For those of you that don’t know, my ‘day job’ outside of paragliding is running my own business in Tignes supplying budget skiing holidays to more or less grateful skiers and snowboarders primarily from the UK. We have over 150 beds spread around 4 hotels and chalets plus a pretty lively bar (www.chaletchardons.com), all run by about 25 staff.
Needless to say I’m pretty busy during the winter months meaning the 2009 Worlds being held from the end of January to the start of February falls slap bang in the middle of the worst possible time for me. We arrived here in Tignes at the start of November to start some renovation work and since then it’s been pretty much full on 12 to 14 hour days without a single day off trying to get everything under control before my departure on Tuesday. Of course I still have about a week’s worth of work to deal with before I can even think of leaving and only two days in which to achieve this but I’m also a very lucky chap in that I have my long-suffering partner, Kat, to keep things afloat for me whilst I’m away.
The major problem in the hotel and bar business is that the authorities will take a dislike to something about you whilst you’re away. Firemen, cops, health officials and employment inspectors can all descend any hour of the day or night and cause trouble if they so wish. They often completely contradict what the last inspector said and are a law unto themselves. My guard dog, Bungle, is not the happiest of chaps when he sees anybody in uniform, especially if they are speaking French (he somehow knows people’s nationalities and hates French speakers – don’t ask me why) so the various authorities are never that happy as they’ve often been chased up the road by a furious barking mutt before their arrival. Under French Law the ‘gerant’ (company representative) is solely responsible for everything with his/her company so really I have to be here 24 hours a day. A three-week absence in the middle of the season will be an unprecedented risk for me to take and the preparations to ensure the whole pack of cards doesn’t fall down as soon as I’ve left have been extensive.
Then there’s the problem of all my kit. In short it has disappeared.
My new glider is no problem as it turned up a couple of days ago from the nice chaps at Ozone. The rest, however, is anybody’s guess as we’ve been renovating our apartment and so have had to store all our belongings anywhere we could find some space.
There’s an unconfirmed sighting of my harness from early November. Apparently someone unpacked it from my camper van and ‘put it downstairs somewhere’. We are talking about a large 60-bed hotel here so ‘downstairs somewhere’ is quite wide ranging. When we talk about the fact that we occasionally see mice ‘downstairs somewhere’ as well it doesn’t perhaps bode well for my reserve which is in the harness. If I lob my reserve in Mexico and the result is an explosion of startled free-falling mice and an even more startled pilot looking at a reserve that resembles a tea bag you all know what’s happened.
Instruments are even harder. I’ve found my vario in a box with a burst bag of flour and, apart from spitting white dust out of the speaker each time it beeps, it seems OK. My GPS 76, however, was last seen “in the handyman’s van when he was trying to work out how to get to Grenoble Airport”. Great. My flying boots were pilfered by somebody to mix concrete in and are now grey. Cement Grey to be precise. My sunnies got sat on by Bungle so they’ll have to be an airport purchase and I have a horrible idea that the staff mistook my flightdeck for a bum bag and used it to complete an ’80’s rapper’ fancy dress outfit for New Year’s Eve from whence it has never been seen again. I also have a vague memory of somebody dressed as an American Footballer in full grid-iron kit with what now seems (as the memories are returning) awfully like my flying helmet with a home-made face guard and some sticky plastic stars and stripes on the side.
Well at least I know where my socks are – In the dirty washing bin with everything else. At least nobody will want to sit next to me on the plane.
So today I shall be hunting for kit, shouting at staff, Bungle will be running for cover as he’s almost certainly eaten something important and Kat will be making me lots of cups of tea and telling me to calm down. And the cops will probably turn up and order me to an emergency meeting with the mayor next week the day after I’m supposed to leave.
Life in an alpine paradise.
Mark H
