Week 9- Falling in love again.
Week Ending 5/2/6

I feel better this week. Not just health better, but better generally about being out here. Good things have happened this week.

On Saturday, I won the bonus ball in our bar competition (everyone picks a lottery number and pays a euro, then whatever number matches the bonus ball wins the whole pot.) I won 22 euros.

I’m rota’d on to work less hours this week. I’m still doing extra stuff but I feel no obligation to do it and will argue my corner if anyone disputes it.

One of the people that’s been pissing me off in the bar the last week or two took things too far one night (department head or not, no one talks to me like shit. Especially not in the bar, in front of customers), so I complained about them to Jonny, only to find I wasn’t the only one to do so that week, and he’d already ‘had a word’ with them that morning and things have been much better since.

I’m feeling healthier because I’m drinking less and not going out every night.

I’m also going snowboarding nearly everyday, and it’s making all the difference. I’m so much happier! I’ve been practicing riding ‘switch’ or ‘fakey’ where you ride with the ‘wrong’ foot forwards. At the start of the week I spent ages wobbling and falling over, now, I feel really confident to be able to switch between the two on green and blue runs and even tried a few reds today.

I’ve been practising traversing from my normal goofy (left foot forward) stance to switch in one fluid motion. The more I do that, the easier it’ll be for me to start popping 180s. I’ve also started to use my own board again. I’ve used the hire board over mine this season, because the conditions have been so rubbish that I’d rather scratch and bump that.

Using my board makes so much of a difference though that I’m only going to go back to using the hire board in the worst conditions. My board is faster, lighter, sharper and I feel much more confident doing things on it because I have faith that it’ll do what I ask of it. I’ll just have to be careful with it during our snow droughts.
The first day I went out on it, I couldn’t get the grin off my face. I think I’m finally falling in love with snowboarding again.

Also, this week, I found out that the report I’d written for Natives about the Show Love tour was also sent into the Mountain Echo, the local English Magazine for Val. Now I know that having my own stuff printed shouldn’t feel that special because I helped start up and run a local English magazine in Spain in 2003 (click here to see the site) but it’s always nice to stumble upon your name in print.

The only slight downer this week is that one of the KPs got a bit drunk one night and ended up getting a bit too lippy with the Duty Manager and very nearly got himself sent home. Everyone got a very stern warning along the lines of ‘if you can’t drink, don’t.’ I think the mid-season blues are manifesting themselves in different ways for different people. I’m just hoping the snowboarding has cured mine.

SHIT. NEWSFLASH. Iain, my manager had his third disciplinary tonight for what seemed to me to be pretty trivial stuff… and he’s being sent home on tomorrow’s transfer…. Shit. This is gonna change things... Bloody Hell….