La Prariond, Tignes '06 - Appartment Review

My good friend James, aka The Network, has kindly agreed to, in his words: "grace my blog with his literary presence". What this means is that he has written, in my words: "a good but occassionally crass" review of the accommodation they stayed in earlier this year - Tignes. It's good stuff so read on...

It's march. 2006. We are on the bus from Geneva maybe half an hour outside of Tignes. Wilka and I are playing 20 questions to try and get our minds off the fact we still have about 12 hours before we touch the snow...

Before I left, a few people described Tignes as a frozen council estate, and when I saw line after line of high-rise flats I knew why! So, first impressions of the apartment's exterior could be better - loads better. We knew what to expect from shots on the web so we continued inside.

Interior

To best sum up the reaction to the insides I'm gonna quote Gav. But before I do, some context is needed. The other half of our crew that Gav is bunking with have a place not 5 mins walk down the hill called La Ferme du Val Claret - a NICE chalet. He clumsily and embarrasimgly let out the following encouraging sentiment: 'it's...different...to ours'.

The place was functional at best. Clean yea, but not a looker.

It sleeps 6 people - 2 in a decent double bedroom, 2 on sofa beds in the lounge/kitchen and 2 in odd bunk beds in the hall that fold out from the wall. The guy on the top bunk ended up on the floor under the dining table cos it was too hot up there and more than a little awkward to ascend the questionable ladder provided. By contrast my bed was alright, though one night i passed out someplace leaving the bed open for one of the boys to 'deflower'...didn't enjoy sleeping in it after that so much. No beef to the bed, mind. The bed was sound.

Snowboard storage is a major problem at La Prariond. Each flat (that sleeps 6, remember) is assigned a locker downstairs that would do well to fit 6 pairs of Ski's never mind 6 snowboards (with boots). We ended up not using the locker and just carried our stuff upstairs. There is a possibility that the mildew patch in the corner may not have been there before...

The kitchen. We had some of the usual stuff: grill, oven, fridge (with a microscopic freezer - ironic?), sink, taps (hot and cold), knives and forks. The cups and glasses were wank. We had to buy mugs from the Sherpa (local superstore effort) to make a decent cup of tea. I know I said we had an oven, but it either didn't work or we were all retarded. One time, I was making some garlic bread and it took like a half hour to slightly warm up. We learned to love the hobs. A microwave would have came in very handy.

Kitchen makes food. Food makes turd. Lets talk about the shitter. Wilka put spoons in it. He also made it smell like nothing on this earth twice a day like clockwork. Not a lot more to say about it. It was pretty clean, in a plain white room all on its own and flushed almost every time.

Next door to the crapper was the bathroom sporting a tub with a decent shower attached. Mind, I'm a shade over six two so I had to be crafty to get the unadjustable shower head angled to hit me above the shoulders. I liked the bathroom - it had a massive big mirror which suits me just fine.

Location

Ok, I feel I need to shift onto the apartments good points now, and location is top of the list. It's 2 minutes walk from the Bollin/Fresner chairlift that can get you on some nursery slopes or shoot you half way to Val d'Isere. In fact, all the main lifts are well within walking distance and at the end of the day you can ride to the door. We often took the Bollin up cos it was easier to ride back down the kiddie slope than walk! SWEET! Oh yea, the bottom of said kiddie run is an ideal small-kicker location. We built one and I hurt my ribs.

Off the slope, the flat is real close to the town. The Sherpa and bars are no more than 5mins away.

Summing Up

La Prariond is not a good looking place. It's not mad cheap either. Cheaper than some, but all in all we didn't pay much less than Gav and the others did for their lah-di-dah place. It needs a lot of work before I'd be happy to return. Having said that, we all had a class time, and if nothing else the lame ass flat gave us something to laugh about; cos for all its shortcomings, it was good enough. It kept us warm and lets not forget why we left our smashing homeland UK in the first place: s-n-o-w. The quality of the flat didn't make that any worse. In fact, it made us want to stay out in it longer.

[Really Small] Spine Transfer - Part 2

This is deja vu isn't it? Well not exaclty. I'll tell you what's going on here. We really want to be able to transfer the spine on the mini ramp we ride at R-Kade. Mike figured we should get it down on the really small ramp first, then take it to the larger mini ramp...

I'm lucky to be skating with Mike actually becuase it's been him that's pushing us both to do it. He started things off by trying to air the spine with a grab (holding before take off); and this time he wanted to get it done with a straight ollie. It's so good skating/riding with someone of the same ability because you end up pushing each other all the time.

