Unchained melody...

This morning, up we got, bright and early!  Yesterday was a rain (!) day, so we hung out on "vacation" all day.  However, in the night the weather changed to snow, and we have another foot of fresh snow!

We were at the lift early for us (9 or so), and purchased our tickets.  I noticed at that point that the lifts weren't running; when I asked, she told me that they had to work on the lift for about fifteen minutes as a result of the freeze last night. No problem!

After a little while of standing around, we noticed a pile of other prospective skiers moving away from the lift and taking the shuttle to the neighboring ski lift point.  Hmmm.  Time to ask the people who know rather than the people selling tickets.  I wandered around to find the guys working on the lift.  Turns out that a safety mechanism on the lift broke during the night because of the freeze.  Repairs?  At least an hour.

After some wandering and thinking, we decided to change the pass to include the French side of the mountain.  As almost everything does, it had an unintended/unanticipated consequence:  we need to have our passports to ski!

We decided to go home for the hour of waiting instead of getting a shuttle, since we had to get our passports in any case.  It would give us time for a snack, and so on.

And this is where the plan came unstuck.

As we were going up the steep driveway, the chains (which had struck fear in Michael's heart all week) came apart.  Meaning, we were blocking the road, couldn't get up, and couldn't get down (safely).  Michael wrestled with the things, teaching me some new words (fortunately the children had run upstairs to work on the hot chocolate), and sort-of-kind-of got the one back on.  He went up 6 inches, and the other one promptly came off.  More bad words and much wrestling later, he got that one back on.  But the van did NOT want to budge.

Adding to the stress, of course, the previously untraveled road became Main Street.  There were cars wanting to get by both directions.  I went and chatted up the drivers, letting them know that -- as miserable as it was for them -- it was even worse for us.  Everyone was very kind, and regaled us with stories of Erik's son-in-law going off the side of the cliff (young daughter in the car) while Erik casually observed them from the balcony, others sliding completely down the hill (or working for hours on chains), and so on.  I'm not sure whether it helped or not, but I did feel better about blocking everyone.

Eventually, Michael determined that the chains were past fixing.  Erik & Ada's neighbors (one of the cars we had blocked) were extremely kind, called around, and determined where new chains could be purchased.  Not only that, they were kind enough to drive us into town.  And boy, am I glad they did: while the town is an easily walked distance away (although less fun with skis, hence our driving), we never would have discovered where to purchase the chains.

We followed our guide into a bar.  Yes, a bar.  The hostess looked at us, our guide explained our mission, and she "oui, oui"'d us a few times and told us that she'd be right back.  After serving out some more drinks, she asked for the tire information, and handed our host a pad.  And here's where it became Swiss for just a moment (rather than Italian): rather than handing her the piece of paper on which he had already written the information, he wrote it out again on the piece of paper she gave him.  Note:  this was not a form, any kind of specialized entry device.  This was a notepad!

She disappeared down a hatch that I'd not previously noted, and one arm and a leg later, we were back on our way.  With chains that looked equally flimsy, I might add.

We're going to drown our troubles in the snow this afternoon...maybe we'll have easy stuff to deal with, like kids falling off of cliffs, skis coming off, and face plants.

Love,

Alexandra