I just want to know which shop did the snow boarders edges, they were super sharp.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Chris, very sorry to read of your injury. Please add my voice to your GBS well-wishers. Skiing with Demons (or: The TAO of Chris) came up a lot during our last Zell adventures.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
If anyone is still vaguely interested - The Chalet Project is over, I can't face another season.
Now I can simply go on skiing holidays like normal people ( or maybe become a snow gypsy and live in a well insulated camper van).
PS - Leg fully reattached and mostly follows instructions now. Rumours of amputation were greatly exaggerated - although they did help sell a lot of books
If anyone is still vaguely interested - The Chalet Project is over, I can't face another season.
not surprised if you only skied one day per week. What on earth was the point? Seriously?
Glad to hear the leg is better!
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
@skiingwithdemons,
You do know this was gonna be the best one yet?
Powder and bluebirds aligning with your free days!
Quiet slopes with only well mannered skiers
easy going, well behaved guests from straightforward bookings.
Well probably not 😂 but you never know.
Best of luck this season and thanks for the books that nudged me out here.
Although I never did make it home.
Makes it all a bit easier next season I guess 😂
@jedster, Yes that was a little exaggerated. I do usually ski more than one day a week. But it's mostly Girlfriend Skiing with guests. Very pleasant, but it is rare I get to ski to my own agenda.
@hawkwind, It seems my books have prompted a few folks to setup their own Chalet Projects, hopefully with a bit more acumen than me. This maybe one of the reasons it's getting harder to find a suitable chalet in Morzine. Or it could be that Zine is getting ridiculously popular.
The Ski Nazis are running their own Project next season too ( just Jan and March). So maybe I'll be staying as their guest a lot next season (payback time) "Valerie , this porridge is too hot."
I'm now being inundated with offers of accommodation. Maybe Ill sofa surf all season.
I've also been invited on a skiing road trip - I'd probably get a whole book out of that one.
As they say "When one chalet door closes several others open". (hmm , must use that line).
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
skiingwithdemons wrote:
@jedster, Yes that was a little exaggerated. I do usually ski more than one day a week. But it's mostly Girlfriend Skiing with guests. Very pleasant, but it is rare I get to ski to my own agenda.
I must admit maybe I didn't quite grasp the scope or intent of the Chalet Project - I'd always thought it was supposed to be a little bit of a self funding collective where the guests covered your overhead rather than a full serve business. Or maybe you're just too nice to say "actually today I was going to do my own thing"
After all it is free
After all it is free
@skiingwithdemons, Good luck with the next stage of your life. I have enjoyed your books and hope whatever comes next for you leads to more inspiration and more books!
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
best wishes, loved your books, always telling people going to Manzine to buy them!
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
@CaravanSkier, @endoman, Thanks guys. Very encouraging.
I need to do something ski-related this winter - SWD3 is about 8 chapters short of being an actual book!
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
Oh dear, I just read a review from, what sounds like, a young person (pre-apres ski age).
- I think his parents are going to kill me
This book changed my life!
ByLeigh Horsfieldon 17 August 2018
Format: Paperback
I only borrowed this book off a friend who said that I would like it but after reading it, I swiftly bought the second and finished it within a few days. I love the Skiing with Demons books - they're so relatable to skiers (Especially if you've stayed in Morzine or any other places mentioned. Can't wait for SWD - III (If there is one in the making)
If you actually care, this is how the book may have changed my life: I'm still at an age where I'm lucky enough to decide what to do with my life (And an age where I've never experienced Après Ski). Before reading this book I was already a ski fanatic - completely obsessed. My favourite place to ski was the Portes du Soleil (Specifically Morzine) and I was contemplating living there. This book has been a bigger eye opener than most days at school for me. Chris, with his relatable skiing stereotypes and fantastic humour has convinced me to become a professional chalet host. My Logic - If someone undergoing mid-life crisis (Such as Chris) can do it - so can a person undergoing a pre-life crisis!
