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Garfed Malta. May 09 2011 16:18. Posts 4818 | | |
I guess its about time I write a blog entry at liquidpoker.net
It would be nice to start with basic info: who am I? I guess a lot of people will just recognize my name from the forum, especially Im way more active lately at lp.net, but still 
Im an ex high stakes player ( I guess I could write a little detailed story in the next blog posts ) that risen from 50$ no deposit bonus to nl1000 in 1,5 year, and then dropped poker completely.
That brings us to the second part: I've been working for lp.net for quite some time already ( over 3,5 years ), first being a newsposter on tlpoker.pl, then running the site in general.
From March I am officially working as a manager for liquidpoker.net I hope the site will feel more active with every month, and we will be able to provide you guys with more and more quality material.
But back to blog! Ladies and Gentleman, today I present you: LiquidSnow 2011 trip report!
Under this secret code-name is nothing more then an awesome trip, where part of the liquidpoker.net staff was invited. We decided to meet-up in French Alps for skiing to get along together, and actually know who you are working with
Our house was located in the city Les Menuires, in the area of Les 3 Valles ( 3 Valleys ), which is the biggest skiing/snowboarding resort in the world.
There was quite a few people expected to come, so we rented a 14 person house with 7 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms over 3 floors ( plus sauna, giant kitchen and some other cool stuff ). In the end it was only 4 of us, and since the house was prepaid, we didn't change the location. Lets be honest, there was no way to whine about the conditions of stay, it was just way too good
Who attended ( I will use nicknames instead of names later on, so you can recognize us easier later on the forum ):
Liquid`Meat ( Joy )
Raidern ( Antoniel )
Pindarots ( Jeroen )
me/Defrag ( Sebastian )
Few photos from the mentioned house:
 
Raidern arrived in Europe way earlier ( he's from Brasil ), and traveled to France together with Meat and Pindarots, since they both are from Netherlands. They picked me up on the way to Les Menuires from Lyon airport and lp.net team was complete . After quite a smooth ride we arrived at our place a little after 18:00 on Saturday, done some shopping, ate something, unpacked and done formal stuff ( got ski-passes, paid for house etc. ) and then we hit the beds being so tired ( especially Meat and Pindarots, who were driving for whole day ).
I'm not gonna describe every day in detail since our schedule looked pretty familiar:
~8:00 get up/ eat
~8:45 pack up, hit the slopes :D
~16-17:30 get back to home, hit sauna, eat something, play some games together , get some drinks etc and hit the bed
For first three days it was quite cloudy and the snow was raining pretty heavily, so it was quite hard to ride, especially after 15:00 since there was a lot of moguls and the visibility was sometimes worse then 3 meters ( which forced us few times to ski right next to the poles showing end of slopes ).
Skiing was going quite well for the first two days: Raidern took some lessons on the first or second day, since he never skied before in his life ( he never actually saw real snow in his life before ;D ), Pindarots skis really well, Meat snowboards very good as well, and Im not gonna judge my own skill, thou I was expecting it to be way worse after a 3 year break due to torn Menicus and ACL's on my left knee which resulted in 3 surgeries in the last 2 years :D
Unfortunately, Pindarots had a really nasty accident on the third day I think: in the begging of the day ( we were hitting the slopes as early as they opened,so they were really icy ) he crashed, looked really badly, we took quite a short break, then he skied down ( from the top, so like a 20-30 minute of skiing ) and took a break for the rest of the day. Why did I point out that he still went down? Because when he later visited the doctor it turned out that his whole muscle was torn! Talk about high pain tolerance. Really unlucky, since he was grounded for the rest of the trip.
For the second part of the trip we had pretty much perfect weather condition ( almost zero snowing during ski time and perfect visibility with really nice sun ), and we moved to the better area of Les 3 Valles as well, which was Val Thorens. Val Thorens is just 10 minutes away by car from Les Menuires, we had ski passes for the whole area so we didn't have to pay extra, and the made conditions were sooooooooo much better. In the end, we stayed there till the end of our trip
We were also switching sun screens like crazy, going from 10 to 20, then to 30 or even higher, and still getting faces burned pretty badly. Just look at the photo:
( left to right: Liquid`Meat, Pindarots, Defrag, Raidern )
Second photo, where it shows better how badly my face was burned in the spoiler tag:
+ Show Spoiler +
My very own first crash came on the third day, in familiar fashion to Pindarots, where I started to carve and one of the skis slid down on ice before catching the edge. I fell right on my chest and face, leaning my head backwards, which made my chest absorb majority of impact before hitting the ice with my chin. Feeling of not being able to breath for at least 15-20s wasn't the best, but I think its way better then broke nose. In the end, I was quite lucky.
Raidern was hitting easier slopes for majority of time, Pindarots had to stay at home due to his accident, so me and Meat tried to hit as many slopes and glaciers as possible. It was fun, but during the week we were there I doubt we managed to visit even half of the available slopes. Maybe we can try out the rest next year
Food at slopes was JESUS_CHRIST_SO_EXPENSIVE ( quite good thou ), and for evening we split the trip eating half time out/half time we made something ourselves. I can only give out one major advice: never eat in Mexican restaurant in this area. Only one of us had decent meal there, and let say rest of us thought food was quite... bad :D Some vodka with whiskey back in the house doused the bad taste thou!
During last day we also ordered some Raclette for evening from the house owner, I must admit I ordered a set for my own home few days ago. It was damn delicious.
