The members of my Monday group French lesson decided that skiing would be more fun than our lesson. So today we went to Chamrousse. Two of us did… the third got sick and stayed home.
After skiing in Switzerland… this was easy. Ok, we just skied the same couple of runs all day, but it was still fun.
It was freezing cold (yes, you’d expect it to be that cold on a mountain covered in snow) and I couldn’t figure out how to close the vent on my helmet. It was only open on one side so just my right ear was cold. My left ear was toasty warm.
I managed to find my season pass for Chamrousse. Thank goodness it’s getting at least a little use (without Bill around I was afraid it wouldn’t get any use at all). Carol bought the pass that just gets you on one lift… so we took that one lift over and over. Now, to get to it, you have to ride a crazy conveyor belt up a slope. It makes you feel a little like a can of peas slowly going up the mountain. But this morning it wasn’t working. So we had to walk on it… in our skis because if you get on it in just your boots it’s too slippery and you fall. (This I know from experience… just trust me.) We felt less like cans of peas than like mermaids out of water. The one chair lift we could use involves riding another conveyor that moves you into place so that the chair can just swoop up behind you and whisk you away. It times it correctly by releasing you onto the conveyor with little starting gates; to make you feel more like an Olympian than a jar of olives. One time, Carol went through the starting gate before I was ready… she turned around and I hollered not to try to wait for me. But she thought I said to wait for me. Problem is, there’s no getting off that conveyor once you are on. (No, I have not tried that, thank you very much.) She got hit by the chair rocketing toward her, swept onto it, minus one ski. Did the operator stop the thing? No. He just calmly put down his cigarette, picked up her ski and gave it to the people behind me to ferry up to her. The operator at the top tried asking her if she wanted him to stop the lift for her to get off (on one ski) but she didn’t understand his French quickly enough to answer, so he just slowed it down and she hobbled off. We are a little like Lucy and Ethel on the slopes.
On our way down after that, uh, experience someone yelled at us from another lift. It was another ISE taking her kids skiing for the day. (The truth about home schoolers: they do whatever they feel like!) At least she didn’t see the aforementioned lift mishap.
After lunch, it started to snow. Not only did my ear get even colder, but it was getting hard to see. So we stopped for hot chocolate then hit the road. I’m a chicken driving on our road if there’s a flurry that isn’t even sticking to the road. Here I was, driving down the mountain in what was a fairly heavy snow that was certainly sticking. And not a plow in sight. At first, I got in a line of cars stuck behind a rickety old camper limping along at 10 kilometers an hour. After about ten minutes of that, even I had to pass… it was just too ridiculous. As I passed, I noticed the chains on the camper’s tires looked as questionable as the rest of it, so it was probably best not to be behind it… because I didn’t want to be anywhere near it when parts started flying off. Turns out, I can drive down the mountain in the snow just fine.
So we made fools of ourselves and my ear froze. It was still fun. I may have to go up there again! Maybe even by myself.