A Hard Day's Riding

16/02: Les Houches:
Caught the last Easyjet flight on Friday evening from Gatwick. Flying out with Grant Gallacher to have a full days of riding in Less Houches in Chamonix. I’m always impressed with the service I get with Easyjet. However this time round I had a little disagreement with the lady at check-in. She was insisting on informing me on what kind of assistance I required. I had informed that I only needed help up to the security desk as I would meet Grant on the other side, she insisted on getting me assistance up to the plane, and more annoyingly so, she insisted I wait for an hour before the assistance is provided as the flight was delayed. Eventually a much more flexible Easyjet member of staff understood the situation and walked with me to security. On arriving to security I realized I had Nigel in my pocket (Nigel is my tool which I use to adjust the bindings on my board) I declared it and quickly ran with my new found Easyjet friend to where I had left my snowboard, unfortunately it was to late and my snowboard had already been sent on the plane. Having only my laptop bag on my back I decided to put Nigel in my laptop bag and check the bag in. However not having the heart to put my poor delicate laptop through check-in, I decided to take it out of the bag and carry it through security!

Easyjet air stewards are always extremely helpful on the plane, to the extent that Grant thought the male steward had a crush on me when he asked Grant to step a side while he (the male steward) sat next to me and helped me remove my jacket, and then began to take me through the safety procedures.

17/02: Les Houches:
Went to sleep quite late and awoke to the ringing of my phone. Oh dear… it would be Keith and Grant and I had slept in. I answered, trying to sound as awake as one could with 5 hours sleep. I got ready in record time grabbed my board (forgot my gloves) and ran to the door only to stand there for about 5 minutes struggling to open it as the key didn’t work too well from the inside.

17/02: 9:30 am: Showing a bit of leg
Grant and I began climbing the 2 set of stairs which would take us up to the first chairlift. We went as high up the mountain as the 3 chairlifts would take us. It was the first time Grant had been with me outside the indoor slope in Milton Keynes. It was quite momentous. The first couple of runs were quite nice. I was wearing the bright yellow bib I had got made recently. It says on it ‘blind rider’. I had a similar bib in the just as fashionable bright orange for Grant saying ‘rider’s guide’. Grant for some strange reason preferred his Scottish Instructors jacket over the bright orange bib so didn’t wear it. However, if Grant was trying to not attract attention he failed dramatically. As half way down our first run he realized that the zip which goes down his leg burst open revealing his sexy leg to the unprotected eyes of the bystanders! However to give him credit I think he got the situation under control fast.

17/02: 7pm: Hotel Room, Les Houches

Just had an amazing sleep but have slept through my dinner date with Grant and Keith. I feel so refreshed, body is still feeling quite harassed but now the need for some food is high. I’m sitting in a nice cosy room at the back of a building site as this hotel is slowly being converted into apartments.

Its dark and I suffer from night blindness which means that I would be totally useless in finding any food. I made a cup of coffee, had some chocolate and sent Keith a text informing him I was going back into hibernation. I decided not to ride on the Sunday as my body was still recovering and I grabbed an early flight back to good old London town.

Festive Fun!

’Tis the Eve before Christmas...

24/12/2006 : 2am London :
Haven't still finished packing. Spent most of the day travelling round the UK trying to pick up a set of Motorola walkie-talkies, eventually picked them up at Ellis Brigham in Tamworth (who kindly provided them for free together with some base layers.)

My snowboard is sitting on the bed looking irresistible.

It is a pure white Icon Wallpaper edition, with the board make stencilled in an overlapping fashion across the middle between the bindings and rapping around the bottom of the board.
However there is a big scratch on the top surface which I’m sure was my cleaner bashing the vacuum into it. There are some little knocks round the edges which I have a suspicion are the war wounds of carrying it through the London underground!

My snowboard bag is full. I have crammed everything down to my aftershave in there due to the new hand luggage restrictions at the UK airports. Any ideas on where I could put the snowboard?

7am London:
I think I must have fallen asleep about 3am after packing my bags and while listening back to the advice which Keith was giving me on the recording I had of him. Then something vibrated, just in time for me to wake up and not miss my flight! There was another vibration: my phone was ringing. It was my housemate wanting in. He was apologetic for waking me totally oblivious of the fact he had potentially saved me from missing a flight.

I grabbed a taxi to pick me up. You would imagine that after prancing around the UK yesterday to find the walkie-talkies that I wouldn't leave them all nicely charged on my bed! Flight or no flight I went back for them

Christmas in Argentiere

25/12/07: Argentiere:

Just got back from my first day on the slope. Ben (A friend I made in the Belvadere bunk house) came up with me. We struggled at the beginning a little as Ben, as a skier would be facing down the slope at all times however when on a snowboard if I was to be on my toe-side I would be facing up the hill so we really had to think about our lefts and rights!