We also had some fun when going back. I had flight back to Warsaw from Lyon around 13:00, we left around 9:00 ( it was a ~2:30h drive ) with plenty of spare time, and when going still in the mountains we smelled burning rubber... since we were passing some small town we just thought it wasnt our car, but after it continued we decided to stop. It turned out we had some problems with breaks in the car ( quite dangerous in the mountains, huh? ), Meat actually knows how to deal with his car so after taking off the tire and few fast calls we were back on track! We made it right on scheduled time to the airport, however my plane was delayed for over 1:30h.
And I must say, this was only once in my life when I was scared during the flight, lol. I fly quite a lot, and I find it really comfortable, there is not much difference between a bus and plane for me when it comes to worrying about crashes. However, the plane was delayed a ton ( never saw that happen on non-cheap airlines ), they changed the crew right when we were boarding, and when I sat down, a middle-aged guy in suit sits right next to me, pulls out a leather case and starts chewing his finger nails while reading a manual entitled "How to react in cases of plane failure". Him having a official airlines logo on the bag didint help either. When taking off plane was bumpy as hell, I was scared as f%*@. But hey, at least it was fun.
What about the LiquidPoker crew? Seriously, I cant say a bad word about anyone present ( shame on people that didint attend thou! ) even if I wanted. It was an awesome trip, and I hope there will be a repeat of this next year, hopefully with more people attending.
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Photos after clicking on spoiler tag :+ Show Spoiler +
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dnagardi Hungary. May 09 2011 17:21. Posts 1776 | | |
sweet, I was there skiing too in february (val thorens) it really is an awesome place.
btw why did you drop poker? |
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kingpowa France. May 09 2011 17:27. Posts 1525 | | |
Nice. Lost a ski there few years ago.
I have a Russian friend who brings back a raclette set to offer as a present every time he goes back to Russia. |
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Garfed Malta. May 09 2011 17:30. Posts 4818 | | |
| | On May 09 2011 16:21 dnagardi wrote:
sweet, I was there skiing too in february (val thorens) it really is an awesome place.
btw why did you drop poker? |
I was really tired after playing so much and becaouse of swings. I also had my first leg surgery in december ( I stopped playing just month earlier ) and afterwars I was on really heavy painkillers for over a month and not really able to play. Never started playing again after, I simply lost motivation and started to use the cash I made to enjoy life. |
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Arirang Canada. May 09 2011 18:21. Posts 1673 | | |
Psshhh, bunch of dudes in isolated house within French alps with sauna and shit. Sounds pretty gay to me. Or in the least, looks like a perfect setting for a horror story. Nope, not jelly at all of your seemingly awesome trip. |
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Pindarots Netherlands. May 09 2011 19:45. Posts 802 | | |
It's been an awesome week with great people, even though I torn my MCL and am still not fully recovered (been walking with a knee brace for the past 6 weeks, seeing the doctor tomorrow hoping for some good news). Thanks to you, Raidern and Liquid`Meat (and the Polish wudka ) I still had a great week regardless of my injury.
The way back was pretty weird, also for us. After putting on the tire in France we continued all the way and when we got back to the Netherlands (at the point where I was gonna leave Antoniel and Joy since my parents were picking me up there) we felt a bit of a wobble in the car, like we had a flat tire or something. We stopped, checked it, nothing to be seen. A few km further they checked again, turned out that the tire wasn't put back on properly as the bolts were really loose, we were actually lucky the front tire didnt come off while driving!
Anyway, we all made it back alive and with a lot of great memories, rly hope we can do this again next year! |
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PuertoRican United States. May 09 2011 21:21. Posts 13042 | | |
5 star writeup.
It's not surprising that LP people are good people, as a lot of them are old school sc1 players who are pretty much adults at this stage and are mostly mature and chill in real life.
That cabin looks nice, and some of those hills look scary, in the eyes of a newbie skier that is.
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>>>>> There needs to be a 1-5 star rating system inside the blog post.
I had to click the blog on the left sidebar to rate it, instead of reading the blog and being able to find a rating system below the original post. <<<<<
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| | On May 09 2011 17:21 Arirang wrote:
Psshhh, bunch of dudes in isolated house within French alps with sauna and shit. Sounds pretty gay to me. Or in the least, looks like a perfect setting for a horror story. Nope, not jelly at all of your seemingly awesome trip. |
Sounds like "Hot Tub Time Machine", except it was at a different ski location. |
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| Rekrul is a newb | Last edit: 09/05/2011 21:27 |
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baller life! post more blogs xD it was a nice read. btw only buy mexican food in mexico, it sucks anywhere else... or at least all places ive tried it |
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whamm! Albania. May 10 2011 00:20. Posts 11625 | | | |
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Looks awesome, nice job, great blog post..
Can you schedule a LP meet up sometime in late 2011? |
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Baalim Mexico. May 10 2011 23:52. Posts 34246 | | |
damn im sorry i couldnt go with you guys, i probably cant snowboard yet my foot is still fucked :< |
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Meat . May 11 2011 07:06. Posts 3385 | | |
This was such a great trip, thanks for coming 
Oh and this ski area is unbelievable, amazing slopes with insane views. |
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Raidern Brasil. May 11 2011 13:47. Posts 4243 | | |
This trip was awesome, we had some hiladlrious moments. After the mentioned mexican dinner, in which I had pizza, the following convo took place:
"have u ever been to Mexico?"
- no I've never been to the us
so random Hahaha
great blogpost Sebastian it was fun remembering it all again
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patmcgroin Afghanistan. Aug 03 2011 08:50. Posts 830 | | | |
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