autumn sweater

Fall arrived in Boulder yesterday.

When I woke up, sun was streaming in my window but I could hear the wind howling outside over the noise of the neighbors' kids playing outside. The leaves don't turn lots of different colors here like they do back in New England, but they are starting to dry up and blow around in parking lots like the plastic bag in American Beauty. Jeremy and I went to the farmer's market on 13th Street in the afternoon and I felt like I was back in Maine or New Hampshire. It dawned on me that the reason I felt that way was that that was the first time I'd really experienced autumn, in the way I conceive it, in Colorado. Up in Winter Park, fall seems to be nothing more than a three-week period during which it could be sunny and 60 or it could snow. There is really very little in-between time up there. Now I'm looking forward to more beautiful fall days here in Boulder on my bike. I think one of the reasons I have such positive associations with this time of year is that it means ski season can't be far off.

very large wine bottles

There are names for them. Except for 'magnum,' they are the names of biblical people, mostly kings. You probably knew this already, but I didn't:

• A magnum holds the equivalent of two normal wine bottles (1.5 L).
  
• A jeroboam holds the equivalent of four normal wine bottles (3 L).
  
• A rehoboam holds the equivalent of six normal wine bottles (4.5 L).
  
• A methuselah holds the equivalent of eight normal wine bottles (6 L).
  
• A salmanazar holds the equivalent of twelve normal wine bottles (9 L).
  
• A balthazar holds the equivalent of sixteen normal wine bottles (12 L).
  
• A nebuchadnezzar holds the equivalent of twenty normal wine bottles (15 L).
  
• A melchior holds the equivalent of twenty-four normal wine bottles (18 L)

If anyone would like to send me a melchior of champagne for my birthday next year, that would be cool.

modern times

In case you've been living under a rock, Dylan's new album, Modern Times, came out yesterday. I love it and will have more to say about it in the future, but today I was pleasantly surprised to read that my current favorite track, "When the Deal Goes Down," is the first single. Today Sony launched a streamable video for the song on their website, starring Scarlett Johansson in a gorgeous clip shot on old film stock or with old-school lighting or something. (You film snobs out there can tell me what exactly they did to get this effect.) I would love it if there was a way to watch this on my roommate's 50" TV. Watch it here.

Update: Thanks to SJR, here's a link directly to the video file so you can download it and enjoy it in its full sun-washed glory.

interesting obit

Dartmouth College consistently produced the best American skiers (alpine and nordic) of the early twentieth century. Many of them served in World War II and went on to distinguished careers both in and outside of the skiing world. Only a few of those pioneers of American ski racing still survive; Aug. 18 marked the death of one of Dartmouth skiing's standouts, Warren Chivers. You can read his obituary from Ski Racing here.

skidictionary.com preview, part 2

The first entry I posted here from my forthcoming dictionary of ski racing terminology seemed to generate some buzz, so I might as well post another one today. (No citations for this one yet... if you come across one, please let me know.)

bib•bo informal
adverb
in sequential order according to bib number: After racer 15A, the race will be run bibbo.

adjective
arranged in bib order: a bibbo start order.

2006-07 schedule

We just found out our preliminary training and racing schedule for the upcoming ski season, and it looks something like this. Let me know if you want to come watch a race somewhere or visit me in Winter Park in between events.

• Sept. 8-12: U.S. Olympic Training Ctr., Colorado Springs, Colo.
  
• Oct. 16-30: Hintertux, Austria (team training camp)
  
• Dec. 2-6: U.S. Olympic Training Ctr., Colorado Springs, Colo.
  
• Dec. 7-13: Breckenridge, Colo. (Ski Spectacular, Nor-Am SL/GS, speed training)
  
• Jan. 2-8: Park City, Utah (Huntsman Cup, Nor-Am 2xGS/SL)
  
• Jan. 16-22: Aspen, Colo. (World Cup 2xSG/2xGS/2xSL)
  
• Jan. 25-29: Aspen, Colo. (Winter X Games XI monoskier-X, event date TBA)
  
• Feb. 1-6: Winter Park, Colo. (Meridian Cup, Nor-Am SL/2xSG)
  
• * Mar. 1-10: Abtenau, Austria (World Cup SL/2xGS/super combi/SG)
  
• * Mar. 10-15: Zoncolan, Italy (World Cup Finals SL/GS/SG)
  
• Mar. 19-25: Waterville Valley, N.H. (U.S. Disabled Alpine Championships DH/SG/GS/SL)
  
• Mar. 29-Apr. 1: Vail, Colo. (SkiTAM team fundraiser)

*selected team members only

Today I have been learning some interesting things about junk foods. For instance, I was fascinated to learn how Necco wafers are made and also which knock-off brands of Dr Pepper are best (and worst).

coming soon(ish)...

SkiDictionary.com!

As some of you may know, for the past six or eight months I've been working on a dictionary of ski racing terminology on historical principles — that is, following the lexicographical method (popularized by the OED) of including only words that have appeared in print and of including these print citations within each entry. (Yes, web pages count as print now, too.) So far I have a few hundred entries with preliminary definitions written for most of them, along with citations for many, drawn from such sources as Ski Racing, rec.skiing.alpine, Bode Miller's Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun, and Hermann Maier's The Race of My Life. Next on my reading list are Mike Wilson's Right On the Edge of Crazy and Bill Johnson's Ski to Die.

Here is a little sneak preview of a sample entry for you NTAA readers:

ang•u•late
verb [ intrans. ]
bend sideways at the ankles, knees, or hips so as to tip the skis on edge : 1994 From what I remember, they recommended somewhere between 1-2.5 degrees of angulation, making you slightly knock-kneed. This allows you initiate a turn instantly without having to angulate to get your ski on edge first. I had a race instructor cant me for this, and it makes a phenomenal difference. (rec.skiing.alpine, “Boot cant,” 12/18/94) • 2002 “Gretchen [Bleiler] is one of the few women freestylers that angulates real well,” [Pete DelGuidice] says. (SR, 12/27/02)

[ trans. ] 1994 Top racers are stuffing amazingly thick shims under their bindings to elevate the boot and improve their ability to angulate the ski. (rec.skiing.alpine, “new Ski Manufacturer wants input!,” 10/24/94)

DERIVATIVES
ang•u•la•tion noun : 2003 [U.S. Ski Team coaches] also talk a lot about snow contact, pressure distribution and balance through angulation. (SR, 11/12/03)

Feedback welcomed in the comments section...

language wars

It seems that Iran has joined France as the latest country making a futile attempt to rid its language of so-called impurities. It would be nice if all the politicians trying to make English the "official" or "national" language would read that little AP story, make some offhanded comment about the futility of trying to prevent "pizza" from entering Farsi, and then have it pointed out by an impartial observer that they are trying to legislate something just as un-legislatable. (There, I just made up a word. Come and get me, language purists!)

laguardia

The name of this airport has always reminded me of the bacteria giardia. Assuming you find bacteria distateful, the comparison is apt. I sat on my plane from Portland for about 35 minutes before the people showed up with the ramp and aisle chair to get me off the damn thing. (Fortunately, I have lots of time to kill here before my flight to Denver.) They have the weirdest system of transferring between the different terminals here; you have to take a bus that's not wheelchair accessible, only comes every 15 minutes or so, and leaves not from the gate area but from baggage claim... wha??

After I get in to Denver, I have to pick up my monoski from Aspen Seating, go home to Boulder and pack, and then head back to the airport tomorrow to fly to Mt. Hood for a one-week training camp. I'm looking forward to it though.

i think i'm in love...

...with the inaugural U.S. women's ski jumping team, that is. Click for video: wmv mp4

SoPo

I've been home in Maine for the past 8 days or so. I figured I should mention that, although I don't have much to write right now. Been hanging out with Jared, Elise, and the fam... went to a couple Sea Dogs games; they're kicking ass right now. Heading back to Boulder on Friday.

tapioca time bomb

The following is a genuine news story from 1972:

CARDIFF, Wales, Sept. 14 (AP) — The biggest tapioca pudding in the world is cooking in the hold of a fire-swept Swiss freighter and threatening to split the vessel at its seams.