You see, at first we thought it would be easier to transfer on the larger spine by keeping hold of the board. Less scarey than ollie'ing right? So we tried that first on the smallest ramp. The thing was though, when we took it to the larger spine, compressing down on the transition to get a grab was killing all of our speed. That's not to say that a better skater can't do it - it's just we felt we had no chance, yet.

So, Mike was like

we gotta be able to just ollie over it clean - I reckon it's gonna be easier than grabbing anyway...

So that's what we tried. Similar to the last one, this was the first time we'd ever attempted this - and our very first attempts weren't filmed. It kinda goes like this: "man, I think we're gonna end up landing this, better get the camera out," so we often don't film the first bits.

Again, just take this for what it is: us learning something new. The track's called "Float On" and it's by Modest Mouse. I must confess that this if the only song of theirs that I have heard - my sister was playing it. But I think I'm gonna get their album and see what it's like. Enjoy...

New Gallery

Just a quick note: there's now a gallery section on afterbang, which will contain links to my videos and photos. You can get to it from the menu at the top... enjoy!

A Skating Adventure

So we changed what is becoming a regular arrangement and went to skate the R-Kade park, Redcar, on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday. We were dumb asses - because when we got there we realised that the skatepark closes earlier on a Tuesday evening. 50 minutes from home and stading in the first few drops of rain, it looked like a wasted trip and no skating for us...

But hey, you gotta drive through Middlesbrough on the way back from Redcar, and Middlesbrough is home to a new skate park - the Prissick Plaza. Despite the rain we decided to go check it out. None of us had seen the park before and taking a look, even if it is raining, has got to be better than just driving to Redcar, turning around and then driving back. And besides, there's always the chance that it will stop raining.

And it did. Well, not at first, but after about 20 minutes the rain stopped and it started to dry out - and I don't know what type of concrete it is, but it dried real fast!

But none of that came before us first climbing over the fence (note: if you ever need to, climb the gate as it doesn't have spikes on the top), nearly falling into an insanely big bowl and then sliding around on some freshly waxed, and wet ramps. You know what it's like when you go somewhere new and there's nobody else there: you're running around trying everything out and you don't know what to look at next...

We played around in the bowl a little, which is massive, skated around the place and just as it started to get dark we tried to ollie the gap between the kicker and the raised middle section. Cock-eyed plans aside, our little adventure in to Middlesbrough turned out to be a good night. Here's some pictures and a few clips. I heard the track on DC MTN.LAB - it's "In a Big Country" by Big Country, from their album The Crossing. Great Tune.

Xscapeology: Friday 11th August

Last Friday I went to the Xscapeology session at Castleford - it was the first one that I've been to. I've got to say that I was impressed with the extra effort that had gone into the park. This is what they had:

• Left Top: Rookie Kicker
• Left Bottom: Gap Kicker
• Middle Top: 3m metal rail / 3m metal rail / C-Box
• Middle Bottom: C-Box / Picnic Bench / Double Picnic Bench
• Right Top: Raised Magic Rail / 4m down rail (side kickers) / Down-Flat-Down Box (side kickers)
• Right Bottom: Slide Box / Wall Ride
• Nursery Slope: SNO!academy and snowskate park. x4 rookie boxes and rails / x2 rookie kickers

I spent the majority of the night riding the gap kicker, which was by far the biggest and best-shaped kicker I've seen at Castleford. I figured that they always have a good selection of rails so I should session the kicker while they've got a good one... Man, that thing must have taken some shaping!

It's not the biggest kicker that I've hit, but the gap always makes things interesting. In fact, I'm keeping an eye out on the web to see if anyone posts any photos of the park because it was pretty impressive given that it was indoors.

The best I managed was a frontside 3, and I only landed one of them. As it happens I was trying to hold a decent grab on a frontside 180, and the more I tried the faster I rotated. On one air I was like "man, I'm going all the way round here" and then skidded out on my ass. So on the next one I just let it float all the way round and landed the 3... Very pleased.

As the night went on it kinda got a little sketchy. After taking a break to go and play on the snowskates and boxes I came back to the kicker to try and improve on things. I made something like two nice frontside 180s: one was kinda slow and smooth, the other had a half-decent grab. I then tried to repeat the 360 from earlier but by this time I had convinced myself that the kicker was much slower (actually, I think it really was)... I starting trying to spin harder - hucking it round. I just kept slamming.

At first I was dissapointed because I was sucking, but then I started thinking "hey, at least I feel comfortable trying this trick" - which is progression for me, and that felt good. Note to self though - there were some really sweet backside 180s on display. I've got to work on backside 180s and 360s.

