some queyras photos

...can be found here.

european world cup wrap-up

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

Click here to watch a video promo about the event.

goodbye evans

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

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

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.?

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?