I’ve been home for a few days now, but that trip was pretty wild. We only ended up training three days, but not because of the weather. The weather was absolutely perfect for our entire stay. For Bode the main objective was to find or help develop good slalom skis. And after two days of slalom training he was psyched with two models. The days we skied slalom we’d drive up the 30 minute access road to arrive half way up Kauntertal by 6:30 AM in time for a warm up run or two and a slip run before we dove right into training. I was skiing on four different pairs of slalom skis taking two runs in the course on each pair. Bode had 6 different pairs so he only took two runs on a couple pairs of skis, if any, since he took a few runs on his speed skis before Rainer and I finished up in the course.

Either way, it was a sick set up. We were lapping around on a snow mobile and those guys were hammering. There were a few times when I was getting pulled on a relatively flat section where we were easily doing high 60s (mph not k’s) the only thing I was thinking was don’t catch an edge… please, don’t catch an edge. With GS skis it was pretty moderate, but with slalom skis it was certainly squirrelly. We were able to get 8 runs in before the mountain opened at 9:00 and we were off the hill by 10:00 when it started to warm up a little. The snow was great and the training was better. Unfortunately, we only skied one day of GS. The GS skis were good, but not totally money. Rainer thought it had something to do with the snow; but it seemed to me, I just couldn’t generate enough speed out of each turn. Perhaps that was because it was my first day on them. Usually it takes a few days or even a good week to break in a pair of skis. Either way, they have potential and we’ll see what happens.

After we stopped skiing we rallied to Heinz, Bode’s speed tech, house in Lustenau, Austria for a few days to play some golf and hang out on his boat before Forest and I ripped over to Patsch to take care of some things. It was a killer trip and I hope there are more of them in my future.

Hope all of you are doing well. GO CELTICS!! w