September 2009

September is fitness month with hikes, very long bicycle rides and the first skiing for the coming season. It started with the SHG hike, a very interesting day , it was a hike with various stops on route to explain the food pyramid and nutrition. After walking for a couple of hours we all blew it at Karin's because she had put on the most amazing dessert buffet. The 13th was the slow up though the Emmental, we hire flyers again, this certainly helps against those hills. We kept on bumping into people we know, so although we went on our own, it was definitely not lonely. Duncan wanted to test the battery capacity on the 40km route, so we didn't change batteries half way round this time, he also used the electric assistance the whole day, unfortunately just before the last hill up to Sumiswald his battery gave out. Michelle went on the flyers again 3 days later on the Heart Route from Willisau to Hasle Ruegsau, a total of 70km. She was pretty tired come the end of the day in spite of the electrical assistance. The weather was good on both days luckily. The weekend after saw us giving in to our wish to start skiing again, it has been 4 and a half months since we last skied. So we packed the car and headed of to Saas Fee for the weekend. We were not the only crazy people on the mountain, as usual, most of the ski area was reserved for racers. This is our main complaint about summer skiing in Saas Fee, not only do they have a majority of the Pistes closed for them, they are incapable of queuing in a reasonable manner for the lift back up again. They push in at the front, refused to go up with anyone else and a generally arrogant beyond words. We did meet a nice couple from Lausanne though, he was from Western Australia and she was from England, we skied a couple of runs with them. Saas Fee had been in the newspapers this week because of a huge ice avalanche. It was really visible from the village, it was amazing just how blue with broken edge of the glacier was.