"It's like a huge tapioca time bomb," said an incredulous fire chief today as he watched the smoldering 12,165-ton Cassarate at the Cardiff docks.

Firemen earlier controlled the fire which started in timber stacked in the upper holds 25 days ago at sea. The crew kept the smoldering timber dampened until the ship docked here late [on September 12].

But the water from the Cardiff hoses seeped down to the lower holds where 1,500 tons of tapioca from Thailand were stored.

The water swelled the tapioca and the heat from the flames started to cook the sticky mess.

The swelling tapioca — enough to serve a million plates — could buckle the ship's steel plates, fire chiefs warned.

"It's got to burst somewhere," one said. "It will take dockers a couple of days to clear the smoldering lumber before we can reach the tapioca."

The plan is to load the gluey mess onto a fleet of trucks and dispose of it. One report said there was enough to fill 500 trucks.

But where do you dump 500 truckloads of tapioca pudding?

grass skiing

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life.

For a while now I've been vaguely aware that the Fédération Internationale de Ski governs "grass skiing" as an official discipline — in fact, on the FIS website you can view grass skiing race schedules, results, competitor biographies, and official rules (even though nary a mention is to be found there of disabled alpine or cross-country skiing, both of which are administered jointly by the FIS and the IPC and which have hundreds of competitors and THEIR OWN FREAKING WORLD CUP CIRCUITS). (Not that I'm bitter.)

Nevertheless, until today I had never really investigated this "sport" or fully grasped how truly asinine it is. If you want to learn more about grass skiing history or technique, the place to start seems to be this website, the online home of Grass-Ski France. (Why doesn't it surprise me to learn that the French are really into something this dumb?) From that site I learned that the only place to go grass skiing in the United States is apparently Bryce Resort in Virginia, where its introduction is the brainchild of one Horst Locher, a German-American who says of the "sport": "It's kind of my baby... I still dream that it will grow big."

Keep dreaming, Horst. Keep dreaming. I can think of no better way to bastardize my favorite sport than by removing the essential ingredient: snow. Why not try swimming without water or playing baseball without a ball? Those might be fun, too. I bet grass skiing involves way too much friction, a much greater potential for injury, and a lot of overheating due to wearing too much protective gear in the hot sun, with a dose of hay fever thrown in for good measure.

But OK, I can hear you critics out there already: "How can you knock it if you haven't tried it, Carl?" This may or may not be a valid point. So here's what I'm proposing: if anyone reading this can find me a place to stay within one hour of Bryce Resort and arrange with the mountain's management for visiting U.S. Disabled Ski Team dignitaries or potential disabled grass-skiing pioneers to receive grass-ski rentals and lift tickets free of charge, I will be on the next plane to Appalachia. Because to tell you the truth, I'm kind of curious.

joe buck

I'm a little confused... earlier today, I watched the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight as Joe Buck, a tall, blond, hickish male prostitute in New York who dresses like a cowboy. I liked it pretty well. But now I'm watching the MLB All-Star Game, and Fox has a tall, blond, annoying commentator named... yep, Joe Buck. Weird.

new toy

I decided to use some b-day cash to buy a new stereo for my car. I wanted several features that I didn't have in my factory-installed stereo:

1. a CD player that works
   
2. a way to hook my iPod directly into the stereo without needing a terrible-sounding cassette or FM adapter
   
3. satellite radio. I've been curious about it for a while, and after taking a few trips with Ralph in his Sirius-equipped Subaru, I can't deny how nice it is: 175 channels of commercial-free music, NPR, baseball games, stand-up comedy, and just about anything else worth listening to. (They even have a left-wing talk-radio channel!)

After mulling it over for a week or so, I bit the bullet today, bought this stereo and signed up for Sirius. At first the controls were really confusing, so I parked outside my house, turned off my engine and spent over an hour reading the manual (yes, I actually do that), figuring out the controls, and setting my pre-sets. Then, abruptly, it turned off. I had drained my battery and my car was dead... d'oh.

In other news, I'm going to a Rockies game tomorrow and hope it stops raining. What's up with this? It never rains in Colorado.

tour de france

I'm really getting into watching the Tour de France. When Lance was still racing, I never had OLN, so I couldn't watch their daily coverage — which, incidentally, is fantastic. Now I'm glued to the TV. Today's first full stage finished in an exciting sprint, with a Frenchman winning for the first time in 20 years and George Hincapie becoming just the fourth American ever to wear the maillot jaune. Yesterday's prologue winner, Norwegian Thor Hushovd, got a nasty gash on his arm after getting clipped by a spectator with a giant green foam hand during the final sprint.

(video highlights here)

booberi

This is one of the coolest commercials I've ever seen, even if it is for a fruit-flavored vodka. If you're interested in how they made it, click here.

vote for Laurie and Steve

Two USDST athletes are nominated for ESPYs, ESPN's sports awards, in 2006. Alpine sitting skier Laurie Stephens is nominated for Best Female Athlete with a Disability, and XC standing skier Steve Cook for Best Male Athlete with a Disability. You can vote for them here. (If you don't want to vote for all the categories before them, you can select their categories from the scroll bat on the right-hand side of the site.) The awards ceremony, hosted by Lance Armstrong, airs July 16 at 9 p.m. on ESPN, although I kind of doubt they'll televise the disabled categories.

Oh yeah, you can also vote for Ted Ligety or Julia Mancuso for Best Olympic Athlete.

music to hate

In case you're unaware, a band called Wolf Eyes is at the forefront of the movement known as "noise rock." This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: people with traditional rock instruments (plus some electronics) trying to make the biggest godawful racket possible. (My dad thinks most post-'60s rock music sounds like this, actually.) I won't claim to actually like this stuff, but it is pretty intriguing to listen to/watch for a minute or two, kind of like a gruesome car accident or American Idol.

biking after the hailstorm

Just got back from an otherworldly bikeride. The sky cleared very quickly after the storm, and by 7 p.m. the sun was shining. Knowing I still had an hour and a half of daylight left, I set out on a bike path I discovered yesterday near my apartment. The path wound its way through residential streets soaked with rainwater and coated everywhere with mounds of green and white. The green was leaves and branches blown and ripped from the foliage above; the white was weird piles of conglomerated hail, looking more like cotton than snow or ice. And yet everywhere, people were outside — barbecuing, biking, walking dogs. I even saw one proud homeowner spraying the plant debris off his driveway with a garden hose. Ten or fifteen blocks from home, on a fast downhill, my front tire found a rock or pothole under the leaves and flatted. As I limped home northward on 28th Street, I saw the main thoroughfare to my apartment as if for the first time. At bike speed, I noticed a dozen businesses I had somehow missed from my car: a Korean restaurant, a copy shop, a Belgian bakery. I was grateful for the details that my slowed pace brought to the surface.

whoa

Now it's hailing.

sigh...

I need a job. Or some sort of regularly scheduled activity. Otherwise I'm inclined to stay up late, sleep in, not go to the gym, and just generally be lazy and unproductive. True, I've spent the better part of the afternoon retooling my resumé and applying for jobs and freelance writing gigs. But I told myself I was going to go for a long bike ride today, and that hasn't happened yet — and won't, judging by the fact that it's currently pouring rain, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees in about 20 minutes, the wind is howling, and lightning just struck so close that it just about scared the crap out of me. I guess I'll make some dinner, and maybe go to Kinko's to print resumés if the rain lets up. Hmph.

new head coach

USDST news: You heard it here first — Ray Watkins, longtime (though intermittant) assistant coach for the team, has been named Head Alpine Coach, replacing Kevin Jardine. He will officially start July 8th. For the last couple years, Ray has been a golf pro in Mt. Shasta, Calif., although he was with the team as an assistant coach for the World Cup Finals and Paralympics in Italy last winter. Last year he married Gwynn Albee, a New Hampshirite who was the head coach of the Winter Park Disabled Ski Team a couple years back. It'll be interesting to see if Gwynn comes back into the disabled skiing world again as well.

