Ski

Yeah, Poop rocks :rock (and I don't mean the thing you do late at night with those karaoke girls)

How could you buy boards for the last four years if you are only two years old?

Ah, stupid work. Glenn made the trek up and had to listen to my stories all afternoon 'cause all the cool locals were elsewhere...

I was tempted to duck the rope and get first tracks in the pipe. Is it open, yet?

Who were you running from, Metzy?

Great report, Mike. It's cool to hear good things about the place. I'm torn over ever going back, since I taught there back when my oldest was born and it was always so empty during the bottoming-out of skier visits. They used to leave the lifts running into spring until the last skier was sick of taking off their skis and walking to the next patch of snow.

I learned how to quickly convert Central European Time over the last two weeks.

Time for a good fight between 1st Grade and Rob...as Phil would say, that would be "EPIC".

I usually don't wake up until 11, or so...I'll be doing laps on Boomer and Cannonball around noon. I'll have that wrench I borrowed from you, so look for the orange helmet...

Oh, man, Ridge called me a f*ckhead and a dosh , but you can't be picking on him 'til he's a J2. Ridge apparently hiked a gate in run 1, but he had an 8th place second run. Not a great day, but runs count individually and so it was a decent day. Actually, USCSA! Now he gets to tell chicks he raced in college and it's true. That's worth a surprising amount of p***y.

I just noticed our own little 'Dude is in 20th place in the state and just one good race out of a Top 10 spot. A post-season race is possible...very possible.

Just so you know---because you don't right now--wax is important for all skis and boards, no matter what you do with them. Without wax, your base material dries and flakes off. If you don't give a shit about your gear, that's fine. But your statement is just plain dumb. Wax will also allow you to ride a flat board without suction---it allows water to pass under the base. Not taking two minutes to throw on a rub on at the very least, just once in a while, is just lazy. This isn't just opinion, btw, it's fact. So yell at the manufacturers and not me, if you disagree.

I went up for a few quick runs at about the same time as the last few days and still had to park pretty far from my normal spot next to the NF lift. But there were ZERO lift lines; in fact, there were about ten empty chairs for every full one on the Phoebe. At 1pm, there was still fresh cord on the left side of Lower Runaway, which is a heavily skied slope. I only did the NASTAR course, then a few lapes down Boomer. Boomer was as good as it gets, with loose chalk on top of groomed hardpack. I had my race skis, so there was no way I was bothering with WL. The sun was casting perfect shadows from the bumps and it looked pretty gnarly. Sure is nice to have the slopes back.

It looks like a halfpipe as of today...just totally ungroomed.

Yeah, I never thought about pushing the friends/family thing...any way to get kids hooked early, the better. Numbers have been mostly level, if not on a slight downswing with PARA. Any way to just make it easier for kids to get pointed in the right direction is a good thing. Case in point: I was standing at the bottom of our race course at The Hideout last year and a family walks over to me and says how much fun it looks and they wished they had signed up for the program at the beginning of the season. They just didn't know that our single pole GS course with stopwatch timing was a simple, day to day thing that cost $3. They couldn't imagine that it wasn't like a Little League, with registration a month before it began. As for NASTAR, I guess it would be nice if the Pacesetters could stick around the course for a while and take more runs and was able to hang with the kids. I know Mike at CB is a J3 coach and it's just not possible for him. I suppose the ideal setup is to have a minimum of three people staffing a course. It's a little like Warren Miller's essay in which he said ski areas could learn a lesson from drug dealers...give some free samples and get 'em hooked.

Rob: I agree that it's a good time for a mixture of recruitment and a time for a mountain to put a good foot forward.When people are nervous and out of their element---like on a race course for the first time---a bored kid with an attitude sending racers through the start is a really bad thing. It even leaves a bad impression when I'm at non-NASTAR races and starters sit there in a lousy mood---it's non much different than getting a grumpy waiter or taxi driver. Years back, we used to have great experiences at Sterling Forest (now called Tuxedo Ridge, or something like that). We used to drive from Princeton all the way to New York State because they made it more fun for a little kid than it was at Shawnee. As to Montage/Sno, they have this ever-roaming development team---a bunch of little kids that are mostly in full ski team uniform. That in itself is a recruiting device to some extent...but it's the two girls that seem to be the main coaches for them. Both are bubbly, outgoing young women that just draw kids to them like kindergarten teachers. Whenever they see Ty around the mountain, they always ask when she's going to join their team. Yesterday, in fact, Ty and I were in line behind them at the start and one of the other coaches told us to cut the line ahead of them...but Ty just wanted to stand there in awe, watching them go one by one. Sib: point taken...I suppose, though, that if you have the money to add a coach, then you have an extra coach. I guess I'm looking at this from the view of having a decent budget. But, yeah, that's the other thing about ski instruction and any other kind of teaching. Just as a wide generalization from my own experience, you end up with the more tenured instructors giving private lessons and all the newbie instructors giving the begginer lessons. While it makes sense on the one hand, new skiers/riders almost always benefit so much more from the long-time teachers, for obvious reasons. Again, I'm not looking for a job. It's just that our home hill was just about to be shut down when it was saved---and it seems to be flourishing. Ticket sales aside, the county had some terrible deal with a company that ran the bar and didn't see any profits from it. That was crazy! I've been in the bar/restaurant a half dozen times this year and it's packed with hundreds of people throwing down cash. Jeez, the bar must make as much money as weekend ticket sales last year. 'Mom: if The Hideout would build a 25-ft high start ramp like the one they talk about in Ski Mag at Buck Hill, then I'd consider it....but that's never happening. It would ruin the view of four or five houses, for one thing. The Hideout is just too small and gets too crowded to have even a devo program. We hardly even ski here anymore until the lifts close...then it becomes our private hike-to place.

