Ski

Well, I do it for the love of doing it...so I did okay. There's always ex-J1's around to keep everyone really, really humble.

It won't happen again, son. What's your sister doing tonight?

Yeah, off night there without a platinum?

You know, Doug, I see a problem with some of your vertical numbers...

Just to be clear: It's not called cranky, you idiot.

Okay, so just to pass along what I blew off Booter's NASTAR night for... Sno Mountain has an adult race league that's held Thursday nights. You can either enter as a team, or as an "independant". Tonight was a dual GS course, but you still race against the clock and not the person next to you. It costs $8, plus a discounted lift ticket if you don't have a pass. Unlike ASRA, there's no start order. It's more like a regular NASTAR, where you just get in line. But when it's a dual, you have to take one run on each course, then your best handicap is counted. There's a huge difference between the super fast guys and the DFLers. In fact, there are a lot more 40+HCers than you'd expect from a regular league, but that's cool. There's a laid back atmosphere, but the top guys are all in speed suits and take it pretty seriously. After the races, there are $2 Yuenglings in the bar (they are the main sponsor), which is cool if you drink gallons of beer like Jeffy. They also do door prizes and I won hand warmers and a cool Yuengling long-sleeve t-shirt. I ended up drinking shots of Citron and watching the Notre Dame basketball team get upset. One of the regular race chicks is pretty hot and Doug should definitely try rapping to her, if he ever gets up here. Because they use NASTAR scoring, results are posted both at the ski team site, as well as at Nastar.com. Anyone interested, the races are open to everyone...just sign up in the Ski School building at around 5pm, then first run is at 6pm. All in all, a very cool night with good people.

Congrats on a great HC tonight, Mike...

From Eurosports.com Switzerland's Daniel Albrecht made his first victory a world gold medal when he surprised the favourites to win the men's super-combined event at the Are championships on Thursday. Albrecht, who was in seventh position after the downhill section, mastered a tricky slalom course on which many competitors skied out to win in a combined time of two minutes 28.99 seconds. The 23-year-old had never made the podium at a major event nor on the World Cup circuit but had demonstrated his potential by finishing fourth in the combined event at last year's Olympics. "I had a good downhill and after that I concentrated on reaching the bottom of the slalom," he said. "I would have been more than satisfied with a podium but a gold medal is just unbelievable. "The conditions suited me fine with that very cold snow requiring aggressive skiing," he added after a slalom staged under floodlights at the end of another dry, blistering cold day in this Swedish resort with temperatures below minus 20 Celsius. "I also have new slalom skis which are absolutely fine on a course like this one." Albrecht's victory was the second shock result in as many men's races in the two-week festival after Italian Patrick Staudacher's stunning super-G gold on Tuesday. Austria's Benjamin Raich, the defending combined champion, won silver, a slim 0.08 seconds back, with Switzerland's Marc Berthod completing the podium, 0.24 seconds off the pace. "Silver is okay," said Raich, who was in 14th position after the downhill and clocked the best time in the slalom. "I had lost too much time in the downhill to have a reasonable chance of winning the gold," he added. Berthod, who contributed to a memorable day for Switzerland, had already made the skiing world take notice last month when he celebrated one of the most unlikely maiden World Cup victories in history, coming from 27th place at the halfway stage to win a slalom on home snow in Adelboden. American Bode Miller, who had clocked the fastest time in Thursday's downhill leg, finished sixth after an error-ridden slalom. The unpredictable Miller, who had appeared at his ragged worst when he was 24th in the super-G, strongly suggested on Thursday he would be one to watch in Saturday's blue-riband downhill. Miller's compatriot Ted Ligety, the Olympic combined champion, survived a scare when he had to stop to avoid colliding with a race steward in the slalom. Ligety was already out of the medal hunt after a poor downhill run. The super-combined, replacing the traditional combined which featured two slalom legs after the downhill run, was making its debut at major championships here.

Thanks, TP4! Yeah, there are 3000 homes in the two sections and not a single burglary last year. That's pretty amazing to me, since only 1/3 of the houses are year 'round residents and there are a lot of rich people's homes that surround each lake that are stocked with good swag. The Hideout has a weird rap mostly because we kick out anyone that doesn't pay their annual dues prompty---eh, not me, but that's the way it works. Then, these pissed off people hate The Hideout forever and write creepy letters to the newspapers, saying there's a bunch of drug dealers here. But, Doug, if you wanted to score crystal meth, would you go to a dealer where you had to first check into the security building, give your license plate number and car registration to a rent-a-cop, then pass through a gate on video? I think it would be a crappy place to deal drugs from. Anyway, we missed the early cold because they shoot for Xmas week opening every year. The groomer has been a problem since the third week of January when they first went to groom.