Ray is a short, super-fit, friendly dude who does a spot-on Eric Cartman impersonation. (I once spent an entire chairlft ride listening to him sing Styx's prog-rock opus "Come Sail Away" in Cartman's voice.) He can be a little more no-nonsense than Kevin, which could be a good thing for the team now. If you get a little too self-congratulatory, say by talking about how many miles you biked yesterday, Ray's likely to respond with "Whaddya, want a cookie?"

Our first training camp with Ray as head coach is tentatively scheduled for late July at Mt. Hood.

2856 Kalmia Ave., Apt. 102, Boulder, CO 80301

That's my new address down here in the Front Range, until I move back up into Winter Park in November. The name "Kalmia" was foreign to me; it sounds like a made-up word from a sci-fi novel. But it turns out that it's actually the name of a plant — a poisonous, flowering shrub. Pretty enough name and flower to justify naming a street after it, I suppose. But as far as I can Google, there's only one other Kalmia Ave. in the U.S., in Virginia.

The name of the condo complex I'm living in is "The Boulders," which strikes me as a little odd, since it's in Boulder. It's not like there are many big rocks around here.

mt. hood

Apologies for not being more diligent with the blogging lately. It has certainly been a while since I rapped at ya, as Jim Anchower would say.

I'm writing from Welches, Oregon. We've been staying here since last Thursday and skiing on Mt. Hood. And by "we," I mean the four of us — two athletes, Ralph and me, and two staff members, Ben and Willy — from the team who decided to show up to a last-minute optional training camp. The weather up on Hood can be iffy, especially this time of year, but we've had pretty good luck. The first three days were misty and rainy (the third day so much so that we had to take the day off), but since then it's been sunny and bluebird-clear up on the mountain even when it was raining down below. There are few things cooler than driving up through the clouds into a glorious, 35-degrees-and-sunny June morning.

laaaaame

Found this email from our team manager in my in-box this morning:

Hello,

The IPC has just confirmed that there will be no World Championships for Alpine in 2007. Klosters, Switzerland pulled thier bid about a month ago. The IPC Race Director found a new site in Sweden, but the new site was unnaceptable. They only had a FIS homologated GS and SL, no DH or SG. It would have been a very low level World Championships.

I know it is very dissapointing. The Race Director, Michael Knaus, is working to secure a site for 2009 so that this will not happen again.

I will send you a full update from the FIS and IPC meetings in Portugal in the next few days.

Hope everyone is doing well!
Sandy

simply hilarious

Thanks to Uncle Frank for this.

"A slut nixes sex in Tulsa"

...and other great palindromes can be found here. (I particularly like all the various absurdist riffs on the well-known "A man, a plan, a canal — Panama!", such as: "A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal — Panama!")

back from south carolina

From Monday through Wednesday, I traveled to Greenville, SC to help my sponsor, Charter Communications, kick off a new sales initiative. Dubbed "Selling for Success"("S4S"), it's a program to improve their customers'experience by training their customer sales representatives to follow a carefully researched call-flow procedure -- or at least, that's what I got out of it. Charter flew call-center managers and other middle-management people to Greenville from regional offices all over the country to spend anywhere from a few days up to three weeks learning from an outside consultant group how to teach their CSRs the new procedure they'd devised.

My job? First of all, to address all the assembled managers, introducing myself and my relationship with the company as my sponsor and trying to draw parallels between what I do as a ski racer and what they do as a company: "Goal setting is important," "You have to be open to changing the way you do things," etc. People were generally pretty nice and forgiving of the fact that I don't have much public-speaking experience, and they listened to what I had to say and asked good questions even though what I was talking about seemed marginally relevant, at best.

Then I had to give a similar presentation six more times to groups of CSRs who work at the Charter call center there. This was a substantially tougher job. Imagine a 24-year-old upper-middle-class white kid in a wheelchair and an Oxford shirt talking to a room full of mostly working-class, mostly-African-American phone operators of varying ages about a sport whose existence they're barely aware of and trying to explain to them why they should try and make more money for the multi-million-dollar corporation they all work for. I got better at it with each talk, but to be honest I've never felt so much like the Man in all my life. I'm only trying to do what Charter asks me to as a way of saying thanks for funding my whole ski season, but the experience left such a bad taste in my mouth.

Swiss people, gender dynamics, and unhealthy aggression

The inexplicable murder of retired Swiss World Cup skiing champion Corinne Rey-Bellet by her estranged husband has raised some issues about gun control and the role of women in Swiss society.

gasket schmasket

My poor Montana! It has blown a gasket. Specifically, the head gasket. Apparently, this is a big deal and necessitates at least eleven hours of labor. They have to basically take the engine apart to replace the thing and then put it back together again. I will be happy when my van is all better again... until I get my VISA bill.

coachella

I just got back from Coachella and I'm too exhausted to write anything now, but all my photos and videos from the festival are online now.

interview with Laurie

This interview with my soft-spoken teammate, Laurie Stephens, appeared in the latest monthly e-mail newsletter from USSA:

SPOTLIGHT ON 'THE BEST': Paralympic Champ Laurie Stephens
The 2006 season was another successful year for highly decorated
sit-skier Laurie Stephens (LW-12/1; Wenham, MA). She won seven of
12 World Cup races and collected three more World Cup titles. At
the Paralympics she won two gold medals and a silver. Born with
spinal bifida, Stephens recently was honored by the U.S. Olympic
Committee as 2005 Paralympian of the Year, the first winter sport
athlete so honored.

USSA: You did it again - walloped everyone on the World Cup
schedule, including six wins in a row, then dominated the
Paralympics, too. How do you do it?

Laurie Stephens: I don't really know. I just go out - it's kind
of the same each time, just go out there and ski, and whatever
happens happens. ...I'm definitely competitive. I've always been
competitive in the sports I did.

USSA: Is it sports psychology stuff, mental training and imagery
to get yourself revved up before each race?

LS: Not really. I like skiing and like going out there every
race and trying to ski better. It's kind of my main focus. I
don't know how it works, but something works. ...I tend to
listen to music at the start. Nothing in particular, but it
helps me get ready. It blocks out the distractions and anything
that would get to me before a race.

USSA: This was your third season on the Ski Team, and you had
plenty of success, thumping everyone again. What was the coolest
part of this season?

LS: The Paralympics were probably the highlight. I'd never
competed in the Paralympics and getting that opportunity was
such an honor. The racing was cool. Everyone was at a really
high level, everyone was pushing it. Borgata was an awesome
course and the snow was really good.

USSA: You're at such a high performance level to maintain. Any
surprises about the season and your skiing?

LS: The whole Paralympic thing was kind of a surprise. I figured
the pressure would have gotten to me. I know a lot of things I
need to work on and change for next season - slalom, in
particular. I hope to work on that stuff this summer.

more bad news

We recently found out that Klosters, Switzerland has backed out of its bid to host the 2007 Diabled Alpine and Nordic World Championships, which were scheduled for next January or February. This leaves the organizers with very little time to find a new host resort. I'm really bummed, because I was looking forward to racing the downhill there. I really hope the event isn't cancelled altogether.

it's official...

Actually, it's been official for a week, or so, but now it's public... Kevin, our head coach, is leaving the team. I thought this might be coming now that Kevin and Ashley have had their second kid, but it's a big loss for our team. He'll be hard to replace.

hahaha

Perform LASIK surgery on yourself, in the comfort of your own home!

amazing Paralympic photo site

George forwarded me a link to the photo-sharing website of this guy named DSUSAken5, who I guess must work for Disabled Sports USA. He was apparently on the hill taking literally hundreds of photos of each run of the slalom and GS races in Sestriere. It takes quite a while to sort through them all; here are some links to the pictures of me:

slalom run 1 slalom run 1 slalom run 1 slalom run 1 slalom run 1 slalom run 1 slalom run 2 slalom run 2 slalom run 2 slalom run 2 slalom run 2 slalom run 2 GS run 1 GS run 1 GS run 1 GS run 2 GS run 2 GS run 2 GS run 2

new look for spring

I realized that I wanted to add a links section to my blog, but I realized I was totally inept at changing the template myself, and I was in the mood for a new layout for my blog anyway, so I just spent hours looking through every damn Blogger template on the web, only to conclude that some of the best designs out there are the default options they give you on Blogger. So I picked one of those... this is called Jellyfish. Let me know what you think.

freebird!

