The Alps

For quite some time, David has wanted to visit the Alps. So when an opportunity arose to take a ski weekend to the French Alps with an organization through his work, he signed us up promptly. Better yet, Johnson Controls paid for part of the trip, so the whole package was a real bargain.

We left on Friday after work, 40 people piled into a comfortable coach bus. The bus drove us into Paris, where - amidst a throng of other weekend skiiers - we found our way to our platform and onto a train bound for Bourg-Saint-Maurice.

I should mention here that Dave and I went into this trip completely blind. As someone else was doing the organizing, we didn't think of anything but packing warm clothing. So we had no idea where we were headed, other than the French Alps.

Five hours later, we hopped off the train and found ourselves at an isolated platform in the deepest dark of night. The small building that served as a station bore a sign telling us we were in Landry. Stars shone brilliantly overhead (it's funny how you forget about stars when you live in a city), and in front of us loomed the ominous dark gray mass of a mountain. It was late, and it was cold. We silently trudged along the platform to the other side of the station, where a jolly man in a cap loaded our luggage into a van and ushered us onto another bus.

Dave wondered why we were being separated by our luggage but I was too tired to complain. The bus lurched forward and began traversing series of switchbacks, slowly making its way up the mountain. Twenty minutes of back-and-forth later, we were being kicked off the bus on the outskirts of the village of Montchavin. The road was too narrow and snowy, and we'd have to walk the rest of the way. Up ahead, the van with our bags plowed on to the hotel.

The hotel was exactly the kind of cozy lodge you'd expect in a ski village. Wood paneling, fuzzy wool blankets, and charming carvings decorating the rooms. The next morning we braved our balcony in a snowstorm to overlook the valley and the mountains beyond. It was incredible.

At breakfast, the jolly man returned with lift passes and a map of the ski runs. David and I had never skiied outside of Michigan before, and were overwhelmed with the number of runs available. We stopped our host and asked, "Where are the easy ones?" He laughed and waved his hand dismissively at the map and said, "Oh, they're up there somewhere".

So, after gearing up at a local rental shop, I begged David to take us to the bunny hill. In fact, the bunny hill was little more than a 2 degree decline, and we were getting funny looks from the parents who were teaching their toddlers to ski there. So we took out the map and headed for a lift.

The lifts were not the rickety chairs that we were used to in Michigan, but fully enclosed capsules with seats. We joined another couple in a capsule and up we went. And up. And up. I started panicking. There was getting to be a lot of altitude between us and the hotel, and I knew that it couldn't possibly be all bunny-hill level decline.

Finally, at the top of our lift, we were ready to go. The couple we had ascended with took off, and Dave was left with me and my panic attack.

But it was ok. We started off on a "debutant" hill with a tow rope, and went up and down a few times. That was fun. Then we continued past the kid's hill onto the main run. It wasn't too steep, and the view was beautiful. That was also fun.

And then we came to a point where the "easy" run coincided with the "medium" run. And that's where it literally went downhill.

To spare you the emotional details, lets just say that I am not a natural born skiier. Dave says I just lack confidence, but I remind him that I've been trying - and failing - to try to ski since I was 10 years old. No amount of enthusiasm for the Alps is going to make me a skiier.

I'm going to blame it on my fear of falling. Not falling down on the snow, but the feeling of free falling one has when gliding over packed snow on two thin rails of waxed wood. After two hours and a lot of tears and cursing, David helped me unclip my skiis and clomp over to the top of a ski lift, where I shamefully asked for a ride down in bad French.

After returning to the hotel and nursing my pride for a while, I encouraged David to hit the slopes again and pulled out the camera. I spent the rest of the day (the rest of the weekend, really) taking photos and wandering around the village.

David kept at it and turned out to be a pretty decent skiier. On Sunday morning he went out again and didn't fall once. I spent the morning taking photos, writing postcards, and playing Nintendo in the hotel. After lunch we returned our gear and took a lift up to a hiking trail, where we walked some paths and appreciated the view.

Finally we boarded our bus, then the train, then another bus, then our car to get home after midnight, completely exhausted. Now David's hooked on skiiing....and at least I can say I got some nice photos.

Dave learns that his Doc Marten's are almost as good as skiis.