So I flew out to Denver five days ago and rented a hot whip, a two door yellow Chevy Cobalt (as you might guess it was the cheapest vehicle I could find), stuffed my skis in it and started driving west. It was dumping so I stopped in Vail for diner with Nick Foster, a buddy of mine from high school, and ended up crashing on his couch. I did absolutely not accommodation planning for this trip as I just felt it would all fall into place. Not to mention, I’m a big fan of the no plan plan and this was that type of trip. I’ve learned – over the past few years – that over planning is far more painful and expensive than under planning. This was clearly an under planned trip. Over the last five days, I spent each night on a different couch. I nearly had a bed with some of the ski team guys before a coach showed up with a significant other. Luckily, there’s always extra space somewhere for a ski racer looking for merely a place to crash. I’d like to thank Fordy, Ramsay, Brett, Adam, and Ian for all being very helpful on potential coach surfing locations.

We always joke, “If you need snow, just schedule a speed series.” That was certainly the case in Aspen. The snow was painfully soft for racing – amazing for powder skiing – the mountain operations crew was grooming the hill twice a night to give us a chance to race. The first day, not being on SG skis since last spring, I went too straight and got caught up in some soft snow and blew out. The second day, I started in the high twenties so I took a very high line down most of the piste, pinned it off in the middle section where there was hard snow from where they injected the hill for the Women’s World Cup and Men’s Nor-Am earlier this year. In that split, I was second two hundredths back. However, on the top and the bottom, my high line approach kept me in the course, but it just wasn’t enough to do much damage. I ended up finishing in 15th 1.2 second off Chris Frank. It was great to see Chris win his first Nor-Am and put himself in contention in the SG standings. And for me it was nice to cross the finish line. In the last month, I have only finished two races yesterdays and a USSA slalom at Proctor.

It was fun to get a few SG races in before the end of the season where we’ll be racing 5 of them. The March schedule is pretty intense and I’m already getting fired up for it. Since there isn’t all that much on the schedule right now I fly later today to Boise where I’m going to meet up with Dane for three days of training out in Sun Valley. Then we’ll have a bit of a break before the final push in March.

The Olympics
It has been extremely exciting and fun to watch Julia, Bode, Weibrecht, and Lindsey absolutely destroying in the medal count. NBC American coverage is terrible, but it’s great to see so many inspiring runs put down by the whole group. Ted nearly picked up a medal in the SG and the Combined. Will Brandenburg was second in the slalom run of the Combined behind Ted (Bode was third on the run to obviously win gold). For Bode it was really nice to see him get some retribution after struggling four years ago. It’s been fun to watch them all kill it. Who knows what the slalom is going to bring. The GS was a bit painful to watch, but even Bode had some moments of brilliance that I haven’t seen in ages. And right now, Schleper is looking pretty good about a second out.

Anyway, hope you’re all doing well. Cheers, w

P.S. AJ thanks for the couch and breakfast this morning. See ya later Denver.