Now it's clear that France is the country to be in if you want comfort in your nether regions, as it would seem they specialise in knocking up arse holders and to be honest, after driving the rental car for an hour on their roads from Geneva airport, it soon became pretty clear why. When we arrived in SlowLaunches (Haute-Savoie) we were greated like royalty, we were given a great tour of the Qortel facilities and invited to a stunning lunch at the local Brassierie. But afterwards it was time for business, time to get our hands on these new models.
The first model we tried to test was the new Qortel "Cuddle". We'd seen it in the brochure and knew that it was designed for the flying parent, but we weren't quite expecting to be able to fly with newborn babies only 2 months old. This thing came with gadgets we couldn't even guess at. The fold-away nappy changing bench that slipped under the seat board fooled us for a while, and it had a special deodorizing sausage maker thingy that was designed to hold "soiled" nappies buried in the back where the rucksack should be. We're serious, it's no joke, it created sausages from shit-filled nappies. "It keeps the smell down", they informed us. "Yeah, right", we replied. We had calmed down a bit when they showed us the electric bottle warmer built into the side pockets, as we could understand that one, but none of us had the nuts to even touch the tit-shaped plastic pump thing hanging from the left riser. How had they tested this thing? Again we'd settled down a bit when they attached a brightly coloured chain of distracting plastic tinkling teddy-bears across the chest harness, as we'd seen these things before too. But to finish us off they then strapped the papoose thing diagonally across the chest area and told us this was where the baby goes. The bloody thing looked specifically designed to strangle you if you slipped on takeoff, as far as we could tell. To conclude then, none of us even had the balls to go closer than a metre to it as it was practically dripping hormones.
Next up, they presented us with something we could actually get our heads around. Something designed more for our mindset. The Qortel "Quicky". Now here was a tandem harness truly designed for some cross country action. Suffice it to say, just about every connection on the thing was designed to rotate 180 degrees vertically and the full 360 in the horizontal. It looked cool. Really cool. Everything on it was matte black, except a single silver logo on the back of the shoulder which simply said "Quicky?" Yeah, that cool. As chief editor, I was the closest when they asked if anyone wanted to try it, and as such, managed to just squeeze my arse in before Dave our test pilot. To say it was perfect timing for their secretary, Vanessa D'en Haut, to arrive with the afternoon coffee was to understate the current atmosphere and we noticed she left quite rapidly after putting the tray on the table. We guess she'll be sending the guy from the stores to deliver it next week when XC-Rag do their reviews. There was only one gadget that took a while to figure out and it wasn't until we discovered the on-switch in the shoulder strap, and gave poor old Dave the fright of his life, that we discovered how those kinky French dudes really like it. You've never seen a grown man exit a harness so fast in your life. Incidentally, they may be missing one or two of their demo models when they do a stock take at the end of the month.
Clearly with a couple of "Quicky's" shoved up our jumpers there was no time to review their other new models, the "Quaint" for the older pilot, and the "Quackers" a new speedriding harness. If we have time, maybe we'll return next month and complete the review, but I imagine that we'll have too much tandem piloting on over the next few weeks to squeeze it into the schedule.
Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1494 "Leonardo da Vinci Training Hill" videos
Funnier than the 1494 "Leonardo da Vinci Training Hill" videos