Alpe d'Huez

24,710 Acres
84 Lifts
6 Cable Cars
10 Gondolas
41 Ski ropes
121 Marked trails
Virtually unlimited off trail skiing
6824 Foot vertical (Pic Blanc Gondola to L’enversin D’oz)
Longest single trail – 3.6 miles, 3320 vertical feet


Add a crystal clear blue sky, bright warming sun and French hospitality and you’ve got the makings for a great holiday weekend.

Wow! We’ve been wanting to do a ski trip in the Alps ever since we visited Innsbruk, Austria back in the 1990's. It’s hard to imagine that it took us over 10 years to finally make the return trip.

So when an old work colleague and friend of mine, Mederick invited us down to France to join him and his girlfriend Muriel for a weekend of skiing, Beth and I jumped on the opportunity. We flew into Lyon and rented a cheap little micro-car for the 2.5 hour drive up into the mountains. It was a pretty drive through the narrow alpine valley. But it turned truly spectacular when we turned off the main road and started up the twenty six switchbacks that climb from the valley floor to the mountainous slopes of Alpe D’Huez.

Tour de France

This was taken about half way up the switchbacks when we broke out of the hazy clouds of the valley. The building looked like an old monastery that was built on a precarious bluff on the side of the mountain. After we stopped, we weren’t so sure what the building was, but the views were spectacular. By the way, the climb up the mountain is one of the more brutal legs of the Tour de France bicycle race. I can’t imagine being able to climb it on a bike after already pedaling over 100 kilometers.

M & M

Our hosts – Mederick and Muriel. Not only did they introduce us to this great ski resort, but they let us share a friends apartment and cooked outstanding French meals for us each night. Thanks! That is why we let them whoop our butts at Eucre each night ;-) We’ll return the hospitality when you visit us in Holland….well, maybe we’ll cook some Spanish meals for you instead of Dutch and we’ll play cards to win ;-)

People Mover

The village crosses several different levels of the mountain and this lift is designed just as much for people coming home from a restaurant as it is for the skiers.

Honden

Sage would have had a ball here!

Pool

An outdoor heated pool in the center of the village.

Flatlanders

Two flatlanders near the top of the mountain. We just finished our first (and last) black diamond run of the day.

ATV's on ice

ATV races on the ice track. I’m sure that Katie and Jody could have cleaned up this crew!

Gondola

The photo doesn’t do this gondola justice. Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the day that we rode it to mid-mountain. The gondola stopped here and you had to walk across a metal grate (the flat part in this picture) to get back to solid ground. What you can’t see from this perspective is that the walkway was perched over about a 1000 foot drop down a rocky gorge in the side of the mountain. Let’s just say that Beth didn’t look down through the grate as she jogged with her ski’s to solid ground.

Slopeside

This photo gives a good perspective of the three tiers of the mountain. These two gondolas that you can see are on the second tier.

Dennenstraat 7

Wij hebben een nieuw huis gekocht!

It’s been a stressful few days as we tried to navigate the process to secure a bid on the house. As I’ve told some of you, the market here is extremely hot right now and houses frequently sell for more than the asking price.

The way that you bid is downright bizarre. Whoever makes the first bid on the house holds all the power. Anyone who comes in afterwards with another bid has no idea what the opening bid was. And to make it worse, you only have one opportunity to place your bid. So it better be right on target! Once you make your bid, then the opening bidder is notified and has an opportunity to match or beat your bid. As the second bidder, you are done. You have no other chance to again match/beat the other's bid. It is downright brutal!

We were sent information on this house late last week, but they were not doing any showings before Tuesday. We got a 2:00 timeslot for viewing. As soon as I walked in I knew it was our place. It had the kitchen on the front side of the house and was built out in the back. This configuration is pretty rare and leaves a large open room on the back south facing garden. It allready had the third story built up and everything was remodelled in the last 5 years. There is very little work to do besides painting and carpet. Perfect!

But by the time that I got there, there were already two bids for the house. Did I mention that Beth was in Germany from Monday to Wednesday? So, what do I do?

I sucked up and made as an attractive bid as I thought was possible without causing a divorce in our happy little family. Full price, no contingencies. My realtor called it in from the sidewalk in front of the house. She suggested that we put some pressure on them to accept by setting a 6:00PM deadline on the offer. At 5:30 I got a call from the realtor. They rejected the offer because of the deadline. There was so much interest in the house that they wanted to continue showings for another day. The only goal of which would be to drive bids up over the asking price. Disappointed and sure that we'd lose the house, I let the bid ride until noon on Wednesday.

To my surprise, I got a call at 12:30 on Wednesday that the bid had been accepted! Our “no contingency” clause had sealed the deal. So, I had just spent almost $400,000 Euros on a house that Beth had never seen! And you thought I didn’t have any cajones!

All the paperwork is due in next week. I don’t think we’ll be taking possession for several months…another oddity in the way that the real estate market works here. But for now, we're happy with the purchase. We’re flying down to the Alps in France to ski away a carefree weekend with friends.

Beth will get to see the house next week. ;-)

Firewood

- what a difference a few thousand miles make.



When we lived back in the mountains of Western Maryland, Beth, Sage and I spent many weekends out in the forest with the tractor, trailer, and a couple of chainsaws cutting up firewood for winter. We heated our house with wood and needed to have 12 cords cut and stacked in the barn before the first snows flew.

It was hard work, but we really enjoyed doing it. It made the evenings in the hot tub seem that much more special.

Nowadays things are a little different ….




These little bags of wood are sold at our local garden store for 2.5 Euros each. We only use them on the open hearth for ambiance and we go through about 8 bags in the course of a winter here. It’s a far cry from loading the outside furnace three times a day.

In a way, I miss the woodcutting, hauling and stacking. I think that we’ll do a few loads “just for the fun of it” on one of our trips back to the land this year.