* no two are alike *

mid-paralympic update

2010-03-18T19:03:00.002-06:00

We're more than halfway through the Games, but I'm exactly halfway through my race schedule, so it's a good time for an update.

I was the top American in both the slalom, held last Sunday, and Tuesday's GS, finishing 9th and 14th respectively. This was a nice surprise for me; I hadn't expected to do so well in the technical events. The GS was particularly tough, since we ran the race in a steady rain and deteriorating snow conditions that probably would have forced the cancellation of the race if it weren't for the incredible army of volunteer course workers and slippers on hand here in Whistler.

I got to spend some time with all my assembled family and friends on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday Mary and I drove down to Vancouver to visit the University of British Columbia. I was accepted to the UBC's graduate School of Library, Archival and Information Studies last week, and I wanted to check out the campus and meet people there. I came away with a very favorable impression of the program and the campus, and it's quite possible that Mary and I will end up there later this year.

After my interview and tour at SLAIS, we met up with Mashi Shinoda, a monoskiing friend from Winter Park who is an undergrad at UBC. The three of us had dinner at an authentic-seeming Chinese restaurant (they even had shark fin soup!) and caught a Paralympic sled hockey game. Korea beat Sweden 2–1.

Today was the downhill, rescheduled from last Saturday when it was cancelled due to fog. The conditions today were pretty much ideal: clear and sunny, and cold enough last night that the track froze and set up nicely. That meant that the women had a pretty bumpy and fast ride, while the course had softened up a little (and gotten even bumpier) by the time the men went.

We Americans had a stellar day in three classes. In the women's visually impaired class, my Winter Park teammate Danelle Umstead and her husband Rob took the bronze, their first Paralympic medal. In the men's VI class, Mark Bathum won his first medal too, a silver. His guide is Slater Storey, brother of fellow Paralympian Elitsa Storey. And in the women's sitting class, we went 1-2 again, with Alana Nichols winning her second gold of these games and Laurie Stephens in silver. Bravo USA!

revised Paralympic race schedule

2010-03-13T19:16:00.002-07:00

Fog and bad weather cancelled the downhill today, and it will affect the race schedule here for the whole week. For now, the schedule is as follows, with my races in bold:

Sunday March 14 Slalom VI- Sit, 10:00 & 13:30 (I'll be running with bib #74)
Monday March 15 Slalom Standing, 10:00 & 13:30
Tuesday March 16 Giant slalom VI-Sit, 10:00 & 13:30
Wednesday March 17 Giant slalom Standing, 10:00 & 13:30
Thursday March 18 DH All, time TBA
Friday March 19 Super-G VI-Sit, time TBA
Saturday March 20 Super-G Standing, time TBA
Sunday March 21 Super-combined All, times TBA

VI-Sit = Visually Impaired and Sitting classes
All times are Pacific Daylight Time (and don't forget to spring forward).

You can watch the races live on www.paralympicsport.tv !

I am told that tickets will be honored for the date printed on them, not the race printed on them. If you now have tickets for the "wrong" event, you can exchange them at a Paralympic ticket office in Whistler or Vancouver.

paralympic blog, day 5

2010-03-13T01:19:00.002-07:00

Oh well, so much for the "daily blogging" thing.

One quick word before I go to bed tonight, post-Opening Ceremonies: the weather has forced a schedule change. They will still try to get the downhill off Saturday at 11:30, but Sunday will be either the super G for ALL classes or slalom for sitting & VI. That means my first race of the Games will definitely be Sunday, not Monday.

paralympic blog, day 3

2010-03-10T23:47:00.003-07:00

Oh no! I was just about to go to sleep, but I realized I forgot to write anything today. I better make this quick.

The first day of downhill training was long. Fog and snow rolled in and out all day, and after starting on time, there were many holds and delays. I didn't run until around 4:00 p.m., and the standing men didn't get to run at all. My run was a bit round and not too fast, with a couple of mistakes. But I made it through the course at speed, which was the goal. I will run tomorrow's training run unless we get hit by bad weather again (which is the current forecast), in which case I may skip it and get some rest and some exercise on the bike. As I've said, I'm not set to race the downhill anyway, but I'm now qualified to run it if I'm called upon to fill someone's spot.

Oh, also I just found out that I've been admitted to the library science program at UBC in Vancouver — hooray!

Only two days until opening ceremonies...

paralympic blog, day 2

2010-03-09T22:18:00.003-07:00

We got up to Whistler Creekside this morning and did some freeskiing, though not on the race hill. That slope, Franz's, was closed a few days ago so the Paralympic downhill course could be set. Our head coach, Ray Watkins, set it. It's very similar to the course we ran here a year ago for World Cup Finals. Tomorrow is the first downhill training run, and I'll be inspecting and running the course even though I'm not scheduled to run the downhill race on Saturday. The downhill is the only event I'm not going to be racing, even though it's probably my best race. This is because the United States has a lot of strong downhillers in the sitting men's class, and we're only allotted three start positions. I'm ranked #4.

Despite the clouds and light snow falling, the view from the Creekside Gondola this morning was prettier than any mountain vista: a world-class, race-ready downhill track, all dyed and prepped for a few forerunners to test out today. At the finish is a good-sized temporary stadium for spectators, as well as a dozen or so temporary buildings for media, timing, logistics, concessions, doping control, et cetera. Everything is spangled in VANOC blue and green and looks just as splendid as it did on TV during the Olympics. The only thing out of place is the giant green Olympic rings erected slopeside, next to the final pitch of the downhill. The Paralympics don't have permission to use the five-ring logo, so they have been covered with a giant white tarp in hopes that no one will notice them, I suppose. All that was missing today was spectators. They'll begin filling in the stands tomorrow, and Saturday's race is sold out. I'll be sitting there watching then, but for the next few days — weather-dependent, of course — I'll be out there maching down that white ribbon.

paralympic blog, day 1

2010-03-08T23:21:00.002-07:00

Well, I'm here. I mean, we're here. The Games are here.

I'm pretty comfortably settled into the Whistler Paralympic Village, watching old Dylan clips on YouTube with my roommate Nick and getting ready to freeski a bit tomorrow on super-G skis.

This morning Nick and I took a bus up the Whistler Creekside base to retrieve a few things from our ski bags, which had been delivered to the ski preparation area. Each team has a wax cabin in the Creekside parking garage, and the U.S. room is huge, with plenty of room for our four technicians to do their job and even maintain a small office. After getting home we spent the day traipsing around the Village and getting the lay of the land. There's a big old dining tent with much better food than we had at Sestriere in '06, and many athlete lounges filled with TVs, video games, pool tables and the like. Pretty much everything an athlete needs is here, within a quarter-mile radius: medical attention, massage, fitness facilities, even meditation and prayer rooms. All our needs are attended to by a phalanx of U.S. Paralympic Team staffers and an army of "Smurfs," as the blue-jacketed Vancouver 2010 volunteers call themselves. These people come from all over the world and spend their own money to get here, just to serve us food, drive us around, inspect our credentials, answer our questions, and do the million other things that need doing around here. It's an impressive sight and a pretty well-oiled machine.

paralympic blog, day -1

2010-03-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

I’m on the Team USA bus from Vancouver Airport up to Whistler. Skies are gray and it’s cold and rainy outside, but spirits are high and someone has a DVD of Dumb & Dumber playing on the bus’s TVs. The Sea-To-Sky Highway provides some ridiculously dramatic views of B.C.’s coastal inlets, mountains, straits, fjords and whatnot before we turn inland and start climbing uphill.

The flight from Denver was easy enough — I even managed to finagle a seat in First — but loading and unloading 10 or 12 wheelies on one plane took a good while. (We traveled with the curling team.) As soon as we cleared passport control, Vancouver 2010 staff were waiting to issue us our athlete credentials. The credential is a laminated, hologrammed card as big as a DVD case that you have to wear around your neck for just about every waking moment at the Games. Security is generally as tight as you might expect for a big international event. Some people even wear their credentials underneath their race suits while competing, so as not to be caught without it if selected for doping control in the finish area. When we had our head shots taken for our credentials a month or two ago, we were told we couldn’t smile, so all of us look deadly serious in the photos.

Joe Tompkins has convinced the bus driver to stop at a roadside Subway, and everyone is chowing down on sandwiches. Soon we’ll arrive at the Whistler Paralympic Village and begin settling into our dorm rooms, learning our way around the place, getting dinner and inevitably convening for the first of many alpine team meetings. I don’t know yet who my roommate or roommates will be for the duration of the Games, but I do know it will be someone I’ve shared with before — I think I’ve probably roomed with every U.S. male disabled skier that’s skied a World Cup race in the last 10 years. Who I’m assigned could have a big effect on my mental state for the next 15 days.

paralympic blog, day -2

2010-03-06T23:01:00.006-07:00

We received all our Paralympic kit today at team processing. I'm not exaggerating when I say you could clothe a small village in one athlete's allotment of Ralph Lauren and Nike. We're in Denver tonight. I can't tell you which hotel we're staying at, but it does involve two trees.

Tomorrow we take off for Vancouver and then bus it straight up to Whistler. We'll have two days to acclimated to Paralympic Village life and freeski the hill a bit before downhill training runs begin on Wednesday. Although I won't be racing in the downhill, I've been informed that I will be starting the downhill training runs so that I can be available to race if one of the three U.S. sitting men should be unable to start because of injury or illness. That will also give me some valuable experience running the speed hill, which ought to help me in the super-G and super-combi races.

Look for an announcement from U.S. Paralympics on Monday re: U.S. broadcast coverage of the Games. Amazing awaits!

paralympic blog, day -3

2010-03-04T21:46:00.003-07:00

We left the hotel for the mountain around 7:30 this morning. We made it home at 6:30 p.m. That's an IPC World Cup super-combined race for you. One run of super-G and one of slalom somehow adds up to a very, very long day on the hill. It was capped off with some delicious fish tacos from Dos Gringos in Carbondale.

I actually had a pretty good day today. My super-G run was lackluster and I finished 11th, but I had the day's third-fastest slalom run to move up to 6th place. The slalom was so choppy and rutted that it took out a lot of my competition, but I'm pleased that I made it down the run without any major errors.

I need to ski tomorrow's super-G a bit more dynamically than I did today.

Sorry for the brief post tonight. I'm already past my intended bedtime, but I needed to stick to the plan and write something.

paralympic blog, day -4

2010-03-03T21:23:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I ran the Buttermilk downhill course in a factored time of 1:16.06. Today my time was 1:18.02 — a full two seconds slower. Many other skiers skied faster today, or about the same. I didn't make any major mistakes in my run. The coaches had nothing but good things to say about my skiing.

And yet I was slow. Not just a little bit slow, but 11th-place slow. 5.7-seconds-out-of-first-place slow. Who knows how these things happen? Did we miss the wax? Is the structure of my downhill ski's base no good for this type of snow? Did I make some big mistakes that weren't immediately obvious?

The answer to all three of these questions is probably yes. (In fact, video analysis confirms the third answer.) Now it's a question of addressing each issue and trying to reclaim some of the speed I so rightfully (self-righteously?) deserve, in time for tomorrow's super-combined and Friday's super-G.

Speed is a weird, elusive thing. That's about as profound a statement as it's possible to make about ski racing sometimes.

p.s. Congratulations to teammate Alana Nichols on winning her first of many World Cup downhill overall globes today.

paralympic blog, day -5

2010-03-02T20:17:00.002-07:00

First off today, a link. (I guess you need to be logged into a Facebook account in order to view this.) Susan Burgstiner, who as a steering committee member of SkiTAM is one of our team's biggest supporters, shot and posted this nice little glimpse into a U.S. Adaptive Team training session at Vail last week. Here it is.

We raced downhill today under the fierce Colorado sun, a very springlike day. The organizers decided not to groom the race hill last night after two days of training on the same track. This is how it's normally done — one doesn't want the snow softening up too much at night; it's better to let the track get firmer with each day of racing. In this case, it led to a pretty bumpy track that the standing skiers didn't have much trouble with but some of the sitting skiers found pretty difficult. There were lots of DNFs. I managed to power through the bumps and ripples and finish six or seven tenths faster than in yesterday's training run, good enough for sixth place. Joe absolutely killed it today, winning by almost two seconds over Germany's Thomas Nolte and Frenchman Yohann Taberlet. I was just two hundredths behind my teammate CDY. We'll do it all again tomorrow at 11 a.m., and who knows where the top skiers will end up with another roll of the dice?

paralympic blog, day -6

2010-03-01T19:47:00.005-07:00

Some of you reading this have been checking my blog weekly or even daily, hoping I would finally get my act together and write something (hi, Grandma & Grandpa!). More likely, you're catching this on an RSS reader, Facebook, or Google Buzz.

I am going to try something here. I'm going to attempt to write something in this space every single day from now through the end of the Vancouver Paralympic Games, on March 21. It will be good for my head, and some of you might even be interested to hear about my experiences, opinions, &c.

So. The Paralympic Opening Ceremony isn't until March 12, but we will arrive at the Village in Whistler on March 6 to begin settling in and do a little last-minute training. So that makes today six days out from the beginning of the Paralympic experience, and a good day to start the daily blogging for two other reasons, as well.

To wit: (1), Last night was the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics. People have put that warmup competition behind them and are ready to start thinking about the main event. (Ha ha.) And (2), this is the eve of the final World Cup race series of our season.

We're staying in Carbondale, Colorado this week, racing downhill, super-G and super-combi half an hour away at Aspen's little sister mountain, Buttermilk. (No working people in the Aspen area can afford to live in Aspen itself anymore, so they all live in these peripheral towns that are named after minerals, like Basalt, Carbondale, Marble or Redstone.)

Yesterday and today at Buttermilk we have had what's called "downhill training." But don't let the name fool you: this is really more like a race than anything else. We get to inspect the race course — the same one we will be racing tomorrow and Wednesday, when it counts — and then run it, with everything exactly the same as it will be on race day: timing, race bibs, blue dye, the whole shebang. Only one run per athlete per day, just like race day.

At least, that's the idea. But of course, how can one day really be exactly like another day? That's not how the world works. The weather changes. The track changes, gets bumpier or icier or softer. People get sick, or well. People wake up on different sides of the bed.

For those reasons, training run results can be a pretty poor predictor of the actual race results. Who knows whether someone is holding back in training, or whether someone who crashed in both training runs will keep it together on race day and be the fastest one down the hill?

All this said, my training runs have gone well. Yesterday I was sixth, a little over two seconds slower than the leader, my teammate Joe Tompkins. And today I was second, just 0.11 seconds behind today's leader, Germany's Martin Braxenthaler. Downhill is a game of hundredths of a second, and that's particularly true on this course, which is so easy that there's no room for error. Lose half a second, and you might find yourself five places back.