I hope that in a few years time I will be able to join the elite club of bacon runners at the start of the season on their annual commute to the best office in the world.
My Response:
Hi Leigh, Thanks for the great review and your enthusiasm for my books. It is good to know what you want to do with your life at an early age ( pre-apres ski). I'm a little concerned that your parents might not be so impressed with my influence. I, at least, had a few quid ( and a pension prevision) when I embarked on my new life as a Chalet Host.
As well as being amusing, I hoped my books might serve as a warning to those thinking of jacking it all in and heading for the Alps. But, if you've read them both you'll be aware of the downsides as well as the ups.
Maybe I got it the wrong way round? Do the hedonistic chalet host thing when you’re young - then become an accountant when you're old. In any case, I wish you “bon chance”.
Yes there is to be a SWD3 and it's in the making. I’m just struggling to finish it. It needs a conclusion and I haven't yet decided how the Chalet Project ends.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
DECISION MADE AND BRIDGES BURNT, CHIS TOMLINSON HAS COMMITTED TO A COURSE OF ACTION – THERE IS TO BE NO CHALET PROJECT THIS COMING SEASON, WINTER 2019
There will be no bacon run, no Land Rover angst, no food allergies to dance around and no living with 24-hour party people. But most of all the author of Skiing With Demons is looking forward to skiing without cooking a bucket load of eggs first.
You can make important decisions with your head or your heart. Whichever one you choose, the other organ usually haunts you. But all I feel right now is excitement - I’m actually looking forward to the forthcoming ski season!
It’s September now and the calls are coming in. It seems that everyone is now thinking about booking skiing accommodation. Of course if you want to ski this New Year or half term, you are already too late to book anywhere and you may want to review your decision to have had children.
I did have a slight pang when I turned down what would have been my first booking. It initially felt very wrong to say 'no' to a perfectly good piece of business. Then it felt good, in a wicked way, to be delivering the bad news. However, articulating the very sentence that summed it up, 'No chalet this year mate, I’ve decided to just go skiing', I knew I’d made the right decision.
Surprisingly, as the enquiry emails come in, I’ve discovered what I’ve been missing. I’ve received many invites to go on holiday with former guests and offers of accommodation in Morzine. Even the Ski Nazis*, loyal supporters of my project, have booked their own chalet for next season. I may stay with them just for fun one week and complain about the consistency of the porridge. All in all, I’ve got myself three weeks in Morzine and it’s not even October.
Added to that, the Ski Club of GB have come through this year and are sending me to Saas Fee and Meribel to lead two of their holidays. Not wanting to sound like a vulture, I could also be called upon by them to cover colleagues who get injured. Inevitably someone will break a bone or, like me last year, be felled in action. With no commitments this winter other than having fun, I can fill in as requested.
Perhaps, with a season off, it would be a good time to re-mount my campaign for higher BASI status. Part of me knows I’ll need a skiing goal if the Apres Aliens* are to be avoided. But then I know that BASI courses are purgatory. 'BASI have been ruining skiing since 1963', as one disgruntled candidate once told me.
But on this one, I’m going with my heart (not my head) and say 'no', I’m going to try and actually enjoy my skiing season instead; not toil it away and spend hundreds of pounds trying to ski like a ballerina.
With no chalet to run and no ambitions to become a fully qualified instructor, it might seem like my alpine dream has fizzled out and the Chalet Project is over. I feel like I might be letting down those who have enjoyed my books and foolishly been inspired to create their own Chalet Projects. I’d like to tell them something profound like, 'it’s a journey not a destination', but as the Alps are actually a destination, that’s not going to work.
Metaphors aside, my journey has ended, even if theirs is just beginning. However, even though my alpine dream might need a new name, it is very much alive – it has just become peripatetic.
