So, here is what happened...

The plane arrives from Toronto. Pulls up to the gate and the flight attendant opens the door, but he/she forgot 1 thing. To move the little leaver that tells the plane that it is not in flight anymore, but park.

Well, apparently the emergency exit slide has now filled the ramp exit. Can you image the poor guy on the other side? I hope he is still alive. Wow!!

I've now heard that they have to drop 60 people from the flight since they have one last slide. Oopppssss

What a morning

Woke up to an awesome mountain morning. Not a cloud in the sky, no wind and about -2C. But, all good things must come to an end.

The drive to Munich had everything from very twist narrow roads to doing 190k on the automate.

I'm now at the airport with time to spare, but something is going on in a baggage ramp that does not allow us to check in bags. So, I have to stand around and wait for who knows how long. And, this only affects Air Canada.

Long over due update

Wow, I just reviewed this and realized that I have not updated this in a while.

Carrying on from my last update, my back is much better. I have a new belief in chyropractors. This lady that my next door neighbour sent me to just rocks.

So, that brings me to the last week of 'stuff'. Work brought me to London earlier in the week. However, I've decided that when it is remotely possible, that I would make the odd detour. This time it was to Austria (after a meeting with a customer in Germany).

I've spent the last 2 days skiing at Kitzsteinhorn (http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/). For the last 2 morning, I have woken up to rain and fog. Yesterday, I only made it up for half a day, but what a half day. 3200 vertical meters in fresh snow (somewhere between 6-12"). Then, today again the same thing. However, this time, I made it for first tracks and skied the morning in the fog with the brail technique. But another foot of snow fell. I was wearing my Garmin Forerunner 305 heart rate monitor and it tracked me doing over 6000 vertical meters. So, in 2 days of skiing, I didn't hear my skiis scraping over the ice once (you guys from Collingwood hearing this?).

In the picture above, have a close look at the red and white tower. Now, notice the size of the chairlifts running on the surface. That is the tram tower and they only use it to get from the bottom of the glacier to the top. NOT from the parking lot to the bottom of the glacer (also called the alpine center).

There is alot of history on the lifts, including the underground railway that used to take you up from the parking lot. http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/information/gletscherbahnen/history.htm. Read about how a fire killed 155 people back in 2000 on the underground lift. You can read more about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1018153.stm.

I could see where this lift went into the mountain, but still don't have a clue where it exited at the top.

If you really like, you can spent the night in the igloos (http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/news/?we_objectID=299). I'm not kidding. These have to be seen as they are huge.