The plan for tomorrow's race, then, is this: try to do exactly what I did today, and try not to make any mistakes. (And maybe try to beat some of those people with Wikipedia articles about them.) Easy, right?

breakfast

2010-02-27T11:58:00.003-07:00

I ordered a breakfast burrito this morning — "hold the chorizo." It arrived with huge chunks of sausage in it.

"Hey man, I'm sure I said no chorizo. What's this stuff then?"

"Oh, don't worry, that's not chorizo. That's regular sausage."

kimberley, BC downhills

2010-02-11T15:28:00.002-07:00

We raced two Nor-Am downhills today up here in Canada, and my friend (and teammate for this trip) Nick Catanzarite won them both, with me in second place both times. Not the most challenging field of racers here, but it was a really fun & fast course.
Results should be up soon over here. (Look at the right side of the page, under NOR-AM.)

ugh

2010-01-08T14:09:00.002-07:00

First World Cup race of the season was today, a GS at Patscherkofel, outside of Innsbruck, Austria. The snow was really firm and icy, so unlike our Western U.S. snow. It was a really rough day for me. I finished the first run in last place after making some big errors, and then failed to finish the second run. I'll try again tomorrow in the slalom and hopefully write more later.

see lake wakatipu

2009-08-22T21:56:00.003-06:00

greetings from kiwiland.

glory box

2009-06-30T16:21:00.002-06:00

Eleven years ago today, the English singer and guitarist John Martyn and his band performed a live set in the studios of KCRW, the influential public radio station in Santa Monica, California, for Nic Harcourt's legendary show Morning Becomes Eclectic. Martyn, who died earlier this year at the age of 60, was described in his London Times obit as "an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues," but I really can't say I'm familiar with his body of work.

In fact, the only reason I know about him is that one song he recorded that day in 1998, a cover of Portishead's "Glory Box," made it onto a live-in-studio compilation KCRW issued the next year. The CD found its way into my hands sometime during college, probably through my stint as a student-radio DJ at Dartmouth, and the track somehow quickly became etched into my consciousness. At the time I had no more than a passing familiarity with Portishead's original recording, and Martyn's soulful (I hate that word, but there really is no other word) rendition of a heartrendingly written song ("I'm so tired of playing with this bow and arrow...") became the soundtrack to every breakup I've endured since.

Here it is:
John Martyn - Glory Box

And here is the equally stunning Portishead original, in case you've never heard it:
Portishead - Glory Box

justed listed

2009-04-13T18:01:00.003-06:00

I received this postcard the other day in the mail, from a local Realtor looking to drum up business from people like me who own condos in the same development:

JUSTED LISTED
116 Waterside, Building B, Unit 206
Two bedroom, two baths and two outdoor living spaces on the pond!!!
$329,900

I have to admit that, as absurd as "justed listed" sounds, it wasn't until the third or fourth time I looked at it that the headline looked wrong. A Google search confirms that "justed" for "just" is rare but not unheard of in phrases like "justed listed" (390 hits), "justed married" (522) and "justed sold" (56).

It's not hard to explain why: when we write such a phrase, our brains are thinking "past participle tense!" (whether or not we know that it's called that). We might be so anxious to mark the phrase as being in that tense that we accidentally inflect the wrong word and tag the -ed onto the adverb just in addition to the verb list.

N.B. — I suspect that some of these Google hits are from items written by non-native English speakers, but the Realtor's postcard is not.

of andy murray, blancmanges, and ties

2009-04-04T10:33:00.004-06:00

I really enjoy my free time.

Now that our racing season is over, I can sit in my living room while the snow continues to pile up outside and watch a tennis match, as I did last night, between the Scot Andy Murray and the Argentine Juan Martín del Potro. I can revel in the euphemisms employed by the commentators when del Potro gets hit in the balls, and I can let my mind drift, during the injury timeout, to the topic of Scotsmen In Tennis.

I can recall how, in one of the more bizarre episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, itself a pretty bizarre TV show, "The Science Fiction Sketch" imagines England overrun by blancmange-shaped aliens from the planet Skyron. The blancmanges seem to have the power to turn everyone in England into red-bearded, kilt-wearing Scotsmen. It emerges that the blancmanges' end goal is to win Wimbledon, which will be an easy feat for them since their only opponents will be Scotsmen and (the sketch keeps reminding us) "it's well known that Scotland is the worst tennis-playing nation in the world." It is only after a dessert-hungry couple, Mr. and Mrs. Brainsample, eat the blancmange which is playing in the Wimbledon final, that one Angus Podgorny, Scotsman, is able to do the unthinkable and win the tournament.

Having re-watched this sublime bit of oddness, I can then start wondering whether I can be the only one to notice that the top British tennis player in the world today is, in fact, Mr. Murray, a Scotsman. A quick Google search confirms that I am not the first; among others, Mark Hodgkinson, a writer for The Telegraph has also noticed it.

Reading the article, which is about Britain's lack of success in the Davis Cup without its star layer, Murray, I become very confused when I read the following sentence:

[T]his defeat to Ukraine, played in Murray's absence, meant that Britain are still yet to win a tie north of Hadrian's Wall.

"Win a tie"? Is Britain really so bad at tennis that to them a tie would qualify as a "win"? Is it even possible for a tennis match to end in a tie? I know that something's up when the noun "tie" appears four more times in the article, apparently not meaning what I think it should mean.

That's when I go to one of my favorite lexicographical resources, OneLook.com, where I start examining different dictionaries' entries for "tie." My go-to dictionary, American Heritage, doesn't seem to list this meaning. Nor do Merriam-Webster's, Encarta, Webster's New World, or a dozen others — although they do list as many as 14 noun senses for the word! Of course, I should have begun my search with a British source: Sure enough, sense 4 in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English is "[Brit.] a sports match in which the winners proceed to the next round of the competition." That's the sense I was looking for, the one Mr. Hodgkinson emplyed so liberally.

Instead of going to OneLook, I guess I could have gone straight to the website that is fast becoming a more comprehensive resource than even the venerable OED: Wiktonary. The lexicographical partner to Wikipedia, the site can be remarkably comprehensive and up-to-date in ways print dictionaries (and their online versions) can't, thanks to its anyone-can-edit-anytime format. Just look how beautiful its entry for "tie" is. Right there in the list of noun senses we find: "(sports, British) A meeting between two players or teams in a competition" — and we even get a usage example: "The FA Cup third round tie between Liverpool and Cardiff was their first meeting in the competition since 1957." Perhaps the amateur (and professional?) lexicographers of Wiktionary have missed one subtlety, though, that Oxford's editors caught: a tie is not just any sporting match, but one "in which the winners proceed to the next round of the competition," as they do in both the Davis Cup and in the Wiktonary example. Score one for the experts.

I could follow my mind's wanderings like this all day, thanks to the time-suck of the Internet. Like I said, I really enjoy my free time.

whistler

2009-03-15T13:56:00.002-06:00

Yesterday we wrapped up the World Cup Finals in Whistler, B.C. This was our test event for the Vancouver Paralympics next year; we were racing on the same hill we'll be on then. I'm writing from the Vancouver airport on the way back to Colorado and don't much feel like writing prose right now — kinda sleepy after a late night out with all the teams. So instead I'll write some bullet points to update you on the pertinent facts, and I'll keep going until I get sick of writing more or it's time to board our flight, whichever comes first. Ready? OK, let's do this:

In yesterday's slalom, my U.S. teammate Gerald Hayden landed on his first World Cup podium, taking the bronze behind Suzuki (JPN) and Egle (AUT) and ahead of a lot of really, really good skiers. In the finish I gave him a fist bump and a "Booyakasha!"
I seem to have caught a bad case of the DNFs lately. I didn't finish the downhill, GS or slalom. Despite that, I'm pretty happy with how I'm skiing and I think that when I do break out of this rut next season, I'll be racing on a higher level. I haven't trained as much this winter as usual because we've been so busy racing, and I think it's hurt me in the technical events.
If you haven't seen them yet, the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic mascots are AWESOME. Quatchi is a friendly sasquatch and Miga is an adorable little anime-ish bear or something, while the Paralympic mascot Sumi (who was in the finish area of our races most days) is a weird hybrid of a sea turtle, an eagle and a bear — kind of messed up but functional in his own little happy way, much like most of us Paralympic athletes.
The Sea To Sky Highway, from Vancouver to Whistler, is breathtakingly cool and scenic.
I did finish the super combined race, in 10th place (14th in the super G portion and 5th in the slalom — who would've guessed I'd be turning into a slalom specialist?). I managed to finish all three super-combis this season, meaning I finished in a respectable 8th place in the final standings in that discipline.
The downhill course is truly badass. Like the Sestriere course from 2006, it has everything a disabled downhill should: speed, steeps, flats, a big banked turn, and even some air. This is probably the fastest course I've ever raced; I was clocked at 111 km/h (69 mph) during a training run, although in the race run I slid out before I got to the speed trap. Despite the DNF, it was valuable experience to run the Paralympic course three days in a row.

world championships, days 2 through 4

2009-02-24T03:57:00.002-07:00

Here's the rundown of my races so far:

GS (Feb. 21): About the worst possible result: I fell on the fourth gate of the course and slid past the next gate, and my whole race day was over by mid-morning.

I tried to make the best of it — had some lunch and then took the gondola early back to the hotel, where I ran into Kim Joines from the Canadian team, whose day had also come to an early end. She told me about the Korean-style spa inside our hotel; I hadn't even known it existed. Sure enough, below the lobby was a pretty opulent tiled set of rooms. One was a locker room and one a sort of powder room just like you'd find in a posh American health club. The third room had showers on each side — regular Western stand-up showers on the right, and traditional Korean sit-down showers on the left, with a small wooden stool to sit on and a wooden bucket to lather up with. You have to take a shower first and take all your clothes off before proceeding to the middle of the room, where there is a big hot tub with a fountain of vertical jets in the middle. I had a nice soak and then moved to the back wall, where there were two more tubs without jets: one with even hotter water and one quite cold. (The thermometer said 19 degrees C, which works out to about 66 Fahrenheit.) (10 minutes later: I just got into a conversation with Erik Leirfallom and Marcel Kuonen about why 66 degrees feels so much colder in water than in air. The short version of the answer we came up with is "specific heat capacity.") Anyway, I took my cue from the Korean guy who came in while I was in the "warm" tub and tried plunging from the hot to the cold and back again. It was pretty exhilarating, and I went back to my room refreshed.

Feb. 22 was a day off. I did some super G training in the morning and then a few of us had lunch at the Top of the Top, the revolving restaurant at the top of the ski area.

Super combined (Feb. 23): Actually, this might have been worse than the GS. I finished the super G portion with no major mistakes, but my run was absolutely terrible. I wasn't looking for speed anywhere, didn't take any chances, and just generally skied like a wuss the whole way down. Resolved to make amends, I skied a somewhat decent slalom run and finished the race in 16th place.

Super-G: This was a lot better, despite the 20th place finish. I really went for it, skied great all the way up to a point about three quarters of the way down the course, where I misjudged the entry to a crucial turn and got so incredibly late that I barely made about four consecutive gates. I'm sure I lost two or three seconds here, but only finished five seconds out of the lead, meaning I skied well most of the way down. This was a tight race in my class, won by Shannon Dallas of Australia.

world championships, day one

2009-02-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

We are at High1 Resort in Gangwon-do, South Korea, for the biennial alpine disabled World Championships [official site]. It's now Saturday evening, Korea time, and we've finished the first day of racing. At the awards ceremony in a few minutes, the new world champions will be crowned in slalom. They are:

Women's visually impaired: Sabine Gasteiger (AUT)
Women's standing: Lauren Woolstencroft (CAN)
Women's sitting: Stephani Victor (USA)
Men's visually impaired: Jakub Krakow (SVK)
Men's standing: Cameron Rahles-Rabula (AUS)
Men's sitting: Jürgen Egle (AUT)

My day was pretty disappointing. I never quite found my rhythm out of the start and went out of the course at the first hairpin. I had to hike to make a gate, and although I skied the rest of the course fairly well I finished too far behind to qualify for a second run. I spent the afternoon watching my teammates and competitors race. Tyler had a good second run and moved up from 16th place after a mediocre first run to finish 12th overall, but that was the best result any of the male monoskiers on our team could manage. Fortunately our team did have some good news in the first-place finish by Stephani and a close second by Alison Jones in the women's standing category — she won the first run and seemed to have the race in the bag when she broke an outrigger near during the second run and had to ski the last few gates with a floppy rigger.

kimberley wrap-up

2009-02-07T10:55:00.002-07:00

M and I are packing up in Kimberley, B.C. this morning and getting ready for the long, long drive to Colorado. She accompanied me up here (I flew up to Boise, then we drove from there) for some Nor-Am races, two downhills and two super G's. In a few days there are slalom and GS races in Park City, Utah but I'm skipping them — I need a little time off before we head to Korea for the World Championships on the 18th. Instead, we are taking our time getting back to my house in Winter Park, perhaps stopping in Yellowstone or Jackson Hole for a day or two.

It was a pretty enjoyable week of racing for most of us here in Kimberley. There was a big field consisting mainly of Americans from the Winter Park and Aspen programs, including four or five of us current U.S. World Cup team members. In my class in particular the competition was stiff, with five top speed skiers in attendance: my teammates Chris Devlin-Young and Tyler Walker, the UK's Sean Rose, KJ van der Klooster of the Netherlands, and me. The race hill here is quite rolling, with lots of varied terrain (made even more pronounced this year by a dearth of snow in this part of Canada), and the course was fairly fast and open. We battled it out for the top three spots every race, and in the end I won just one medal (bronze in the second downhill) but was generally pretty pleased with the way I skied. Complete results can be found here.

weather day (again)

2009-01-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

No racing today — high winds and moderately heavy snowfall last night and all day forced the organizers to cancel today's super-G/slalom super-combi. We got as far as inspecting the course, which looked great, before the decision was made. We will try to hold a super G race tomorrow, but the forecast doesn't look good, so it appears we may be done racing here in Sestriere. We are scheduled to drive to Marseille on Sunday and depart on Monday morning. We'll have perhaps an afternoon and an evening to sightsee in Marseille — leave any local restaurant recommendations in the comments section!

4th in sestriere super combi

2009-01-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

In a "super combi" race today I had the sixth-fastest downhill run and the third-fastest slalom run and finished in fourth place overall, equalling my previous best World Cup finish, from a super G in Korea three years ago. But first let me back up.

I made such a boneheaded mistake in yesterday's downhill. After a solid training run with only one section that could've stood major improvement, you'd think I would have made damn sure I knew what my plan was for that section of the course when it came time for the first race run that same afternoon. But the entrance to that section was still a question mark in my mind, and sure enough I blew it there, skiing too straight into a two-gate left-hand turn and finding myself unable to stay in the course at that speed. The result: Did Not Finish.