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Well, good on you. You had courage to do what you wanted when you wanted, you lived and learnt, had some great times, and some not so great times, some shared with us, and life moves on! You have the ability to write about life in a humorous way which entertains people and may help to earn you a living if thats what you want. Whatever comes next ....... write a story about it! Unless of course it interferes with time on the slopes
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
as one door closes, another opens...
regardless Chris, you have the memories, now you can actually go & ski & enjoy it - seems like a plan to me
Enjoy, keep safe & have fun.
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Thanks @CaravanSkier, I'm really looking forward to this season, a feeling I've not had for a couple of years now. I will miss my regulars of course - well most of them.
@michaelbury17, Skiing for enjoyment! I'd almost forgot that was possible.
Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
@skiingwithdemons, but still writing SWD3 on your travels, I hope? Enjoy a season free of whinging guests and I hope you have lots of fun.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
@HoneyBunny, Thanks and yes - I will still tap away at my laptop whenever I can.
I already have some 50k random words already penned for my next book.
Quit a lot of them are about recovering from injury, retiring from the chalet business and quite lot of the others are gibberish. I still need some themes and an ending too.
I have to return to the dreaded Tignes in December to take the SCGB Leaders refresher course which might be a good end point for SWD3 - a happy ending I hope.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Best of luck in Tignes in December, looking forward to reading about it. Ideally if you can publish by New Year I can read about it in Tignes
@skiingwithdemons, December is not an ending, merely the beginning of a new chapter. If you have a pass/fail on the course rather than just a tick in the CPD box, it makes little difference to the ending as either way you'll have a season of skiing to participate in.
@ousekjarr, hilarious, the armoor might chafe a little in the moguls.
I have seriously thought of wearing my motorbike trousers (kevlar with lots of pads). But where do you stop? Protection for the arms as well? Cricket box?
Yes, I'm unlikely to fail the refresher course, few leaders do, but I have a history of pioneering failure.
- I think it's a little more then a CPD course too.
The main theme for SWD3 (so far) is centred around the question, 'why do people like skiing?'
and what personality type do you need to be to enjoy it - many don't.
Is it the act of skiing itself, people enjoy or just simply being in the mountains?
Is skiing all about the skiing, or the environment in which it is done?
@ousekjarr, hilarious, the armoor might chafe a little in the moguls.
I have seriously thought of wearing my motorbike trousers (kevlar with lots of pads). But where do you stop? Protection for the arms as well? Cricket box?
Bubble wrap is your friend.
Quote:
Yes, I'm unlikely to fail the refresher course, few leaders do, but I have a history of pioneering failure.
- I think it's a little more then a CPD course too.
You mean more £?
Quote:
The main theme for SWD3 (so far) is centred around the question, 'why do people like skiing?'
and what personality type do you need to be to enjoy it - many don't.
But here, those people do not exist
Quote:
Is it the act of skiing itself, people enjoy or just simply being in the mountains?
SnowDomes and rolling carpets seem to suggest the former. Ski Touring is a good example of the later.
Quote:
Is skiing all about the skiing, or the environment in which it is done?
No.
Quote:
Thoughts anyone ?
See above
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Thanks @admin, - I was actually looking for more profound eloquence, that I might plagiarize, than answers to a survey
After all it is free
After all it is free
Not sure this will help, but for the actual skiing for me, its being in that moment, rarely happened to me lol, but just when everything is working as it should, and you know it. There is a perfect harmony between the environment and the activity, nothing else exists!
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
skiingwithdemons wrote:
The main theme for SWD3 (so far) is centred around the question, 'why do people like skiing?'
and what personality type do you need to be to enjoy it - many don't.
Is it the act of skiing itself, people enjoy or just simply being in the mountains?
Is skiing all about the skiing, or the environment in which it is done?
Thoughts anyone ?
#1 - "Skiing" itself can mean all sorts. Racing, piste bashing, off piste, touring, a holiday. I live a short drive away from a dome but I've not once skied there.