I went to the weekly local-band night at the Rocky Mountain Roastery in Fraser, and the guys who were playing were really good, playing a mix of originals and covers spanning the gamut from alt-country to prog-metal. When it came time for an encore, the singer asked for requests, and predictably, everyone shouted "Free Bird!" (Winter Park music fans have clearly gleaned most of their expected rock-fan behavior knowledge from TV, or actual Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts.) The singer just smiled, but after quite a bit of noodling and tuning, he announced, "I'm going to fulfill an adolescent fantasy of mine" and with that he actually launched into a cover of "Free Bird". And I'll be damned if it wasn't a great rendition.

R.I.P., Doug Coombs.

more photos up

I've finally finished tagging and captioning all my photos from Italy and Spain. You can view the second batch of Paralympic photos here, my Florence photos here, and my Barcelona photos here.

new opening ceremonies videos up

I just posted a few videos that I took during the Paralympic opening ceremonies in Torino. They're over on my YouTube page. I think they came out OK, considering that I took them with my little Sony still camera.

Paralympics finally to air on obscure cable channel

We found out at SkiTAM that ESPN-U (a college sports channel?!) will be airing nine hours of coverage of the Paralympics (thanks in large part, no doubt, to SkiTAM organizer and ESPN exec Steve Raymond), beginning TONIGHT at 6 pm ET. (That's right after a program called "The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Georgetown for Losing to Villanova in the 1985 NCAA Final.") The full broadcast schedule can be found here; according to the press release, it sounds like you might be able to get the channel if you have DirecTV, Dish Network, or Adelphia cable. If you're looking to see me race, your best bet is probably to tune in between 7 and 8 pm ET tonight, which is when they should be showing the men's sitting downhill, in which I finished fifth.

2014 Winter Olympics & Paralympics

I won't still be racing in 2014, but I was curious to see which cities have applied to host that year's Winter Games. So I did some research and found that unless the Games are awarded to Salzburg, they will be held in a country that's not at all well-known for its skiing prowess. At this point, the candidate list looks like this (in descending order of plausibility):

• Salzburg, Austria


• Pyeongchang, South Korea


• Sochi, Russia


• Jaca, Spain


• Almaty, Kazakhstan


• Sofia, Bulgaria


• Borjomi, Georgia


• Hoth, Hoth Solar System

celebrity

Got back yesterday from Vail, where we had our annual ski team fundraiser, SkiTAM. It's attended by bigwigs from the cable TV industry, involves a team ski race and lots of partying, and raises around 60% of the U.S. Disabled Ski Team's annual budget.

One of the corporate teams always ensures victory by bringing in ringers like Pam Fletcher, Chad Fleischer, and Picabo Street. I'd met Chad and Picabo briefly a couple times before, and we chatted a bit at the start of the race on Saturday. Then afterwards, I was down in the base lodge, having just taken advantage of a free lunch buffet at the posh Larkspur restaurant and having some issues with carrying a full plate of food and a glass of iced tea up a ramp to my team's table. Who should appear to offer her assistance but the 1998 Olympic super G champion? Picabo followed behind me as I weaved through the tables and up to the ramp, and of course I obnoxiously made a point of stopping at each person I knew to point out who was carrying my drink for me. Celebrity must be such a bitch.

zurich

Everything is expensive in Switzerland, and despite this being one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, that includes Internet access. Earlier today in a Pakistani-owned cell-phone-store-cum-Internet-cafe in Barcelona I paid 50 Euro cents for a half-hour of access; tonight in my hotel in Zürich I'm paying 8 Swiss francs for a half-hour on their wi-fi access. Such is the price of Internet addiction.

But enough bitching. I have two things to be happy about: I get to go home and sleep in my own bed tomorrow after over a month on the road, and I just finished up three days in one of the best cities I've ever visited. Barcelona really does have it all: art museums, punk clubs; historic churches, Richard Meier buildings; youth culture, old men's cafés; the ocean and the mountains; Catalunyan pride, international flavor. If I had a good reason, I would move there in a minute. Highlights for me included the modern art museum, the MACBA; a great little indie record store called Revolver Records (I picked up a reissue of a 1960s Skatalites LP as well as the latest Belle & Sebastian single); a cable-car ride across the mouth of the harbor to a little mountaintop café overlooking the whole city; and of course spending time with the inimitable Tracy Brooks Landers. Brooks and I stayed in a divey ho(s)tel just off the Rambla, the main pedestrian corridor through a very pedestrian-friendly town. The Rambla is like a three-lane highway for walkers bordered by one lane of motor vehicle traffic on each side, and it's full of street performers, vendors, and sidewalk cafés. As great as it is, it's full of tourists and you hear as much English there as Spanish and Catalán, so you definitely have to hit the un-beaten path as well. By this afternoon, I felt like I knew a 20-block radius of my hotel as well as I know Boston or Denver.

Zürich is just a brief stopover, the place I stored my luggage while traveling and the United hub I had to fly home from. I've just about finished my drink in the hotel bar, so it's time to sign off for the night and get some sleep in my post-modern Swiss hotel room.

blah

I'm sitting in an empty train car that bears a striking resemblance to a jail cell, except with green curtains. Apparently the only wheelchair accessible car on this Trenitalia local from Florence SMN to Pisa Centrale is one that's completely empty except for a desk and an office chair — no other passengers, no seats at all, so I'm stuck in my wheelchair. And I was looking forward to a nap, too. At least the trip is only an hour or so.

The conductors just passed through my car on the way to the cockpit (or whatever it's called on a train — the engine room?). I guess this must be kind of their lounge area. I hope we start moving soon; the gray, trash-strewn, rainy railyard is depressing as hell.

I just said goodbye to Abby and Kate, who got on another train bound for Milan. They'll spend a night there before flying home to the States. My plan is to stay the night in Pisa by myself and then take a taxi to the airport, where I have a flight tomorrow morning to Barcelona. I can't wait to see Spain.

I'm listening to the Raconteurs, the new Detroit supergroup comprising the White Stripes' Jack White, singer/songwriter Brendan Benson, and the rhythm section from the Detroit Cobras. If the lead single is any indication, their debut album will be quite a listen.

firenze

Writing this from a hotel computer in Florence, where I've spent the past two days with friends Abby and Kate. Lots of the usual tourist activities: traipsing around museums and churches, shopping, and eating gelato. A very relaxing time after three long weeks (well, three long months, really) of racing. Saturday it's over to Barcelona to hang out with Brooks for a few days, then I head back Stateside.

last day in Sestriere

Last night the Paralympics ended with the most spectacular closing ceremony imaginable. (Photos will be up soon on my Flickr page.) The athletes paraded through a piazza in Turin, the route lined with tens of thousands of spectators. We sat in the main square in front of the Olympic Medals Stage and watched a two-hour choreographed show that was at times bizarre but consistently engaging. At the end of it all, legendary NYC folk-punk heroine Patti Smith played a one-hour set with her band, rocking out even more than she did 30 years ago.

My races concluded yesterday with the slalom. After the downhill, I knew that slalom would probably be my best chance for another good result. Sure enough, I fell in the super G and skied too conservatively in GS, but I gave it my all in the slalom and finished a respectable 16th. The field is just way too big in slalom and GS for many unheralded skiers like me to get a top-ten finish; one who did was Poland's Jaroslaw Rola. CDY was the top American in eighth. A sizeable mistake in my first run might have cost me a few places, but the top three skiers were just unbeatable — especially German Martin Braxenthaler, who came away from these games with an amazing three gold medals in four events.

[View the official results from the slalom here.]
[View the performance analysis data here.]
[Read about the race and women's champion Stephani Victor here.]