Today was the second consecutive beautiful, cold, bluebird day, and it was decided at the meetings last night that we would be running a "super combi" race today. The super combined is a relatively new race format that combines one run of either downhill or super G with a single run of slalom, all in one day. It favors the strong all-around skier. I'm not sure if I'm that, exactly, but I am strong in the two most extreme disciplines, downhill (the fastest) and slalom (the tightest). Consequently I had an inkling that I could do well today — always a dangerous thing. (If you don't believe me, see the cocky and ultimately fruitless predictions I made in my last post.)

From 8:30 to 9:00 this morning we were allotted more time to inspect the downhill course, although it was the same one we ran yesterday. I was able to pick out my line through the the section that gave me trouble yesterday: gates 20 and 21, the entrance to the section known as Acque Minerale, or "Mineral Water," for the way that it requires you to let your skis move fluidly back and forth down a steepish pitch. It basically worked out: I raced that section well, if perhaps a little conservatively. The course ran faster today than yesterday, thanks to a combination of colder temperatures, more firmly packed snow, and our increased confidence on the hill. It was a little bumpy in places, and while it never felt like too wild a ride, it was tough to be perfectly clean all the way down the piste. I ended up sixth in the downhill, a respectable finish and not a bad position to attack the slalom from.

During inspection we all noted that the course (set by a Slovakian coach) was a bit odd and arrhythmical — none of us liked the looks of it much. My approach was to ski the run at a solid 90 percent and make a clean run, and it paid off. My run felt solid, given what the course set.

In fact, when I crossed the finish line after my slalom run, I was in first place. In a two-run race like today, the second run start order reverses the top 15 finishers from the first run, so I was happy that I hadn't let any of those who I beat in the morning's downhill sneak past me in the slalom. But I knew that the fastest five guys were still on their way down and that I probably didn't have a great shot at a podium finish even though a few of them were not strong slalom skiers. So my heart raced as I watched what unfolded:

Harry Eder (AUT), in 5th place after the downhill, beats me, so I'm now in second place.
Shannon Dallas (AUS) beats us both and takes the lead, so I'm now in bronze-medal position. (He is the eventual super combi winner.)
Martin Braxenthaler (GER) makes a mistake on the final pitch, falls and missed gates, but gets up and finishes — a bit of a no-no; you can be fined for doing it in a World Cup. He gets a time, but is obviously disqualified, so I remain third.
Sean Rose (GBR), a better downhiller than he is a slalom skier, finishes with what was clearly a slower run than mine. The digital scoreboard reads, "Place: 4." I assume I am still in third.
Tyler Walker (USA), the leader after the downhill, falls in the same place as Martin, hikes, and finishes well out of contention.

My conclusion, and that of everyone around me, is that I've finished third and have won my first-ever World Cup medal. Right away everyone starts shaking my hand and congratulating me, and I'm beaming. The race is now over, and I can't wait for the coaches to come down so I can tell them about my accomplishment. I reflect on how long I've been racing World Cups — ten years, off and on — without a podium finish, and now the day finally seems to have come.

It's not for another ten or fifteen minutes, as I'm getting out of my monoski and getting ready to go home and change for the awards ceremony, that our head coach Ray's voice comes over another coach's radio: "Unofficial results: Burnett, 4th." I can't believe what I'm hearing. Did some inattentive gatekeeper forget to disqualify Braxenthaler? Was the electronic scoreboard wrong? Or was there some way I could have just miscalculated where I ended up?

Much later this afternoon, after the awards ceremony where the bronze medal is awarded to a surprised Sean Rose, I finally figure out the error in my thinking (and everyone else's, even Sean's). Have you figured it out?

By the way, this morning's run was scored as its own separate downhill race, besides serving as the first run of the super combi. The winner in my class was my teammate Tyler Walker, repeating his surprising feat from yesterday. I say surprising because Tyler has always been stronger in the technical events than in speed, and you may notice that I omitted him completely from my list of pre-race favorites. That was definitely a mistake; after these two days, Tyler is now the #1 ranked downhill sitting skier in the world.

powder day in sestriere

2009-01-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

I have a good feeling about tomorrow. As anticipated, we were unable to train or race today after an overnight storm dumped a foot of snow on the course, wiping out our second scheduled training day. But the weather cleared early this morning and looks like it will stay that way for another couple days — enough time to get in some racing, we hope. Tomorrow's revised schedule calls for us to run a single training run at 10 in the morning, followed by a race at noon. At the risk of tempting fate, I'll say that I think it'll happen more or less as scheduled. I'll even go so far as to predict that three of the following people will be on the podium tomorrow in the sitting men's class: Chris Devlin-Young (USA), Sean Rose (GBR), Yohann Taberlet (FRA), Shannon Dallas (AUS), Reini Sampl (AUT), Luca Maraffio (ITA)... and me.

After the training runs were called off this morning, a small group of us decided to go out powder skiing. Tyler, Brad and I had all brought fat freeskis with us, and we headed out with three of our coaches to explore all that Sestriere has to offer beyond the downhill course. It wouldn't be an understatement to describe the conditions as "truly epic." We had that rare combination of sunny blue skies and a foot of light, dry, utterly rippable Italian powder, and we ate it up. We skied for nearly five hours straight, stopping only once for cappuccino, clocking probably eight or nine runs of over 500 vertical meters each. The craziest part was that we had fresh tracks all day long. Europeans by and large just don't ski off-piste, leaving stash after untouched stash for pow-hungry Americans.

Most of the other teams, not traveling with fat skis, took the day off completely. But we were joined for a run by Emanuele "Meme" Pagnini, Italian monoskier, recent dad, and all-around nicest guy on the World Cup tour. Meme was skiing on a slalom ski, nice and fat at the tip and tail but way too narrow in the waist. I thought he'd have a tougher time than he did, following us down through the trees, clearings and creekbed crossings, but he only augured in a few times.

weather day

2009-01-19T12:16:00.002-07:00

As expected, the snowy/windy weather is playing havoc with our schedule. Today's scheduled training runs were canceled because the snow on course was allegedly too soft to be safe (we Rocky Mountain skiers thought it was fine), although we did get to inspect the course twice. It's a good set on a really fun hill. Now we're just hoping the snow will subside so we can get some training runs and a race or two in. Two training runs are scheduled for tomorrow, at 11 and 1.

sestriere (ITA), day 2

2009-01-18T07:55:00.001-07:00

Another morning of freeskiing on the downhill piste today, followed by live alpine World Cup-watching on TV. It was mostly sunny again this morning, but windy and colder, and by the afternoon a front had rolled in. Now it's snowing pretty hard and the winds outside are high enough to force closure of many lifts.

There's a saying in ski racing: "If you want snow, hold a downhill." Almost without fail the maxim seems to hold: we roll into town for some speed races, maybe get a few days of training in, and then like clockwork the storm clouds roll in and dump meters of snow on top of the course, forcing delays and cancellations as the course crew and coaches frantically try to clear the race line of excess snow so that we can hold a safe, fair race. We're all really hoping the snow doesn't continue as long as it's been forecast to, that we can get in a training run or two over the next two days and then run our races as scheduled, Wednesday through Saturday.

first day in sestriere (ITA)

2009-01-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

We finished up the La Molina World Cups on Wednesday and Thursday with a pair of slaloms. That's been a good event for me lately, but I had no tangible success in Spain. I had a good first run on Wednesday before skiing over a gate on the second run and getting DQ'd. (I had problems later on in the run anyway, so I would've slipped back from 8th to 10th place.) My first run the next day was shaping up to be my best yet in La Molina, but I skied out in a hairpin toward the bottom of the main steep pitch. This same section claimed perhaps half a dozen others in the men's sitting class, and the total number of DNF's in the class was at least half the field, thanks to the combination of a challenging race hill and a challenging, arrhythmical set.

Ultimately, the tech races at La Molina were a somewhat frustrating experience for me, so being out on the 211 cm downhill skis here at Sestriere today was a welcome change. We went freeskiing today on the race hill, the same piste I notched a fifth-place finish on in the 2006 Torino Paralympic downhill. Believe it or not, this is my first downhill since that race three years ago. Not many downhills get scheduled on the disabled circuit in the first place — too much work to put one on and too much hillspace needed for too many days — and they are often cancelled due to adverse weather. (I missed the one downhill our team ran last year, at Soldier Mountain in Idaho, because I was out with a back injury.)

So:
8:45 a.m. this morning and the sun hasn't yet broken over the jagged peaks, but the lifts are running and there's enough light to see what needs to be seen. The Italian and French and British tourists are still sleeping off the wine and grappa from last night, and the other disabled teams have elected to sleep in after the travel day.

We have the mountain to ourselves.

The downhill course is long, immensely long, ribboned by blue safety fencing on either side, all the way from the windswept and open starthouse, through some long flats, down the steep turns called "Acque Minerale," around the doglegs right and back to the left, all the way down the heart-racing final steep straightaway into the finish corral. The first run is cautious, taken in sections. We feel out edges and bases, remembering and relearning their relationship with the snow. Confidence builds, and speed comes so easily. A slight edgeset produces a clean long arc, and time slows, even as plastic and metal rush faster over frozen crystals. Steeper terrain means the arcs become tighter, the forces making themselves known on the internal organs, but the eyes and brain are steady, flat. Nothing is rushed, and the mountain becomes an ally. The undulations underfoot aren't something to resist but to interpret, be massaged by, conform with. Thousands of vertical meters are erased in a minute or two, sucked up into my stomach where they are like nourishment, like food.

It's great to be back out on a downhill ski again.

la molina update

2009-01-13T12:28:00.003-07:00

My monoski finally showed up at the hotel mid-morning yesterday — not in time for me to race in the first giant slalom, but at least I was able to take a few warm-up runs in the afternoon and get my bearings.

We had another GS race today, and I had a solid day. Despite a moderate mistake on the second run of a very steep and demanding course, I finished in the middle of the pack in 15th (the top American in my class, surprisingly). Our team has been struggling a bit so far, with our only podium finishes each day coming from Laurie and Stephani, our two ace female sitting skiers.

Tomorrow is the first of two slalom races. On such a steep hill I predict that the race (especially in the sitting classes) will be a bit of a survival-of-the-most-tenacious sort of a scenario, with no one skiing truly cleanly and the winner being the person who makes the best recoveries. Still, I'm excited to race slalom, because that's felt like the stronger of the two technical events for me lately.

Major bummer: my friend Kat Forestell, visually impaired racer from Canada, crashed today and tore her MCL and will be sidelined for at least the next six weeks.

If you're interested in watching any of the races, you can theoretically do that by visiting this website. I say theoretically because there seem to be some technical issues, at least with my setup (Mac running Firefox). Also, today (Tuesday)'s GS is for some reason labeled as Thursday. I was bib 58 today, although as of this writing they haven't posted everyone's run from today's race yet.

Today's results [PDF]

arrrgh

2009-01-11T08:38:00.002-07:00

My monoski and skis still haven't arrived from Air France, and it's seeming less and less likely that I'll get to race tomorrow here in La Molina.

I'm trying to put this in perspective... I'm in a beautiful place in the Pyrenees with some great people. My bags have made it to Marseille, which means I will get them sometime in the next day or two and be able to race eventually. And the world will go on.

And still, the feeling of frustration at this point is pretty overwhelming. I know that paying $550 in excess baggage charges doesn't guarantee that my luggage will arrive on time, but it's hard not to feel swindled.

le sigh

2009-01-09T14:16:00.003-07:00

So here we are, stuck in a crappy roadside hotel near Perpignan, at the eastern edge of the Pyrenees in southwestern France. Seven of us U.S. Adaptive Ski Team racers and six staff members (a nice ratio, that) flew from the States to Paris-Charles de Gaulle last night, and then hopped an hour-and-a-half Air France flight to Marseille. Our destination is La Molina, Spain, close to the borders with France and Andorra, where we'll race in the opening World Cups [PDF] of the 2009 season.

(Why fly to Provence and then drive four or five hours to La Molina when we could more easily fly into nearby Barcelona or Toulouse? Well, after these races are over we head by car to Sestriere, near Turin, Italy [where the alpine events for the 2006 Olympics and Paralympics were held], and Marseille is more or less equidistant between La Molina and Sestriere.)

After waiting around for all of our teammates to arrive — we didn't all make it onto our scheduled flight from Paris because Air France would only allow two wheelchair users per flight! — four of us found ourselves short a total of twelve checked bags, including all of our skis and my monoski (and Jonezy's clothing/gear bag). We spent a good two hours filling out forms and waiting around in the lost luggage office, only to be told that Air France didn't really know where our bags are or when we'd get them.

We made arrangements to have the bags re-routed to Toulouse and then delivered to our hotel, and took off for La Molina in our fleet of three rental vans (two for passengers, one for cargo). But over the past few days, Provence has experienced what one local said is its first snowfall in twenty years, and today it's been pouring rain. As a result, the highway driving conditions are decidedly sub-par. (Actually, isn't being below par a good thing? So "over-par," then.) We made it about two hours out of Marseille before the drivers (our coaches) wisely decided to stop for the night at a roadside hotel and continue the drive in the morning.

So I'll finish my delicious almond-pear tarte (God bless French convenience stores), and wrap up this post by publicly expressing to the cosmos and to Air France that I would really love to get my ski equipment sometime tomorrow so that I can get in one day of free skiing before the races begin at La Molina on Monday. Please? S'il vous plait? ¿Por favor?

first race of the season

2008-12-08T16:40:00.003-07:00

We ran a slalom race today at Copper Mountain in Colorado as part of the Ski Spectacular disabled ski week.

I took third place behind Sean Rose of Great Britain and surprise winner Josh Dueck of Canada. I suppose Josh wasn't a surprise to anyone who watched him ski last season — he just kept getting better and better, and it was only a matter of time before he "put two together," as we say.

It worries me a little that I was the top American, because I wasn't all that fast despite my podium finish; I was six seconds behind Josh and two behind Sean. I know how fast my teammates Tyler Walker and Chris Devlin-Young have been in training (namely, faster than me), but Tyler had a lackluster day, finishing just behind me, and Chris skied out in the second run after placing second in the morning run. I predict they'll be back in form tomorrow for the giant slalom, an event that I've not felt very good in during recent training.

notre dame de paris

2008-11-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the States now. Sorry for the lack of posting for the rest of the trip; I was hoping to add photos but I lost my camera at the Cold War Kids concert in London.

I did have a great moment that perhaps bears relating while eating a brie-and-cucumber sandwich in the churchyard behind Notre Dame. I was listening to my iPod on shuffle mode, and the R.E.M. song "1,000,000" came on. This is a song from the band's first EP, Chronic Town, which features a picture of one of the very gargoyles I was looking at:

A neat coincidence.

