Egypt

Christmas in St. Veit

(Note:  You have to excuse the blockyness of the pictures.  It's caused by Jpeg compression.  Jpeg can compress a 580,000 byte file into13,000.  If I didn't compress them, you would have to wait weeks for this page to down load.) 

This year, 1999, Carol and I spent Christmas without any visiting family.  We decided not to stay home.  We thought we might go to Africa, but that didn't sound Christmassy enough (And it was very expensive.  You wouldn't think it would be expensive, but I 'm told that the camel driver and bush beater unions are very strong.  The Nubian goat herders, however, are reasonable.)  We chose to go skiing in St. Veit, Austria, with a group from our local ski club, Sci Marco. 

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Here is a picture of the mountains we flew over on the way into St. Veit.  

Actually, we drove.  Its a picture of the mountains on our way to Budapest in November of 1999,  but it fit nice.  

Here is our route.  It was about 660 miles and we drove it in eleven hours.  An easy drive unless you have Captain Kirk, aka Carol,  as a passenger.  She sits in her command chair deforming the center consol and door handle with her death grip because she lives in fear that I, who have been driving for 44 years without an accident, am going to kill her in the next 30 seconds.  Come to think of it, she might not make the 30 seconds.   Actually it can be quite relaxing because I don't always have to look ahead.  I can look at the scenery and, if the traffic situation changes by so much as a hubcap width, I will see her trying to push the dashboard through the window or hear the hurricane like inrush of her breath as she sucks the dust off every horizontal surface in the car.  As a matter of fact, I have to keep a window cracked open to keep the vacuum from breaking my ear drums. 

We arrived at our four star hotel with Carol covered in sweat and me with a slight ear ache.  It had just started to snow.  The hotel was beautiful, the rooms too warm, the food abundant and tasty and the gluhwein dynamite.  Gluhwein is a hot mulled wine that makes you happy to be in Austria (or anywhere for that matter.).  

Our room.  The white covers on the bed are about 5 inches thick.  Called duvets.  They keep you very warm, but they are a little heavy.  I would wake up in the morning with sore toes from holding the duvet up all night.  I soon learned to sleep on my side.

We were greeted by eight inches of new snow the first morning.  It snowed all day.  Absolutely beautiful.  I got out my new directions and put my new chains on in the new snow.  I invented new words.  
Turning in new powder snow is difficult for new skiers. They learn new words too.  Like, "Holy s..., how do I turn these things?" 

Off to the slopes!!  1 mile by car.
Our first view of the valley 1/2 way up the main lift.  At Alpendorf ski resort one does not take the lift up and start skiing.  One takes the main lift up to the bottom of the other lifts and then goes higher before starting the slide-for-your-life down the mountain.  

A little farther up the main lift. These beautiful gondolas were in excellent condition and the crews that operated them were very professional.  A marked difference from skiing in Italy where an exciting part of your day can be the chair lift hitting you in the back of the knees at twenty miles an hour.  (Yesterday, at Rocarasso, Italy, the little gate to the chair lift closed on me and knocked me down, while I was down the gate closed on my head, but didn't knock me out.  The Italian behind me tried to do that with his ski pole.)

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