J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

ATOO wrote:I have just changed my money at the post office and they only gave me a rate of 1.11 to the pound ,if i changed less than £500 it went down to 1.08 ..think i've had my pants pulled down :-)

ATOO,
I think that sounds like the normal post office rate. As has been said earlier, most of the banks etc. charge up to 3% for converting currency on purchases with your card, and I've found in the past that the post office is usually about 1% worse than this.

JonG,
Thanks for that link - that's very useful. I will be going to London before I leave on my holiday so I could easily go to Waterloo station and get the 1.15 rate (assuming it's still that in a couple of weeks time).

Ally

Ise,
That's great news about the dog :thumbup:.
That's the trouble with farms - the dogs tend to left loose outside (like ours) and if they get bored they're likely to follow someone, especially when they're young dogs.

I think maybe in English we'd have 'visitors' on a sign like that. I'm sure I've seen signs in building yards etc. that say something like 'Visitors must report to the site office immediately on arrival'.

It's one of the problems I have when I'm trying to translate French - there are often many possible meanings to a word. I suppose it's the same in English, but I don't notice it because I'm a native English speaker.

That word chantier might come in handy to impress my French teacher at my next lesson if I said something like 'Chez moi, c'est comme un chantier!'. Do you think that sounds okay?

Ally

The Visa rate is now 115.86 euros per £100, so the pound is still going up :D

Let's just hope it keeps creeping up.

Edit
Farqueue, does that mean your gadget is giving the international money market rate, and not the consumer, or tourist rate?

Ally

Thanks Ise,
It was very interesting and lovely photos.

Someone walked off with our dog like that, once, when he was young. Our dog followed them down the road to the village and then somehow ended up on his own, but luckily some nice kids found him and their parents phoned me (we have our phone number on his collar). It was very kind of you to leave him somewhere safe because otherwise I expect he'd have followed you the whole way.

I couldn't translate everything on that forestry sign, but it was pretty strange. I got the private forest road bit, but for chantier my dictionary says 'building site, builders yard, mess' so I wasn't too sure what it meant unless it means something like a loggers camp, so strangers to the site are only tolerated at their risk and peril as the road is dangerous and only suitable for limited vehicle sizes.

Ally

gadgetgirl79 wrote:The T&Cs only seem to appear when you actually try and buy the lift pass online, and go through to the payment bit! You don't seem to get the option to view them before then!

I find most resorts manage to keep a couple of lifts open in bad weather so they don't have to refund any lift passes.

Gadgetgirl,
When I bought my lift passes online, I expect there was one of those boxes I had to tick, to say I'd read them, and I probably just ticked it and didn't even really notice the T & C's.

The day they shut all the lifts in VT it was extremely windy. We went out first thing, in a group lesson, and ski-ing back down into VT it was so windy it blew my woolly hat off and then back up the piste (some kind person ski-ing behind me picked it up for me). Then they shut the lifts. They tried to keep the 2 drag lifts going, but they even had to give up on those after a while, and shut everything. It was annoying, because we wasted a day's lift pass and a day's ski-ing lessons :evil:

Ally

daved wrote:... I thought I had been doing lots of exercises for this but obviously not enough...I went to see one of the PT s at the gym this week and he recommended partial quick squats..more like dips...lots of them..so I now do 4-5 sets of 30 squats standing on a Bosu (wobbly half ball) with a weight across my back ...seems to mirror the skiing experience

OMG Daved, it sounds more like some sort of medieval torture! :wink:

How on earth do you manage to do squats standing on a wobbly half ball?

Well, there's one thing, if you survive the new training regime you will certainly be fit enough to ski :D.
When are you next off?

Ally

Rose,
Congratulations, whatever you do as part of your normal lifestyle must keep you naturally fit (aren't you walking 3 miles to and from work each day, now?).

That was a pretty hectic schedule for the week, and it sounds as though you had a great time :D

Ally

Tony,
I think it all depends what one does during one's own ski-ing holiday. I know how fit I have to be to cope with my holiday, and my ski-ing lessons, but other people will have less taxing holidays where they can stop for a rest when their legs start to ache.

I'm not trying to say that everyone has to be as fit as me (or much fitter of course) in order to enjoy their ski holiday.

In the lessons on my last couple of holidays the instructors have been increasingly demanding regarding our level of fitness. Several other people in my groups have been told off by the instructors for not being fit enough. The instructors actually said that we should all do lots of ski-ing exercises to make sure we are fit enough for the lessons before our ski holidays. People who aren't fit enough sometimes get put down a group, even if their technique is fine, because they can't keep up. I don't want that to happen to me :oops:

I must say, though, before I started ski-ing again in the last few years, I did think that it was only the beginners who had the exhausting time (because of falling over all the time and having to get back up). I really thought that once one could ski okay it was only a matter of pointing the skis downhill, steering and letting gravity take over. The really good skiers always look so graceful and make it look totally effortless.

However, once I went up a couple of classes I realised that in fact as one improves things get even more physically demanding. One is expected to ski for longer (not so many little chats and practices at the side of the piste), much faster, and do things that are really quite physically taxing (like jump turns).

Ally