The next song to come on after that was "Roforofo Fight" by Fela Kuti. Kuti was the leading figure of the Afrobeat movement, without which "world music" as we know it almost certainly would not have existed. Paris is the de facto capital of the world music scene, and it owes Kuti (and Africa in general, for that matter) a great debt. Hearing the ordered chaos of Fela's music while gazing at Notre Dame, the enduring monument of Europe's rapidly fading Christian colonialist past, was a great juxtaposition.

merry olde england

2008-11-08T03:50:00.004-07:00

I'm writing my first real blog post in months from the Sanctuary House Hotel in Westminster, London. M. and I are on a little trip around England (and ending up in Paris) with the intention of seeing friends in various parts of the country and (for me) relaxing a bit before the ski season gets into full swing.

M. spent her early childhood (age 1 to 3) in the tiny village of Great Chishill, not far from Cambridge. She and her family have maintained their friendships there over the years and often returned to visit, so we were able to stay for our first few nights with M.'s friend Sophie, who lives in a modern townhouse half a mile away from the 500(!)-year-old house where she grew up — and where her parents still live — under a thatched roof.

Sophie's house is only a year old, and England is decidedly a first-world country, so I was really surprised to see how many, er, modern conveniences it was lacking. It began with the bathroom sink, which has separate taps (not just separate knobs) for hot and cold. This means that hand-washing requires either (a) filling the sink with the right mix of hot and cold water and then washing, (b) using exclusively ice-cold or boiling-hot water, or (c) rapidly alternating between the two. As I reflected that I hadn't seen a sink like that in an American house with plumbing less than fifty years old, I decided that option C worked best.

Another plumbing-related surprise was that the house had no shower, only a bathtub. As much as I enjoy a relaxing bath now and then, I can't imagine getting ready for work every morning by trying to wash up as quickly as possible in a bath instead of a shower. According to Sophie, it costs much more to put in a shower in her part of England because a pump has to be installed to compensate for the inadequate water pressure.

Yet another annoyance (well, it would be to me, anyway) was that the house had a washing machine but no dryer. But I began to realize that this one was part of an overall energy-consciousness that's not to be found in American homes, where efficiency is only beginning to be embraced by both builders and consumers. Dryers use a LOT of electricity, so it's both cheaper and more environmentally friendly to dry your clothes on a rack. (In England, I imagine outdoor clotheslines are only an option for a few weeks out of the year.)

There were other energy innovations, too. I soon found out that all electrical outlets in England have an on-off switch next to them; that way you can easily eliminate your electrical appliances' "phantom power" draw without having to unplug and re-plug them all the time. Likewise, Sophie's hot water heater was of the instantaneous (a.k.a. "tankless") variety, meaning it has to be turned on before you take a bath, but it saves lots of energy. Overall, of course, the house was quite a bit smaller than most American living spaces, too, meaning that it requires less energy to heat, clean and maintain.

That's all for now — time to go see some more sights in London and go to another show. (We've already been to concerts here by Al Green and the Cold War Kids.) Next post: London and points beyond, possibly with some photos

the five-dollar newspaper

2008-09-07T16:33:00.003-06:00

For a while now, the newsstand price of a Sunday New York Times (outside of NYC, anyway) has been $5. Purchasing one in the Salt Lake airport today brought to mind that milkshake scene from Pulp Fiction, so with apologies to Quentin Tarantino... here goes:

INT. HUDSON'S NEWS, LAX AIRPORT - MORNING

Harsh fluorescent light. Bleary-eyed business travelers and tourists mill around looking for caffeine and reading materials. Vincent Vega (JOHN TRAVOLTA) and Mia Wallace (UMA THURMAN) approach the check stand. The clerk is dressed as a 1950s newsie.

CLERK
How 'bout you, Peggy Sue?

MIA
I'll have this package of Tic-Tacs here -- orange -- and a five-dollar newspaper.

CLERK
How do you want that paper, New York Times or USA Today?

MIA
New York.

VINCENT
Did you just buy a five-dollar paper?

MIA
Sure did.

VINCENT
And that's newsprint and ink?

MIA
Uh-huh.

VINCENT
It costs five dollars?

CLERK
Yep.

VINCENT
You don't get bonus Web content or nothin'?

CLERK
Nope.

VINCENT
Just checking.

Vincent hands the clerk a ten, the clerk hands Mia the newspaper and $3.08 in change, and she and Vincent walk out into the busy airport concourse. Mia brings the newsprint to her nose and inhales.

MIA
Yummy!

VINCENT
You mind if I read a section of that?

MIA
Be my guest.

VINCENT
I gotta know how a five-dollar paper reads.

MIA
We can share this section if you like -- I don't have cooties.

She hands the front section to him. Vincent smiles.

VINCENT
Yeah, but maybe I do.

MIA
Cooties, I can handle.

He skims a few headlines.

VINCENT
Goddamn! That's a pretty fuckin' good newspaper.

MIA
Told ya.

VINCENT
I don't know if it's worth five dollars, but it's pretty fuckin' good.

He hands the paper back to her.

SCENE.

Naturally, I will be optioning this to all interested studios.

dogs in super-slow-mo

2008-08-15T14:34:00.002-06:00

Totally awesome video. (I suggest downloading and opening in a media player so you can make it big — that means option-clicking on this link if you use a Mac.)

the eight kinds of drunks

2008-08-06T12:21:00.002-06:00

I recently read Ammon Shea's Reading the OED, his chronicle of the year he spent reading the Oxford English Dictionary from cover to cover (well, covers to covers). Shea finds a lot of great words along the way, but my favorite was his entry for goat-drunk. It turns out that this word is just one of eight terms that an Elizabethan writer named Thomas Nashe came up with hundreds of years ago to describe the different ways people act when inebriated. Shea lists them all, even though they didn't all make it into the OED. How many of these people do YOU know?

Ape drunke: “he leapes, and sings, and hollowes, and daunceth for the heavens”
Lion drunke: “he flings the pots abut the house, calls his Hostesse whore, breakes the glasse windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrell with any man that speaks to him”
Swine drunke – "heauy lumpish, and sleepie, and cries for a little more drinke"
Sheepe drunke – "wise in his owne conceipt, when he cannot bring forth a right word"
Mawdlen drunke – "when a fellowe will weepe for kindnes in the midst of his Ale, and kisse you, saying; By God Captaine I loue thee, goe thy waies thou dost not thinke so often of me as I do of thee, I would (if it pleased GOD) I could not loue thee so well as I doo, and then he puts his finger in his eie, and cries"
Martin drunke – "when a man is drunke and drinkes himselfe sober ere he stirre"
Goat drunke: "made lascivious by alcohol"
Foxe drunke: "when he is craftie drunke, as many of the Dutch men
bee, and neuer bargain but when they are drunke"

new photos

2008-07-26T18:40:00.003-06:00

There are lots of new photos up on my Flickr account, including some from camping in Idaho, an R.E.M. show at Red Rocks in Colorado, a Drive-By Truckers show in Bend, Oregon, and visiting a houseboat in Seattle.

usada

2008-06-15T18:37:00.005-06:00

First of all, sorry I haven't posted in so long. Since I am such a slacker in the USDST news-reporting department, many of you will want to add the following to your blogroll: http://www.jessicatidswell.com/blog/. This is the blog of our trainer/coach, Jess, who does an awesome job of posting words and photos just about every day that we're on snow.

Now, on to what's on my mind at the moment: the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

(Why does the USADA logo contain an Austrian flag?)
This might be long, and almost certainly will contain some vitriol, so reader beware and all that. Plus, it'll probably get noticed by USADA and get me "randomly tested," but what the hell. (I'm only half-joking.)

Last fall my teammate Roger Lee was selected for a random, out-of-competition drug test, which was conducted by USADA. This happens now and then to all Olympic and Paralympic-level athletes. On this occasion, Roger tested positive for two "prohibited substances," chlorothiazide and hydrochlorothiazide. The reason for the positive test was that Roger had been taking a medication prescribed by his doctor during his recovery from a shoulder injury.

When a doctor deems it medically necessary for an athlete to take a medication containing a prohibited substance, the doctor must sign, and the athlete must submit to USADA, a Therapeutic Use Exemption form (TUE). Roger had done this prior to his test, and USADA should have had his TUE on file. But for some reason they didn't. His doctor sent the form to the wrong place, or someone misplaced it, or it got lost in the mail. In any case, Roger took all the steps he was supposed to take, and was not guilty of breaking any law. He played by the rules in every way.

That notwithstanding, if you visit the home page of the USADA website, you will notice a link to a press release titled "U.S. PARALYMPIC ALPINE SKIER ACCEPTS SUSPENSION FOR DOPING VIOLATION." If you read it, you will come away with the impression that Roger never submitted a TUE, and you will learn that Roger has been suspended from competition for one year.

As unlucky as Roger is that he is being sanctioned for something over which he had essentially no control, he is also lucky, because his lawyer managed to make his one-year suspension retroactive to September 14 of last year, meaning that he will be clear to train and compete with the team this upcoming ski season.

Nevertheless, this is not an acceptable outcome. Roger does not deserve any blame here. What's worse is that USADA is trumpeting its decision to the world, proudly proclaiming another victim of its perversely misguided arbitration process for doping violations.

The bottom line is that doping trials do not work like normal criminal or civil trials. There is no presumption of innocence until one's guilt is established. Instead, as soon as a positive test is recorded, for any reason, you are labeled guilty. You will have to spend thousands of dollars in an attempt to clear your name, but if one goes by the numbers, you will not be successful. Like a big corporation or a tyrannical government, USADA always wins. (My friend Steve, a lawyer, described it to me as a "kangaroo court.") USADA's official policy is that there is no such thing as "extenuating circumstances." To them, an unintentional violation like Roger's is as severe as an intentional one. And a violation for a "specified substance" (one that's not performance-enhancing but banned nonetheless, like cannabis) is just as bad as a violation for anabolic steroids.

Crazy? Absolutely. But that's what we have to endure in the name of catching a few cheaters, right? I don't really think so, actually. We need different systems for different sports. Doping is just plain not as much of an issue in, say, curling as it is in cycling or track and field. As far as I know, there has never been a documented case of real performance-enhancing drug use in alpine skiing, disabled or able-bodied. Instead, USADA wastes everyone's time and money busting people for improper TUEs, smoking pot, or using Propecia. We need a less paranoid, more just system. It's time for the madness to end.

north american scum

2008-05-22T18:11:00.003-06:00

Some of you might enjoy this slide show I made from photos my compadres and I took last season. The music is by LCD Soundsystem. (For a better viewing experience, I recommend clicking the "view high quality" link below the video window.)

UPDATE: fixed a problem with sound in the video, and un-embedded it for better viewing.

SkiTAM a success for disabled team

2008-04-10T15:44:00.000-06:00

USSA press release on SkiTAM here.

my latest obsession

2008-04-08T13:28:00.003-06:00

is The Onion AV Club's crossword, which you can do for free online. It's just as smart as the New York Times puzzle, but much snarkier. For instance, one recent puzzle called "Double Hung" featured long clues whose answers all involved two synonyms for "penis" (e.g. "ANDY [ROD][DICK]," "[PETER] O'[TOOL]E").

queen rock montreal

2008-04-07T13:34:00.003-06:00

My girlfriend M. and I have an ongoing game, inspired by The 40-Year-Old Virgin, called "Know How I Know You're Gay?" For the uninitiated (watch the linked video, which is NSFW unless you work somewhere really cool), this involves witty banter about just what it is that indicates that one's interlocutor is gay.

Anyway, M. recently had the best occasion ever to ask me if I knew how she knew I was gay: I bought the DVD Queen Rock Montreal and am currently watching it. I saw an abridged version of this rock doc on a plane to Europe in January, and it rocked so hard it almost blew my mind. So when I was in Best Buy the other day and saw the DVD on the rack, I knew I had to throw down for it. This is a Queen concert from November 1981, just a few months after I was born, in which the band runs through all their greatest hits. If there is an arena-rock band active today who is as energetic and tight as Queen and who has as charismatic a frontman as Freddie Mercury, I want to know about it.

the cuts

2008-03-29T21:35:00.000-06:00

In October of 1988, a Burlington, Vt.-based rock band called the Cuts released their second album, Straight Path. Their first album, a self-titled LP, had been a local favorite in 1985, and the band was doing their own promotion for the follow-up, sending it to DJs, promoters, anyone who could expose their music to a wider audience.

The Cuts never broke big, and if you Google them, the only mention you will find is in the recollections of ex-Burlington scenesters like this guy. In fact, the only reason I know about them is that the band's guitarist, Frank Egan, is my uncle.

For a few dollars, I recently bought a vinyl promo copy of Straight Path on eBay. It came with a great promotional poster of the band and a press release with a hand-written note to someone named Mickey, signed by Dave Daignault, the lead singer and bass player of the Cuts, and to this day one of Frank's best friends. After the Cuts, Frank and Dave moved to Boston and then New York, playing together under a variety of names: Lisa Rock, Coffee, Penny, and most recently Louder Daddy. Now Frank is a financial analyst with a wife, an ex-wife, and two kids, soon to be three.

But I digress. Here is my copy of Straight Path:

While the cassette version of the album (which I listened to repeatedly as a kid) had ten tracks, the vinyl edition has just six — "to insure [sic] greater fidelity for radio airplay," as the press release explains — making it more of an EP than a bona fide LP. My intention here is to re-expose the world to an album that very few people ever heard, and that probably I am the first person to listen to in a good 10 years. I managed to figure out how to digitize the EP, and I present it here (with Frank's pre-approval, of course) for your listening pleasure, complete with analog pops and hisses.

Click here to download the whole EP, or click on the track names below to listen to or download them individually:

01 Straight Path (lyrics)
02 In a Different Part of the World (lyrics)
03 Pig (lyrics)
04 Rain (lyrics)
05 Hard to Pretend (lyrics)
06 People Solving Problems (lyrics)

I recommend starting with the title track — the one the most deserves the title of "lost gem." This one's got it all: some kick-ass guitar lines, some oh-so-'80s synths, an anthemic chorus, and an even better verse melody that Dave milks for all it's worth. My favorite part is the fourth time through the "My roots..." verse, when Frank joins in on backing vocals. I also love the rhyme of "avoid" with "Freud." Classic.

Some of the other tracks maybe haven't aged as well, particularly "People Solving Problems" and "Pig," which are ruminations on world peace and American greed, respectively. (In particular, the sax solo on "Pig" reminds me how glad I am that that instrument is no longer prominently featured in many pop songs.) "In a Different Part of the World" is another topical song, but it's interesting for a number of reasons: first, the production, which is very Talking Heads-y in its world-music flavor and its female backing vocals; and second, the lyrics, which are frankly hilarious. The verses totally throw the feel-good message of the chorus on its head.

