Extreme weather

February 7, 2012 was an extremely cold day.  Not only was the temperature in the negative but the wind was being clocked at over 70kph (43ish mph).  I heard some local reports that the strong winds were pushing the water from the lake onto the quai in Versoix and the whole thing was frozen over.  Since I was about 3 min away, I took Andrew to check it out.

Doesn't he look excited to leave the house?  I felt bad for the kid, but it was a very quick trip outside.

Here's what I saw at the quai...

Les Houches and the Coupe du Monde - Day 2

Day two of the Men's downhill at Les Houches was almost as exciting as day 1 but much, much colder.  At one point in the morning the temperature was -20 ºC aka -4ºF!  And I'm pretty sure it got colder before we left.  These are the hazards of hanging out on a mountain. 

On Sunday the top 30 runs from Saturday moved on to the slalom competition.  This was really cool to see.  They go so fast and have to hit every gate or get disqualified. I forget who won, but he had the best combined time from both days.

Les Houches and the Coupe du Monde - Day 1

Early in February we went to Les Houches to see the men's downhill event of the Alpine World Cup.  Prior to moving to Geneva we didn't see many ski competitions on TV, mostly just for the Olympics.  After ski season started here, I noticed skiing on TV every weekend and many of the events were being held right in Switzerland.  So we decided to check out one of the events being held close to us in Les Houches.  Les Houches is located about an hour from Geneva in France and is a part of the Chamonix ski area. 

We got to the finish line just in time to see the first skiers.  One of the crowd favorites was Dider Couche (he's Swiss) and we also got to see Bode Miller ski.  It was pretty amazing to see how fast they went down the piste.  Later I heard it takes the crew a week to groom the slope and they spray it with water so it ices over.  Yikes!  If they don't get enough snow after the race, the slope can stay closed for up to two weeks because it's too dangerous for the public to ski on. 

Didier

Bode Miller

Team America!

 

January Round-up

Perusing my pictures from January I realized a few things.  

1. There were about 2.5 really great things that happened.  Like a snow storm and my first attempt at skiing.

2.  I took less than 10 pictures for above-mentioned interesting things

3.  It would be lame to make a separate post for these and other slightly interesting things.  So here is a round-up of the month of January.

January 9: Came home to flowers

January 14: The boats are back on the lake

January 20-22: Back to Zermatt for a Girls weekend and my first skiing lesson

January 29: Andrew's 2nd Birthday party

January 31: Snow covers Geneva

Boom!  January in a nutshell.  It was fun while it lasted, but I'm happy to have spring and sun and green things out my window.