Do you remember the very memorable and dodgy Channel 4 documentary about the New York S+M scene? The one where some loon nailed his foreskin to a table and another got his nob rigourously chafed by a blonde in a pvc minidress using a cheese grater... well the real nutters were into stuff too extreme to be deemed worthy of a late night documentary even with an adult and disturbing material warning... The out-takes have some sad old perv breaking down in front of the camera, his face blacked out, his voice creaking with emotion and self loathing...
"...er I go skiing in Scotland!"
*******
Just as I get myself a months work in ITland it starts to snow and Nobby calls up with "there's some awesome conditions at Glenshee - it's on the web, deep powder snow everywhere...best start to a season for years...!"
That was Wednesday. In true Scottish style, by the weekend the thaw has set in, on Friday night Nobby arrives by train from Durham and I sponge a few beers off him down the Argyle before late night toast and tea made with milk 5 days out of date...
Saturday morning, the 6am alarm aounds for ages just as I'm dreaming about Elin Tvedt the famous Norwegian weathergirl. Ha det Elin. Hello rainy Edinburgh, a long drive and a day on the slopes. We have to decide which centre to go to. Glencoe and Nevis Range are rainy swamps with perfect conditions for mudboarding, Glenshee has had an overnight thaw, The Lecht looks OK but takes ages to get to. Aviemore it is then.
2 hours and one Swedish folk music tape later, we're in Aviemore looking for an open ski hire shop trying to avoid the tumbleweed and the rusty shop signs blowing in the wind. We eventualy find somewhere near Glenmore Lodge for Nobby to get some skis from...they sell bacon rolls too so we load up on the lard for the rigours ahead.
Nobby has a heart attack when the nice aussie bird tells him that the price of a linited area ticket up the funicular for the two of us isnt £24 but each. Considerably poorer, we shuffle into the Piccadilly Line at Covent Garden and ten minutes later are expelled at Cockfosters into a total whiteout. The conditions are pretty much better than average for Aviemore as it isnt windy and there's no rain or gale force ice bits in your face. We both ski like unfit fat bastards down the easy traverse leading to the zig zags. In fact, I'm not sure it would be called a piste in a proper ski resort. It seems more like the access road except that this time there's nutter snowboarders looming in and out of the fog...
We do the easy stuff for a couple of hours until Nobby gets bored. He suggests we have a go at the White Lady run (a red run of some fame) It's got about a meter of deep powder snow (about 1 meter long and about 34 cms wide by the side of an enourmous open patch of damp bog) - on the upper slopes, the snow is actually quite good and by the time we're doing our last run down, Nobby has perfected some awesome wipeout in muddy holes manouvers and I have even managed about ten telemark turns in a row without falling over. Then it all goes a bit wrong. Where the White Lady steepens into a proper gully and the skiing gets harder, I run into a particular unpleasant type of slush and lose my left ski. After accidentally waking a couple of sleeping ptarmigans and extracting some unwanted snow from my arsecrack, I reach for the lost ski and dislodge it downhill. It goes on for ages. Bear in mind that telemark skis dont have brakes and will slide on downhill forever and that I've forgotten to make up some leashes out of the shoelaces in my pocket because I'm too tight to buy some froma ski shop. Soon I'm plodding on downhill looking for a ski which has long since diseappeared into the gloom.
Half an hour later, I'm trying to think of some story to tell the piste crew to keep a look out for a left telemark ski somewhere on the White Lady, when I spot a bit of hideous yellow colouring half burried under a snow bridge in the burn...
just in time for an awesome session of avoiding gravel whilst skiing on down to the carpark and the end of a fantastic first foray for the season..
Nobby on the car park run black run (black gravel in places)
You nutters...