Alps Trip!

Okey Kokey people, the Alps trip has come and gone and we are all sadly back in the harsh reality of WORK! Never mind, all good things come to an end...
It really did live up to all the hype that we'd heard from other people and I can't wait to get back there, so I'll let the others fill in the gaps as I usually misinform on a grand scale when jotting my blog entires...Dave

Chris

Hmmph, not in the mountains anymore. Have however just booked this weekend in Dorset with Kate, might help ease me back into working what with my 3 and half day this week and having just found out I'm owed another 5 days, woohoo.

Firstly, I'm just glad I got to go on holiday at all, on account of Gemma's flippant remark about idiots not checking their passports before they travel, lead to me clocking my passport was out of date a good 15mins before we left for the ferry, helpful. What with Finters patented cross country route fitting squarley into the detour rather than short cut box we arived at the check in with about 10mins till the ferry sailing, Daryl nailed an entire bag of choccy eclairs in nervous uncontrolled face filling, Dave 'nochalant' Branfield was fighting the urge leap out of the car and hand himself over to the authorities on 1 count of person smuggling and 1 count of wearing indecent underwear and I bored all and sundry to distraction blurting out the details of my current love life (Kate if you're reading this it was the PG version). Anyway it would appear that a valid passport is surplus to requirements entering or leaving France but does make for a stressful start to the holiday. Still at least I didn't notice on the Morrocon border sometime in December.................

The Alps rule, winter summer whatever. Getting that first lift in the morning while its all still quite and there's just the occassional rumble of the lift bumbing over the pylons is a good feeling. Picking out new lines and checking if take offs and landings are dry and just getting worked up for the days riding.

My hire bike (GT Ruckus i-drive) may have the heaviest rear end ever seen this side of celebrity fat camp. Didn't really realise until I picked Dave's bike off the lift with about a tenth of the effort!! looking forward to riding the Kona again, with all that reduced weight I'll have no excuse.

I reckon you could spend a good couple of months out there before you had to start riding any of the same trials all the time and it would take you that long to build up a bit of specific fitness, riding downhill constantly is just as knackering as taking on a cross country loop and occasionally a far sight more painful. Anyone whose thinking about going, do it! If you want to prepare, go to Wales and ride the meanest section of the MBR run in Coed-y over and over in the wet till your hands feel like they might fall off, then brush up on your Aussie accent.......Finter.

Finally to anyone who may well be reading this in the Boomerang bar, sorry. Also all Australian beer sucks, not just the Tooheys although I thnk Daryl may have made this point somewhat forcefully already.

Daryl...
General impression and comment of the week was 'Epic'. I think that summed it up quite nicely, the sheer scale and endless number of different trails was amazing. It was a real shock to the system to be back riding the "Advanced loop" at QE country park near Portsmouth last night. Not exactly what you would call advanced, as we finished in the dark and I still nearly fell asleep at the helm of the Giant!!

The trails in Les Get and Morzine are so much different to anything we ride over here it is difficult to draw comparisons. The major thing that surprised us all was just how difficult it is to ride any of the Black runs in one hit without losing complete feeling in hands and forearms. Other than bumpy they can best be descrbed as steep, rocky and rooty with the odd sneaky drop, landing onto wet roots, just to keep you focused!! (Red run in the rain from the top of super Morzine anyone??)

On the bike front the Giant Reign was superb, only major drawback was the forks. The splice elite's have to go. Whilst the back end was soaking up everything I threw at it the forks were doing their best bucking bronco impression, leaving me sorely dissapointed that I didn't have a set of Fox 36's on the front. Best of all I managed all the ups last night at QE without any change of rear shock setting.

Final note...If you are going to visit Les Get don't make complete fools of yourselves by smashing into Le Boomerang and doing really bad Australian accents all night whilst abusing the regulars. Good job I don't have a loud voice hey!!