The Road Trip

This was nothing like those crappy American movies full of high jinks & cheerleader troops flashing their t*ts at us as we overtook their coach, mores the pity.  It was 12 hours of motorway driving through rural French country side.  This was very similar to diving through our own country, shouldn’t really surprise me but hey, the only difference being the lack of traffic jams & hold ups.

  The day started off at 5am where I had to use all those years of Tetris skills to load the contents of a 3 bedroom house into a 4 seater car.  The amount of crap we took really is unbelievable.  There was not a space left unfilled with shit.  We had a washing machine, ironing board, clothes airier, more clothes the M&S, 2 snowboards, the wife’s 500 pairs of shoes, 7 books that we’ve read before, half our kitchen, a fridge freezer & a cuddly toy.  Maybe not all of that but the list is more generation game than holiday check list.  It wasn’t until we unpacked that the full extent of the useless shit became apparent.  Not just the wife either.  I brought 4 watches (1 doesn’t work) 7 coats, a DVD player when there’s 1 in the room & on my laptop & even an odd sock.  An odd f#cking sock, how did that happen?  Once we’d unloaded the car we had the hellish task of getting it into our apartment.  We had to go up a flight of steps into the entrance, up another flight of steps to the lift, send it up in the lift (me loading on the ground floor, wife unloading on the 1^st floor), into the apartment then into ever available nook & cranny a 1 bed flat has to offer.  In all fairness it has all fitted in but if we use half of what we’ve bought I’ll be amazed. 

I think I’ve managed quit well on the whole France thing, it was a good 10 hours in before I had a rant about the useless French, I’m sure it won’t be my last.  We then had to suffer the indignity of loosing football to the garlic munching surrender monkeys (see), luckily our TV hasn’t got a power cable yet so we missed it.  I also managed to miss the mighty Lilywhite’s trounce the Arse.  Again.  Champions league on Wednesday, shant be missing that.

Back to the arrival, it was at night so we couldn’t really see a lot & we were both knackered so we couldn’t even be bothered to go out for an arrival beer so it was early to bed.  When we got up though it was to a scene that confirmed we’d done the right thing, we were home.  The mountains were giving of that readybrek glow & the sky was filled with snow floating down in front of our full height, full width windows .  It snowed all the 1^st day & the village was looking great, the slopes need plenty more on them but with a week till opening day we’re still hopeful.

veiws from our balcony

Our 1^st few days have been spent generally lazing about, getting the lie of the land.  Drinking & eating & meeting other seasonairs.  A bunch of holiday company reps turned up the other day.  They are so young, no wonder so many people’s holidays end in tears.  All students on a gap year being paid by loans or mummy & daddy, let’s see how long it is till they p#ss me off.   I also experienced the 1^st dose of snowboard snobbery.  Like many of us my snowboard only gets used 1 or 2 weeks of the year, I bought a new 1 in January but when in the bar discussing with a young lad (with his baseball cap pulled over his ears!) he said ‘oh what last year’s model’.  The little tw#t, the pisser of it all though, he’s probably brilliant as well.  I bet I could down a beer quicker than him though.



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