It's Official...

I have skied exactly two times in my life. The first time was freshman year at university where I fell, tore the ACL in my right knee, and had reconstructive surgery. A few weeks ago I decided that undaunted, I would try and ski a second time. Again I fell flat on my face and hurt my knee. Today I found out officially that I tore the ACL in my left knee. Now I have to decide whether or not to have reconstructive surgery on my left knee. For someone who isn't all that athletic or active, I sure do have my unfair share of injuries.

Costa Del Sol

This past weekend the UK was hit with severe rain and gale force winds (80+ mph) but I knew nothing of this as I was sunning myself in Puerto Banus, Spain where it was a mild ~70F. I went to Spain this past weekend for yet another training session and asked my friend Tonya to join me once again. By the time the trip came we were both excited to get out of London and head for some sunshine. I think it's just about this time of year when people are the most affected by the gloomy weather and neither Tonya or I were spared. We only stayed a couple of days but it was long enought to get a slight tan, some mojitos, and the requisite dish of paella.

Althought it was fantastic to feel the warmth of the sun again, I probably won't be returning to Puerto Banus in the future. As much as the Europeans may complain that the Americans have no sense of culture/adventure to explore new destinations, I think that the Europeans are much more exposed to this criticism. In my travels I've discovered that the Europeans (mainly the Brits and the Germans) have a tendency to seek out or create places that offer warmer climates and then completely homogenize them by sucking out any sign of local flavor. Puerto Banus is an excellent example of this since it is basically a destination that was artificially created in the likeness of what Brits and Germans believe a city on the coast of Spain should be. There are marinas with expensive yachts, alleys with designer clothing shops, and hotels filled pools and lagoons. However, there are no signs of local Spanish culture. For a small fortune, every restaurant serves either fish and chips or paella and sangria, which is not a Spanish dish or drink typical of the Andalucia region where Puerto Banus is located in. You also didn't need to go far to find your local Irish pub. This was most apparent to us when, trying to get a drink before dinner (since dinner starts at 10pm), we entered a romantic looking Italian restaurant. The cheesy owner in his "Miami Vice" outfit seated us in the bar where the walls were decorated with pictures of him with celebrities. For 30 minutes we watched as couple after couple of 80+ year old Brits came in for their "early bird" dinner special and he kissed each one on both cheeks.

We were much luckier in our choices though since we were able to find a couple really good authentic restaurants that had food we wouldn't likely see in London or San Francisco. In the pictures you can see the traditional dish of espetones de sardinas (sardines roasted on bamboo spits).

Sorry I haven't got much to write about this time but I didn't make it back from Puerto Banus until ~1am last night so I'm completely exhausted. It was also a serious downer to come back to some horrid weather after spending two days laying out by the pool. I did manage to take a few pictures though.

To Ski or Not to Ski

One picture can easily describe last week in Germany for me.



When I moved to the UK I had a list of several things I wanted to do in Europe before I left (I may share my list at another time) which included hitting the slopes at some point. I had always wanted to snowboard/ski in Europe but it was always too expensive and too far to go for questionable conditions. Any snow holiday in Europe would need to be booked far in advance and who knows if there would be snow by the time the trip came. Several weeks ago I was scheduled to come to Nurnberg, Germany to work at a trade show. I figured this would be a great opportunity to stay the weekend and hit the slopes. I emailed the sales team in our Munich office and before I knew it we were all set to go. Someone in the sales office had booked rooms for us in a guest house in the small village of Fischbachau, where he lives, and it would only be a short 15-minute drive to the resort near his house. He even offered to lend us his season passes so we wouldn't have to pay a dime for lift tickets.

The week of the trip came and it was just a disaster. The person who planned the trip for us got scheduled to go to a meeting in the San Jose office. Although we were able to meet him the night before he left, we were completely on our own to head to the slopes. The slopes near Munich also had not seen any snow for the last 5-6 weeks so the conditions were not going to be great and everyone else from the local office backed out as well. So here we were in this small village on our own with no snow while the person who planned the trip was enjoying 100" base at Heavenly Ski Resort.

