Hello all,

I just landed in Boston, MA on a direct flight from Munich (I love direct flights) my good buddy Nick Landry picked me up at the airport and I can’t explain how wonderful it is to be on American soil. It feels like a lifetime ago that I pushed off on New Year’s Ever. It’s been a long, wild road.

The last few Europa Cups were painful for me. After my last update, we hiked around Cinque Terra – which was fun, beautiful, and refreshing – swung by Monaco where checked out Monte Carlo at Jon Olsson’s flat overlooking the water. Unfortunately at the end of the trip, I came down with a deep chest cough that turned into a full body cold that I haven’t ditched yet. In Meribel, France, I skied pretty poorly into 11th place after first run and talked to Luc, Chris Frank’s coach from GMVS, in-between runs who got me fired up for second run. I didn’t have much energy and knew my first run wasn’t special and he explained how I could arc every single turn on the pitch and wondered why I slid my way down. He ended with so you’re a little sick, whatever. Fired up I put down a great second run attacking my plan. I started letting it run coming off the pitch on a left footer 8 gates from the finish and on the last roll I took the straight line and wheeled through an undergate (longer turn) and missed the second to last gate of the course. A number of us had trouble there, but I was one of the few that actually didn’t finish.

The day turned out to be a huge success for Dane. He started first second run and totally killed it. Starting first on non-injected snow is always an advantage, but he really capitalized on. It broke down a bit after him, but he laid down a run that no one could touch. He won the second run by 8 tenth and moved from 30th all the way up to 4th. After a tough season constantly switching equipment without much luck and grinding away, it was great to finally see a smile on Dane’s face after a race. He killed it and scored a 9.17. By the way, he skied on a pair of my skis. The next day we went to Kennelbach, Austria to pick up some skis for him, but for now he’ll race on a pair of mine that are broken in.

Oberjoch yesterday, was somewhat similar to Meribel. I straightened out the line nearly at the finish, the snow broke away, I went onto my hip, and my European racing for the season is complete. During our painful repacking session – man, do I have a ton of stuff – I ran into Claudia, the person that manages and owns the apartments in Patsch, and she had the same damn cold as me. Lufthansa wasn’t too painful, they charged me $200 for my extra bags and overlooked that everyone was grossly overweight. It’s a painful era when you’re happy to get away only spending an extra $200. Hopefully the next couple days will take care of that.

Home sweet home. Ahhhhhhh. Hope all is well, w