June 8th 2009

Jamaica, season 3.

Somewhat belatedly, I finally got around to sorting out my holiday photos. I returned to Jamaica for my thirs visit and Petra's first to celebrate Mark's 40th birthday. Here is a photographic summary.

March 12th 2009

What a season!

Just back from a day trip to Chamonix with Michael and Adam. We somehow managed an erroneous detour via Annecy but despite crappy map-reading skills still managed to squeeze in a monster powder day. Photo evidence is provided here.

December 15th 2008

Ready for skiing?

In readiness for the new ski season, I've updated the fantastical weather page; Dead links have been removed and all links now pop-up in full size, which in particular makes the webcam images nicer. Any feedback or extra images you'd like me to add, just let me know.

December 8th 2008

Geneva Supercross

Reto invited my nephews and me to the Geneva supercross even in the Palexpo. This is a mix of supercross riding and jump displays, which is both extremely spectacular and photogenic. The resulting pictures are here.

August 14th 2008

Nyon Triathlon 2008

Petra and I rode to Nyon early on Sunday to watch, and document, the Segal's brothers' first forays into triathlons. Congrats to both for finishing in more-than-respectable times around the 1 hour 20 mark. The photographic proof is here.

July 3rd 2008

New Luxury soaking.

Our new bathroom is complete. Or at least, it nearly is. We have to wait a few days for the shower enclosure to be delivered, but the rest of the room is in working order. Here are the (shocking) before and after photos.

June 8th 2008

Bring on the Euro.

After 8 weeks of waiting, I finally got my hands on the new TV I ordered back in April. This online-ordering saga has been a comedy of errors since the start that has had me pulling my hair out in frustration. I was so enraged that I vented my fury by signing up with all the Swiss price comparison websites I could find and writing the complete onerous details of my supplier's journey of incompetence. Still, I now have a 52” HD flat screen to enjoy the Euro on. Go Ingerland…  er, anyone who’s in it, really.

 April 4th 2008

New Car!

Petra took delivery of a shiny new Suzuki Swift on Monday and for the first time in my life, I got to drive a new car off the forecourt. It’s a nifty, funky little drive; reminds me a lot of the new Mini. The nice man from the Alfa-lady’s insurance has promised us prompt payment of the full value of the knackered Corsa, which he over-valued because the pokey 1.0 liter engine version was never sold in Switzerland.  No wonder the damn thing couldn’t make it up our hill.  

March 25th 2008

Car Crash, part 2.

Petra and I were rear-ended on the way to work last week, which we have just confirmed means her ancient Opel will have to be replaced. Yipee! We were both unharmed, which was more than you could say about the slick Alfa of the girl who ran into us. A quick constat by a (surprisingly pleasant) policeman meant we had all the paperwork to declare that she was totally to blame and her insurance would be playing for Petra’s dented Corsa. A quick visit to the repairman revealed it was a right-off, so we’re shopping for a new car now. Although generally not a nice experience, it was far more pleasant than my last car crash.

february 25th 2008

Verbier ski trip

Two updates in a week? But that's impossible!

Well, the first post below was made purely out of embarrassment. This post is because I have something of note to say or, more precisely, something to see. Mark, Michael and I took a day off work on Friday and wisely spent it skiing in Verbier. Armed with the Canon D30, I also got some snaps which I used to update the skiing page.

february 17th 2008

2008 update

One problem keeping a blog is that you can't hide from your updates. We're 6 weeks into the new year (and four months since my last update) without any new news from me. I have no excuses to explain why I've been so inactive except that the small matter of buying a house has kept me pretty busy. I promise to try harder for the rest of 2008.

The symbolic final act of moving in was installing satellite TV last weekend. The problem in Arzier is that there is no option other than satellite to get TV and Swiss, German and UK TV channels are all broadcast on different satellites. In theory I would have needed 3 dishes, 3 cables and 3 receivers to get the TV needed for a happy household. I'd prefer my new house not to have a silhouette like Mickey Mouse, so after an extensive internet search, I stumbled on this setup. This captures 4 satellites from one small dish, with one cable and one receiver box. It’s small and dinky, and as an added bonus, it looks like Captain Piccard crashed a model of the Starship Enterprise into the house. We're still sorting thorough the 3000-odd TV channels and 1000s of radio stations so don't expect any new posts for a while.

OCTOBER 15th 2007

New footie photos

No updates for a while because I've been busy - buying a house as it turns out! More on that later once we actually move in. In the meantime, my football team harrassed me today about posting some new photos I took a few weeks ago, so here they are.

September 15th 2007

Mountain biking update

Petra and I spent the Jeune Genevois weekend in Champèry, to go hiking and mountain biking. I dragged the 30D along on a day's downhill biking with Jay under the pretext of shooting some decent new shots but in reality using the camera as a crutch/excuse to dismount on the sketchy downhill parts. These shots form the foundation of the latest photo album in my Champèry page.

I also got bored with the layout so changed the site colours today. Oh, such is the excitement.

August 26th 2007

Happy birthday to me!

Last weekend was my 30-somethingth birthday. I opted for Michelin-star rated Indian food the night before and then we celebrated with family and friends on the day itself with a BBQ. The pressie haul was a good one; music, an iPod case and biking shorts from friends, and two tickets to see The Police from my family. I was totally thrown that they came up with this gift without any prompting from me, and simply gob-smacked to hear it was my mother’s inspiration.

This week we enjoyed my gift from last year, which was a visit to my very own vineyard in the Valais. Actually, that’s an exaggeration; I own one vine in the Rives du Bisse vineyard, for which the owner gives me a bottle every year for the next ten years. As this was the first year, I was invited to lunch made up of local produce and a wine tasting. Quite a nice marketing concept as they won’t send the free bottle to me for the next 9 years, so if I want to pick it up I’ll be tempted to buy a couple of cartons.

