Hello all,

After our endless journey back from Anchorage, AK – our scheduled departure on Tuesday night was cancelled due to an ash cloud – Sam and I were able to land standby seats on the milk run, which stopped at nearly every city in AK on our way to Seattle and then onto Salt Lake. When we arrived to Salt Lake it was no surprise our luggage didn’t make the journey with us so we spent a night in Park City. On Thursday morning, we rolled toward the airport with our fingers crossed. I walked into the baggage claim area and saw my big Head ski bag on the floor and just like that our luck began to change. We had a pleasant 8 hour drive to Breckenridge, CO and settled in for a great home cooked meal by our host Joni Hinterhaeuser. On Friday, I drew bib 1 and the snow was pretty soft. I put down a very straight, fast run and was winning by a second. Second run it was quite rough and I had a mediocre run as I put on the breaks a few times to stay in the course, but I won the race by 1.1 over Will Gregorak and good ole Scotty Vennis. I ended up scoring a 12.71, which isn’t a quite a result.

Yesterday, I drew 4 – another great starting number on soft snow – and put together another great first run. I was really trying to take the turn deep and not slide the top of the run, which is pretty difficult in soft snow. I was up by 7 tenths. Second run knowing I wasn’t going to make the same mistake that I did the day before, I hammered out of the gate and skied the grove up top and on the pitch took each turn really deep (which means I was very patient and didn’t slid the top of the turn). I got launched out of a few ruts, but didn’t let my skis skid much and ended up winning the second run, which I was totally pumped about. I ended up scoring another 12.71, which seems impossible. It’s too bad that both Leif Haugan and Dane Spencer didn’t race the same days to help drop then penalty, but two wins and 3 of 4 winning runs definitely felt good.

Dane had some knee problems on Friday so he went to Vail to get his knee looked at instead of racing, while Leif was tired and wanted to take a day off yesterday to get ready for the slaloms. As for Dane yesterday, he took a pretty gnarly crash and thinks he blew out his good knee. We have our fingers crossed.

I’m at Vail right now for two slalom races today and tomorrow. Take care, w