september 2001
BUMMING IT
Everything you need to know about
making it as a bum
with our (tongue in cheek) guide to the ultimate life
...
Let's face it: who really
wants to work during their season?
If you're seriously into your boarding/skiing,
the last thing you want when it's a great powder day
is to be rudely interrupted by having to go to work.
So, if you can't shake the cravings for the white stuff,
there is only one real option: Commit to the cause,
swear allegiance to the credit card, devote your soul
to powder, sell everything and
BECOME A BUM.
The Dream Scene - what you hope will
happen:
1. Rock up to your resort of choice at the start of
the season and luck out with a cheap deal on a great
flat in the centre of resort. Alternatively, meet a
wealthy chalet owner and get paid to house-sit his chalet
while he's not there (don't believe me? It happened
to a friend of mine). Make good use of top of the range
4x4 left in the drive (you need to keep cars running
or they freeze up, right?), and become the most popular
guy/girl in town.
2. Make friends with all the chalet girls/boys
(helps if you have that irresistible cheeky face and
naughty twinkle in your eye). Flirt outrageously, while
never exercising favouritism and you will have the perfect
balance of unlimited free food and sex. Easy.
3. Make good friends with bar owners/staff
and get all your drinks for free, just for being you.
In return, entertain them with your great wit and impressive
tales of mountain madness. Occasionally help out by
DJing/doing promotions on special nights, in return
for more free drinks.
4. Happen to look exactly like the first worker to
get sent home with an injury and 'borrow' their lift
pass for the season. Manage to avoid discovery from
their boss, who will be desperate to get their hands
back on that pass. Alternatively, make friends with
a ski instructor/pisteur, who lets you have his/her
old uniform - so you don't even need to bother with
queuing for lifts (another friend pulled this one off
for a whole season).
5. Offer your services around resort as
freelance bar person / photographer / driver and negotiate
lucrative contracts to fit in with your hectic schedule
of boarding/skiing, partying and sleeping. Alternatively,
get spotted by a Salomon/Burton scout who spies your
potential and pays you to ride/travel/live the life.
End up coming home with more money that you started
with.
OK - so it's far fetched, but it does
happen (maybe not all to the same person), and there's
no harm in dreaming!
But for every successful season bummed,
there are many who try, but fail miserably in their
quest for ultimate snow nirvana.
Reality Bites - a sorry tale:
1. Rock up to your resort of choice, only to find that
you're 6 months too late and all the seasonal accommodation
went in August. Beg and plead a space on someone's floor
for a few nights. Be grateful for your sleeping bag
and try not to listen to your kind host 'entertaining'
their latest conquest a three inches from your head.
Get kicked out on Christmas eve, after you're caught
with your tongue 'accidentally' down said conquest's
throat, forcing you to blow half your budget paying
premium rates for a bed over Christmas and New Year.
Go home at the end of January when your money runs out.
2. Discover that most new chalet staff
'can't cook, won't cook' and end up living on burgers
to stave off imminent starvation. Spend your first few
weeks looking for a place to stay and feeling too cold,
hungry, hungover and tired to go up the mountain. Contract
flu and spend £50 on antibiotics. Remember travel insurance
that day too late.
3. Show your commitment to friendship
with (the bank of) bar owners by investing all your
money with them. Entertain them with drunken antics
and your best party tricks, only to have them laugh
in your face when you ask about possible jobs. 'Reshposhible,
moi?! Coursh I am.' Blame the beer monster for the lack
of notes left in your wallet and report the theft to
the police. Ring home for emergency funds.
4. Spend £400 on your season lift pass, only to find
out two days later that the guy/girl who looked exactly
like you has broken his leg and is going home. Try (and
fail) to resell your lift pass to the Lift Pass Office.
5. Offer your services around resort as
freelance bar person / photographer / driver. After
three weeks of 'Je cherche du travail', feel lucky when
you're offered a trial day's pot washing at £1.50/hour.
Cherish the £10 you've made for 6 hours work, and do
not resent the fact that you were scrubbing cheese (aka
cement) off saucepans while all your mates were out
enjoying the first big dump of the season.
OK - exaggerated, maybe, but not so far
from reality. Bumming a season is fun but also hard
work, and by no means guaranteed to succeed … but that
doesn't stop people from needing their snow fix!
So, in response to the massive demand
from people who want to 'do a season' and don't want
to, or can't, get a job, Planet Subzero are offering
affordable seasonal and long-stay accommodation to make
not working a more realistic option.
The perfect solution - with deferred university
places, sabbaticals and career breaks making it easy
to find the time, and Planet Subzero making it easy
to do the bumming!
We do seasons with style. None of the
cramming 10 to a room in mouldy apartment blocks five
miles out of town, we offer seasons in a fully equipped
chalet (no more than 3 to a room) in the freeride and
snowboard centre of Les Arcs. You'll have all the time
in the world to improve your skills, the opportunity
to travel to loads of other resorts, and we'll even
give you breakfast! AND - before you're thinking '…
this is going to be way out of my price range', a place
in the Planet Subzero chalet also comes surprisingly
cheap. To find out more, have a look around the site!
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