Now I'm off on a whirlwind tour of southern Europe: bus to Zürich tonight, train to Florence tomorrow to meet my friends Kate & Abby, flight to Barcelona on Saturday to meet my friend Brooks, back to Zürich next Tuesday and then home to the States the next day. Whew.

redemption for USA

On their last day of competition today, the standing skiers finally won two Paralympic medals: Allison Jones gold and Sandy Dukat bronze: [story] [results]

tech events

I have one event left here at the Paralympics, tomorrow's slalom. Today we trained a bit of slalom in the morning, and things felt really good. I feel as confident for this race as I did for the downhill, although my competition will be considerably stiffer — the Euros and Japanese bring their A-game on slalom day.

I wish I had been as confident going into yesterday's GS. I had had some really bad runs of GS training the day before, and I definitely held back on the first run. I skied pretty stiff, like I was just trying to make it down safely rather than actually attacking the course. After that run I was in a miserable 32nd place. But in between runs I realized I had to change my approach, so I loosened up on the second run and just went for it. Plus, the course was faster and more open — much better suited to my skiing style. I was 19th in the 2nd run, so I moved up to 22nd overall. Not a great finish, but a decent one. Chris and Tyler, both very strong GS skiers, had a disappointing day, finishing just off the podium in 4th and 6th respectively.

If I let the ski run well tomorrow and don't make too many mistakes, I think another top ten isn't out of the question. Since downhill and slalom are feeling like my best events right now, I really wish disabled skiing had a Combined event, like the one Ted Ligety won at the Olympics. Running a downhill during the day and then a slalom in the evening under the lights — that would be tons of fun.

[View the results of the GS here.]
[Read about it here.]

the halfway point

Two Paralympic races down now, two to go. By now you may have read elsewhere that I was only 31st in yesterday's super G. What happened is that on just the third gate I leaned in a little bit, caught an edge, and went down. I spun around 360º on my side and then popped back up. I hadn't missed any gates and was still on line, so I continued my run. There were a few minor things I would've changed about my run after that, but it was good skiing. Sometimes in ski racing that stuff just happens, and after my good finish in the downhill, I wasn't too angry with myself. In the finish area I just shrugged and raised my outriggers like, "Hey, what are you gonna do?" I was in 20th place at the time but of course got bumped back as other skiers came down. As the commentator on ParalympicSport.tv put it, at least it was a good warm-up for Friday's GS. Besides, my friend Nick had one of his best finishes ever by finishing 4th, just 0.08 off the podium. Unstoppable German Martin Braxenthaler won gold.

[Read the USOC's press release here.]
[Read Ski Racing's story here.]
[View the complete race results here.]
[View the performance analysis report here.]

My brother Will makes an excellent point: the Torino Paralympics' mascot, Aster, looks a lot like one of the characters in the ridiculously awesome music video for the Danish dance-pop band Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet."

downhill fast

I had a really fun day yesterday in the downhill, and I finished fifth — my second-best international finish ever, 0.28 seconds off the podium. For a time I was sitting in third place behind my teammates Bramble and CDY, but a fast young Japanese skier named Takeshi Suzuki (haha! look how funny his head shot is!) and a fast French veteran, Denis Barbet, came down and slid in between Chris and me. Of course I immediately began second-guessing where I could've found more speed, but in the end I'm very happy with my run.

[Watch the race here by clicking "Highlights" and then "Men's sitting downhill."]
[View the official results here.]
[View the performance analysis data here.]
[Read the USOC's press release here.]
[Read the U.S. Ski Team's story here.]

A few tidbits about the race:

• Austrian medal contender Reini Sampl (the photo caption is wrong) was yellow-flagged twice, meaning the racer before him crashed and he had to go back up to the start for a re-run. On his second re-run, Reini crashed. I felt really bad for him.
  
• The U.S. also won the gold in the women's sitting division, with Laurie Stephens smoking the field as usual. These are the only three U.S. medals of these Games in alpine skiing thus far; the standing skiers were shut out in Saturday's downhill and today's super G.
  
• The race course was 2325 meters long, and my raw time was 1:39.68. That means my average speed was about 84 km/h, which works out to 52 m.p.h. — slightly faster than my clocked speed at the second interval, 82 km/h.
  
• Before the race, Tyler provided Nick, CDY, Bramble and me each with a hit of pure New Hampshire maple syrup, which he brought to the start with him in a pocket flask. It was a nice little reminder of home and as well as a good sugar buzz; I guess it worked for me and Chris, if not for Tyler and Nick, who both had trouble on their runs.

downhill training day #1

I had a really solid first training run and am ready to give it more gas tomorrow. Here's a link to today's training results and statistical analysis. (The other classes' results can be found here.)

downhill inspection & training

Today was scheduled to be the first of three days of official, timed downhill training. Organizers of all downhill races are required to schedule at least two downhill training runs (and actually hold at least one) on a course identical to the one used on race day. (Not only is this not the norm for super G, giant slalom or slalom, it would actually be ILlegal if racers were permitted to train on the course prior to the race. Downhill is different because the high speeds involved and the long, difficult-to-memorize courses can make it unsafe to go all-out on one's first trip down.)

From 9 to 10 a.m. was course inspection, the time allotted for racers to sideslip through the gates in order to note terrain features and the placement of gates, to plan our optimal line through the course, and to memorize the whole course. The memorization part is especially crucial in downhill, and most racers usually use the full hour for their inspections — unlike, say, GS, where I find 15 or 20 minutes is often sufficient. The downhill course here at Sestriere Borgata looks really great: a mix of high-speed gliding, technical sections, and some interesting terrain features; it's challenging but not too intimidating. (All downhills are a little bit intimidating.) It has 40 gates marking 23 turns and follows roughly the same route as last month's men's Olympic super G. I already know it by heart, thanks to having run it probably 15 times already in my head.

Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until tomorrow for my first chance to run it for real. After inspection today, I went inside to stretch, grab a snack and use the bathroom. When I came back out, all the other monoskiers were sitting around in a little cluster at the bottom of the hill, and Nick said, "Did you hear? It's cancelled today." It turns out that wind speeds at the start of the race course had been steadily increasing, and an errant gale-force gust managed to rip the aluminum poles that were holding up a large start-shelter tent right out of the snow. The poles hit several team staff members, breaking a Japanese physiotherapist's leg and hitting a German coach in the neck as well as bonking one of our team's ski technicians in the head. The Japanese woman and Baloo, the German guy, had to be taken down the mountain in sleds for treatment, and the organizers made the decision to scrap the day's training run — a drastic step, but perhaps a good one for the teams affected. It will also give the organizers more time to deploy the army of course slippers, rakers, and groomers at their disposal to remove some of the excess soft snow that's continued to fall recently and could make the course dangerous. (They've already done a tremendous job of making the course ready to go once.)

Downhill is fast when you actually run it, but until then it's a hurry-up-and-wait sport. Tomorrow we take another crack at it, so I better get some sleep.

in the Paralympic Village

OK, I'm in Sestriere now, getting ready for the Paralympics. We moved into the Athlete Village here two days ago, and I took a few runs this afternoon on our race hill. It's looking sweet. All our races are on the men's Olympic downhill & super G run, if you happened to see that on TV. It's long and rolly, with some steep pitches, flats, and small jumps. It's going to make for a fantastic Paralympic downhill, I think, and the weather and snow right now are totally ideal — sunny and minus 5 to 10 Celsius, with firm but grippable snow.

There's so much to write about, so I guess I'll take it in chunks. For now I guess I'll try and describe the Paralympic Village experience. This year I think all the teams are staying in the Villages, the official housing provided free to athletes, coaches and staff. The hockey players and the curling team stay down in the Torino village, while the alpine and nordic skiers and biathletes stay up here in Sestriere. There are five residential buildings here, most of which were built for the Games. If you saw the three cylindrical towers on TV during the Olympics, those are part of the village, although the U.S. team isn't staying in them. We're in a low building almost immediately adjacent to the ski hill. It's great, you don't even need to get in a car to get to the race course. (The nordic skiers have a 20-minute drive to Pragelato each day.)

Inside the Village, there are all kind of amenities you might find in any neighborhood: general store, café, florist, dry cleaner, souvenir shop, Internet lounge, hair stylist, etc. Of course there's also a huge 24-hour dining hall with some good food and some really awful. Strangely (this being Italy and all), the pizza there is truly terrible. At least they have tomatoes and fresh mozzarella at every meal, along with plenty of olive oil and balsamic vinegar of course. They also have surprisingly passable egg rolls.