Snowskates
Snowskates... I've thought about buying one of these many times now before but always thought that I'd never use it. I couldn't have been more wrong. They are so much fun! There were like 4 or 5 of them left out for people to play on on the nursery slope - so James and I got to work. Tricky at first, but it takes little time before you're sliding your way down the slope. We even managed to land some tiny airs over the kickers. I'm definitely going to get one before my next winter trip.

All in all the Xscapeology session was a great night - despite the blue stuff leaking all over the place (you'll know what I mean if you were there). Nice one!

Keeping Your Lines Close

Many times I have looked with wonder at the empty space in my garden... is there enough space for a drop-in and rail? Would a mini ramp fit down at the bottom? Man, how nice would it be to snowboard/skate in your own garden?

I don't think it's something that I can do right now, but had I a bigger garden it's something I'd really like to do.

Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I've stumbled across a few related things that I think might be interesting... To begin with, check out brummyskier's garden setup (from the SCUK forums):

Then there's the professional approach of high quality ramps offered by companies like Transitions Skate Ramps. These ramps look totally sick! And they've got back yard specific ramps.

But...
This setup takes the biscuit! Skating in your living room - sweet.

It's not all fun and games though!
You'd be mad to think that this kind of operation wouldn't attract the attention of you neighbours. Check out this post, entitled "Skateboard ramps in back gardens of residential areas" from the Noise Abatement Society :-) Imagine if you had built the perfect garden setup only to be limited to one hour per day! Gutted.

I love the offering by OperaticCyd to the thread:

How sad that you feel such a need to complain about children playing. Perhaps if your campaign works the children can get into quieter, indoor hobbies like playing computer games and taking drugs.

I guess close proximity to neighbours and back yard skate ramps don't go well together...

[Really Small] Spine Transfer

A week ago while skating at Redcar, Mike got it in his head that he wanted to learn how to transfer over the spine on the mini ramp. We talked about maybe going for a "rock over" style manouver, hooking the front wheels over first followed by the back wheels; we also talked about trying to go into a tailstall and then dropping in the other side. However, Mike had the bit between his teeth and he wanted to air it, with a grab...

Of course, we're talking about one of the smallest mini ramps around, which makes for a really small spine and therefore a small tranfer. But let me tell you, the first time you try it, it aint easy!

We opted for the basic indy grab. Our intention was to get it dialed on this ramp and then take it to the slightly larger spine - but a few attempts on that ramp at the end of the night showed quickly that it was going to be a different story.

I don't want to belittle our achievement but I don't want to big it up either. It's fair to say though that we were pretty damn pleased when we started landing this thing! Just take it for what it is - learning to do something new :-) The song, "The Only Living Boy In New York" by Simon & Garfunkel has a "nothing to serious" feel to it, which I think kinda fits.

Actually, I've got this song on the soundtrack to the film Garden State. It's a little off track when compared with the type of music I normally associate with snowboarding - but it's good. Also, by some strange coincidence I bought this CD just before I watched DC Mountain Lab for the first time: they both have the song "Let Go" by Frou Frou...

Itching For Snow

Wow, I've been without an Internet connection for nearly a week, which these days is kinda difficult... I'm glad to get it back. I've also been without snow (the artificial stuff anyway) for nearly three weeks and I'm itching to get that back too!

I couldn't hit Castleford last week which was dissapointing as they built a "big gap kicker" in the park - supposedly one on the biggest ones they have shaped. The week before that was the Aim Series event/LG Action Sports Tour; speaking of which, the Aim Series website has news and pictures of the Castleford results.

And watching futureproof last night was the final straw - I've got to go boarding this weekend...

Skate Action From Last Week

[Redcar Session 2] We hit Redcar twice last week: Saturday morning and then a mid-week session on Wednesday evening. We wanted to fit the Wednesday evening session in because we knew we weren't able to go at the weekend as we were all away.

As it turned out, the mid-week session was really good. The skatepark was quiet, well, empty in fact. We had the whole thing to ourselves. As a result we've decided to go again this Wednesday, and hopefully we can up our skating to two sessions each week.

Anyway, I'm making progress so there's a video of last week's action. It's all still the basic stuff, but it's fun, and each time we add a new trick we can start to use a little more of the ramp. Current tricks include:

• Rock to Fakie
• Rock and Roll
• Tailstall
• Backside 50-50 / Axlestall (with my skating the distinction is blurred)
• 180 kick-turn Rock to Fakie type thing

Tricks I'd like to learn next:

• Blunt to Fakie
• 5-0 to Fakie
• Spine Transfer (one way or another)
• Fakie, pop off the coping to rock position - ride back in

The clip includes more music from The Kooks, which by the way has turned out to be an excellent album. The track is called "Eddie's Gun"... Enjoy!