king of carrot flowers

'when you were young you were the king of carrot flowers,
and how you built a tower tumbling through the trees...'

-the neutral milk hotel

I'm listening to this song as i start this blog. Its off our friend helens compilation album Five Years - The Musical. Jo you might have this album. I really like the song, the guitar part in it, simple but really good sound.

sorry for holding up the blog. no excuses. i am eager to read what the other us copley kids will write soon after, i find your post infinitely more interesting than my own

ok so the hotel reopened today. we have been busy over the last few days (nicki and i got back on tues.) helping to get the refurbishment finished and cleared up. lots of painting had to be done still and things were only just finished today. the fisrt guests arrived just as we were finishing cleaning up, truly last minute. Feels good to have it all finished and to be able to get back into the swing of things here. the bar and restaurant look really smart with the fresh paint, everything back in its place.

earlier. as we rode the train from edinburgh up to the trossachs destined for the hotel, we realized the snow had melted while we were away. maybe we'd be able to get the mountain bikes out? it looks so beautiful here when its green. we took public transport to balquhidder, the town closest to the hotel. noted the sun now stays with us till almost 5:30. decided to walk the 4 miles from balquhidder to monachyle. as we walked any sense of uncertainty or aprehension about returning here quickly melted away. its beautiful, remote, quiet. the walk reminded us of a tramping trip - a day on the milford track maybe, or strolling past giants in prarie creek - and while there is no mitre peak nor redwoods here, the mountainous
surroundings have such a friendly approachable feel to them, yet are so vast and impressive to behold, that I started to forget we were walking home and not to find a camp site. it cant seem to make up its mind. the first night we were back in snowed huge clumpy snow flakes leaving the ground covered in 10 cm of clean white slate by morning. but then it rained and it nearly all washed away.

ever throw a snowball at a pig? he is awsomely unresponsive and i was so entertained by this! the pigs have gotten huge while weve been away. soon they will be in our bellies. i am thankful for having pigs to throw snowballs at and to eat.

Nicki and I are largely preocupied with thoughts about our upcoming cycle tour of eroupe, which rapidly approaches with each passing day. not close enough to make a chain yet though. there was a good amount of discussion and hypothetical plan making while we were in france just recently. the most recent idea is to begin in Le Havre, cycle along the normandy coast, head inland at mont saint michel, then back to the coast above bordeaux, then through bordeaux to toulouse and then the south coast of france. from there we have not decided but (after our recent trip to the south alps) we're entertaining the idea of keeping on the coast until almost
Nice then head north and cycle over the alps towards milan via gap and briancon. this option would be amazing, aford us the opportunity to see friends, and experience this beautiful region in the summer, but it is the french alps, and would be nothing short of torturous. from milan through slovenia to croatia. four months. ish. plan is big in scope and would continually evolve until the trip is through.

the frace trip was really good. french skiing is different expereince than california skiing, and i've been wanting to get over there since we arrived in the uk last march. i think we skiied 7 out of 14 days. mostly at les orres, which is actually similar in size to northstar, a bit bigger, and a fair amount steeper. the tree skiing here was really fun, and we found some great fresh snow. in les orres we stayed with our friends manu and fabio, who have a spare room in there appartment which we got to use. we lived mosly on wine and cheese and chocolate. ok thats not entirely true. but there was one day close to the beginning of our trip, we had decided not to ski this day but to take advantage of there bread maker, when we really went overboard. they both had the day off so after we got the bread cooking we went to the shop, ended up buying 7 or 8 different kinds of stinky rich french cheese (oh the variety!), an amount of wine, and oh did we eat wine and cheese. nicki says cheese gives you vived dreams by the way. i think it might. we had enough cheese to last us a while. yeah that was good. ok from there manu was nice enough to drive us to les2alpes, we made a road trip out of it on a sunny day. it was an amazing drive through the alps. we went a little out of the way to drive into italy and take a photo. incidentally i really had to go so i pee'd on italy. then we went back to france and to les 2 alps. again we stayed with friends, they were really nice, happened to have just moved from one apartment to another, and let us use their old apartment to the time we were there. the town here is a really ustling ski town. the summit (or should say the highest summit) is just over 11,000feet, which i think is the highest ive ever been. there is glacier skiing here, a fairly crazy place to ski over all. you should look at the map online, its crazy. at the end of our trip it felt like we'd been away from the hotel forever...

...now it feels like we never left.

the farewell transmisson now plays. songs ohia

an apropriate song for the end of my blog