Exporting Presents

Item 76 is also a present related one.

Two good friends emigrated to USA in the autumn of 2010, and I wanted to make sure they both got birthday presents (Nov/Dec) and that Christmas presents arrived in time.

Again, and mostly thanks to the power of the internet, I did achieve this :)

Birthday Present Quest 2010

Item 73 is a simple one, to buy my friend M a birthday present. This shouldn't have needed to be included on my Day Zero Project list, which is essentially a bucket list of experiences you want to do before you die. Or at least in the next 3 years.

However, despite M being one of my closet, nicest and most generous friends, I have spectacularly failed to buy him a birthday present for the last 3 years!

Each year I speak to his wife, find out what he wants, assure her I will purchase the present, and then I don't. I don't know why, I just have a blank spot around his birthday!

So, clearly it was time to rectify this. I was away visiting Dans family when his birthday fell, so I made Dan detour into Exeter on the day before his birthday to pick up the present I promised him a year ago. It was with much pride that we met on my return and I had a present to hand over. He seemed very pleased and his wife has reported that the present has been played with.

I am relieved to finally broken the bad habit. I don't know what will happen next year, lots of friends keep having children and this squeezes my present budget!

Snowboarding A Black Run!

Item 55 was to snowboard a black run.

You'll notice that I didn't specify how well I had to do it :) You might think that to count it, I needed to do it well, but personally I think it took so much guts that my attempts this winter counted!

My first ever black run was at Murren. Dan and I had the choice to turn down a red route or a black route. We noticed the black route was pretty short and thought we'd give it a go. The first bit was simply quite steep and so I simply took it slowly on my heel edge. Then we had to stop to see where the route went. It was off to the left, and it was narrower than my board... I was a little nervous so Dan went first to show me how to do it. And promptly fell over. I figured I could only do better and followed him down. It quickly widened to the most mogully slope ever, clearly a piste basher had never been near it. I edged over bumps, trees and bushes and was quite relieved to reach the red run and civilisation.

The photo above is taken at Birg on the last day where we had another go at an equally short black. It was fab! This time I attempted to do better than just slipping down on my heel edge so I bravely did a bit of falling leaf, until half way down, the slope flattened out and I quickly put two linked turns in before the route went over the edge of cliff and I had to get back under control. I got to the bottom feeling very proud of myself that I turned on a black slope. Wohooooo!