Anytime you want to re-enter the Village, or go in the dining hall, or do just about anything else, you have to show your credential. This is basically your proof that you are an athlete and you are who you say you are. It's a bad thing to lose, because then you basically don't exist.

pre-Paralympic photos

are now online over here on Flickr.

GS in Artesina

A solid 10th-place finish today in a very fun GS. This is probably the hardest event for me to do well in on the World Cup; everyone is just too good. There are fewer good slalom skiers and even fewer monoskiers (especially Euros) who can let 'em run in super G and downhill.

I finished the World Cup season in 11th place (2nd American) in the slalom standings, out of 14 racers who scored points. You can view the standings here.

Artesina slalom

I finished 8th today in a World Cup slalom in Italy. I skied two solid runs, maybe could've found a little more speed in a few sections but I was happy with both the performance and the result. Roger was the top American in my class, finishing 7th, while Stephani clinched a tie for the overall World Cup title in slalom by winning today's race.

So far I'm loving the whole Italian experience. Everything is really laid back (some times too much so; as I write this we've been waiting two hours for today's race awards to start), and the gelato and cappuccino are better than I could?ve imagined. We're staying in an amazing hotel that occupies part of an old seminary/monastery across the courtyard from a seventeenth-century cathedral. Loading skis into our team vans every morning in front of the huge Baroque dome and the chiming church bells is surreal indeed... photos to come soon if I can get my own computer connected to the internet somewhere. (No internet access in the monastery!)

night before leaving for Italy

Frantically busy lately getting packed and organized for five weeks on the road: first World Cup Finals in Artesina, Italy (home of the (in)famous Pink Rabbit), then of course the Paralympics in Sestriere, and then trekking around Italy a bit with friends. Hence no time to write a long post I'd planned to do (actually started it but lost it to the electronic netherworld) about the experience of Paralympic "team processing" in Colorado Springs last weekend. Suffice it to say that they gave us an awful lot of free Roots and Nike clothing.

ParalympicSport.tv launched today. If anyone can figure out how to get this to work on a Mac running Safari or IE, please let me know.

My latest musical kick is a little band from my native Portland (Maine, duh) called X-Ray Actress. They make kind of loungey, layered electro-pop with a female lead singer, along the lines of Ivy or Portishead, minus the trip-hop vibe. Their singer, Shirley Moe, sounds a little like an American Isobel Campbell (formerly of Belle & Sebastian fame). If that sounds appealing (and granted, to many rock snobs, it won't be), check out the free mp3s on their website. (You have to click on the image in the middle column, third row down of that 5x4 matrix — stupid Flash interface.) The sound quality isn't perfect, but it'll give you an idea of the amazing production on their records.

Sometimes pictures say it best.

What Ted Ligety's been up to this Olympics:


What Bode Miller's been up to this Olympics:

slalom results

I put two solid runs together today in slalom, which is what I've been trying to do for a few weeks, so I'm happy about that. I was hoping it might result in a win, but I had to settle for second place behind Chris and Tyler, who both skied really well. It would've been tough for me to catch 'em today. One more race tomorrow, GS, before I head home to Winter Park.

morning post, for a change

Today at nationals we're racing what's currently my best event, slalom. I know I'm capable of winning, but I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself. Whatever happens, I found out yesterday that I'll be racing in all four events at the Paralympics, so that's a load off my mind. I'm going to just go up there and try to have fun on the slalom course and let myself go. I've got nothing to lose and plenty to win.

In yesterday's downhill I took fourth. I was hoping for a podium, but I just couldn't catch Bramble (who is untouchable in downhill), Joe (who has almost a 100-pound advantage over me in a very flat course), and Chris (who I beat in training, but he's the smartest racer out there when it comes to figuring out how to get every last hundredth out of a course). I felt pretty OK about it.

definition of the day

I was pleased to find that the most recent edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary includes the word "McMansion," defining it as "a large modern house that is considered ostentatious and lacking in architectural integrity. ORIGIN: from Mc- + mansion, with reference to the name of a restaurant chain." I'm not sure why I find this definition so satisfying, but I do think I might have to make the Definition of the Day a semi-regular feature of this blog.

U.S. nationals super G

The field for the first race at the U.S. Disabled Alpine Championships here in Park City, UT was disappointingly small, only 36 races between the men and women. I'm not really sure why — there are some Winter Park skiers who aren't coming over until the GS and the slalom, but even with them the field would've been pretty small. Sometimes it seems like the number of disabled racers is in decline, although not for my class. The men's monoskiers constituted the biggest field, at least 15 skiers.

The other issue with the races is that Park City, which has world-class giant slalom and slalom race hills, really has no good place to run speed events. That means we run super G and downhill on a really easy, flat trail called Payday. It rewards fast skis and very subtle skiing more than technical skill and aggression.

That said, I guess I skied pretty subtly today and my ski ran fairly well, because I finished 2nd, just 0.16 seconds behind CDY (and only a few tenths ahead of Nick). I made only one mistake, and it was a minor one but might well have cost me a tenth or two.

adventures in Tokyo

So I'd been meaning to write something about our last day in Japan to go with my photos. But I slacked off and never wrote anything, and I just came upon my teammate Nick's post about that day on his blog. He tells it like it is, so instead I'll just do the slackerly thing and link to that post.

Tokyo photos up

I finally got around to posting some photos from Japan here.

for immediate release:

Twenty-seven Nominated to 2006 U.S. Paralympic Alpine Ski Team

inexplicably...

Yahoo Sports has picked up a whole bunch of shots of the Meridian Cup races and posted them in their Olympic alpine skiing photo gallery. Here's one of yours truly.

stop hasselling the 'Hoff

I'm hooked on a feeling.

hilarious news segment about our team

Yesterday when the St. Anne's kids came up to Winter Park to watch us race in the super G (in which I crashed halfway down and DNF'd, by the way), the Denver NBC affiliate was up to shoot a story, which aired last night. Here's a link to a Windows Media file of the segment, which I found to embody every clichéd thing ever said about disabled skiing ("So inspirational!"). It's local-news feel-good telejournalism at its finest.

By the way, the guy who crashes in that clip is a Winter Park Disabled Ski Team kid named John Knudsen. It's a particularly awesome crash, and he ended up being fine, so don't feel bad about going through it frame-by-frame a couple times. I did.

Dartmouth athletes in Torino

A great round-up in the latest issue of the VOX newspaper summarizes all the winter Olympic and Paralympic athletes, coaches and staff with ties to the Big Green.

more great news

We just found out that, for those of you who can't make it to Italy next month, the Paralympics will be webcast in their entirety, live, free of charge, at www.paralympicsport.tv. This is tremendous news for us since U.S. television coverage of the Games has fallen through completely.

one large elephant pushed out of the room

One of the dubious distinctions I've had to bear ever since making the U.S. team back in '99 is that no matter how well I've been skiing, I've been one of the few team members never to have won a race, big or small. I've had literally dozens of second- and third-place finishes at Nor-Am races and U.S. Nationals, and more recently a number of World Cup top-10s as well. But I have no gold medals in the cardboard box where I keep my medals, at least none that I've won since I raced as a junior eight years ago.

Today that finally changed. The stars were in alignment, my chakras were synchronized, my chi was unblocked, whatever. I finally won a race, a Nor-Am giant slalom on my home hill of Winter Park. My second run wasn't pretty — I almost skied right out of the course after making a big mistake — but I held onto most of my speed, and my closest competitors made even more costly mistakes. The win did come with a bit of an asterisk: a couple of the top U.S. GS skiers in my class, namely Chris and Tyler, weren't here — attendance at this race wasn't mandatory. Nevertheless, I was not only the fastest monoskier in both runs, I also had the fastest overall adjusted time of anyone in the race, which earned me $250 in prize money. (Rock on.) And as an additional bonus, my roommate Gerald and my friend Nick took second and third.

