Le Franco Phoney

Someone very close to my heart participated in last weekend’s Defi Foly and he did his runs with his waterproof camera stuck to various places. The video from his snowboard is rather bumpy! This one, however, taken from a stick in his hand, proved quite stable, but unfortunately made it harder for him to balance once he was in the water (I think he was more concerned with keeping the camera balanced than himself!). So, if you want to experience the speed of the snow ramp at around 65km/h, click on the video below.

He left from the first height out of three. Imagine how much faster the speeds are from the top height without any turns. I guess the force of hitting the water from just the first ramp is enough for most contestants.

The weather in the French Alps is changeable at the best of times, so organising a BBQ while the ski lifts are still running is probably a bad idea. However, as you can see from the first photo below, the weather last weekend for the Defi Foly (I wrote more about it last year, here) was great! People were burning from the hot sun as they chowed down on some BBQed goodness, watching the stunt paragliders in the sky between the crazy people zooming across the lake on skis, snowboards, monoskis or snowscoots. See photo below for a sample of all that sunny goodness. The ramp in the background is in the sun and the snow was melting quickly. Our flagpole helped my friends find our group in amongst the crowds of people.

And then there’s that big cloud that dumps rain down amazingly quickly. This is what happened just after I had reapplied sunscreen to my burning shoulders. A friend who had an umbrella to protect her skin from the sun merely grinned as the rest of us ran for cover. The wind picked up and I feared the flagpole might fall, so with thongs/flip-flops/jandals/whatever-you-like-to-call-them on my feet, I slipped and slushed over the new mud to reach the pole. It’s actually just a fishing pole which slots into itself to reduce in size, and while I shrunk the pole, all my friends decided I made a good religious photo opportunity. Some have named me the flag-loving Romanian lady, and others are now calling me Mary. What you’re actually looking at here is a grass skirt, bikini, and flower lei hidden by a hoody and scarf to soak up the rain. Within five minutes of the rain starting, people had cleared off en masse. You can see just how empty it looks compared with the photo above. What strikes me most about this photo is my friend in the foreground who hasn’t noticed the rain at all due to his heightened interest in a box of cookies.

Meanwhile, the guy who won the Defi Foly, Philippe Troubat, broke all the previous records by reaching 155 metres — almost the width of the lake! That’s ten metres more than the previous best time of Freddy Quenet, who is normally the clear winner every year. Next year should be good. I might bring a rain coat.

Monday was the first day of the French ski instructors’ week-long competition. “ESF” stands for Ecole du Ski Français (French ski school), and their outfit, as seen on the roundabout here in St Jean de Sixt, is red. A friend and I drove to Chinaillon — part of the Le Grand Bornand ski resort — where all the action was happening, but we discovered a bit of action on the way there. As we drove through town in my very old Golf cabriolet, people in red outfits were everywhere, and while we stopped to let some walk across a pedestrian crossing, one yelled out in French: “Oh, a convertible! Here, I’ll just put my skis in the back.” Thankfully, before he could do so, the other instructors had cleared the pedestrian crossing and we were on our way.

In Chinaillon, the red outfits outnumbered the rest of us. We sat at a café at the bottom of the pistes to watch the entertainment. We couldn’t see the races, but lots of instructors had taken advantage of the pub further up, and they found some innovative ways to get to the bottom of the piste. One sipped his drink while flying past at high speed, as if relaxing on a sunlounger rather than bouncing down the lumpy piste. Many others had empty plastic beer cups hanging around their necks. One instructor skied over some skis laying on the snow, left by one of the other café customers who either didn’t see or didn’t mind, and then a couple of ESF cowboys skied past, complete with fake guns, cowboy hats and gingham shirts. One poor instructor tried to get a lift down on the back of his mate’s skis, but he skied off too quickly and the instructor slid down skate-style in just his ski boots. Funniest of all was the instructor piggy-backing another instructor. It was going really well until he had to slow down, and then there was a crash, a tumble and lots of laughter.

On the way home, we passed the decorated roundabout in St Jean de Sixt, which has changed a few times already. On Monday morning, a policeman mannequin was arresting a ski instructor while the other three ski instructor mannequins (pictured in last weekend’s photo) continued to ski down their plastic slope. By Monday afternoon, the policeman was gone and a ski instructor mannequin was installed on the roof of the little roundabout house — complete with his competitor number on his bib. Can you guess what the number was? If you guessed higher than 68 and lower than 70, you’d be spot on.

