Uhlfelder News

January 3, 2008.  My sister left this morning to catch a flight back to New York.

I went to rent a car (in person, I just couldn’t get a good rate over the Internet).  This required some negotiation, and I’m certain I was given among the worst deals possible.  I will be driving up to Andorra next week to do a “fam” trip of the resorts there.  The person at Ski.com who was to lead a trip there because unavailable (husband had a by-pass) so I stepped into the fray.  This should be interesting as I have 15 people to lead around in Andorra, where I have never been.  Also, I am expected to ski with them.  This should be really interesting, as most people tell me skiing with me is “skiing through intimidation.”  Finally, Anne noted that we hope there are no women who acquire an instant dislike to me — this happens every once in a while.  We don’t know why.  It may be a very long week. 

Mary Claire, the original group leader, when I asked her about the group make-up, told me not to worry.  “There are no jet-setters,” she advised, but the good news is they are all nice and five of them are deaf.  Come again, I said.  Yes, they are deaf, but they can read lips very well.

As for home life, our upstairs neighbors moved back in after their place was renovated.  We hated all the construction noise, but having them back, we would prefer the construction noise.  It is at least during the day.  These people arrive back home at 9:00 from their work and child-care, and their kid(s)? proceed to scream and run for a couple of hours while the parents apparently move furniture.  In Anne’s opinion, the children in Spain are underperformers (they are) because they lack proper sleep.  These kids may get seven or eight hours, at best. 

January 4, 2008.  I changed my Hertz reservation for next week, and that was my opportunity to speak some Spanish.  Pretty pathetic.  I have to get more hours, otherwise I’ll look back on this as a wasted opportunity.  Right now, I feel like I know about what I knew a few months ago.

January 5, 2008.  Today was the Three Kings Day.  I’m not very informed about this, but my impression is these were the guys who came to Mary after Jesus was born and brought gifts, which included franincense, mur and cash or cash-equivalent.  Mary tried to kick them out of the room, until she heard about the cash.  In any case, this is the day in Spain when gifts are exchanged.  Christmas Day here is called American Christmas and generally no gifts are exchanged (except, presumably, by Americans).  With television and increasing commercialism, there are more celebrations of Americans Christmas.  As part of the Three Kings’ Day, they have a parade and throw hard candy at the crowd by the bagfulls.  We filled a bag, then just gave away most of it (what would we do with a bunch of hard candy?  Decorate our apartment?  There were drums, pirates, I guess Kings, and more and lots of kids fighting for candy in order to properly rot their teeth.  Many people made sure they were smoking since there were kids around. 

Sales (“Grandes Rebajas”) begin on January 7, by law, so everybody is geared up to buy stuff at discounts.  I don’t need or want anything, which makes me sad.  I’ve failed as a consumer and generally I feel materialistic in my heart.  I just can’t bring myself to buy anything.  Maybe I’m just cheap. 

The King’s birthday is today or yesterday and the television also has a lot of coverage of his life.  Generally he is and has been a good monarch.  One of the newscasters yesterday stopped his telecast and toasted the king’s birthday.  It was very nice.

January 6, 2008.  I’m thinking about how I’m going to lead a group of 15 people who I don’t like in Andorra.  I plan to ski Tuesday and maybe Wednesday and get an idea about getting around the place since I have to lead the group of 15 the week after (yikes!).  It will have to be the new Mark, the patient Mark, you know, the Mark that doesn’t exist.

January 7, 2008.  I picked up the rental car today, drove about half a mile, and called Hertz to tell them it smelled too strongly of cigarette smoke for me to use.  I simply didn’t want to sit in an ashtray for six hours.  They “understood” and changed it and upgraded me.  I now have a huge BMW new sedan — it drives beautifully.  It is a manual, like most cars around here, even larger ones, and has a feature that when you stop, put it in neutral, and let the clutch out, it stops the engine.  Push the clutch back in, the engine starts.  Also, it runs on diesel and appears to be super economical with gas.

January 8, 2008.  After dropping Anne, the boys and Rocket at school, I drove to Andorra which took about 2.5 hours.  I was a dreary day with misty wet roads.  I got to the hotel, and they gave me a room that, predictably, smells like an ash tray.  What is wrong with there people?  I think the smoking is driven by the Spanish, they were told that you are not much of a man unless you smoke.  My reply, you’ll be less of a man with only one lung.  Oh, well. 

As for Andorra.  First, the skiing absolutely sucks.  It’s a bare base of man-made “snow” which is brown, full or rocks, and icy in spots.  I managed to ski most of the huge mountain in about 2 hours since skiing was limited to the runs where they could make snow.  I tried to check out the restaurants to see if there was any decent food, but there didn’t seem to be.  In order to get on the mountain, we have to shuttle about 6 kilometers to another town, then take a six kilometer gondola ride with takes about 20 minutes plus. 

Most of the other skiers were either Spanish or Russian and a few odd balls.  There are tons of Russians here, second tier to be sure (enforcers, not the godfathers).  Many of them have Motorola Radios and they seem to always be calling each other.  The woman have those acrylic nails, which probably were all shipped there after they went out of style in Croatia.  They are likely here on cheap package tours.  The economy of Andorra seems to be powered by Spain, and specifically by Spanish people who come here to buy cheap electronics and other stuff like perfume.  There is a street here, the “shopping street” that is at least a mile long with very brightly lit (overlit) stores hawking all sorts of wares and it’s very crowded, again mainly with Spanish.  I’m not feeling in a very consuming and materialistic mood, so it doesn’t do anything for me.  I guess I would characterize it as Reno meets a smoking convention at Sears.

January 9, 2008.  Andorra is composed of two areas, the quaint old town (didn’t find it) and the shopping area, which I would say is like Las Vegas, but not as elegant.  The snow is getting worse (read, nonexistent).  And I have a group of people coming to “ski”.  Basically, I am a cruise director on the Titanic.  It’s a suicide mission.