"Rain" is an interesting atmospheric piece that feels a bit longer than it is, but the production is fantastic, with synthesizers, backing vocals and distorted guitars used to spooky effect. This should've been in a movie.

The sleeper hit on the record, for me, is "Hard to Pretend." The synth line that opens the song would've fit right in on pop radio in '88, and the song is brooding, dark and moody as hell. Plus that guitar solo — damn, uncle!

When I was a kid listening to this stuff, I guess I didn't realize how many of the Cuts' songs were about messed-up desire and illicit romance, although I guess they did make the sex stuff more overt in one of their later songs, which was titled "Take Me Down." (I wish I could've been able to post an mp3 of "Esther," one of the cassette-only songs from Straight Path, which was about Dave's "Domino's pizza girl" and contained the awesome line, "There isn't anything that I wouldn't give just to munch-a-munch-a-munch on her pies.")

OK, so have a listen to these tracks and post reactions in the comments section.

paralympicsport.tv re-launched

2008-03-28T11:14:00.003-06:00

The website ParalympicSport.tv just got an overhaul, and the interface is a little easier to use. (If you're using a Mac, you'll need the Flip4Mac plug-in, which is a little cumbersome.) The site has footage of the Torino Winter Games as well as the Athens Summer Games, and there seems to be some new content also.

If I may make some recommendations, check out the footage of the first Winter Paralympic Games, from Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, in 1976. The narration's in Swedish, which is kind of amusing if you find Swedish as funny as I do. And then maybe you'll want to relive the glory (heh) of my 5th-place finish in the Torino downhill, which you can watch here. The problem is that you have to watch a very large amount of pre-race coverage, plus the visually impaired classes, the women's sitting division and some extensive course holds, before you get to the men's sitting category, and on a Mac at least, there's no way to fast-forward or jump to the segment you want to watch. Still, it's worth waiting for Kevin Bramble's awesomely balls-to-the-wall winning run and subsequent obscenity-laden trash-talking in the finish area.

SR article

2008-03-23T08:10:00.002-06:00

The Ski Racing article about my lexicographical pursuits is now online, thanks to my alma mater, Gould Academy. You can read it here (PDF).

back on snow

2008-03-14T16:42:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I went to see my doctor for a follow-up visit about my back; it's now been more than six weeks since I injured (or possibly re-injured) my back while competing at the X Games. While the broken vertebra was still apparent on the films, my doc was confident based on my pain level (zero) that my spine is healing well, and since it's already essentially immobilized by the spinal fusion that I had in 1999 to correct for my scoliosis, he cleared me to ski, race, and do whatever else I feel like doing.

Obviously, this is awesome news. Today I took four runs at Winter Park in choppy new snow, some of the more challenging conditions I could have asked for, and my back felt great — no pain. I feel ready to head back east next week to get in a couple races before the season wraps up. There are three races at Waterville Valley, N.H., that I will probably skip, and then three more at Sunday River, Maine, that I will attend. They are the first Nor-Am/Level II disabled races to be held at Sunday River, my old home mountain for six years, and I am super-psyched to be able to go, even if there are not too many top skiers racing there. I can't wait to ski the old race trails again — T-2, Monday Mourning, and Right Stuff, here I come.

2008-02-18T09:56:00.003-07:00

If you'd asked me a month ago, I would have thought that today I'd be in South Korea, getting ready to fly to Japan. Instead I'm sitting in a cafe in Ontario, Oregon. Things can change fast.

As some readers know (despite me not blogging about it), I competed in my second Winter X Games this year, in the Monoskier X event. I did about as well as I could have hoped, qualifying for the semifinals and then failing to advance to the final, but taking second place in the consolation round, for a 6th-place finish overall and a nice little paycheck. But every run I took on the course really did a number on my back. Every time I'd land a jump — of which there were many — I'd feel the impact all the way up my spine.

A week and a half after X Games, after taking plenty of days off snow to rest, I was training at Winter Park and my back still wasn't hurting any less, so I decided to see a doctor. They took some X-rays and found that my T-8 vertebra was kind of crushed or compressed — it appears to be only about half as tall as the other vertebrae. There have been some problems trying to get a diagnosis as to what exactly that means in terms of time off-snow, but for now it means I didn't get to make the trip to Asia for the last two legs of this year's World Cup circuit. So instead I'm here in Ontario visiting my girlfriend, M., working on some lexicography projects and waiting for the final word from my doctor. My season might be over, or maybe I'll be able to race at our U.S. nationals at Soldier Mountain, Idaho, next month.

some queyras photos

2008-01-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

...can be found here.

european world cup wrap-up

2008-01-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

You know what has been the best part of my day over the past week? The three seconds after I cross the finish line and before I see my time. Things are just not feeling right for me in the technical events, slalom and GS. We raced two of each here in Queyras, France, and tomorrow we drive back to Munich, then fly home to the States on Monday. I finished both giant slaloms, but I never felt like I was skiing cleanly except on the flattest parts of the course, and I finished each run over five seconds behind the leader. I thought the slaloms would go better, but instead they went worse: each day, I finished the first run outside the top 15, then resolved to get more aggressive for the second run but skied out and failed to finish.

Today has been a good off day. We hung out at the L'Eldorado Restaurant adjoining our hotel and watched Lindsey Vonn (nee Kildow) win the classic women's downhill at Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy. That was just a warm-up for the even more classic men's downhill in Kitzbuehel, Austria, the Hahnenkamm, which Bode almost managed to win — he tied for second behind Switzerland's Dider Cuche — despite making the majority of one turn with both skis off the ground, running along a safety fence, a good meter above the snow! We watched in horror as the second racer on course, our countryman (and for some of us, good friend) Scott Macartney, crashed badly off the final jump of the notorious Streif course. Scotty Mac, who was celebrating his 30th birthday today, landed so hard on his head that he broke his helmet in half and then slid, unconscious, across the finish line. Ironically, he still managed to finish in 33rd place — just 0.16 seconds away from scoring World Cup points. The mood in the finish area looked somber on TV as medics airlifted the still-unconscious Macartney to a hospital in Innsbruck. We all hope he suffered no more than a concussion and that he gets back on his feet again soon.

When I get back to the States, M. and I will spend two nights at my place in Winter Park before heading to the X Games in Aspen to begin training for the Mono Skier X competition.

day off in Queyras

2008-01-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Today most of the Americans and Canadians are sitting around the hotel restaurant here in Molines en Queyras, France, drinking coffee and eating croissants, enjoying the free wi-fi and watching lots of live skiing on TV. (Today is the 78th annual running of the famed Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen, Switzerland — the longest, oldest and quirkiest downhill on the World Cup circuit.) In other words, it's the perfect day off after a solid week on snow and a 12-hour drive yesterday from Abtenau.

We were originally scheduled to race downhill and super G here, but the organizers announced last week that they were scrapping the speed events and scheduling some slaloms and GS's instead. It's a real bummer for me, and for most of the U.S. team, since speed events are a strength for us. It seems as though every disabled World Cup downhill they schedule always ends up getting canceled for some reason or another. In this case, the excuse is not enough snow, but you wouldn't know it now; there's about two feet of fresh new powder on the ground, all fallen since the decision was made to cancel the races. To be fair, it would've taken a tremendous amount of manpower — which the organizers probably don't have — to pull off the races after so much new snow fell on what had been essentially a bare slope. Still, it's a disappointment.

abtenau, days 2-5

2008-01-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

The less said about Tuesday's GS race, the better. All of our team finished the race, and yet not one American ended up on the podium. I had a really mediocre run, followed by a run that was going better until I hip checked on the flats, dumping all my speed. I popped right back up and kept going to the finish, but I was way off the mark, finishing 12th. As usual, Martin Braxenthaler of Germany was the winner in my class.

The last three days have been a different story — well, not for Martin, who's continued to win every day, but for us Americans. We had three super-combineds, the newest event on the disabled World Cup circuit. Each race consists of one run of super G and one run of slalom in a single day; the winner is the one with the fastest combined time. It's a fun race because it allows the speed specialists to compete against the more technical skiers in a sort of jack-of-all-trades battle. For more about combined races, see this Wikipedia article (which I wrote a lot of).

ANYway, my teammate CDY did extremely well, winning the super G portion of all three races — which were also scored independently as super G's, so he's now won three World Cups this season. Slalom is not his specialty, but he managed to do well enough in the slalom legs to take 2nd, 5th, and 3rd in the super combis. As for me, I am struggling with super G right now. I feel great during my runs, but when I look at my time I always seem to be blindsided by how slow I am. Slalom is a little better...

I was 5th, 13th, and 10th in the super Gs. I didn't finish the slalom portion the first day, but ended up 9th overall in yesterday's race and 8th in today's. Complete results can be found here, and you can read some U.S. Ski Team press releases here.

Tomorrow, we're off to Queyras, France — a 10-hour drive — for more World Cup action.

tough day of slalom

2008-01-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today was the first World Cup race of the season, a slalom in Abtenau, Austria. I was the only sitting male finisher from the U.S. today, in 8th place in race won by Austria's Harry Eder. The race was held in weather that ranged from mist to pouring rain... it was pretty lame. The organizers put chemicals in the snow to keep it firm and try to create a consistent surface, but large holes developed in two places on the first run, taking out a large percentage of the male sitting skiers, who run last in slalom. I made it through with a solid but unambitious run. On the second run I charged a bit more, but when I reached the final pitch, where big ruts had again developed, I went for quite a rodeo ride. I hung on though, and by finishing cleanly I moved up a few positions, from 11th to 8th. Not the best slalom finish I could have hoped for — but not the worst, either. Only one other American guy, Brad, finished both runs (he was 9th in the standing class). In the women's race, Jonezy took a respectable third place among the standing skiers, and Laurie turned it up, winning the sitskier category the way we used to expect from her every day, regardless of the discipline.

Complete results can be viewed here, on the IPC website.

park city wrap-up from munich airport

2008-01-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from the Munich airport, where there's no wi-fi at the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to post this in the not-too-distant future. We just arrived here for the opening World Cup races in Abtenau, Austria, which begin in a couple days.

We raced Nor-Ams on Tuesday and Wednesday ihttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifn Park City, Utah, and I had mixed results. I felt awful on my GS skis, and I made a lot of big mistakes on the first run of the GS before crashing and failing to finish the second. But the next day in slalom, I put together two really solid runs and finished second, about one second behind.

Just getting from my house in Winter Park to Park City on Dec. 31 was a real challenge. I was scheduled to fly from Denver to Salt Lake at 6:10 in the morning, so my girlfriend M. and I set out for Denver around 6 p.m. the night before. The plan was to drop her off at the airport that night for her to catch her flight and then spend the night at Brad's parents' house in Highlands Ranch. But unbeknownst to me, a winter storm had been brewing, and by the time M. and had all our stuff packed into my van, Berthoud Pass was closed. Berthoud is on US 40, the main route in and out of Winter Park, and it's a twisty, tortuous drive that only takes 25 minutes in good weather, but it's possible to be stuck up there for hours during a blizzard. Thankfully, that didn't happen to us, since they had already closed the pass. I would almost certainly me missing my 6:10 a.m. flight out of Denver, so at that point, there was nothing to be done but go to the store for some veggies, tofu and wine, go home and make a stir-fry, and play some Guitar Hero on Wii. (I kick ass at "Anarchy in the UK," but I'm still struggling with the solo on Tenacious D's "The Metal.")

The next morning, New Year's Eve Day, periodic checks of the CDOT website revealed that the pass was still closed — and that key portions of Interstate 70 were shut down as well, meaning that the alternate route out of Winter Park — west through Kremmling, south to Silverthorne, and then east to Denver via I-70 — was also a no-go. M. suggested an alternate alternate route, heading south from Silverthorne down to Fairplay (of South Park fame) and then back northeast to Denver:

View Larger Map
Google Maps pegged the route at around five hours under normal conditions; with the roads in such a condition, it was sure to take even longer, but it seemed like our only hope of getting to Denver before the dawn of 2008. So M. packed up some snacks, and around noon we set out on the road. By now it was mostly sunny, but fierce winds still kicked up snow and blew it across the road, making it difficult to see very far during the stronger gusts and requiring a driver to use a firm grip just to keep the car going in a straight line.

We made it to Silverthorne with no trouble, but it seemed like all of Colorado was stuck in that strip-mall, outlet-store town and trying to get out. There was quite a queue of cars waiting for I-70 to reopen, and another heading south out of town on Highway 9, our route. We inched our way through Breckenridge and then up over Hoosier Pass, which somehow remained open. By the time we reached Fairplay, it was nearing five p.m. — two hours before the day's last flight to Salt Lake on Delta, the airline the team had booked me on. M. and I frantically started calling other airlines and found a flight on United leaving at 8:48 p.m., which seemed within reach. I sped toward DIA as fast as I thought I could get away with, and M. and I talked through the logistics of how we were going to get me onto my flight with my five checked bags, her onto her flight home to Boise at 9:40, and my van into some sort of parking area. We pulled up to the curb at about 8:00 — three minutes before the check-in deadline — and I went straight to the United desk and said, "One one-way ticket to Salt Lake, please." (I have always secretly wanted to buy a last-minute plane ticket that way, although I never knew they charge you an extra $20 for the privilege.) I made my plane, wasn't charged for my excess bags, and even got upgraded to first class, while M. made her flight home as well.

I later found out that Berthoud Pass reopened mid-afternoon, which means we could've taken a much more direct route to the airport and arrived there earlier, in time for the last Delta flight — but also found out that I would have almost certainly have been charged at least $225 in excess baggage charges, which United waived. Missing my flight and buying a last-minute ticket for $150 ended up saving me $75... how about that.

x games 2008

2007-12-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

I just found out that I've again been selected to compete in the Monoskier X event at Winter X Games 12 in Aspen. Our race will take place on Sunday, Jan. 27 at about 2:30 pm, and will be televised LIVE! Mark your calendars...

nightcat!

2007-11-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

Some of you may remember when I blogged about my college friend Eric Lindley's then-new album, Nightcat! Well, now NPR Music's "All Songs Considered" program has profiled Eric on its website and added one of his songs to its online music player... you can check it out here.

new USSA & USST websites

2007-11-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

The powers that be have apparently decided it was time for an overhaul of the U.S. Ski Team and U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association websites. They've done a pretty nice job, adding some video content to the Disabled section of the USST site and lots of good information to the Disabled section of the USSA site. Hey, looky there — who's that handsome devil whose photo they decided to put on the header of the section?

haha

2007-10-20T11:02:00.001-06:00

Last time I logged into MySpace, I was in Chile. At the time it started displaying the site in Spanish. I figured that would change once I was back in the States, but nope — apparently now I'm part of MySpace Latino. I even get my friend requests from bogus hot chicks sent to me in Spanish.