After the near-record warm December and January, the hydraulics gave out on our lone groomer, just as we were about to spread tons of newly blown snow. The mechanics finally located a part and we're expecting to open The Hideout Ski Hill Friday, Feb. 9... The huge piles, btw, we're totally unskiable, since everything had frozen up so hard. Maybe if we'd had some mid-30's, or so, but it was concrete.

Well, it's sorta connected to what I talked to you about a while back. Oh, and I should've mentioned that after you got up from the third crash, you beat me on the next run. But that was then...and this is now....

Yep. But I made it mysterious

Just as my Thursday night work schedule cleared, I got talked into joining the Thursday night corporate race league at Sno (that's what we call Beer Leagues at fancy places like Sno)...I'll miss racing with you Booter ass clowns---last year was a blast every time...and watching Jeffy crash on that one gate three straight times was PRICELESS.

I was riding the lift the other day with a guy that said the typos were worse than on some of the porn sites he belonged to (and, no, it wasn't Doug).

Your choice seems pretty obvious, IMO...

"Zaugg will be arriving next week and the construction will begin on the wall of Stonehenge, an all new concept in pipes drsigned by Planet Snow Tools." That just means a wall...like at BC?

What's your drive time compared to other hills?

No way. I've never met a ski patroller in PA that has any race experience beyond skidding 50 handicap NASTAR's (well, maybe one guy at CB with a 25)... 'Dude's example was pretty dead on...and it's not a stereotype and it's not necessarily negative. If you're grinding rails, there's no way you're going to be carving turns. And if you have a soft boot setup for jumping, those boots are mushy and can't hold a turn. They are made to cushion landings, among other things. Patrollers? Well, it isn't too often you see red jackets pushing the envelope in PA...it's my experience, from the guys I know and the one's that work at our hill, that the vast majority are intermediate, recreational skiers that have passions beyond ripping high speed turns. Racers? I can spot one from one turn, a mile away. From the youngest devo team kids through Masters, a racer rolls his/her ankles up on edge in a way that nobody else does.

I don't think it was running, but can't say for sure. I'm saying about 99% sure it wasn't. But I wouldn't ride it anyway. I'd rather just take two lifts up, then skate over to Upper FT & Runaway. The Long Haul breaks down waaaay too much. As for the cold, the NF seems warm compared to anywhere else. No wind and you're down in the trees. Some guys were leaving when I was arriving and they stopped to tell me how freaking cold it was. But I layer with UA, a surf wetshirt, and two more thin layers...I didn't even wear a jacket all afternoon Sunday (because of NASTAR---I'd never wear my speed suit for NASTAR, but always drop my coat) and wasn't cold. IDK, I'd never skip skiing because of the cold. Lowe's had a great sale on heat packs, just $.45 a set and I grabbed a case. And tomorrow is supposed to be a little warmer, too.

Just got back from a couple of hours on th NF and conditions are AMAZING! Boomer was groomed flat, then they blew a few inches of really dry, chalk on top. And the cool thing about the SMI Polecats is that they throw the snow high and evenly, so there was no need to groom it out. The guns are spaced just right, so it's like there was a four inch snowfall on top of cord. No big piles, just powder that's evenly distributed. WL: groomed cord down to the headwall, then small bumps, but that's where the fun starts: they had also groomed it, then blew even powder on top. It'll turn into a full bump run pretty quickly, but it was a blast as it is. Smoke is really weird right now, with a ton of snow being saved for the 2/24 USSA races. There are even two big piles in front of the finish house that are being conserved. Cannonball is groomed hardpack---the cord marks are still there and it's super fast. Lower Runaway is pretty much the same, except for the few inches of powder down the left side. There were five or six people on the NF from 1:30 to 2:30pm...then a few more people showed up for the next hour. When I came around the patrol shack to do Runaway, it looked just as dead up top. Great day!

