I missed the news that Muriel Spark had died. Those with good memories may remember that one of my photographs was used as the cover for All the Poems of Muriel Spark a couple of years ago.
Author: jane
read lot and mostly
I read a lot, and mostly crime or thrillers at the moment. I’ve discovered a few new authors recently – Peter Robinson (Strange Affair, Cold as the grave and The Summer that never was – all of which are excellent are revolve around the same characters), Tess Gerritsen (Body Double) and Karin Slaughter (Indelible), all of which are proving to be good reads. Any other authors I should be looking for?
Snow in Crowborough
Yesterday, despite it being April, we had snow in Sussex. Nothing in Brighton, but quite a lot in Crowborough. These are photos taken from my office window with my phone which is why they’re pretty poor quality.
Whilst we were snowboarding
Whilst we were snowboarding in Colorado recently, we hired some demo kit to see what, if any, a difference it made.
The first board I hired was a Ride Kashmir 151 which I loved. I kept my own bindings as Breckenridge Sports only had standard Burton bindings. The board suited me well, and I found it a lot less shaky on flats. It didn’t take long to adjust to and I had great fun with it.
The second board was a Salomon Ivy 151 with some Burton Mission bindings. The girl in Breeze rentals recommended the Ivy as a great rental board, but didn’t think it would make a good board to buy as they’ve seen a lot of damaged returns. Apparently the Ivy is due for a re-release next year and it might be worth following up on then. The bindings were great and the board felt really responsive.
Looks like I’m in the market for a Ride Kashmir then…
Colorado
Colorado 2005
A snowboarding trip in Colorado, 10 nights spent at the lovely Four Peaks Inn in Breckenridge staying in the Gold Nugget room. Breckenridge was a great place to base ourselves, with loads of bars and restaurants to chose from. I’d return to Colorado, and to Breckenridge and would definitely spent time on Breckenridge mountain, at A-basin and at Keystone.
Resort review
Breckenridge
Ride time: 4 days
Favourite run: Crystal or Centennial on Peak 10
Ranked: 2 – lots of different terrain to chose from
A-Basin
Ride time: 1 day
Favourite run: Humbug, Falcon and Cabin Glades
Ranked: 1 – our favourite resort because it was challenging, quiet and fun
Vail
Ride time: 1 day
Favourite run: Expresso and Cappucino
Ranked: 4 – a busy resort, with quite a few flat traverses which make it hard work for snowboarders
Keystone
Ride time: 1 night
Favourite run: Spring Dipper
Ranked: 3 – excellent night riding, lots of runs on offer, nice resort
Copper Mountain
Ride time: 1 day
Favourite run: Union Park (primarily because it had trees and was quiet)
Ranked: 5 – too busy by far, most of the runs return you to the bottom of the mountain and there were huge lift queues. Offers the slopetracker service though which is an interesting and fun service.
Take a look at the photos
BBC Winter Olympic coverage
I’ve been enjoying the BBC coverage of the Winter Olympics, and especially enjoyed the mens snowboard cross event yesterday. It was great to see this event make it onto the olympic stage as its so different to most of the olympic events, and is an excellent sport to watch from the sofa. I wouldn’t even manage to get out of the gates, so maybe I should go and do some more practice 🙂
Meribel for New Year
We spent a few days in Les Allues, France over New Year with Jeremy and Kirsty and spent the time snowboarding in Les 3 Vallees. We made use of our lift tickets and spent some time in each of the other 2 valleys, but spent most of our time in Meribel and Meribel Mottaret. We were really fortunate and had 2 powder days – New Years Eve and New Years Day – what an amazing way to start a new year.
We spent New Years Eve (and in fact most other evenings) at La Tsaretta in the village.
A great break, and Meribel and the surrounding area is definitely a resort I could return to.
Whilst was looking for
Whilst I was looking for webcams of some of the ski areas we’re thinking of visiting, I stumbled across SnowEye which claims to have over 3000 webcams from ski resorts all over the world. They’re classified by country and region which makes it really easy (providing you know your geography) to get a glimpse of conditions. Now we’ve just got to hope that the webcams don’t show us huge greeny muddy areas like they would have done of Fernie last year.
We went to Las
We went to Las Iguanas on Friday evening for dinner. The cocktails were good (mohitos), the chips and dips were excellent, as was the starter (duck taquitos). Unfortunately, the main courses (chicken moqueca and xinxim) were dissapointing – overcooked chicken with a bland sauce. The atmosphere was pleasant, the wine was tasty and the desserts were pretty good (although £3.50 for a slice of watermelon seemed a bit steep).
Overall, probably worth a visit for their starters/tapas (they do a tapas menu at the bar), but I wouldn’t bother with a main course again.
We revisited some of
We revisited some of my old Aspect stomping grounds at the weekend. We stopped off at Potemkin on the way to Cathy‘s 40th birthday and had a few vodka shots – I had a sweet cranberry (a bit like cough medicine) and a honey (bit too strong for me), the others had mint, sage (tastes a bit like stuffing), blackcurrant (a bit like undiluted ribena), sweet aniseed, black vodka and hunter vodka. The following day we headed back into town to see Dave, and ended up in The Food Bazaar which was directly opposite the first Aspect office I worked in down Gray’s Inn Road. A great trip down memory lane.