In other news, the World Series is coming to my neighborhood next weekend. People here in Denver aren't used to caring about the Rockies, but man, do they ever care now. The Boys in Purple are on everyone's lips these days. Gerald had the idea that we should rent out our apartment for the weekend — apparently places are renting on Cragslist for exorbitant amounts, starting around $500 a night. It's not a bad idea... all that remains to be seen is whether the Rox will be playing against the Indians or Red Sox. I'll be watching Game Six tonight with fingers crossed and breath bated.

river-boca

2007-10-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

Yesterday Elitsa and I were privileged to witness the premiere rivalry in Argentine soccer: El Superclásico, River vs. Boca. These two teams' fans make a Yankees-Red Sox game look like a cuddle party.

Held at River's home field, El Monumental, the game attracted a sold-out crowd of about 40,000 River supporters and 3,000 Boca fans — along with about 1,100 police officers and national guard troops, according to the newspaper Clarín.

Within 10 blocks of the stadium, the police presence was hard to miss. Everywhere cops in riot gear, with batons and tear-gas guns, lurked on streetcorners imposingly maintaining order. In particular the roughneck Boca fans from the other, "bad" side of town were eyed suspiciously by the cops, and if one of them stepped out of line he would be roughly corralled back into place.

Not being a huge fútbol fan, and I have to admit that the game itself felt a little underwhelming. Two goals and maybe two excitingly close shots in ninety minutes of playing time is not my idea of excitement. But it was hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd. Almost everyone was wearing the team colors of red and white, although we passed through a fiercely partisan crowd of blue and yellow Boca fans outside the stadium. (The rivalry between the fans is so intense that the Boca fans have to enter through a special corridor to the stadium, sit in their own isolated section guarded by hundreds of police, and after the game ends, the River fans cannot leave the stadium until all the Boca fans have been first escorted out to practically the next zip code.) When River, who had been considered the underdog, scored each of its goals, everyone around me from a 10-year-old to a chain-smoking old man offered me jubilant hugs. In between goals (what I would consider the boring part), the fans sang loud, amusing songs that everyone knew the words to except us. And anytime a referee, a River player, or (especially) a Boca player did something unpopular, fans young and old unleashed a torrent of puta! this and tu madre that. It was all gloriously uncivil.

I have a bit of a cold and a headache and don't feel like writing much more, but here are some photos of the whole affair.

The Boca section:

Various River fans:

Elitsa outside the stadium:

viedma, argentina

2007-10-05T09:02:00.000-06:00

After some drunkenness on Wednesday night and hungover-ness on Thursday morning in Santiago, Elitsa and I hopped a short flight over the Andes to Bariloche, Argentina, and then took and then a really awesome train ride across Argentina. It took like 17 hours but itwas really fun, like a hotel on wheels. We had a sleeping car and an awesome attendant named Lucas who brought us vino and cerveza. We had AC power to watch DVDs and a dining car to eat meals. Now we're in the internet cafe upstairs from the bus station in the town of Viedma (wi-fi! amazing!), on the Rio Negro. We have 14 hours to kill until our bus to Buenos Aires, so we're hoping we find something fun to do in this podunk town.

friends on top of kilimanjaro

2007-09-28T16:30:00.000-06:00

My ski racing friends Hannah, Sandy, Liz, and Katja (along with Sandy's friend Kati) just completed their all-female, all-disabled trek up Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro. You can read all about it and see their pictures right here.

first ski day in portillo

2007-09-23T19:56:00.000-06:00

It's a good tired, as they say.

We only skied for like four hours, but we're all pretty exhausted. I haven't been living at altitude this summer — Denver is only a mile high, but Portillo is the same as Winter Park, 9,000 and change at the base, and going well upward from there. So there's that, and the fact that we haven't been on snow since July. In fact, many in our group haven't skied since April.

The mountains here are pretty epic, and they surround a small alpine lake, the Laguna de los Andes. Some of the off-piste skiing requires you to traverse across the frozen lake once you get to the bottom.

I posted photos from our crazy night in Santiago on my Facebook page... check em out.

santiago de chile!

2007-09-21T07:58:00.000-06:00

Just arrived in Chile. This is my first time traveling to ski somewhere I can actually speak the language (well, besides New Zealand and, uh, Canada), and I've already surprised myself with my ability to communicate at least at a basic level. People keep coming up to Elitsa and me and offering their transportation services. Eventually we'll need some, but for now we have a couple hours to wait for CDY's flight to get here. Then the plan is to head to our hotel here in Santiago, drop off our mountain of baggage, and then hit the town. Tomorrow morning we'll return to the airport and meet all the rest of the athletes and coaches when they arrive, then take our chartered bus to Portillo.

"We" will consist of Kevin Jardine, head coach of the Challenge Aspen disabled ski team (and former U.S. disabled head coach); current U.S. head coach Ray Watkins; his wife Gwynn (now an assistant coach for Aspen; a few more Aspen hangers-on; and a motley crew of athletes from Aspen, Winter Park, Breckenridge, and points beyond. The U.S. disabled team will be represented by me, CDY, Elitsa, and supposedly Joe Tompkins, who no one's seen training or racing in a year and a half but who has a way of popping up unexpectedly.

We'll train in Portillo for about two weeks and then drive back to Santiago, where the rest of the guys will fly back to the States. But for Elitsa and me, the trip will have just begun; we'll spend the next week traveling around Argentina and possibly Uruguay before returning to the U.S. on October 11.

more on the ski spec

2007-09-07T07:34:00.001-06:00

Click here to watch a video promo about the event.

goodbye evans

2007-08-26T22:49:00.000-06:00

When I talked to my parents on the phone today, I learned that Evans Huber, a childhood friend of mine was struck by lightning and killed last night while camping in Baxter State Park with his mom and brother. I had not seen or talked to Evans in years, but I was affected by the news. Two years younger than me, Evans grew up on Peaks Island, Maine, where my family spends our summers. His parents and mine were close friends, and my mom and dad had recently started visiting more regularly again with Lare, Evans' dad. I remember Evans as the quintessential island kid, curly-haired, barefoot, bike-riding. He hung out with the island crowd, the kids who snuck beers on the Back Shore and jumped off the towers at the ferry dock, but also seemed more interested in the world beyond Peaks, a trait he no doubt inherited from his parents.

Evans went to McGill University in Montreal and graduated the same year I did, in 2005. I hear that he was in love with a woman he met there, a Canadian, and was planning to get a visa to move to Canada and live with her. His brother Emmett is still an island presence at the age of 18; he was hit by the bolt, too, but survived. Their mom, my mom's friend Lois, was uninjured.

How do you deal with something like that if you're Evans' family? I have no answer. I have never been touched by tragedy in that way, and I am grateful. I do not know how I would or could respond to the death of my own brother, but I know that I am looking forward to seeing him next week, even more than I was before I heard the news about Evans.

ITEM: team "you know, for kids" stuns in pub quiz debut

2007-08-14T16:37:00.000-06:00

DENVER (AP) — In a debut that rocked the local drinking community, a new team calling itself You Know, For Kids took third place last night in its inaugural GWD-sanctioned pub quiz competition, held at area ex-pat bar The British Bulldog. The team, composed of three members of the U.S. Disabled Ski Team and two of their hangers-on, seemed not unhappy with its performance, but universally agreed that it "could have done better, considering."

The team roster consisted of secretary-general Carl Burnett, Director of Professional Sports Studies Chris Catanzarite, VP for '80s Music Affairs Nick Catanzarite, Exchecquer and Former Mullet-Owner Gerald Hayden, and Hot Nurse/Science Geek-in-Residence Mary, who spoke to the AP on the condition that her last name not be used. (Full disclosure: OK, this reporter does not actually know Mary's last name, and is too lazy to find out.)

The team faltered in the early rounds due to overconfidence in its knowledge of 1980s popular music (they knew their Bon Jovi but not their Belinda Carlisle), but rallied when Hayden and Mary arrived, advancing to fourth place, then third. After two stellar rounds, including a Catanzarite-brothers-led dominating performance in the sports round, the team seemed a shoo-in to advance to the top two. Undoubtedly through administrative subterfuge, the team instead fell back to fourth place, necessitating an eleventh-hour (literally) rally to secure its final position in the top three.

Reached for comment at his Greenwood Village workplace, Burnett vowed, "We'll be back. Just wait till next week, when we'll be sure to do some pre-gaming before the quiz starts. The Bulldog's list of performance-enhancing substances sure is delicious."

power invasion ministries

2007-08-13T13:13:00.001-06:00

Yesterday while biking along the Platte River trail here in Denver I saw a building that scared the hell out of me. It's a fortress-like concrete edifice, nearly circular in shape, located in a barren industrial area. Two large signs on the building identify it as the home of "Power Invasion Ministries," with a King Arthurish sword-and-shield logo. Of course I had to Google it when I got home from my ride -- was this really a church, and if so, who or what were they invading with their power? And why were they located in what looked like a fallout shelter to be used in case of industrial accidents?

I found their website (which includes the breathtakingly candid slogan "Desperate people, desperate for God"), and it answered my first two questions. Apparently, the "power" part comes from Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” They don't cite a biblical verse mentioning an "invasion," but their mission in that regard is spelled out pretty bluntly. The Power Invasion folks apparently believe they have been

[a]ppointed and anointed by His Power to Invade [sic] the greater metro area of Denver by uprooting, tearing down, destroying, and overthrowing the power of darkness; and called to build and plant a new foundation.

Invade, uproot, tear down, destroy, overthrow -- wow, those are some strong verbs. I suppose that's the point, but like the ministry's building, its intentions scare the hell out of me. These people would like nothing better than to see people like me either converted to (their particular brand of) evangelical Christianity or driven out of town. These same people are on the pulpit every Sunday denouncing the spread of ideas they find dangerous -- including, I'm sure, fundamentalist Islamists, whose ambitions exactly parallel their own. One recent Power Invasion sermon (by "Pastor Randy") was titled "What you Tolerate May Destroy You." In a free society, I am reluctantly willing to tolerate the existance of groups like Power Invasion Ministries. But I really hope their Pastor Randy was wrong about the destruction part.

what is g.o.p.?

2007-08-13T12:44:00.000-06:00

On the Brooklyn-based neo-Afrobeat group Antibalas' awesome 2007 release, Security, is a 12-minute slab of funk called "Filibuster XXX." After seven frantic, instrumental minutes, West African-accented vocalist Amayo starts in with some of the funniest stream-of-consciousness political musings ever committed to wax:

What is G.O.P., class?
Let us examine the cronynynynynism:
Is it Greedy Old People, class?
Is it Guilty Of Purjury?
Or, let's try this one...
How about Gas, Oil and Plutonium?

It would be fun to keep going...

Guns Offer Protection?
Generating Offshore Profits?
Grumbling Over Palestine?
Governator Obliterating Priuses?

Well, class, what is G.O.P.? Can you add to the list?

what the deer said to the beaver

2007-08-07T17:58:00.000-06:00

(click to enlarge)

mt. hood camp #2 wrap-up

2007-08-03T19:25:00.000-06:00

I was back at Mt. Hood again for 10 or 12 more days on snow and got back on Monday. The ski team just posted a great press release about the camp, which includes a photo of all of us on the croquet lawn.

sadler's ultra challenge

2007-07-21T17:23:00.000-06:00

Lately I have become a bit of an armchair cycling fan. (No, not cycling IN armchairs — that would be absurd.) I have been catching stages of the Tour de France on TV, but lately I have turned my attention to an equally exciting race: the Sadler's Ultra Challenge. This is an eight-stage, 267-mile endurance race for disabled athletes, run every summer for 22 years from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Alaska. There are divisions for wheelchairs and handcycles, but in recent years the handcycling category has come to be far more popular and competitive. This year the race, like most elite handcycling races over the past few years, has been dominated by the Mexican-American Alejandro Albor. This guy is really amazing; I've seen him ride and he makes it look so effortless, which I assure you it is not. A double amputee, Albor has a built-in advantage since he's not dragging any dead weight, but he also has a unique style of movement, sort of rolling back and forth over the handcranks of his bike. (He is one of the few handcyclists I've seen who uses alternating cranks, like a regular bike, rather than double/simultaneous cranks.)

You can read Ian Lawless' blog entries about the 2007 Ultra Challenge here and view complete stage-by-stage results here

the sentence dictionary

2007-07-18T15:05:00.000-06:00

If I may brag just a little bit, I am really excited to have just been hired as a freelance lexicographer for Oxford University Press. They — no, we! — are beginning a new collaborative online project to compile something called the Sentence Dictionary. Essentially it will be a web-based dictionary based on the already-existing New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE) and New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD), Oxford's major single-volume dictionaries of contemporary (British and American, respectively) English. As I understand it, the Sentence Dictionary will include headwords, pronunciations, definitions, and etymologies identical to NODE and NOAD, but will include much more thorough documentation of each word's usage "in the wild," as it were — in a list of real-life examples for each headword. This will be particularly useful for foreign learners of English, and for native speakers looking up unfamiliar words that they wish to use idiomatically in their own writing.

The examples are to be culled from a corpus of contemporary English, the billion-plus-word Oxford English Corpus, which contains many thousands of books, web sites, magazine articles, stories, journals, blogs, and the like, all of which have been hand-selected and tagged for their country of origin and vetted for quality to some degree. Oxford's corpus software is able, in many instances, to tell when a word is being used as a particular part of speech and in a particular sense; for example, it can tell with reasonable accuracy when ground is being used as a noun meaning "earth," a past participle of "grind," or a verb meaning "stop (a plane, etc.) from flying." But the software's accuracy is far from 100%, and even when it does make the correct choice, a human is needed to determine which are the "best" examples. An example sentence that disparages a particular politician, for instance, is undesirable both because it expresses a strong opinion that may distract from the sentence's illustrative function and because it contains a reference that could soon seem dated or obscure.

This is where we freelance lexicographers come in. In a test exercise I did for Oxford as part of the application process, I went through hundreds of potential example sentences (all for words beginning with adv-) and determined which were the most suitable. (Let me say that I have a much fuller appreciation for the subtleties of the word "adventure" than I did before!) Apparently my soon-to-be bosses agreed with my decisions in enough cases that they want me to do more such work for them. It's not the most dynamic sort of task, but it is kind of dorkily influential. I am now a lexicographical taste-maker of sorts, however anonymously. How exciting!

the first russian winter games

2007-07-05T09:14:00.000-06:00

The big news in sports yesterday, as far as I was concerned, was the awarding of the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics to Sochi, Russia. By all accounts, Vladimir Putin's presence at the IOC meetings in Guatemala City (!) did wonders to secure the choice of his country's bid over Salzburg, Austria and Pyongchang, South Korea.

