Côte d’Oex hot air balloon festival & 1st ski

A few weeks ago on Sunday (27-Jan-08), I drove out to the Portes du Soleil area in the Valais region on the other side of lave Geneva with Jason, Kelly, and Lily for the Côte d’Oex hot air balloon festival. (Portes du Soleil has hundreds of kms of trails serviced by the ski lifts and is where Jason and I will be mountain biking this spring and summer). The atmosphere at the festival was uplifting - pun intended. I never imagined seeing so many hot air balloons in the air at once, especially with such a magnificent backdrop. They were going up all day - about one every 10 or 15 minutes. There were balloons of all shapes and sizes, decorative, ordinary, advertising, and even a replica of the Breitling balloon (the silver one) which circumnavigated the earth. The pictures sum up the day best - it was a crisp, yet beautiful day. We wrapped up with some sledding, then a very long drive back to Geneva - we had to sit in traffic for hours with all of the festival attendees as well as all of the skiers for the areas' many pistes. Speaking of the pistes, I went skiing for the first time in France the following weekend with Seigbert (a friend from Crossroads and also a leader in the ALPHA course, I am attending at Crossroads) at le Grand Bornand ski area. This is very close to the area at the Col du Colombier where I wathced the Tour de France last July (which incidentally, the Tour is already a train wreck for 2008 as the former Discovery, now Astana squad including would-be defending champ Contador, and teamates Leipheimer and Kloden, did not get a spot). The skiing was great fun, not a huge resort, yet it seemed the perfect blend of runs and relaxation, including one off-piste area and a trick / jump run which I took several big airs off of. (live-action pics at the bottom). The following weekend, I went cross-country skiing with Jason, kelly, and Lily for the first time ever. It was a fun challenge and a decent workout; most of the tiredness did not hit until the next day - this, I thought to myself, would be fun to do at a marathon distance, maybe next year right? Speaking of marathons, I found out a while back that both Paris and London are full, and since I have no prospect of getting a bib, the training I began in December is slowing down considerably, though I am maintaining some decent base miles in just in case. Nevertheless, this will free up time for my cycling training for my dominating conquest of Alp d'Huez this spring. Stephanie is coming in town today (Friday 15-Feb-08), we are heading to Zurich and Amsterdam, and possibly Montreaux - yea, my first visitor!

Live action sequences (and one still) from skiing with Seigbert (the top of the jump is at the base of the two red poles, imagine a line going between them -- although it is bright, as you can see, this was a big jump, and I went about 10' high and 25' -30' out):

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