The next morning we headed to the resort to find the conditions had further degraded. The mountain with no snow turned into a rainy mess of mud and little snow. We'd come all this way though so we weren't going to turn around now. Seeing as the conditions weren't promising, I decided I may as well take some ski lessons and spend my day challenging myself. I've snowboarded for nearly 10 years so snowboarding in horrible conditions wouldn't be any fun. I rented some skis and was assigned a 19-year-old recent high-school graduate as a teacher who looked like she couldn't be bothered to teach an old grandma like me in her hungover state. You could tell that she hadn't the faintest idea why I hadn't been skiing since I was two, like her, and why did I think I could learn now. You'll love the irony that her name was Theresa as well. I decided to just be happy that I had a private lesson with ski rental for well less than I would pay at any resort in Lake Tahoe. We went through most of my lesson and I was progressing fairly well, even Theresa commented that she didn't believe I'd only skied one before. We were using the small t-bar lift on the side of the slopes and were headed down for the last run of my lesson. I got a bit distracted and let go of the t-bar too early. Theresa said I could get back on the t-bar lift if I grabbed it quickly which just turned into me missing the t-bar and laying splat on the wet snow. Before I knew it the next t-bar grabbed onto my ski and instead of flipping off, it pulled my left leg all the way back until I heard my knee pop. At this point I was laying on the wet snow unable to move, trying not to cry out of sheer pain, and trying to figure out how I was going to get down the stupid mountain. None of this impressed Theresa and I don't think she'll be teaching any old ladies like me anytime soon.

The snow mobile finally came to collect me and brought me down to their small hut where I waited for the ambulance to take me to the emergency room. I was just happy to hear that this tiny village had a doctor let alone a real hospital. I was brought to the ER where I had some x-rays taken and a very stoic doctor poked around my leg a bit. In the end 2 hours on the slopes cost me 3 hours in the ER, 228 euros, a strained ligament, and a very injured ego (for everything else there's Mastercard). For the most part I'm doing fine, just hobbling around a bit like an invalid but I'm able to drive and get around. I probably need to have an MRI taken at some point. The gods are definitely trying to tell me something considering I've skied twice in my life and each time I've injured a knee (I tore my right ACL the first time). Although I've never had a snowboarding related injury (knock on wood). I really do have to thank my coworker, Stefano, for being such a great help to me. He ended his ski day early to come to the ER with me and even bought me a hot chocolate :-)

Of course my fantastic weekend didn't end there. My friends, the Beckers, happened to be in Munich at the same time so I went down to spend Saturday with them since I wasn't flying out until the evening. Mrs. Becker is five months pregnant so it was great to see them since last I saw her was pre-pregnancy. We had dinner Friday night and had a full day of sightseeing planned for Saturday, including a visit to the BMW Museum. We got up on Saturday, had a massive breakfast at the hotel and headed down to the Marienplatz area to see the Glockenspiel chime at 10:30 am. We walked around a bit and within 30 minutes the blue sky turned to pouring rain, to torrential hail, and finally to snow. We didn't have any shelter and it didn't help to be running around on my bad knee. On top of that we ducked into the tourist office where we found a brochure for the BMW Museum and read that the museum had not opened yet (it's been under renovation for a couple years now).

The kicker to all this was that during our tour of the Munich Residenz, I received a text message from British Airways informing me that my 9pm flight was canceled and that I should call to make other flight arrangements. I quickly called British Airways and Stefano and we rushed to Munich airport to try and catch a 4pm flight. Due to the weather the airport had closed down for several hours so there were massive queues of angry customers with no place to go. Luckily we made it to the airport on time and our flight was only delayed to 5pm. This was unlike some customers whose 9am flight was canceled, then got rebooked on the 1pm flight which turned up 5 minutes after our flight started boarding.

All in all I'm happy to be home safe and sound while warm and dry. I'm not too much worse for the wear and the few pictures I took are on the right.