The smell of fear part 2

And it happened again! I cannot believe it! It wasn't the same skier but it was the same misjudgement which led to the same kind of trauma.

Our holiday operator organised a trip to another ski resort not far from where the first incident occurred, half way through the week-long holiday. I wanted to have a look at this other resort as this may be a potential future destination so I went along for the day trip. When we got to our drop off point for the day we were told by the guide that to get to the main ski area we would need to take the gondola up to our first ski point and then we would have to ski down a couple of blue runs and take a couple of chair lifts, but we were not to worry as she would be with us to ensure we knew where we're going and to arrange a meet up point for later. At this announcement, one of the skiers sitting behind me got hysterical and said she was 'going to kill that girl' (that girl being the guide) and that had she known this she wouldn't have come on this trip at all. She couldn't possibly ski down on blue runs. Having said this she didn't decide to wait in the coach or the coffee shop by the gondola departure point but decided to come along with the group, while she vocalised her displeasure about the situation to the guide. I was surprised by how rude and unreasonable she was but I guess fear can do strange things to a person. She was there by her own choice so why was she taking it out on the guide?

As we proceeded on our way she screamed at every turn and whenever anyone passed her, i.e. she screamed quite a lot. Our guide tried to make things easy by keeping the group together- availability of familiar faces and human shields from other skiers- and taking the descent in stages. At every stop this woman complained about how it was very hard on her and that she was feeling quite unwell from having to do this. She also kept saying to her husband that she wanted to head back and make their own way back to our base resort. We got to the central ski area and went our separate ways after we arranged a meeting point and time to head home later that afternoon. I was relieved to not have to deal with her again until later, and be able to enjoy the spectacular skiing and views on offer. It was, however, more of the same on the way back; she didn't head back on her own as she had threatened.

I'm not entirely sure what she was expecting but its a bit over-ambitious to go away for a day to a ski area that one isn't familiar with when one can't be confident of managing an easy ski run. The guide was there to take care of the travel arrangements, not to teach the skiers how to ski so why is this the guide's fault? The resort we were based at had a couple of blue runs and the rest were all reds and blacks. The one we visited had more blue runs and was probably more suitable for beginners. However, if the lack of familiarity is a worry, what the skier needed was probably lessons and more practice somewhere she could repeat the actions without having to worry about the routes. If she had thought things through and considered what was best for her she probably would not have come on the visit. But she didn't think it through. Mountains can be unfriendly places if one is ill-prepared; it could have been an expensive mistake to make. 

The smell of fear

Fear can make the most rational person irrational. Today we spent the best part of the afternoon trying to calm a very scared skier and to help her get herself to the bottom of a ski run. The skier in question is a novice who was making good progress in her efforts to learn to ski when she had an accident, while on a skiing lesson, that stopped her from participation for two years, initially due to the physical trauma and later from loss of confidence in her own abilities.

The novice skier decided to restart skiing lessons this winter and after a morning on the slopes with an instructor decided to join a group of friends for lunch at a restaurant situated near a blue run. She has the technical ability to ski blue runs and the group had offered to keep her company on the way down after the meal. On the way up the novice skier was separated from her chair lift partner because she had been unable to follow through the gates when they opened for them to move to the seating area. She was upset at having to travel on a chairlift alone and by the time she got to the top of the lift section she was terrified to the point of tears. All through the meal she was worried about the descent as she realised that this was a ski section she had not been on before, and she was unhappy about being on unfamiliar ground.

We set off as a group of 6 after lunch with her in the middle of the group so that she was somewhat shielded from other skiers- she was worried they would crash into her. She was so worked up by this point that she was unable to do anything at all and had to be guided down one turn at a time, stopping at the top of every brow and when fear- of other skiers, the steepness of the incline, etc- struck her. To her credit she got to the bottom and decided that she needed more lessons to help her regain her confidence, and she duly arranged for these for the rest of the trip.