August 5th 2007.

Triathlete!

I rode the bike leg of the Nyon Triathlon Classique (i.e. Olympic distance) as a relay with Mumu as our swimmer and Addison as the runner. Mumu somehow managed to sign us up as a company team, so whilst enjoying a post-exertion beer, we were unexpectedly called up to the podium to collect 2nd place (from a total of two teams, I suspect). This led to a somewhat embarrassing interview when I was asked which company we represented… Still, we got to keep the swag and the cup as the 1st place team did a no-show.

After July’s record riding month, covering the 44km distance was easy, but riding flat out was not so enjoyable. On a hilly course, I averaged 34kph compared to a TDF time-trial average of over 50kph… but then I am drug free. My time was about 10 minutes slower than the fastest triathletes, so that’s respectable.

August 1st 2007.

Big biking month

July’s biking totals are just in: 1,113km. My personal Tour de France was completed without too much fanfare. I have to admit that during the last week I have been feeling under the weather with a minor cold, which may be a result of over-extending myself but may just as easily have absolutely nothing at all to do with all this riding. In celebration of finishing my TDF, we’re off to eat, drink and make merry in celebration of Swiss Independence day today.

This weekend was another decent one on the bike. Saturday was a nice mountainbike tour in the Jura with the Sandborg clan and Sunday was a 80km trip up the Col de la Faucille and through the Jura with Scott. This inspired me to add a Jura photo album to the site.

July 24th 2007.

Tour du Lac

Here’s the answer to July 20th‘s post: Not too bad. I rode into work today and yesterday despite a punishing ride around Lake Geneva on Sunday.

I rode with Scott, a colleague of mine who has always been keen to ride around Lake Geneva, but in the two years he's been here, we've never managed to get the time out to ride this classic tour. This weekend, both his wife and Petra were away visiting their respective families, so when the cat's away... Because we had no-one to feed us, we met up on Saturday night for a pasta frenzy at my local pizzeria. On Sunday, Scott rode the 15 minutes from his house to meet me in Coppet where we started, just as the sky cleared to a perfect weather day.

Lake Geneva is Central Europe's second largest lake; it's a neat 100 miles around the shore, assuming you take the shortcut at the top end of the lake. We opted for the traditional Swiss-side-first route, meaning a ride though the cities of Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux, Evian and Geneva. 5 hours 40 minutes of riding time later, I stumbled back into my driveway. We rode relatively easily to the half-way point and then for whatever dumb reason put the hammer down on the French side. We were both pretty toasted by the time we free-wheeled into Geneva. Click here for some photos.

July 20th 2007.

Biking update  

I'm half-way through my personal TDF. I started a day late, but until today hadn’t had a rest day unlike those slackers in France. Nor have I had the assistance of any performance enhancing drugs. So far, so good. It is surprisingly easy to ride every single day, but I’m typically only riding for about an hour to work each day at a reasonably sedate pace. I’m not sure how this would feel after a really hard day out. And I’m pretty sure I would stop immediately if I had 60 stitches in my knees or a broken coccyx.

July 14th 2007.

Buster's Tour de France.

The Tour de France started last week, so I’ve been glued to the ITV resumé every evening. Because I am trying to rest my football injuries, I’ve decided to limit my sports to biking in the off-season. This brought me to the idea of trying to ride my bike every day during the TDF to see what effect this has on me. Watch this space.

Petra and I extended the Tour de France theme by completed our annual pilgrimage to watch the Tour today, France’s bastille day. Despite big plans to make an event out of this and ride in a big group, only Petra and I actually biked. We chose to watch at the Cote de Cruseilles, a Cat. 3 climb that was within riding range of home. I forgot my map which meant it turned out to be a slightly more ambitious than planned ride: 100km in total with about 1000m of climbing.  My Dad took my nephews along by car and provided a 5-star full picnic experience, complete with paté, french bread, cheese and the obligatory bottle of rouge, all enjoyed on deck-chairs under a parasol waiting for the riders to come by. I passed on the wine and drank about 3 litres of eau minerale instead. Enough waffling; here are my shots of the 2007 Tour.

July 7th 2007

In the Swiss Alps.

Petra and I spent the weekend in Champèry. I took time off work to cycle up from Geneva on Friday afternoon, and we met up there. We hiked the first part of the Tour des Dents de Midi on Saturday on a perfect summer’s day. This inspired this collection of Swiss mountain clichés.

June 17th 2007

Football’s over.

Today was the last game of the football season. I sat it out as my Achilles problem’s reared up last week thanks to the schedule of 4 games in 8 days. As a memoire, here are some belated shots from the Crans FC’s drubbing of  FC Echichens in May, taken with the D30 and a 300mm telephoto lens borrowed from my Dad - I’ll have to get me one of these.

We finished half-way up the league table despite being one point off relegation in March. After two years of dabbling, the trainer finally came to his senses and select what I thought had always been the obvious choice of the right team. We won nearly all of our final eight games or so. Purely by coincidence, I was in my happy midfield stomping ground in this 'right team'.

June 1st 2007

Buster’s new blue blog!

Welcome to the new site. Five years after moving to Switzerland, I've decided to make the corresponding domain move: www.Buster.co.uk has become www.Buster.ch. The UK site will stick around for a while, but CH is my future so you should replace your bookmarks. I also used this switch as an excuse to play around with the site design and convert it into what is now obviously a blog.

All the old links are available from the new dynamic menu (look left!). This script contains nothing nasty and the site doesn't work without it, so please turn them on! If you have problems with this or just don't trust me, go to the old-fashioned site map here.