Bode Miller will not take part in the team event at the Alpine ski world championships. "He strained his knee in the slalom and we're not going to take any chances with it," the United States Alpine ski team director Jesse Hunt told Reuters on Saturday. "We're hopeful that he will be ready for Garmisch. We're hopeful but we'll see." Former world and World Cup champion Miller endured a miserable world championships, missing the podium in all four disciplines he entered. Sweden hope to put the icing on the cake with the nations team event. Personal glory will take second place behind national pride and Sweden have plenty in store after a triumphant campaign at home featuring three gold medals for Anja Paerson. Germany won the first world championship team event two years ago in Bormio, although the format proved a little confusing for fans and racers alike. At least it offered Germany the chance to grab a late gold medal after they failed to win one in the individual races and several nations will be banking on a last chance for glory this year. The competition consists of two races, a super-G and a slalom. Each race comprises four heats with one racer per nation in each heat. Teams can enter a maximum of six racers, which means they can make two changes between the first race and the second. A points system is used with the winner of each heat getting one point, the second-placed skier two points, and so on. The team with the lowest points total will win the gold medal. Women's giant slalom gold medallist Nicole Hosp has pulled out of Austria's squad for the event because of illness. Hosp, who also won downhill bronze here, will be replaced by Michaela Kirchgasser for an event Austria need to win to knock Sweden off the top of the medals table. Favourites Austria will also rely on Fritz Strobl, Benjamin Raich, Mario Matt, Renate Goetschl and Marlies Schild for the event, featuring a super-G and a slalom.

Great question...the final feed, other than the team event, was complete more than 24 hrs before posting. All I've asked was for a day or two to pass.

That's a good BS line!

Thanks Rob, 'Mom, and Metzy....with our mountain growing, I'd like them to not overlook some positive changes to the racing, from the ground on up. And it's not just Sno, but all the hills that offer NASTAR. We had some pretty crappy news at our hill: the head of the ski school at The Hideout retired and the guy that took over just isn't interested in setting gates. So the 60 or so kids that were showing up every weekend are just out of luck. Today was supposed to be the annual Hideout Ski Championship, which we have raced in and often helped run for the last seven years. We'd sometimes have over 100 racers and the sponsors paid for a huge number of trophies, so all the kids were happy.

Eh, I guess I'm not being clear. I'm asking what people think about having help for turkey tuckers, not USCSA racers. The typical Saturday afternoon first or fourth time NASTAR racers...people that aren't sure wich way to go around the first gate.

Ha, that'll make him feel better. My 2 cents: no passholder should EVER be turned away. Ever. A special shuttle should be in place...some twice a year deal with some farmer with a field five miles away, at the very least. Impossible? Not feasible? Well, at our small community owned ski hill, our lot is filled by 11am on most busy days. So we have a shuttle run people from our beach lodge parking lot. Problem solved and we are only marginally rocket scientists.

Ha, I was in the hot tub with a tomato plant and bottle of vodka until 4am. How the hell would I be up before 11?

A private lesson here at the Hideout is $45/hr. I can only imagine the pricing at big places. I'm really not talking about a roaming know-it-all, Doug. But an instructor with race experience on a sunny afternoon being available for feedback. And, NO, I'm not looking for employment. People that come over from the greens to pay $5 to go around the gates are usually the last people to be interested in plunking down $100 for a race-type lesson. Not to dismiss your post: that's 0-1 and okay. I'm interested in the negative aspect, too, so thanks! (ass clown ) Oh, and just to add, the majority of first timers and other newbies tend to be families of three from Yonkers and don't have friends with any race experience. Maybe that's what makes Blue's Thursday nights different---the shear number of people that have been racing for years and are a variety of levels.

Well, let's take a dispassionate look at Blizzard versus other ski brands. As Phil will tell you, World Cup skis are nothing like the skis off the rack, or even the "race room" versions we buy off of eBay. However, every testing that manufacturers perform are done on the World Cup level. The World Cup is the testing ground because that's where gear is put to it's limits, from base temperatures to lateral force to high impacts. Reagan liked to call these things the Trickle Down Effect...Head, for instance, may not hand you Bode's skis, but the recreational Head customer will directly benefit from the things Bode had done to his skis this year. Here are the current rankings for women World Cup racers on each brand: Rank-Brand----Points 1 Atomic 3240.00 2 Rossignol 2080.00 3 Voelkl 1800.00 4 Head 755.00 5 Salomon 630.00 6 Dynastar 235.00 7 Fischer 140.00 8 Blizzard 125.00 Does this mean that Blizzard skis for women suck? Not necessarily. It does mean that Blizzard has lower level athletes on their skis, so Blizzard isn't getting the same feedback as Atomic or Rossignol. So it's much harder for Blizzard to keep up. As for the mens rankings on the World Cup: Rank--Brand---Points 1 Atomic 3880.00 2 Head 1550.00 3 Fischer 1500.00 4 Rossignol 875.00 5 Salomon 475.00 6 Dynastar 430.00 7 Nordica 150.00 8 Voelkl 60.00 9 Stoeckli 50.00 10 Elan 40.00 Blizzard is getting zero feedback from top racers. Bottom line: maybe some nice things were said about Blizzard skis in the Ski Mag Gear Guide, but if you've ever seen mass ski testing being done, you sure wouldn't trust your $700 on it. I'd go with the real data and not some instructors opinion of a race ski on a April afternoon in corn snow. So I agree with Phil: "The level of intelligence is remarkable here."