I crashed into a number of Piste marker poles with one of them lodging itself under my board resulting in me riding over it as if I meant to perform a fancy trick! The culmination of that run was my board and me attached to it heading quite fast toward a go slow sign and stopping inches from it.

Ben’s friend Neil accompanied us and Neil’s ski poles came in handy on the flat sections of the slope as he would pull me till I had enough momentum. When snowboarding its crucial to have enough speed when approaching a flat section to ensure you don’t stop. If you stop it is hard to get going as unlike skiing, you are attached to the one platform so you can’t independently push out using your legs.
If there is no kind hearted skier around you usually have to take out one foot and use it to push off, similar to what you would do while skateboarding.


26/12/06 Argentere:
Sitting on my top bunk at the belvedere about to head for a sauna down stairs. Every single part in my body is aching. I hit some more piste markers today. Stopped in time to prevent a collision with a skier. I was quite excited as it gave me a chance to try out my newly acquire phrase informing them that I couldn’t see in French. He turned out to be German and didn’t understand a word I said and asked if I spoke English!

27/12/2006 Argentere:
Went for 1 run in the morning and now I feel pain all over. It was long, steep and icy! Basically it was as if all the ice rinks in London had been joined together and then tilted up at a slant. Falling on ice can be quite terrifying for most average boarders, in my case it’s slightly more so as I am not able to see where the next patch of snow is which will break my fall and bring my sliding to an end.

28/12/06 Argentere:
Didn’t do anything in the morning as Ben was Ice climbing. It gave me a chance to write out some emails which I had to send. The afternoon came and we decided that the ice conditions would warrant the purchasing of a helmet. Was fortunate the expensive French branded one didn’t fit so purchased a slightly cheaper but equally as good if not more better fit K2 version.

Caught some Air from the Chair:
Was waiting at the bottom of one of the runs for the 2 man chair lift which would take us up the mountain. I stood at the bottom with Ben. We were reasonably well positioned however the chair collided with the back of my rucksack throwing me off balance resulting in me half on half off. The longer I stayed in this position the higher the chairlift was going.
I took the decision to jump woohooing on my way down as I landed on the slope below. Thankfully it was not high with about a 2 meter fall.
Ben asked me later on if I knew how high it was before I jumped, I answered in the negative. At times you have to take the risk and go with instinct. I knew if I had jumped later it would have been higher so I cut my losses!

Riding with Ben was great. He looked out for me all the time in the slope. The incident on the chair was not avoidable. It was the first time I was taking a rucksack with me and next time I will be more prepared for the chair approaching.

I think the best point on the slope was when I was really tired as I had not been performing that well on the ice and instead of things getting better the slope got a lot worse as we were going to have to navigate through some rocks. Ben kept calm and had total confidence in me and guided me through with great skill. I felt amazing at the bottom because we had made it down in one piece!

We soon realized that I was performing better during the times Ben would continuously talk over the walky talky. Previously I had asked him to provide directions, so when to turn for example. However providing ongoing information such as:
slope direction (that is which direction is the piste marked)
camber (the slant of the slope, for example, the direction of the slope may be straight in front however the slope may be silted so that the left hand side is higher than the right hand side) that is, the slope may be marked
width of the slope
Condition of the slope (ice, rocky, grass/ mud!)
people traffic

These were all really useful bits of information and made me feel safer and more confident in my riding.

Later on that day I had dinner with Keith McIntosh and Neil McNab. Over dinner we discussed possible routes of the helidrop and possible dates. Neil offered to take me out the next morning for a run just to see how I was getting along.

30/12/06 Les Houches:
Neil came and picked me up in the morning. We drove for about 30 minutes coming nearer to where he stayed and to where we would be riding for the day. After a couple of runs on slopes which were not far off horizontal I convinced Neil to take me on the types of runs I had been accustomed to. Riding with Neil was good as it really helped to tie up areas in my technique which had been taught to me by Keith (in France) Daniel Lloyd and Grant Gallacher (in the UK).

Neil speaks about that day in an article in Whitelines (a snowboarding mag) we made it into.

I stayed at Neil’s house that day and had some amazing food cooked by Neil’s wife Ruth. I also made a new friend, Manon, who was a very pretty and intelligent girl. She drew a lovely picture of a snail and then asked me to draw a picture of a sun above the snail, I was terrified as I hadn’t ever drawn anything since I started losing my sight. However she was very generous and accepted my addition of a sun in her drawing! We watched Toy Story together and I gave her a crash course on how a blind person uses a white stick to learn of dangers such as steps and curbs, she was fascinated. Manon was Neil’s 2 year old daughter!