Hooray! After months of no action on the St Jean de Sixt roundabout, we finally have some mannequin action! They used to change so regularly, but I think this is the first time this winter that they’ve come out. Where else in the world would you find a roundabout with French ski school instructor outfits on it? There’s even a white ski slope, skis, poles goggles and hats, and a judge mannequin in the background. Why the judge? Read on.

The judge is there because these mannequins represent the French ski school version of a nativity scene. Each year, around 3000 members of the French ski school compete against each other in all sorts of snow-based competitions, and this year Le Grand Bornand are holding it for the second time in the competition’s sixty-year history. It’s a bit of an honour for ski resort really, and that’s why the roundabout has been decorated for the event. The judge shown on the roundabout could be judging anything from a boarder cross competition, to downhill skiing. This covers all their disciplines, so telemarking, cross-country skiing, and even freestyle competitions are included. More info, in French, here.

Apart from the competitions, there is loads of entertainment, and I’m pleased to see that the Radio Meuh DJs will be pumping out some grooves between the other DJs, bands, booze and cheese tastings on offer for free. So, thank you, St Jean de Sixt roundabout, for alerting me to the festivities of next week, which may have otherwise passed me by.

My Australian heritage is often lost here in France because I apparently have the same accent when I speak French as an English person. Lots of French people talk about how this cloudy weather must be like being back home. Except, of course, “back home” for me is Melbourne, which has been suffering from drought for close to ten years.

So, when this pamphlet came through my letterbox the other day, it made me giggle. The word for “kangaroo” in French is pronounced the same, but spelt differently, and often when I explain to someone that I’m Australian and not English, the word “kangarou” is bandied around. It’s one of the first French words that I instantly understood and it got me through many moments with strangers before I could speak any French: I could at least explain to them where I was from with one word that we both understood. Saying word was often accompanied with arms raised to the chest, like a kangaroo — sometimes mine, sometimes the French person’s. Everyone loves kangaroos!

In case you’re interested, this brochure was for courses run by a learning institution. It says: “my future is in the pocket”, referring to the kangaroo’s pouch for offspring I guess. What really surprised me was “DZOÏÏÏNG”. I don’t know if those umlauts are used in any French words or whether it’s made up as much as the word. A French friend has told me that “BOING” would be the more common usage in French — the same as in English, but after seeing “DZOÏÏÏNG”, I think I prefer it. Let’s see if I can bring it into common usage in English.

Below is a photo of a typical communal oven in France. A communal oven? What? Back in medieval times, these ovens, known in French as a “four banal” were used in many areas of the Alps as a way for villagers to cook bread. That sounds nice, doesn’t it. However, such privileges came at a cost: those wanting to use the oven would have to pay the village lord a fee, and according to some sources, home ovens were often outlawed so that villagers had no choice but to use the community oven. I can’t imagine living in such a rugged place during the drafty medieval days, let alone living without the heat of an oven. What a great monopoly for the village lord.

The oven pictured here, taken last week on a snowy day in Les Allues, just down the road from Méribel, and one of many communal ovens in the valley, is no longer the only oven in town. The locals tell me that the community oven is still used sometimes, but only for special occasions such as town fêtes. Looking at it closely, you can see the darkened wood and bricks from previous baking sessions.I guess the wood has been replaced more than once over the years, and probably some of the bricks too, but when I lived in Les Allues many years ago, walking past the big old oven always led me to imagine the villagers’ way of life and what a relief it must have been to have this great big warm room to sit in, waiting for their bread to cook. The oven sits in the centre of the village, which, although modernised to a certain extent, still bears the charm of an old French farming village despite its proximity to the pistes. The village has found a balance between the medieval charm of its buildings and the twin-tip skis and inverted camber snowboards that are now as prevalent in town as personal ovens. Les Allues have certainly seen some changes, but its communal oven remains, thankfully.

I’ve been away in Méribel this week, which is why it’s taken me until now to do a blog entry. Méribel is far more bling than La Clusaz or Le Grand Bornand, and I was expecting to be totally out of my element despite spending many seasons there as a ski bum. Apart from a group of young chalet hosts who drove me away from where I was seated with their attempts to impress each other at how hungover they were, I was pleasantly surprised overall. First up, CoreUPT skis were everywhere! Candide Thovex apparently has more of an influence on the bling kids than I thought! Another surprise was seeing the artwork of Charlie Adam, who I wrote about just the other day, on the front of the Méribel piste map and on various bits of resort advertising. It seems that La Clusaz is having more of an influence on Méribel than Méribel is on La Clusaz! I’d never have thought that possible, and it makes me proud to live here. Here’s some Candide action, although I recommend you go directly to candidekamera.com and watch it in full screen mode to really get the most out of the vid. Enjoy.