolant system sprayed all the boiling coolant water all over myself and my paintwork.
It's fixed and ready to pick up from the garage in Les Houches this afternoon. That's about 20km away & mostly downhill so I'm going get padded up in reduced armour (just shinguards & gloves) and boot it down the Balcon Sud & the Gaillands run. Should take me an hour, no more. Then lob the bike in the back of the van, head down to Sallanches to do a big monthly shop and everything's back on track for a good week.
Apr/091
Heading South
There's no point denying it - the ski season is over. The snow has melted and even if the lifts are still running, it's just not much fun.
So we're off for a short break on the south coast before whatever comes next. Saint Raphael in fact. I've got a couple of dives booked with my mate Alex from Diamond Diving. A couple of days in a nice hotel with some sun and seafood feels like just the ticket right now.
So we're heading off in the morning, driving south through France. Grenoble, Gap, Grasse. We'll drive till we find somewhere nice to stop and camp for a night & arrive in St Raph in the morning. I'm diving that afternoon and the next and then we'll make our way back the other way - through Italy. Camp again, perhaps in Finali or somewhere like that.
Apr/090
Rifugio Guglielmina (mountain refuge)
Spring marches on at pace, melting all the snow and bringing out the shorts and T-Shirts. But the skiing is in it's final flourishes. Last week a I went over to Alagna, Italy with a group of friends. It takes a few hours to drive: through the Mount Blanc tunnel and down into the Italian Aosta. So we bought a half day's ski pass and had a great afternoon booting around in the slush, getting our bearings. But instead of skiing down at the end of the day, weskied over to the Guglielmina refuge and stayed there for the night. It was stunning. As good as the Bonatti Hut I stayed in a few summers ago. 50 bucks for accommodation, dinner and breakfast seemed a bargain for the experience.
Due in equal measure to the amount of wine we'd all managed to consume the previous day and the inclement weather we shelved the plans to go touring the next day, hung around by the fire for a while in the morning before skiing back down to the valley floor and heading home. There's probably loads of these refuges to stay in all over the alps, and I'm going to make a point of finding and staying in the nicest ones.
Jan/090
The Dorward Car jinx
All my siblings are having car trouble this New Year. One sister over in New Zealand had an unplanned stop in Christchurch for a few days due the van her and boyfriend are touring the South Island in breaking down. The other sister had to join the RAC to get her hard working VW Polo back to Germany after her holiday in Devon. And my van's been practically out of action since Christmas. The damn thing just refused to start when it was cold and it's been very cold up here recently. The only way to get it going was to bump it, and that meant parking it pointed down a very long hill.
My initial thought was the battery was dying, because I'd left the lights on and flattened it at one point. I checked that and there was no problem with battery or alternator. Then I decided carburetter/fuel lines were clogged with carbonised crap, so I tried a bit of that cleany/burny stuff you stick in it to clean it out. No joy. Then I finally worked it out. It's the glow-plugs.
In diesel cars you have these little gadgets which pre-heat the fuel when the engine's cold, allowing it to start. You turn the key half-way and wait for the little yellow light to go off before turning the engine over. The little yellow light works fine which foxed me a bit, but it's the actual plugs which are fried. The mechanics agree, and it's down in Les Houches waiting to be fixed on Friday. I was hoping it would be a cheap fix - those little glow plugs don't cost much. Turns out that's not what's going to cost the money. They have to remove most of the front of the transporter to get at the plugs, and that's going to take a few hours of labour.
Still, on Friday evening I should hopefully have a working car again. On the other hand, I'm actually starting to enjoy living without it. It's a good excuse to stay in my lovely warm house all day long, making bread, tinkering with my computer and only venturing out to go skiing in Le Tour or on the Grande Montets.
