Francis’ Weblog

Well I had a great week snowboarding. Myself and my family were in Les Houches a small resort near chamonix. Its the first time my parents have actually seen me snowboard… ever! We were at a family friends chalet which was about 100yards from the main life (so it was tough in the morning to get up go :)). The resort isn’t 100% snowboarding “compatible” there are quite a few flat bits and not impossible. I hired a guide for the day to hunt out the off-piste and there happened to be quite a bit of snow hidden around, but by the end of the week some of the pistes were rock hard … oh and a couple of button lifts from hell too no wonder it wasn’t in my World Snowboarding guide My mum had a couple of lessons skiing but unfortunatly had a bit of a crash and crushed one of her vertibra so it now out of action for a couple of months.

Ok i’m off with my family and another family for 1 weeks snowboarding. Were driving down to the alps and it will be the first time that any of my family has seen me snowboard!! all the other trips i’ve been with mates etc… and before that I was skiing. Anyway, back in a week. Taking a load of my digital compositing books so I can read up before my course starts.

ok i’m supposed to teach people to do 180s, 360s, olies, nolies, nose rolls and tail rolls… oh and whats nolie anyway?! ok so i’m feeling the pressure, also my last part of my Australia visa came through which means I have to go have a medical (within a month), which also means i’ve had to take a day off snowboarding because the Doc has a day off on Wednesday… the rookie day off!! grrr… anyway I had mon & tue to practise my freestyle elements then I had to mess around in town finding passport photos, photo copies of things etc… There is one pain with having a mountain which is 40mins away, there is only one lift up in the morning and one lift down in the afternoon. If you want to go up or down at any other time you have to hitch which is not too bad, lots of people do it.

Anyway today I headed off to the Doc for my medical in queenstown. It was a lot more basic than I thought… blood test, urine test, answer a couple of questions… open your mouth etc.. oh and a chest x-ray, unfortunatly I have to go back for the results so thats another day off!!!! oh well.. got MA (movement analysis) tommorow and a practise teach. Gonna run through some lesson plans tonight with Mike before I hit the hay…

Mike was telling me about the conditions on the mountain today, he was basically wakeboarding on the beginners slope… hope the snow holds out for the exams! it was a nice 20oC today down in town, I was sun bathing in queenstown.

Well i’ve been non-stop snowboarding for about 7 days now so decided to have a well deserved weekend off. I start my pre BASI instructor training next week. You usually get Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday off but because of the pre-course i’m working Wednesday too. The pre-course is basically a bit of training in how to teach snowboarding and also improving your snowboarding (stance and posture). At the end of the week they evaluate you and decide if you should continue on to the full BASI training and/or what you need to do in the mean time to get to that level…. anyway it all seems a bit scary so I took the weekend off to read up on the BASI central theme… and sleep

Part of the evaluation envoles checking to see if you “look the part” so you dont have tatty trousers, boots gaffa taped up etc. Matts goggles and board pants were … hmm… well not great so he went out and got some new kit and then pranced around the house:

When they got back we headed off for a walk around Wanaka lake before dinner got a couple of shots of the lake:

Oh and i’ve got my copy of Harry Potter don’t think i’ll be reading the BASI manuals much this week

SNOW INFO: No snow this weekend last snow fall was on the 14th July which was - Saddle Basin: 25cms, Main Basin: 18cm at the top and 8cm at base. But everything is more or less open now except the terrain park and Race training bar. But hey, with Treble Cone as it is with all the natural gullies and jumps you don’t need a terrain park!