#2 - You can like more than one thing about it - even aside from #1
For me as a kid brought up in city suburbs in the Midlands, and never having been to the mountains - the Alps environment was enough of a buzz to begin with but then the sport that followed too it to another level. I guess the icing on the cake was the sense of adventure and the friendships that developed through doing it.
I think the trouble with writing a book about it will be those that do it will already know it and those that don't simply won't understand.
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Just another thing, it can be highly surprising, those that don't like it.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
What's the timing of your reps-reboot?
snowHeads are there, in Tignes, in force the first 2 weeks of Dec.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
Quote:
I think the trouble with writing a book about it will be those that do it will already know it and those that don't simply won't understand
- you've hit it on the head there @Layne
And that there are many types of "skiing" and the pleasure of each is multifaceted. Apart from mogul skiing , where it's just masochistic.
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
@admin, the refresher is 15-19th Dec. The new leaders course is the 15th for two weeks, I think.
- so dozens of blue jackets I'm afraid.
I'm in Val the week before (8th), remembering how to ski off-piste and hopefully why I enjoy it.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
skiingwithdemons wrote:
Apart from mogul skiing , where it's just masochistic.
Oh, I dunno. I've grown to quite like them. But then I've been known to put myself through various degrees of skiing related misery and yet keep coming back for more.
Maybe that's a part of it - for some at least - the idea that some of it is difficult, but not impossible. Maybe. Or perhaps it's just going fast, mountains, and beer with friends.
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
@UkuleleDave,
Quote:
Or perhaps it's just going fast, mountains, and beer with friends.
- couldn't have put it better myself - but I was hoping for a full chapter out of this
BASI - misery is thy middle name.
Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
skiingwithdemons wrote:
Is it the act of skiing itself, people enjoy or just simply being in the mountains?
Is skiing all about the skiing, or the environment in which it is done?
Thoughts anyone ?
It's as different as there are skiers. I think oddly a Clarkson column best encapsulated it for me - it's a massive ballache and incredibly expensive (for an average Brit relative to other leisure activities per hour) but when you are doing it you are sufficeintly engaged to forget about everything else and just experience joy.
And once you are sucked in it is incredibly addictive. What I can't fathom are people who are casual about whether they have a ski holiday this year or not, while I'm scrabbling with vacation days trying to work on my next "hit".
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
@Dave of the Marmottes, in a shameless bid for a royalty share there!
Well put btw.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Dave of the Marmottes wrote:
And once you are sucked in it is incredibly addictive. What I can't fathom are people who are casual about whether they have a ski holiday this year or not, while I'm scrabbling with vacation days trying to work on my next "hit".
@admin, the refresher is 15-19th Dec. The new leaders course is the 15th for two weeks, I think.
- so dozens of blue jackets I'm afraid.
I'm in Val the week before (8th), remembering how to ski off-piste and hopefully why I enjoy it.
Many of us Snowheads will be in Tignes the week you’ll be in Val, so it might be worth adding your name to the ‘I’ll be in the area’ on the PSBFU2018 thread. Hopefully the links between Tignes and Val will be open like last year.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
@Dave of the Marmottes, excellent Clarkson quote, might disguise and reuse.
@admin, no royalty shares available - maybe a free copy of the book if I use a SH quote.
I'll send Dave's copy to Jeremy
@geepee, will do. And hook up if the Ski Club crowd get on my nerves too much ( or vice-versa)
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
skiingwithdemons wrote:
@geepee, will do. And hook up if the Ski Club crowd get on my nerves too much ( or vice-versa)
Nah you won't want to hang with the "bedwetters" when you're with the ubermensch of the SKGB reps.
PS my "quote" wasn't a verbatim lift - far too succinct for JC - I'd have had to shoehorn gags about salt soup and girls called Arabelle and paraplegia into it
FAQ
Poster: A snowHead
or maybe become a snow gypsy and live in a well insulated camper van).
