School Road Boys Go Snowboarding!

During the week 11th-18th March 2001, four intrepid gimps decided to cast off their shackles and spend a week enjoying themselves on the slopes of the Pyrenees. This website is dedicated to tracking their movements, both boarding and bowel. Included will be an account of the infamous Comic Relief Red-Nose Pants evening, or what we recall of it. Click on some of the photos for larger pop-up windows.

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Within a couple of hours of hitting the slopes, Dave took the phrase literally and landed on his coccyx in an almighty "arse-cracker". This left his confidence spread over the inside of his boxers and gave rise to the funniest position this side of the Kama Sutra. Dave's infamous Gibbon stance - leaning slightly forward, knuckles barely missing the snow - was the best way to find him on the slopes.

Just to show that Dave wasn't the only one who could wipeout spectacularly, Russ repeated the feat later in the week. Trying to turn heel-to-toe on a very icy run, he leaned too far back, caught the wrong edge and left the ground. He then bounced twice on his arse, once off his head (losing the Fubu hat) and slid 10 metres off-piste down a steep hill. If the snow wasn't as deep he'd still be sliding now. This crash later won an award for "Most Stylish Fool". Luckily, the only injuries were slight whiplash and a crease in the hat.

It wasn't all about boarding. Stressed out at work, we wanted to let off some steam. On Monday night there was a pub-crawl organised by the reps, who wandered through the crowd squirting cocktails into their mouths with a syringe. Russ got "injected" twice and had to go home early, letting the rest in whilst under-dressed.

For most of the week, we were all too knackered to do much. By Saturday night we eventually worked out how to pace ourselves and managed to go drinking again. Russ dragged everyone through three pubs while he stalked Jo, but luckily we all ended up in the superb Underground Bar. Literally underground, the bar staff wandered round at intervals spraying air freshener. Classy.

The biggest and best off-piste activities were our Comic Relief antics. Too lengthy to get into here, they have their own page.

As the only one of us to have boarded before on snow, Rob was our chairlift guru. The first couple of days on them were carnage, as we spent most of our time shuffling to safety on our knees. Dave in particular felt that the best way to get of was to throw himself at the lift attendant's hut. But Rob had a couple of darker moments. The first blot in his copybook came when, on leaving the lift, he callously sacrificed Dave's stability for his own. Meaning that he shoved him over to save himself. Disgraceful.

The biggest error came on the 4-man chair lift. We often wondered what kind of imbecile caused the lifts to stop - we soon found out. Pulling the overhead C-bar down, Rob managed to hit the binding on his board, causing it to open. So the board fell off, and was only attached by the emergency rope clip. Seeing that he's lost the plot, the lifties stopped the lift. Dangling twenty foot from the ground, Rob then had to reattach the board on a full chair, with a large bar in the way. To compund the mistake, when the lifty came to inspect the trouble, Rob used his basic French to tell him "Sorry" and "It's fine" in an accent reminiscent of Inspector Clouseau. We made our excuses and left.

The final day's boarding was subdued, but Glenn and Rob still had time to catch some mighty air. Yes, they tried to do a couple of jumps. No, they didn't really succeed. Judge for yourselves.

Finished? Then go back to the misfortu.net main page.