I'm pretty happy with the result. Although none of the three cities has ever hosted an Olympics before, Austria has done so twice, both in Innsbruck (1964 and 1976). Obviously, Austria is accustomed to, and well-suited for, hosting winter sports. Most of the facilities they would've used for the Games were already in place, a major selling point for their Olympic bid. But picking Salzburg would have been a safe yet boring choice. Athletes in most of the winter sports already compete in Austria all the time, and with the exception of Switzerland it is essentially the only country where alpine skiing is a major, front-page sport. In short, holding another Winter Games in Austria would do little to boost the popularity of winter sports by creating new fans.

Neither Russia nor Korea is known internationally as a winter sports destination, and yet both would desperately like to become one. Both Sochi and Pyongchang have invested millions of dollars to attract skiers and snowboarders, even hiring top ski-resort managers from the Alps and Rockies to oversee their operations. Putin himself is known to enjoy skiing at Krasnaya Polskana, the mountain range near the Black Sea that will host all the snowsports for the Sochi Games, and when I visited Pyongchang last year for disabled World Cup races, the slopes were crawling with wealthy business people from Seoul and beyond. Pyongchang's major ski resort, Yongpyong, has taken things to a typically East Asian level of excess, installing amusement-park rides at the base area and providing skiers with high-pressure air hoses outside the lodge to clean the snow off their equipment.

I guess that's part of the reason I favored Sochi over Pyongchang: the Koreans just seemed to be trying too hard. It's certainly a plus that they'd already hosted well-organized World Cup events in alpine and disabled alpine skiing, and they'd already put in a runner-up bid for the 2010 Games (they lost out to Vancouver). But to some extent the Koreans were trying to pass off cubic zirconium as diamonds. From my experience, Korea is just not a world-class winter wonderland. It's cold, but not particularly snowy. (When we there, in January, the only snow to be seen was the manmade stuff on the ski hill.) The mountains are no taller than the Appalachians. And the host city they'd selected is not so much a city as a collection of villages, full of tacky new brass-and-marble hotels, not charming chalets. And as tasty as Korean food can be, the stuff they fed us athletes there was pretty sub-par.

Sochi, on the other hand, is terra incognita for most winter athletes outside Russia. To my knowledge, it has never hosted a major international ski or snowboard event, although I'm sure hockey is popular there. But my impressions of the place are pretty favorable. The city of Sochi itself is a resort town on the Black Sea, with palm trees and a mild climate year-round. But the surrounding mountains, which are less than an hour's drive from town, are snowy and huge: Mt. Elbrus, at 18,000 feet, is taller than any other in Russia or Europe. In footage from ski movies I've seen, the Krasnaya Polskana range is a powdery paradise, with some of the most extreme lift-serviced terrain anywhere on the planet. In short, the only reason Sochi is not already known outside Russia as a winter sports destination has to be economic or political. Russian democracy is still new, and negative stereotypes about the country still abound. In deciding as it did, the IOC has given Russia a huge opportunity to show the world how far it's come and to transform its Black Sea region into a true international tourism destination. Let's hope the Russians take advantage of it.

ewwwww

2007-07-01T22:02:00.000-06:00

"Spilled pig parts shut down Edens"

"Northbound lanes of the Edens Expressway were closed for more than seven hours Sunday after a dump truck carrying greasy pig parts toppled and splattered its load across the highway."

mt. hood wrap-up

2007-06-27T11:29:00.000-06:00

USSA has put out a nice press release summarizing our most recent training camp at Mt. Hood.

I also just stumbled on some pretty decent photos of us skiing at our last training camp, at A-Basin in May, including this one of me. (You can view a larger version by mousing over the image and then selecting "medium," "large," or "original.")

new photos

2007-06-25T01:29:00.000-06:00

I just uploaded a bunch of photos from my trip thus far to my Flickr page. Flickr won't let me create sets since I'm not a Pro member anymore, but you can view just the pics from this trip by starting here and then scroll through them by clicking Next.

yreka, ca

2007-06-22T10:09:00.000-06:00

I'm writing from Yreka, California — not to be confused with nearby Eureka, California. (Although they look like they should be pronounced the same, Yreka is actually pronounced "why rica." I would have to look into it further to be sure, but I'd bet this is a spelling-influenced pronunciation.) Yesterday I drove here from Mt. Hood, where I've been training for the last couple weeks. (Well, minus a little side trip to Chicago... but that's another story.) Along the way I had breakfast in Government Camp, had lunch and did some shopping in Bend, and had dinner in Ashland.

I checked into an Econo Lodge here in Yreka last night and was going to just go to bed, but instead I took a stroll through town. I'm glad I did, because I ended up in this bar called the Log Cabin Club with a bunch of Native Americans playing pool and made a bunch of short-term friends.

spit on a stranger

2007-06-13T22:29:00.000-06:00

Lots going on these days and I need to get some sleep, but I had to mention a brush with stardom I had this evening. Just this morning I was skiing at Mt. Hood in Oregon, and in the afternoon I flew to Chicago, where I'm spending a few days at the biennial conference of the Dictionary Society of North America. Exciting! My friend Shifra and her boyfriend Ben met me at Midway Airport to pick me up, and while we were waiting around for my bag, I saw a tall, familiar looking figure walk by. I was pretty sure I knew who it was, but then I was certain when he picked up a guitar case. "Holy shit! That's Stephen Malkmus!" I gushed to Shifra and Ben. They stared at me blankly. "You know, from Pavement?" I said. "He lives in Portland, Oregon so it makes sense that he would be at this carousel. Wait, he must've been on my flight!" But SM and his girlfriend had already made a hasty departure and I was left gawking fanboyishly, with a sudden urge to go check into my dorm room and listen to "Spit on a Stranger" and "Gold Soundz" and "Here" on my iPod.

UPDATE: I'm a total idiot for not knowing this, but it turns out that the Pitchfork music festival is in Chicago this weekend, and Malkmus is playing Sunday night! How could I have not known this?? And how am I going to get tickets on such short notice???

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm a REALLY big idiot. Pitchfork Festival is JULY 13-15, not June. Malkmus has no dates scheduled anywhere until then. Who knows why he's in Chicago.

the wisdom of bansky

2007-06-04T12:30:00.000-06:00

Plenty of people more qualified than I (including, recently, The New Yorker's Lauren Collins) have written about the graffiti art of the enigmatic Brit known as Banksy. Fewer people have noted his knack for coming up with snappy, irreverent catchphrases, which are strewn throughout the pages of his books, although Collins does note that Bansky's "talents as an aphorist ... seem to inspire all who cross his path," citing two examples:

“Never paint graffiti in a town where they still point at aeroplanes.”
“Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet.“

Going through the latest Banksy compilation, Wall and Piece, I was struck by a number of other quotables:

"Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people: politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers."
"Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place."
"A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to."
"Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own."
"There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they're an exception to the rules."
"People seem to think if they dress like a revolutionary then they don't actually have to act like one."
"Nothing dispels enthusiasm like a small admission fee."
"Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity is ideal."
"You can win the rat race but you're still a rat. The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising that a lot of people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers."
"We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves."
"We don't need any more heroes, we just need someone to take out the recycling."
"People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine."

new digs

2007-05-23T21:38:00.000-06:00

I am very excited about my new summer job and apartment. Starting June 25, I will be working for the communications department of Charter Communication as a glorified intern. (I say "glorified" because I will be making a half-decent wage and hopefully working on some cool projects, not just making coffee.) And starting June 1, I'll be living with my current roommate, Gerald in Apt. 605 of The Barclay Towers a really nice apartment building right smack in the middle of LoDo, the most central part of Denver. The building has a rooftop pool and gym on the 33rd floor, which is visible via Google Earth. Am I one to brag? OK, maybe a little.

i want to start a band here in colorado called "maine"

2007-05-16T23:39:00.000-06:00

Back in the '70s and '80s, some honest, hardworking rock bands would name themselves after their home towns, states, or even continents. This phenomenon gave rise to Boston, Chicago, Kansas, America, and Europe. (I'm pretty sure Asia was a different deal.)

Then, sometime in the '90s, some meddling indie rocker had the harebrained idea of naming his band after a different place than the place they actually came from. If you ask me, this is just a recipe for disaster. Recently, this disturbing trend seems to be ramping up. Look at the situation they've gotten us into:

Illinois is from Pennsylvania.
I'm From Barcelona is from Sweden.
Beirut is from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Calexico is from Tucson, Arizona.
Manitoba is from Ontario.
Of Montreal is from Georgia.

2007-04-29T15:06:00.000-06:00

If it's been a while since I posted anything, that's because not much is going on these days. The ski season at Winter Park ended on April 14, and since then I've been laying low. I've been talking with my sponsor, Charter Communications, about the possibility of interning with their PR department this summer/fall, either in Denver or at their St. Louis headquarters. Nothing is confirmed yet, but it seems to be looking like a good bet.

I've been to a couple of concerts in Denver lately. I met up with my ski tech, Ian G., at the Gothic Theater in Englewood for a rousing performance by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. Then last night Nick and I went to see Bright Eyes at a decidedly non-rock-&-roll venue, the Temple Buell Theater at the Denver Center for Performing Arts. Conor Oberst & co. (I counted 12 backing musicians, including two drummers (both women!), two guitarists besides Conor, a bassist, a keyboard/trumpet player, two cellists, two violinists, a sax player, and a flutist!) played mostly songs off of their new album, Cassadaga, but capped off the evening with a raucous performance of the older fave "Road to Joy," which incorporates the melody from Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Oberst looked dapper in a white suit and encouraged the crowd to its feet, turning a concert-hall performance into some semblance of a rock-club throwdown.

I have also been going to the gym a lot to get started on a new conditioning program for 2007-08, following a lot of Red Sox games on the Internet, and putting off cleaning my desk and my bedroom. Also, I've gotten quite a bit of research done for SkiDictionary.com. Check it out if you haven't already.

Our first ski team camp to prepare us for next season will take us to A-Basin beginning May 8. Then we head to the OTC in Colorado Springs for a few days of testing, and then perhaps I'll get in a trip to Maine before our next ski camp in June, at Mt. Hood, Ore.

I'll leave you with an amazing photograph. This picture, by one Ron Jenkins, shows a baseball bat that left the hands of the Cleveland Indians' Kelly Shoppach (a former Portland Sea Dog, I might add) and wreaked havoc on the jaw of an unsuspecting fan. I think my favorite part is the concerned reactions of all the people around him, contrasted with the incredibly unconcerned (or more likely, oblivious) cool of the little girl at bottom center. The photo is captioned "Bat out of Hell." I'm unable to post it here directly, so follow this link.

should we talk about the weather? should we talk about the government?

2007-04-19T12:39:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was outside in short sleeves. Last night, the wind picked up and it started snowing. By this morning there were a couple inches on the ground. The clouds had cleared and the sun was out, but the wind was still out in full force. As I sat inside getting my hair cut, gusts blew snowdrifts off of roofs, and the air above the tops of the mountain peaks was full of towering wisps of white. Looking outside now, the gusts haven't let up much. Spring in Winter Park is an unpredictable time.

I met up with a college friend, Andy F., in Denver yesterday. We went to see the new Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum. Daniel Liebeskind's modernist creation has very few right angles and very few curves; even inside, structural columns descend at odd angles. It's a great space for looking at art though, and the highlight was "RADAR," a couple's private collection of contemporary work from around the world, from Japanese anime-inspired sculpture to one of Damien Hirst's formalydehyde-preserved creatures — in this case, a bull's head.

Speaking of art, the totally overrated English band Art Brut has an awesomely simplistic song that goes, "Modern art makes me want to rock out!" I could only listen to that song so many times, but that's a slogan I'd be proud to wear unironically on a T-shirt.

what we have here is...

2007-04-08T00:23:00.000-06:00

I love discovering a classic that I'd somehow missed until now. Tonight I finally saw Cool Hand Luke in its entirety, and I'd have to put it in my all-time top ten. Paul Newman's Luke is the ideal anti-hero, and the film is the prison-movie antithesis of feel-good fare like The Shawshank Redemption. Plus it has some memorable lines. There's the classic "What we have here is a failure to communicate!" (This one is #11 in the AFI's list of the top 100 American movie quotes of the last 100 years.) And then there's my personal favorite, Luke's line in the poker-game scene that gives him his nickname: "Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand."

Then perhaps best of all, there's the song "Plastic Jesus," which I first heard my cousins singing when I was probably ten. Later, I heard the Flaming Lips' version, released on their 1993 album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. But I'd never heard Luke sing it until now.

Plastic Jesus

Trad., arr. Ed Rush and George Cromarty

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

CHORUS
Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through my trials and tribulations,
And my travels through the nations,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

I don't care if it rains or freezes
As long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
You can buy Him phosphorescent
Glows in the dark, He's pink and pleasant,
Take Him with you when you're traveling far

I don't care if it's dark or scary
Long as I have magnetic Mary
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car
I feel I'm protected amply
I've got the whole damn Holy Family
Riding on the dashboard of my car

You can buy a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I'm not wary
'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary
Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell

I don't care if it bumps or jostles
Long as I got the Twelve Apostles
Bolted to the dashboard of my car
Don't I have a pious mess
Such a crowd of holiness
Strung across the dashboard of my car.

new look for skidictionary.com

2007-04-02T15:59:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the web talents of Jared and the graphic-design skillz of Richie Jay, there is a whole new look over at my lexicographical endeavor, skidictionary.com. Go check it out... you can search for stuff, but since there are still not very many entries online, the best way to browse the dictionary right now is probably to start here, on the Recent Changes page.

some old videos

2007-03-29T12:32:00.000-06:00

I just got around to uploading a few old videos of myself from New Zealand and Winter Park onto YouTube. As soon as they approve them they should be viewable here.

u.s. nationals wrap-up

2007-03-24T14:48:00.000-06:00

Today was the fourth and final day of official competition here at the U.S. Disabled Alpine Championships in Waterville Valley, N.H. For me, it was a pretty weak ending to a pretty strong season. I had been hoping to come away with my first national title but ended up with only a 5th-place finish in GS and a DNF in slalom. (Because Waterville's race hill is not homologated for speed events, this was the first U.S. nationals not to include a super G or a downhill.) In addition to the two official "championship" races, we raced another GS and slalom that counted as regular Nor-Am races. Those didn't go much better for me; I didn't finish the GS and managed 3rd in the slalom.

