Hello all,

I’m in Frisco, Colorado. I arrived last night and it’s awful nice to be back in America. Unfortunately, my two ski bags did not make it. They are hopefully over the Atlantic right now, but that is somewhat up in the air. I spent nearly an hour going from desk to desk trying to find someone in Denver that could help ascertain my ski bags since they were “short checked” to Frankfurt rather than checked all the way through to Denver. At the Lufthansa desk I finally found some help and heard that if everything works out they should arrive early Sunday morning. In line, I ran into Mario Matt, who had a bigger problem than me. Since he really didn’t want to lose his boots, he carried them onto the plane from Innsbruck to Frankfurt. However, when he deplaned in Frankfurt he left them in the overhead bin, a total rookie move. Apparently they had yet to track them down. Not what you’d expect from a World Cup veteran. I guess we all drop the ball occasionally.

The last day of racing in the darkness went quite well. I put together a solid first run. The snow wasn’t quite as good as the day before so I did not have the same opportunity to move up into the top 3. I moved up to a three way tie in 14th, which was a perfect place to be only 8 tenths of a second off the leader.

Second run, I hammered out of the gate had a great upper section, then gave a little respect to the first couple turns on the pitch, and then straightened it out. It was definitely a good run. I lost a little speed on the last knoll when I was airborne a bit longer than I anticipated. I moved up to 7th only 4 tenths off the lead and finished second on the second run. I was really hoping to reach the podium, but a top ten in a Europa Cup is a respectable place to be and it will be enough points to give me a decent start number next month in central Europe. I am excited to build off of these results. It’s just great to be back in racing form again. And by the way, my race skis from last year that I have been racing on are ridiculously fast right now. When I was buckling my boots - just before the start - I was struggling to keep them from taking off. I've been using some new wax from Podium and it certainly feels fast.

I hope to train at Vail for two days after my skis arrive before we dive into the Nor-Am GS races in Aspen. I am going to forgo the slalom Nor-Ams that start on Monday. Anyone in Colorado with good training they want to tell me about?

I am still working on finding a group skiing GS at Vail on Sunday and Monday.

Hope all is well, w