Tomorrow we're racing super G, and the whole student body of St. Anne's school will be up here to cheer us on, which is cool.

arrrgh!

I'm getting fed up with making stupid mistakes in the race course. I'm skiing better slalom than almost anyone right now, but I keep failing to prove it. Today was the first day of racing in the Meridian Cup, here at my home mountain of Winter Park. I knew I had a good chance to do well today and maybe even win my first Nor-Am race, but I think I let that get to me. Three or four gates into the first run, I made a bad decision about how to take a gate, got spun around, and took eight or nine seconds to get up and get back in the course. The rest of my run was very strong, but the damage was done... I finished the run seven seconds behind the leader, Ronny. Man, was I pissed off after that run. I was in such a bad mood that the only way to fix it was to go out and win the second run — so I did, by almost one and a half seconds. Of course that wasn't enough to make up for my first-run mistake, and Ronny won, but at least I finished a respectable 4th.

The Meridian Cup continues tomorrow with GS and Tuesday with super G.

vonnegut on RHD, 1966

When is a review of a dictionary the funniest thing I've read all week? When it's written by Kurt Vonnegut, naturally.

narita redux

Back in the Tokyo airport now, only this time we're hoping not to be stuck here for 30 hours. Instead, we should be getting on a flight to Seattle in 25 minutes or so.

Our races wrapped up two days ago with a slalom. I was really excited about my potential in that race, and on my first run I laid down a solid run that left me in fifth place going into the second run. Try as I might've to keep unhelpful thoughts (e.g. winning, falling) out of my head before the rain-soaked second run, I was only about five gates into my run when I got thrown sideways and had to pick myself up, costing me a few valuable seconds. Aside from one additional bobble farther down the course, I skied much better than I had in the first run, but my mistake was too costly and I finished seventh or eighth instead of the podium spot I had been gunning for. But these things happen.

We've spent the past two nights in Tokyo; yesterday Nick, Hannah, Laurie and I explored the Asakusa and Shibuya districts of downtown Tokyo and had some great adventures... more to come on that when I'm not paying by the minute for Internet access.

shiga kogen GS #2

Talk about boneheaded moves... today was high on the list. My first run was OK but not aggressive enough; I finished 9th. I resolved to ski the second run with more gusto, and I did — until the second-to-last gate. I was running a little late and had to make a big move to make the last gate. But somehow my balance was off-kilter when I went to make that move. I fell on my side and slid through the inside panel of the last gate and across the finish line. Unfortunately, my body and ski were on the wrong side of the gate, so I knew immediately that I'd be disqualified. It was a huge bummer; even with a fall and the ensuing slow slide, I ran a 1:03, within three seconds of the winning time for the run. I would've run one of the three or four fastest second runs, for sure. Woulda, coulda, shoulda... (Full results here.)

Last day of racing is tomorrow — slalom. I'm looking forward to it after missing the slalom race in Korea.

shiga kogen GS #1

Our first race day here in Japan went very much according to plan for me. I skied aggressively (if not always cleanly) and made no major mistakes on a soft-snow surface that's a lot more like what I'm used to skiing in Colorado than Korea was. I ended up 6th out of something like 29 starters in the monoski class. Tyler had a great first run and a not-so-great second run but hung on for second place behind Harry Eder of Austria. As is becoming the norm these days, I was the second-best American finisher in the class. (Full results here.)

live monkey cam!

Here is a link to a live webcam that shows the hot springs here in Shiga Kogen where the snow monkeys hang out.

shiga kogen

Arrived in Japan last night after a long travel day. Yesterday my roommate, Brad, and I overslept and almost missed our 3 a.m. (!) bus ride from our hotel in Korea to the Seoul airport. The bus ride that was projected to take 6 hours only took about 3, so we had a lot of time to kill in the airport. Ate some breakfast and wrote some postcards, then hopped a plane to Tokyo where we loaded our gear into a huge cargo truck. You should really see what it's like to travel with our team. We each have five or six bags; for me that includes one huge duffel with all my skiwear and street clothes, one huge bag containing my monoski, one backpack full of helmets, goggles, gloves and the like, and two ski bags each containing two pairs of skis. Imagine that times twenty or so people, plus two waxing benches, a massage table, half a dozen large plastic boxes of team equipment, and sometimes even a couple bundles of gates, and you have some idea of how much crap we haul around with us. Let me tell you, trying to push around one of those little airport baggage carts loaded up with all five of my bags is no easy feat.

From Narita Airport in Tokyo it was a six-hour trip across Honshu to Shiga Kogen (map), in Nagano Prefecture. This ski area was the host for the Olympic GS and slalom and all the Paralympic alpine events for the 1998 winter games. I spent most of the ride talking with Cho, our team's volunteer interpreter for the duration of these races. She's a Chinese girl from Shanghai who's now attending university in Tokyo; her English is good and her Japanese is excellent, or so I'm told. We had a great conversation about disabilities, movies, Chinese democracy — the whole gamut.

Our hotel is right at the base of several ski lifts; there are ski racks literally right outside the front door. In fact, the only way in and out of the hotel for us monoskiers is by ski or by snowmobile. Tomorrow we race slalom, but today is an off day, so while some people are out skiing I've decided to just chill here in the hotel lobby/dining room with its yummy food, hot coffee, and free wireless Internet access. The hotel probably dates from the 1960s or '70s, and it's a great mix of traditional and modern. Most of the rooms have futons and tatami mats for sleeping, although the one I'm sharing with Nick and Tyler has Western-style beds.

In case you were wondering how Friday's second super G race turned out, it was a bit of a disappointment after Thursday. I had a sweet run going two-thirds of the way down the course, but tried to start going too straight too early on the lower flats and had to throw in a huge evasive maneuver to make a gate. I pretty much dumped all my speed and any chance at a podium; I ended up eighth and Chris won again. At least I was still second among the Americans in my class. (full results)

redemption?

If you know me well, you may know I'm not a big believer in karma. But those who are believers could've probably pointed to my miserable showing over the past two days and predict that my pendulum would soon swing back the other way. As it turned out, I finished fourth in today's super G at Yongpyong — my best World Cup result yet, 0.18 seconds off the podium. Chris won in very convincing fashion, decimating the field by over four and a half seconds; Robert was second, continuing to make a very earnest bid for the overall World Cup title. And the U.S. continued its remarkable streak: all four days here so far, we've had at least one athlete on the podium of every class we have skiers entered in. Click here for full results.)

Granted, there were only 16 starters in my class, fewer than in your typical race. And it was a very lame super G, more like a GS really in terms of the speeds involved. But it still felt like a damn good bit of vindication. After the race I was congratulated by some of the European stars like Martin Braxenthaler. Even the normally taciturn Austrian monoskiers called me over into their little circle in the ski room after the race and told me "Nice job." That was a great feeling that could only be improved on by making the podium tomorrow, which is what I'm shooting for.

Before I sign off, it's time for a few amusing sidenotes on my Korean experience:

• Yesterday I ate something called "Braised Lotus Root." I didn't eat the baby octopi.
  
• In the English-language yellow pages in my hotel room, there are some interesting categories. My favorites "Catapults" (nearly a full column of listings!) and "Restaurants—Fresh Water Eel."
  
• On our way from the hotel to the ski area every day, we pass a farm that's home to something designated as a "Potato Breeding Station."
  
• At the base of the Yongpyong ski area, there is a video arcade, a shopping mall, and a pirate ship ride.

In the four runs of GS racing we've had over the past two days, I've fallen over eight times, although I've finished all four runs. That has to be some kind of record. These have been two of the most frustrating days of my ski racing career. The race hill here at Yongpyong is long, steep, and icy, and all manmade snow, like back East. It reminds me a lot of my high school days training back in Maine, only it's been six years since I've trained on that stuff. It's not exactly blue ice — you can get an edge into it, but it's very slippery, bumpy, and formed into artificial ridges by the grooming machines. Your technique really has to be on point if you want to hold an edge; lean in or twist your shoulders too much and you'll slide out before you knew what hit you. Skiing here has made me realize how much I've been getting by with sloppy technique in the Colorado snow; I really need to go back to basics.

