{"id":36,"date":"2008-02-07T22:45:49","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T21:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/blog\/?p=36"},"modified":"2008-02-18T17:26:31","modified_gmt":"2008-02-18T16:26:31","slug":"week-25-february-7-to-february-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Week 25 — February 7 to February 13"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 7,\u00a02008<\/u>.\u00a0 We met the Edgerly family (minus one daughter) tonight for dinner.\u00a0 They are here from Aspen, visiting with their daughter attending college for a year here and perfecting her Spanish and learning Catalan, the language of the region here.\u00a0 It was really fun for me to see Stuart, about the nicest guy I know.\u00a0 The best (strangest) part is we’re all on the same flight to Geneva and going to Chamonix for the same week!\u00a0 Also David told me several of his class-mates would also be in Chamonix.\u00a0 It should be darn crowded.<\/p>\n

February 8, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Not much went on today of import — we packed.\u00a0 I was waiting for the boys at the bus stop and watched Spanish police pull over motorcycles.\u00a0 There was clearly nothing random about it — these were the ones that were ridden by kids.\u00a0 Papers, etc… were examined.\u00a0 I think they were looking for stolen motorcycles and drugs.\u00a0 I watched for a while waiting for the kids’ bus, but no one was lead away in handcuffs.\u00a0 One thing was clear, they were profiling.\u00a0 No constitutional worries here about randomizing and not profiling just stop those most likely to be criminals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading the papers and there is an election here for President too, and it’s coming up in March.\u00a0 Meanwhile the US election battle gets just as much press and everyone knows what is going on there.\u00a0 I doubt there are many people who know there is even an election coming in Spain, much less the candidates names.\u00a0<\/p>\n

February 9, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We got up and made our way to the airport, and waited in the long line for check-in with easyjet, a cheap dot-com airline.\u00a0 Everything is handled by subcontractors including check in, baggage handling, gate operations, and probably flights too.\u00a0 In fact, as we were checking in Anne noticed one of our bags got to the conveyor belt before getting tagged.\u00a0 I was running parallel to the conveyor belt, trying to help the woman who was checking us in identify it, and then noticed she had given up.\u00a0 She assured us that she would find the bag and get it on our flight.\u00a0 Guess what.<\/p>\n

You thought it would make it.\u00a0 No way.\u00a0 This of course caused an hour delay at the Geneva airport reporting the bag.\u00a0 Then there was tons of traffic to Chamonix.\u00a0 We got a private transfer – eight of us on a 42 seat city bus – we had plenty of room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anywho, we got to Chamonix one bag short, Anne and I had to organize ski rentals for everyone and now David needed new ski clothes.\u00a0 All before the stores closed.\u00a0 Somehow, we got everything done and had a nice buffet dinner at the hotel.\u00a0 Amazing.<\/p>\n

Then Anne and I got on the phone (via Internet) and while doing that (no, the bag isn’t here yet), I got a call on my cell phone from someone at the airport in Barcelona about a bag without a tag.\u00a0 Jose Maria was nice enough to call the cell number on the luggage tag, and hopefully the bag will arrive tomorrow.<\/p>\n

As for Chamonix.\u00a0 It looks great and really reminds me of Europe.\u00a0 It’s a narrow and deep valley, and with unbelievable mountains surrounding it and a vertical rise of 10,000 feet plus.\u00a0 The vistas are amazing.\u00a0 I also arranged a guide tomorrow and managed to get the ski school organized for Dan’s kids.\u00a0 Not as easy as Aspen, but it should work out.\u00a0 Tomorrow Bruno will guide the six of us around and we’ll see what the skiing is like.\u00a0 Bruno really wants to show me some of the good skiing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/u><\/p>\n

February 10, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 After some amazing hassles getting our free tickets, we met with Bruno, our guide who Dan characterized “out of central casting”.\u00a0 Bruno had us modify the tickets they gave us so we could ski everywhere.\u00a0 Anyway, off we went.\u00a0 Basically, I would say that Chamonix is about the best skiing I’ve ever experienced.\u00a0 Living in Aspen this year would likely match it, but I’m here.<\/p>\n

Basically, it’s a skier’s paradise.\u00a0 Once you’ve come here, you’re going to be very spoiled.\u00a0 Here are some photos from today’s and yesterday’s exploits<\/a>, which included Dan and Amy and the four Uhlfelders with our guide Bruno.\u00a0 David’s bag made it late at night.<\/p>\n

February 11, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Bruno, our guide, met us this morning at the hotel with climbing harnesses and avalanche beepers.\u00a0 This was, I suspect, a surprise for all of us.\u00a0 Long story short, we ended up on the Argentiere Glacier after taking two crowded trams with about 60 people in them, then walking down about six or seven flights of super slippery steps with skis to the slopes\/glacier.\u00a0 Bruno was adamant about everyone skiing exactly in his tracks, which seemed smart since there are holes, also known as crevasses.<\/p>\n

It was another day of breathtaking vistas and medium to challenging skiing<\/a>, mainly as a result of the volume.\u00a0 The kids held up really well, the adults were mixed with Dan having the hardest time although doing well given the intimidating nature of the endeavor.\u00a0 After some discussion, we decided to ski the Vallee Blanche tomorrow, which is a very long ski down a glacier that everyone must do when visiting Chamonix.<\/p>\n

February 12, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Today the family, with Bruno guiding, took us down the Vallee Blanche.\u00a0 It was two 15 minute tram rides followed by 15 kilometers of skiing on a glacier.\u00a0 Just getting from the tram to where the skiing started was probably the hardest part since you had to walk down a sheet of ice carrying your skis (and I carried one pair of the boys’ skis, Bruno the other and Anne’s skis) roped in to Bruno just to make sure the kids were okay.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Once we got to the skiing, it actually was not very hard, although there were some harder options.\u00a0 If would be imprudent to do this without a guide; really taking your life into your hands.\u00a0 And, in fact, by not hiring a guide you miss out on the best skiing for your ability.\u00a0 The place is vast and I took a bunch of photos<\/a>, but you have to see it to believe it.\u00a0 In any case, some 2 plus hours later we got to a place where we had to walk up about 300 meters to a gondola which took us to the train to get back to Chamonix.\u00a0 We had a leisurely lunch and dropped the kids off with Anne (enough!).\u00a0 Then Bruno and I went back and did three trips to the Argentiere Glacier and skied all parts of it.\u00a0 Who knows how many vertical feet was skied, but a lot and quickly.<\/p>\n

February 13, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Off we went to Courmeyer, Italy, through the 12 kilometer-long Tunel de Mont Blanc.\u00a0 In less than 20 minutes (and 42 Euros!) you are in Italy next to a really large and fantastic ski area.\u00a0 I made one run on the off-piste down a narrow drop between some rocks with guide Bruno, then decided the entire family could ski a VERY long run from the top to the bottom off-piste.\u00a0 About two hours and many falls by both boys and Anne, we were eating at a small restaurant in a town near Courmeyer.\u00a0 All so very Europe.\u00a0 Photos are here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Off to dinner we went, to the Vista on the seventh floor of another hotel in our hotel’s group.\u00a0 It was cook your own meat at the table with lots of choices including kangaroo.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 7,\u00a02008.\u00a0 We met the Edgerly family (minus one daughter) tonight for dinner.\u00a0 They are here from Aspen, visiting with their daughter attending college for a year here and perfecting her Spanish and learning Catalan, the language of the region here.\u00a0 It was really fun for me to see Stuart, about the nicest guy I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}