Weeeeee!!!!!

The title says it all but for more details, read on! We came back down from the mountain, raided the food store for essential supplied of chocolate and water plus a strange hot sausage in a bun type thingy (cos I was hungry and Inga knows how much I moan when I'm hungry) from a nice woman with a name tag that said "CMOT's better looking sister" - I refrained from looking too closely at the meat.

Now, Austria has lots of big steep slopes that make a mint when they're covered in snow but not so much when they're covered in grass (touring cows are notorious for not paying to graze). So what to do? In the case of one chair lift, they have added a slide - and not just any slide. A massive 1.3km long slide that goes from the top of the chair lift to the bottom again. 1.3km!! 40 corners, a jump and a tunnel included at no extra cost. ALot of us met at the bottom of the hill and set off on a leisurly trip upwards (this is some of us going up). As we went up, there were people coming down on their slides. It looked so cool and I couldn't wait! . the view was pretty too apart from something called the Cube Hotel which squatted on the hillside like a piece of modern art that had crossed over to the dark side - raging hordes couldn't have despoiled the countryside any more than that thing did. No matter, cos the end of the lift arrived and the slide beckoned! There were seven of us going down and I elected to go last so everyone could have their photo taken as they set off. Inga looked eager and ready for action but that didn't last much beyond the first couple of corners! I hopped on my little sledge and examined the sophiticated control (note the singular). Forward = go, backwards = brake. Simple, effective and, let's be honest here, at times bloody scary. What a rush!!! The sledge flew round corners and before you knew it the end of the slide loomed and you had to brake to avoid a collision with the wall. Fantastic! Another set of tickets had been purchased so off alot of us went again. Up the chair lift, grab a sledge and off we went, picking up speed as we went through the first bend. I followed Marko, with Florian and then Inga behind me. Round a bend, full speed, Argghhh!!!! Traffic jam!!!!! Brakes slammed on and coming to a halt. The problem was Steffi who had led off and been given quite a long lead. Thomas had caught her up and stopped to give her another lead, so we had all caught him up too. A rumbling sound preceded Florian, no, it was Inga. Huh? We set off again and got to the jump before we had to stop again. The last few corners were done almost nose to tail (supposedly not allowed), with everyone leaping out at the end so no one hit each other. But Florian was missing. We saw him walking down the hill carrying his sledge. It had veered out of control and he'd flipped out on a corner and damaged himself - it wasn't pretty. Marko and I took the last two tickets and headed back up for the last run of the day - no one in front of me, no one to hold me up. I flew, hammering round bends and taking off over the jump before slamming into the tyre at the end. Such a laugh and such an adrenalin rush! We walked back in good moods to face dinner and an evening of chilling. I finish with a picture of Steffi on her sledge, holder of the most sedate trip down the mountain award :-) Tune in tomorrow (I'm managing one blog entry every lunchtime at the moment) for the wedding (which will probably be in 2 parts!)