Safety first and foremost. It is great to be able to get about the mountains on skis but these are inhospitable places and when in doubt it is prudent not to engage in battle with them. One must be realistic about one's abilities to travel in these terrains and take responsibility for one's own safety. This means planning ahead- getting to know where one is going- and honestly assessing whether one is up to the challenge. A person should be the best judge of his/her own abilities as, in the case of an adult, he/she is the only person ultimately responsible for his/her own safety. It may seem boring when this means non-participation in certain activities but safety should be the main consideration.

Hitting the white stuff again

Its that time of year when one decides the alpine snowy peaks are too irresistibly beautiful to decline a visit. So off we go again on to a plane and then a coach to play in the snow. It wouldn't be a holiday if there weren't some kind of trouble on the way. And this time, the first in a long while, it was trouble with the luggage.

The four flights involved took off and landed on time. However, Turin airport seemed ill prepared for the arrival of the bags on board these flights. Immigration services were hugely efficient so there wasn't even much of a queue through passport control but for some reason the bags were delivered to the wrong baggage areas and it took airport personnel, and everybody else, about 1.5 hours to figure this out. Thus, passengers from Bristol and Manchester, who were the first and second of the four groups of passengers to arrive, stood waiting by an empty luggage conveyor belt 3, as indicated by the information screens, for about 1.5 hours wondering why it was taking airport staff so long to deliver their bags from their planes. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday and the airport was short of staff? Meanwhile, passengers from London at belt 4 were amazed that bags started appearing quite soon after they arrived but wondered why the belt seemed to be almost full, with bags which weren't being collected by anyone standing around that area. The bags from London did eventually arrive and as some people picked theirs up they noticed that the flight numbers on some of the baggage tags didn't seem to match those listed on the information screen.

Meanwhile, a few people from the Bristol plane noticed that belt 4 was quite full and, wondering if something may be amiss, went round to belt 4 to check the baggage tags and found that their bags had indeed been delivered to the adjacent luggage belt. They went back to tell their friends and this led to a near stampede of people from belt 3 to belt 4. Unfortunately, the bags from Manchester were not on belt 4 so the passengers from the Manchester plane then proceeded to check from belt to belt to try to find their bags, only to discover that they were no where to be found. So they went back to wait by belt 3. By this point the information screens showed that the bags from Bristol were on both belts 3 and 4, even though belt 3 remained resolutely empty.

The passengers from a plane that had arrived from Newcastle and were waiting on belt 5, caught wind of what was happening and started to wander around looking for their bags. A message came up on their conveyor belt information screen that told them that their bags were being delivered to belt 3 instead so they all went to belt 3 and waited for less than a quarter of an hour when a message then came up to say, sorry but their bags were actually on belt 5. They returned to belt 5 which was still empty when I left about 10 minutes after this. The group from Manchester were also still waiting by belt 3 when I left.

Surprisingly everyone seemed to handle the situation with good humour and laughed at, rather than moaned about, the ridiculous situation. Maybe the prospects of fun in the snow meant that glitches could be overlooked. The magic of holidays.

No pot noodle but plenty of pot holes

The snow melted and revealed plenty of pot holes on the roads.  On the way home to London on the M40 after a new year weekend gathering, I found myself having to dodge potholes on the motorway- sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully.  This could be quite damaging for the car as some of these were quite deep.  Large stretches of the motorway are poorly lit which makes it all the more difficult to spot and avoid these when driving through at night.

I was not travelling at particularly high speeds because of the potholes and insufficient lighting, and was more on my guard than usual. I was much alarmed when I suddenly spotted two figures in bright yellow fluorescent jackets standing in the middle of the left hand lane, with spades/shovels apparently doing some maintenance work on the road, their maintenance vehicle parked besides them with lights on.  I was travelling on the left hand lane and quickly tried to slow down and change lanes without causing an accident.  I managed to avoid them and my passenger told me he thought he saw them signalling something to me while we were driving towards them, as if to tell us to go into the next lane.  I didn't see the hand signals but I didn't want to pile into them either so did it anyway.  I also didn't see any warning signs to inform drivers that there were men on the road and there were no barriers to protect them from the cars.  I still cannot believe that actually happened but it did.

Whoever you are, you two men in the left hand lane, please don't do it again!