Roger and I have no tuning bench, no ski technicians, no ready-made meals, no lodging accommodations, or training lanes. We merely have an El Cheapo rental car (14 USD a day), a couple pairs of skis, a video camera, and a lot of heart.

I can’t believe we’ve already been in New Zealand for over two weeks. The bulk of our training has been at Treble Cone, a small ski field with very good terrain. It’s just outside the pleasant little ski town of Wanaka. We hooked up with Paul Frankham, the traveling PT of the U.S. Men’s World Cup Tech Team last year, when we arrived and have been living on random mattress and couches ever since. For the last two and a half weeks we haven’t spending a penny on housing. That’s not entirely true the first night in Christchurch we landed at one o’clock AM and stayed in a backpackers. My vote was for the floor in the international airport terminal since we were only going to sleep for a few hours. We picked up some blankets and pillows courtesy of Air New Zealand, but Roger pushed for a bed since he was a bit sick.

So we’ve been doing well with expenses so far, but our bill for training is looming overhead. We’ve been getting some pretty good training with the Treble Cone Race Academy, which is a small training spot for many kiwi and foreigners. We set up a deal with Guenther Birgmann, an Austrian that runs the program, without specifying an exact price, which is good and bad.

We’ve had four days of free skiing, four or five days of good training, and competed in four races over the last few weeks. The races were a good way to start off the season and see where we stand. Roger and I both had some fast sections, but we definitely have work to do. I need to get a few stiffer slalom skis and maybe a few different constructions before our next camp to dial in the Atomic set before the season is fully underway. Europe in October will be a good chance to get that all straightened out; not to mention, more training and more time on the new equipment.


Anyway, we have two more races a GS tomorrow, a SL on Friday, and one more day of training before we fly home to the U.S. and hopefully a few more days of summer.

I hope all of you are doing well and I’ll be in touch, w