With all my sliding around on the course (including a hike yesterday to make a gate), I ended up 15th yesterday and 16th today, ahead of only a few rookie Koreans and Japanese. I'm really hoping to make up for it over the next couple days in the super Gs, or at least next week in Japan, where the snow should be much more forgiving.

The U.S. has a remarkable streak going: for three days straight, we have had at least one skier on the podium of every class we have athletes competing in (i.e. men's sitting, men's standing, women's sitting, and women's standing) — a total of 16 out of the 36 medals that have been awarded in those classes. In my class, Tyler has been skiing like a champ, winning yesterday and taking third today despite a severe mistake. And Robert Fröehle of Austria, one of the truly nice guys on the circuit and a longtime up-and-comer, got his first World Cup win today, a well-deserved victory. (Full race results are here and here.)

when in korea...

eat as the Koreans do, I suppose, but I'm having trouble following that advice. The food in our hotel just plain sucks.

When we finally arrived from Tokyo last night around 1:00 am, some of us found that our bags had not arrived with us. This was especially unpleasant news for me and Tyler, who were missing our monoskis. As a result, we had to sit out today's slalom race. (Full results here.) Despite our team's racing on literally no sleep (we arrived at our hotel around 5 am, and the lift opened at 7:30), we did pretty well: Chris was second in my class, Jonezy won the women's stand-ups, Stephani was second in the women's monos, and Monte was third in the women's stand-ups.

I'm anticipating the arrival of my monoski sometime in the next few hours and hoping to race in tomorrow's GS.

ski dubai

Who says you can't ski in the desert?

Narita refugees

(10:53 AM Saturday MST)

I am lying down across three seats in Tokyo's Narita Airport. I have been in this airport for the past nine and a half hours, except for a two-hour interlude during which I sat in a snow-covered plane, and I expect to be here for at least five or six more.

Let me back up. I'm on my way to Yongpyong Ski Resort in South Korea for the opening World Cup races of the season. I woke up at 3:30 AM Friday in Winter Park, drove through a snowstorm to Denver, flew from Denver to Seattle and then Seattle to Tokyo. I have been traveling for over 30 hours. My final leg, Tokyo to Seoul, is only a two-hour flight, but it is snowing hard here at Narita and many flights were delayed all afternoon. Ours was pushed back again and again until we were finally allowed to board the plane. Of course, it wasn't meant to be. We weren't early enough in line for de-icing, and we missed the 2 AM departure curfew. Our flight is cancelled. All the nearby hotels are full (or so United claims), so there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people camped out all over the airport: jowly American businessmen, demure Japanese mothers and their children, surly American servicemen, Koreans on vacation, even the occasional bewildered European. We are all clutching the standard blue United blankets and pillows, and we are all hungry: the cardboard box lunches they gave some people weren't much, and some of us didn't get them at all.

A man is making a long, detailed announcement in Japanese over the loudspeaker. The only words I can make out are "sandwichu" and "overnighto."

At least six other iTunes users near me have their laptops on, and I can listen to their music over the airport's wireless connection. God bless Steve Jobs. Too bad actually accessing the Internet over the Narita wireless network requires a password, or I could post this now. As it is, I think I'm going to put both my PowerBook and myself to sleep for a few hours and continue this update in the morning.

and the award for total awesomeness in translation goes to...

the TrenItalia.com website's timetable search engine, which asks you two very important questions:

1. Where are you departing from?
   
2. Where do you wish to alight?

(Cue Nelly Furtado singing "I'm Like A Bird"...)

keystone

We've been in Keystone, Colo. since Friday evening for some speed events. We skied super G Saturday and Sunday and trained downhill today; tomorrow is another downhill training day before two days of downhill racing. These are able-bodied junior races, so we're basically here just for training purposes — which is great, because believe it or not, we haven't gotten a single day of speed training in with the U.S. team this season. As it turned out, the super G races the past two days did count for more than that, because our head coach Kevin convinced the Austrian guy who runs the disabled race circuit worldwide to score the races for ASD points. Results from those races (as well as Park City, finally), are available here.

A couple nights ago I was flipping through TV channels and I caught an author named Sam Harris speaking on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. Harris was speaking about the destructive role that faith-based religion (as opposed to meditation-based religion) plays in the world, and his controversial argument about the complicity of religious moderates in the fundamentalist-led Muslim and Christian jihads really gave me pause, because I've had similar thoughts but had trouble articulating them. If you have a fast-ish connection, you can watch the entire program online by clicking here. I was even inspired to order Harris's book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; you can read the first ten pages of it online here (html) or here (pdf).

blahhh

Today's GS was an unmitigated disaster. Nine out of nineteen male monoskiers didn't finish, and I think the other ten all fell at least once — even Roger, who won. The snow was way too soft for racing, there weren't nearly enough course workers to keep the hill in decent condition, and crazy bumps and holes developed right away. I fell twice in my first run and twice in the second before I basically gave up. It's painful to even think about how badly I skied in those conditions. Well, there's always tomorrow, as the saying goes.

Here's a link to a press release about yesterday's slalom.

the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, etc.

First race day was today — slalom on Picabo's, a race hill that was cut specifically for slalom but named after a famous downhiller. In my class, Tyler won the race with a nearly flawless second run, I took second place, and Ronny was third. (Full race results should be posted here eventually.) In a way it was a result I really needed, not so much for my own self-confidence (I know that what I'm capable of these days), but to show other people (e.g. my coaches and my competitors) the way I've been skiing in training isn't a fluke. One of the hardest parts about a race day as opposed to a training day is the increased expectations; this morning, two of our coaches made sure I overheard them saying that their money was on me to race well today. I guess they meant it to inspire confidence, but really it's tough to live up to something like that in a sport that's so unequivocally about individual performance.

Up in the start before each run, unconstructive thoughts inevitably pop into your head, like: You really have to beat so-and-so today. Don't screw up that one section you looked at in inspection. Will you really be able to hold an edge on that icy spot? Even stupid stuff like: Did I bring the hat with sponsor logo on it in case I make it onto the podium today? All of these things are worthless to think about before your run because they have to do with results, not actions. All you can control is your skiing — not how well anyone else skis — and whether the thoughts floating through your head are positive and specific or negative and vague. My coaches' comments were just another vague, outcome-based worry to distract me from the task at hand.

It's a little like that scene in Ghostbusters where they have to keep their minds blank and anything they think about will actually occur, and one of them accidentally conjures up a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Except that in athletics, there are no guarantees about which thoughts — negative or positive — will materialize. But once you identify which thoughts are unhelpful to you, you develop strategies for banishing them. As an uncontructive thought materializes, you just kind of briefly acknowledge it and then let your mind drift on to something else, like an observation or a conversation or, most often, the race course. Rarely do I find that thinking too much about the course negatively affects my run — the better you lay out your plan for the race, the better prepared you are to ski it.

Anyway, today I did a pretty good job of keeping my thoughts focused on the task at hand, even when I was in second place after the first run. Rather than worrying to much about whether I'd be able to hold onto a spot on the podium, I just thought about what I had to do to ski well again the next run and went into it relaxed and ready. As it happened, I made a few big mistakes in the first half of that second run, but I was able to put them behind me and have a great second half. Slalom in particular is often more about recovering well from mistakes than about skiing flawlessly (one of my coaches describes slalom as "a series of linked recoveries"), and I did that well today. I'm happy.

Park City, day 4

It's been dumping here on and off for the past few days, and the freeskiing has been fantastic. That's not so great for the races, though. We're supposed to race slalom tomorrow and GS the next two days, but it will take a big effort from the organizers to get the race hill into good shape, especially if it keeps snowing.

I just got back from seeing the Jim Carrey vehicle Fun With Dick & Jane. I'm not sure what to say other than that it was an agreeable way to pass two hours. The title made me start thinking about the original Dick & Jane's dog, Spot, and why it is that I've never met a dog that is named any of the stereotypical dog names: Spot, Rover, or Fido. I think I ever get a dog I will call it by one of those names, just so people will say, "Honestly? He's really named that?"