Post skiing

By flying from Amsterdam to Barcelona and then catching a coach I think I took a more circuitous route than strictly necessary to Andorra this weekend but it was worth every mile. I have to say the experience of traveling with teen-aged students on a bus made me a) appreciate how annoying I was and b) feel old and vaguely responsible. Oh if only they could capture that feeling and sell it, school masters everywhere would breathe a sigh of relief. (Note to self what else makes me feel like that?!)

Jane a great friend who I met when I was just a wee slip of an 18 year old lad accompanied me. She spent last season teaching English in BCN and then snow boarding every weekend in the mountains of Andorra. Oh the life!

I was only in Andorra, well Pal actually, for two days but the weather was almost perfect: it dumped thick wet snow the whole of Saturday while I was getting back into the groove. Viz was pretty poor but we knew the next day would be worth the pain upfront.

I had an amusing lesson with an Argentian guy who didn't really show me very much but laughed a lot, had cute italian teeth (don't ask!) and showed me round some of the mountain. I got a few blues under my belt and was cruising by the end of the day.

Sunday morning in true turnover day style the pistes were empty, and we had almost 15cm of powder - perfect! I did a blue run first thing, stumbled a bit but before I could say Nancy Reagen - I mean no - Jane pushed me onto the lift up to the top of Pic du Cubil. We could barely see 15m in front of us when we got there and the prospect of a difficult red run terrified me. As it happened I shot down enjoying the more challenging faster, thiner pistes, it dumped us onto the blue that was irking me earlier and I just breezed through finishing a la the Olympics in a spray of victory.

On the way back up we noticed there was this beautiful open slope off piste covered in untouched powder. A quick look around and we surreptitiously crept under the fence (bloody hard when you're in skiis - thank God for my limbo skills) and I had my first powder off piste experience. I tumbled, I fell, and then I switched my music off and concentrated on form: boy what a feeling, tight turns on fresh powder, the whole vallye below you and no one else around. Bliss.

I finished the day going back up to the Pic du Cubil and flew down the whole red and blue run listening to KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See" stopping for no one and takng no prisoners. Man I wished I was staying for another day when I got to the bottom.

Still I'm off to Davos in a few weeks :-)