Tomorrow should be interesting... they set aside some of the prize money provided by the event's title sponsor, The Hartford, for the winners of a head-to-head, pro-style disabled race, similar to the annual World Disabled Invitational race at the Wells Fargo Bank Cup in Winter Park.

world leader pretend

2007-03-17T18:40:00.001-06:00

On March 12, one of my all-time favorite bands, R.E.M., was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, The Ronettes, Patti Smith, and Van Halen. It was an awesome ceremony in which R.E.M. were introduced by Eddie Vedder and played a four-song set that included collaborations with both Vedder and Patti Smith, and you can watch it streaming online here.

In a recent Rolling Stone piece in which the members of R.E.M. comment on their discography, Michael Stipe says that "the big moment" on their 1988 major-label debut, Green, is the song "World Leader Pretend":

It's a tribute to Leonard Cohen, using military terms to describe a battle within. I was so proud of the lyrics and my vocal take that I refused to sing it a second time. I did it once. That was it.

You can tell that Stipe was proud of the song back in 1988 as well, since until 1998 it was the only R.E.M. song that ever had its lyrics printed on the album's sleeve or booklet. "World Leader Pretend" has always been my favorite song off of Green, too — not only because it's a beautiful song with great guitar and piano lines, a string arrangement, and countrified pedal steel, but because it's one of those rare songs that make me, a not-particularly-close listener of lyrics, pay attention to the words coming out of the singer's mouth:

I sit at my table and wage war on myself
It seems like it’s all, it’s all for nothing
I know the barricades, and
I know the mortar in the wall breaks
I recognize the weapons, I used them well

This is my mistake. Let me make it good
I raised the wall, and I will be the one to knock it down

I’ve a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim that claims are left unstated,
I demand a rematch
I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motives
I recognize the weapons
I’ve practiced them well. I fitted them myself

It’s amazing what devices you can sympathize
This is my mistake. Let me make it good
I raised the walls, and I will be the one to knock it down

Reach out for me and hold me tight. Hold that memory
Let my machine talk to me. Let my machine talk to me

This is my world
And I am the world leader pretend
This is my life
And this is my time
I have been given the freedom
To do as I see fit
It’s high time I’ve razed the walls
That I’ve constructed

It’s amazing what devices you can sympathize
This is my mistake. Let me make it good
I raised the walls, and I will be the one to knock it down

You fill in the mortar. You fill in the harmony
You fill in the mortar. I raised the walls
And I’m the only one
I will be the one to knock it down.

I won't pretend to know what Stipe's getting at, exactly, with lines like "It's amazing what devices you can sympathize"; what I love is his wordplay. First of all there's the line "This is my mistake; let me make it good." There's a great ambiguity here: does he mean "Let me make my mistake well" or "Let me fix my mistake"? I'd like to think that Stipe realized it could be interpreted both ways at once, and I love the idea of "making a mistake well."

Another thing that's always struck me is Stipe's employment of one of English's most delicious homophone pairs, raise and raze. Though pronounced the same, they mean exactly the opposite of one another. From the context (not to mention the lyrics printed in the album's booklet) it's clear when the wall is being "raised" and when it's being "razed," but it's fun to substitute the opposite meaning in each instance and see how it affects the lyric's meaning.

The last thing I want to talk about is the section that begins "I proclaim that claims are left unstated." (A nice line in itself, no?) Stipe begins this line and the next two with three different verbs — proclaim, demand, decree — that the linguist J.L. Austin called "performatives." (Forgive me for getting all linguistics-major-y here, but bear with me.) A performative verb is one that accomplishes something simply by the speaker uttering it: by saying "I proclaim..." you are proclaiming something; by saying "I demand..." you are demanding it. Contrast these with what happens in the fourth line of the section, "I divine my deeper motives." Divine is an ordinary, non-performative verb; by saying "I divine..." you are not accomplishing anything. You are just stating what you do, or have done. By using three performative verbs in a row, Stipe has tricked the listener into hearing his narrative voice as an authority. (Who uses performative verbs like proclaim, demand, decree? Officials, politicians, people signing treaties and cutting ribbons.) But when he gets to "I divine..." he has pulled the old switcheroo. It turns out that this narrator is not an authority figure after all; he is just a normal human being (with "deeper motives," even!) trying to get in touch with his feelings by making proclamations, demands, decrees. The joke's on you, dear listener — Stipe's not being performative at all; he's just being introspective.

And some people say pop music is shallow...

Zoncolan results

2007-03-15T14:41:00.000-06:00

Here I am, a week after writing my last blog post and I haven't even been able to post it yet. I'm now in another metal tube, heading from Italy back to Colorado, only this time for some reason we're heading much farther north than usual, up over Greenland. I suppose, barring any unforeseen difficulties, I'll be able to post this tonight when I get home to Winter Park.

It's been a worthwhile trip. We drove about four hours from Munich down to Arta Terme, Italy, which is tucked up in the Dolomites in the northeastern corner of the country, very close to both the Austrian and Slovenian borders. We had two days to ski the race hill and settle into our hotel before the first race, which was a slalom on Monday.

That morning I felt really great, ready to turn in a good performance... maybe that should've been my first clue that things weren't going to go my way. As soon as I got onto the course for the first run, things felt weird. The snow outside of the race course had been really soft, starting to turn slushy by 9 or 10 a.m.; on course, it was a different story. After sliding around on the first few gates, I started to find a rhythm on the next few — only to lean in badly on the entry to the first hairpin and slide off-course. After maybe 15 seconds of racing, my day was over. Even worse, in the second run all three of my male monoskier teammates went down and out as well.

I finished the GS the next day, and while at the time I was pretty disappointed with my 12th-place finish, I think finishing two solid runs built up my confidence a bit. It was also pretty encouraging to see Gerald and CDY have better races, finishing 6th and 7th. On the morning of the final race, a super G, I didn't have much motivation: I hadn't had a decent finish yet in Italy, the course didn't seem well-suited to me, and my warm-up runs just felt off. Before the start I told Nick, "If I have any success today, it will be a fluke." I didn't make any major mistakes in my run, and got to the bottom having thoroughly enjoyed it. It's nice when ski racing is actually FUN, even if "fun" doesn't always correlate well with "successful." Somehow, though, I crossed the line in second place, and only three more skiers who came down after me were able to beat me. Suddenly I had my first top-5 World Cup finish of the season, in the last World Cup race of the season. Not only that, CDY gave our men's monoskiing team its only podium of the season, finishing third.

For the U.S. Ski Team's press release on the races, click here. For complete results, go here.

randomness

2007-03-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from inside a metal tube about 33,000 feet above the North Atlantic Ocean. At home it's 11 p.m. and at our destination, Munich, it's 7 a.m., but whatever time it technically is here, it doesn't feel like sleepytime. Despite the many other things I could be doing right now to pass the time — like doing seven Sunday crossword puzzles, or watching the movie Happy Feet, or reading a magazine so pretentious that it insists on spelling out all numbers, like "five thousand thirty-two" (that would be The New Yorker) — I have instead been listening to Jay-Z while staring at the little animated map that I can call up at the touch of a button on the LCD screen behind the balding head of the man in front of me. (That was a lot of prepositions. Whew!) This map amuses me to no end, because (a) I am a huge dork, (b) it gives distances in miles even when displaying them in German (show me one German person who has any sense of how far "1431 meilen" is), and (c) it depicts extremely obscure cities but not important ones. Apparently this cartographer lives in an alternate dimension where New York and Paris are not worth noting on maps but Stephenville, Newfoundland and Keflavik, Iceland are. I mean, if you're going to mark a city in Iceland, surely Reykjavik is the natural choice, no?

While I'm on the theme of stream-of-consciousness rants, let me tell you about how cool my computer's current desktop background is. It's a manga-style cartoon of Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka hurling a flaming, planet-like object, accompanied by some Japanese characters I can't read. I downloaded it from The Onion's website, where it accompanied a story titled "Excited Red Sox Fans Eagerly Await Debut Of Matsuzaka's 'Ultimate Galactic Dragon Gyroball Pitch Power Explosion'." I love The Onion; I really do.

Continuing with the randomness, here's something I've been worried about lately. When you enter the town of Fraser, Colorado (the town line is just a few hundred feet from my house in Winter Park), a sign proclaims Fraser "The Icebox of the Nation." Ever since I moved there, I've heard it said as gospel truth that Fraser has the coldest annual average temperature in the lower 48. But a recent New Yorker article about Sublette County, Wyoming, notes that it, too, claims to be "the icebox of the nation." Disturbed, I did some Googling and discovered that at least five other towns — International Falls, Minnesota; Pellston, Michigan; Truckee, California; Stanley, Idaho; and West Yellowstone, Montana — also claim the title. Which one is truly the Icebox of the Nation? And more pressingly, why do they all insist on the anachronistic word "icebox," anyway? Wouldn't "The Refrigerator of the Nation" be more au courant?

blog? i have a blog??

2007-03-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

No, I hadn't forgotten, and no, I wasn't too busy to update it — just too lazy. I haven't done any racing since last time I posted, but that will change soon. On Thursday the whole U.S. team leaves for the World Cup Finals, on Monte Zoncolan, Arta Terme, northeast Italy. We will race two super G's, a GS, and a slalom on a hill most of us have never been to before. The rumor is that conditions there are decent, thanks to snowmaking and a relatively high altitude. Many other European ski areas are already closed for the season or have too little snow to host a race, thanks to spring-like conditions all winter long. We were scheduled to be racing in Abtenau, Austria right now, but those races fell victim to the balmy weather and were canceled a couple weeks ago.

In other news, I spent five days at the end of February driving around Arizona with Jared in a ridiculous car — a silver Chrysler Sebring convertible, the kind of car you would buy if you were going through a mid-life crisis but were too conservative to consider a Miata. And it wasn't even that warm, so once we left Phoenix the top was up most of the time. We did, however, have a great time in various Northern Arizona locales, such as Jerome, Flagstaff, the Hopi Rez, Ganado, and the Hubble Trading Post.

In Keams Canyon, we met up with a Hopi potter named Karen Charley and spent the better part of an afternoon talking to her and learning about her pottery. Then we took Karen and her granddaughter out for dinner at the Hopi Cultural Center on Third Mesa, where Jared and I stayed for the night. She also set up a meeting with the superintendent of her school district whose board she serves on in Jeddito the next day, and Jared (a teacher) had a good time talking with him about their situation.

On our first day we had hit up Arcosanti, a crazy concrete desert experiment in "arcology" (architecture + ecology). But we met so many cool people there that we decided to go back and stay there for our final night. We made some friends, learned their bronze casting, and even played music with some of the workshop kids there. I may end up going back to do a workshop there myself some day.

Jared took some good photos, and he has posted them online here.

oh dear

2007-02-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I never wrote anything about the super G's earlier this week here in Winter Park. See, I had written this nice long post but then Safari took a safari and crashed. Anyway, I was really happy with my run the first day and ended up second, a couple seconds behind the Australian speed specialist Shannon Dallas. The next day, though, a small mistake cost me big-time and I ended up in fifth place — my first non-podium finish of the Nor-Am season. D'oh!

Results from all the Nor-Ams are finally posted here.

biracial, cilantro, picaroon

2007-02-09T22:20:00.000-07:00

What do these three words have in common? No, they're not subject-lines from spam e-mails, although they sound like it. All three of these fantastic words were contained in a single game of WEBoggle, my favorite online word game. If you follow the link, prepare to waste hours...

got advice?

2007-02-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Musically speaking, the band Cake may have gone downhill lately, but they're still a clever group of guys. Their website features a section in which the band attempts to answer fans' queries for advice; recently, a reader named Tim presented them with a doozy. Rather than attempt to answer it, the band has offered a copy of their new rarities CD, a t-shirt, and a signed vinyl LP of their first album, "Motorcade of Generosity" to the reader who can write the response to Tim's question, which you can read here. Good luck...

salami

2007-02-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

Theoretically I'm watching the Stupor Bowl right now, but football really doesn't hold my interest, so I'll write a self-satisfied blog post instead.

I finally managed to win a slalom race today, the opening day of the Winter Park Open disabled Nor-Am races. I had an ugly first run but was in the lead by half a second or so, enough to put me in a position where I could give my all on the second run and win the race by several seconds. It was a nice confidence booster, even though I know it probably would've been good enough for, like, seventh place in a World Cup race.

more eric lindley/deth p. sun

2007-02-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I blogged about this guy Eric Lindley, who I went to college with, who makes great music. His first real CD arrived in my P.O. box today and I'm listening to it right now and it's pretty awesome. Some of the songs maintain the spare, creepy acoustic vibe that his demo CDs and live performances have, while others are sort of fleshed out with other instruments. (In case you missed the original post, you can listen to some of his songs on his MySpace and if you like it you can buy the CD for 11 bucks on his label's website.)

Anyway one of the most arresting things about the CD, besides the music, is the awesome cover art. It is from a painting done by a guy whose (real) name is supposedly Deth P. Sun, which he says is Khmer. I just spent about half an hour looking at the paintings on his website, which go very nicely with Eric's record. He paints a lot of cat people, turtle people, mountains, rainbows, iconic words, and other odd sights. His work is sort of cute and scary at the same time, kind of like his name.

I think this might be my favorite painting on his website, but maybe it's just the caption that does it for me: Brushing Teeth

On an unrelated note, we race Nor-Ams the next three days here at home in Winter Park.

from the x games athlete lounge tent

2007-01-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

...which has free wi-fi, naturally, as well as many diversions and much free food.

I guess I am now officially an Xtreme Athlete, having competed in my first X Games and made it to the semifinals. Now it's time to go party like an Xtreme Athlete.

Tune in to ESPN tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. ET and maybe you'll catch me racing, although they might only show the finals. I wish I could be more specific about the time of the broadcast, but alas...

If you want to cheat and peek at the results now, head over here for the results and here for the full story.

spokane, wash.

2007-01-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Racing in Kimberley finished up today with a slalom. I had two solid runs (my second run was fifth-fastest) and finished eighth — not my best result, but I was satisfied with my performance. As soon as we got off the hill, five out of the six U.S. monoskiers on the trip loaded into a van to drive down to Spokane and catch a flight to Denver for the X Games.

Halfway there, though, we got a phone call: our 6 p.m. flight out of Spokane had been cancelled, and we would be stuck here for at least the next 12 hours. We considered our options and decided to take our rescheduled 6 a.m. flight to Denver tomorrow, then hop on a United flight directly to Aspen. If all goes as planned, we should make it into Aspen around 10:55 a.m., just in time to get on snow around 1:00 for the preliminary rounds of the monoskier X competition. Fingers crossed, I'm going to try and get some sleep...

Today's results are here.

GS in kimberley

2007-01-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

Booooo. I made a big mistake on the top, flat section of my first run in today's giant slalom, and then a few gates later I went down, making a foolish mistake by leaning into a turn on the steepest part of the course.... DNF.

Slalom tomorrow... one more shot at a decent result.