Well I just wanted to drop you all a line and tell you how Europe is treating us.

The weather is our biggest adversary these days. A low pressure system has been dumping snow on Hintertux Glacier for five days now and hopefully tomorrow we'll finally have an opportunity to ski. During the past five days we've been back at our home away from home in Grodig, Austria, 5 km outside of Salzburg, waiting out the weather.

We've been doing a ton of dryland training and some testing to learn just how much we need to change our training regiments in the upcoming months. Our aerobic threshold is not quite at par so along with most of my teammates we'll be on the bike for anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours a day building up the much needed endurance for on-snow training at high altitudes.

Rif, our training facility in Salzburg, is phenomenal it part of the University of Salzburg. However, the facility only allows about 20 athletes to train there full time, while none of the University students are allowed to use the facility. The facility caters to high level athletes; sometimes I wonder how we were able to even get in the door. We're training side-by-side with Olympic athletes and champions of a multitude of different sports. It's a pretty intense atmosphere, but provides us with a remarkable place to train. To look over, see Fritz Strobl, and think I guess that's what it takes to win gold in an Olympic downhill. Fritz captured gold from the Grizzly downhill at Snow Basin during the Salt Lake City games.

Anyway, the experiences over here are amazing and I can't wait to be back on the snow. Apparently this low pressure system will be moving out today and we'll be in gates with good weather tomorrow and rest of the week.