MEN: Patrick Staudacher stunned the world's best by blazing to Italy's first-ever men's super-G world title and winning the opening race at the Are world championships. Fritz Strobl took silver for Austria and Switzerland's Bruno Kernen claimed the bronze. The 26-year-old Staudacher, competing in his first-ever world championship race, won the first gold medal of these worlds in a time of one minute and 14.30 seconds. Strobl, a former downhill Olympic champion and last-minute selection for the Austrian power-team, finished just 0.32 seconds behind the Italian with Kernen a further 0.30 seconds back. "This is a dream come true. It's madness," an emotional Staudacher told reporters at the bottom of the sun-soaked piste. "The conditions today suited me perfectly. I was able to attack, to take risks, to ski aggressively and just let the skis go." Staudacher - who started 12th on Tuesday - has never even finished on a World Cup podium. His best career finish came earlier this season at Bormio with a sixth-place in the downhill and his best super-G showing was an eighth-place at Hinterstoder in December. A policeman by trade and a part-time bassist with a Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover-band called Rockomon, Staudacher was one of the last men expected to become the first Italian to win a world championship medal in a speed discipline since Kristian Ghedina's downhill bronze in 1997. Only Strobl seriously threatened to deny Staudacher the victory, with world number two Didier Cuche sharing the fourth spot with Austrian Christoph Gruber. Strobl criticised the starting order, which he said placed the top racers at a disadvantage, although he was happy to get on the podium. "It's a great relief. I had to work hard to convince everybody that I deserved to be at the start. The starting numbers were certainly a disadvantage for the top racers. The FIS (International Ski Federation) rules are not really fair." With fast conditions on the piste after three days of blizzards, gale-force winds and fog plagued the outset of these world championships in Sweden, conditions seemed perfect for a risk-taker. Only Strobl seriously threatened to deny Staudacher the victory, with world number two Didier Cuche sharing the fourth spot with Austrian Christoph Gruber. Strobl criticised the starting order, which he said placed the top racers at a disadvantage, although he was happy to get on the podium. "It's a great relief. I had to work hard to convince everybody that I deserved to be at the start. The starting numbers were certainly a disadvantage for the top racers. The FIS (International Ski Federation) rules are not really fair." As always defending world champion Bode Miller was highly aggressive on the challenging Olympia course, but made several errors to drop outside of the top-20. Austrian Olympic legend Hermann Maier - a silver medallist in the discipline last year at Turin's Olympic Games - also disappointed with a seventh-place finish. "My disappointment is limited when I look at the surprising result," Maier said. "It would have been possible to win today even with a high starting bib but I did not take enough risks in some sections." Italian favourite Peter Fill finished a full 1.01 seconds behind his compatriot to drop outside the top-ten in another surprise, while World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal was also outside the top-10 at 0.94 seconds behind Staudacher. (Bode, btw, finished 24th) WOMEN: Anja Paerson successfully defended her super-G world championship title to the glee of the home-fans in Are, Sweden with a dominating performance in the opening women's race on Tuesday. Without a victory for nearly a year, the 25-year-old negotiated a perilous Strecke course in one minute 18.85 seconds to equal Ingemar Stenmark's Swedish record of seven world championship medals. "It was my dream for many years to win a world championship gold medal at home," Paerson, who has been off the pace since undergoing knee surgery last year, told reporters. "To do it straight away in the super-G is unbelievable." Winner of the super-G two years ago in Bormio, Paerson was in complete control as she eclipsed Austrian speed queen and race favourite Renate Goetschl to take her fifth world gold. World Cup leader Goetschl pulled out all the stops, almost losing balance several times on the treacherous jumps, but had to be content with third place just over half a second behind in 1:19.38. American Lindsey Kildow split them to take the silver medal in 1:19.17. Despite being the most successful active female skier on the circuit with 44 World Cup victories, gold medals at world championships and Olympics have proved more elusive for the 31-year-old Goetschl. "I can live with a bronze medal," said the Austrian, who has two golds from previous championships. "It was a difficult race, you had to be very aggressive and I had not expected that. "That's probably why I made a few mistakes. With so many girls in great form, you can't do that if you want to win." Kildow, who celebrated her first medal at a major championships, will be a big threat in the downhill at the weekend after her impressive performance in the opener. "I'm so happy. This is my first world championship medal," said the 22-year-old. "I made a mistake in the middle section and that probably cost me victory." While the earlier men's race produced a shock winner in Italy's Patrick Staudacher, the women's speed event, which was postponed on Sunday due to poor weather, provided more drama thanks to a course designed to test their nerve to the maximum. Under clear blue skies and with temperatures as low as minus 18 degrees, several skiers failed to negotiate the sharp turns on a course that will also stage the downhill. Italy's Nadia Fanchini was lucky to escape injury after a nasty looking crash that ended with her in the safety nets. American Julia Mancuso was left puffing out her cheeks after one gravity-busting leap that had fans on the mountain and watching on the giant screen in the finish area gasping. However, try as they might, nobody could match Paerson's mastery of the course that also witnessed her last victory in the downhill of the World Cup finals last March. Paerson, who is skiing all five events here, will be defending her giant slalom title next Tuesday.

yup

Oh, yeah, for sure, Nick...plus, you're landing jumps. If I ever hit a flat landing off one of your jumps in my race boots, I'd fracture my skull in a dozen places. If you saw Sib's post in that "Is a slope closed" thread, you may have noticed they are prepping her home mountain's race course by water injection...race crews drag a bar up or down the course purposely injecting water below the surface to create the hardest surface they can.

Icy, Nick? I bet there's a bunch of frozen cord, but I can't see ice being a problem. But we have different thoughts on what is ice; I keep ruining gloves because I sharpen my edges way too much and cut the crap out of the leather. We'll probably be up, Big, from about 2:30 to 5pm, or so, trying to catch the warmest hours. We'll be doing laps on the NF, so drop me a pm or just look for the orange helmet.