Oh, the horror! Woke up this weekend to warm temperatures, overcast skies, foehn wind, and bits of rain. While I've been promised that things will stabilize (April showers bring May flowers, right?), I can't help but feel that the end is near. There is still the Haute Route (I'm still invited right, Silas? Silas?) and overnighters in various huts but all that takes more (family) planning. The take-your-pick choices of single-day ski tours are quickly disappearing around here.
So what's a guy to do when he can't ski the Alps? Be a tourist in them! And that's what the family did: headed to Chamonix to hang out for the day. I was there earlier in the year for my whirlwind three country tour but I failed to see anything in town other than the train station and the long line to board the Aguille du Midi cable car. It was quite nice to step back a moment and smell the
Edelweiss. And, honestly, it was probably a good time to go as the funky weather and closed chairlifts kept the crowds at a quiet minimum.
Yep, the world famous Chamonix. Birthplace of Le Ski Extreme and probably a whole range of Le Ski Unextreme, too. I imagine there are plenty of other interesting and historical events that surround this place but, really, in comparison to flipping down rock cliffs and scraping your way through shoestring chutes what difference does it make?
Straight to a bar to drown our (my) sorrows in Gamay, pasta, and pizza.
Hank was so sad he could hardly eat his ice cream. Poor guy. What else could I tell him that it's the cycle of life: snow falls, then it melts. Year after year. And on and on.
Kind of a gloomy day to be a tourist. Even worse to be a skier. I don't know what is more painful, though: the realization that the snow will soon be gone, or the fact that someone's gonna hafta deal with my complaints about the lack of snow until next October. Wouldn't wanna be those people.
1 comment:
I don't understand. You went to a ski area and did not ski? Are you feeling OK?
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