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At least a one hour delay...
Monday, March 21, 2011

Denver, Colorado - I have a sneaky suspicion this is going to be a long one. After four great days at home, I spent the last 8 in Whistler for 6 days of racing at NorAm Finals on a painfully flat hill getting smoked pretty much every day. I brought a pair of really stiff GS skis that are nasty on injection, but don’t turn on soft snow on the flats… total bummer. Then I banged around pretending I could ski slalom for a couple days and picked up a SG and a Super Combined result the last two days. Then hustled out of town to Seattle, a four hour drive, south to get a more reasonably priced flight back east.


Last night, I stayed on Gordon Gray’s couch, which was amazing I haven’t slept that well in weeks, and after he dropped me off at the airport at 5:30 this morning. Thanks Gordon!!! I’m on my way back east to race in two Eastern Cup GS races in Stowe then two SG’s in Burke starting tomorrow. By the end of this little tour, it’ll be 10 races in 11 days with a nice relaxing day of travel in the middle haha.


Anyway, so here I am in DIA waiting for some maintenance repairs to our plane on a flight to Boston. Then I’ll catch a cab to my car, which is park on E street in Southie because there is free, very long term parking there. Once I set my eyes on the old Honda Accord Wagon I’ll have to cross my fingers. On my drive down to Boston 10 days ago, I stopped on the way to pick up some rope to tie our skis to a Thule rack I brought to put on Charles Christianson’s VW Passat wagon parked at the Seattle Airport. Since there were three of us with way too many pairs of skis, I flew with a Thule rack in my ski bag hoping that would work out. However, we never used the Thule rack because we ran into Florian, a private coach from Salt Lake, driving up to Whistler in the Seattle airport with extra room for our skis. Anyway, when I made that stop 40 miles outside of Boston, I realized that my car was making some painful sounds coming from the two front wheels.


I called Phil Bedard, a buddy of mine’s father and my mechanic, to diagnose the problem. I felt like I was calling into Click and Clack on Car Talk. Phil came to the conclusion, it was most likely a bearing issue since it became louder when I turned the wheel. It made him a bit nervous since I had a ball joint issue with this car two years ago when my front driver’s side tire turned 90 degrees after going over a railroad track when the ball joint popped out (I have a great picture of this on facebook). We were both hoping that wasn’t going to happen again. He had me shake the front tires as hard as I could and if they felt solid, he said keep going. They felt totally money. I didn’t want to miss my flight and I was already pushing the timing so I asked him, “What’s better going fast for slow?” He responded by explaining he couldn’t answer that, but it was important for it not to get too loud. So I got back on the highway and floored it until it was too loud. As I quickly learned, if you kept the old lady over 80 the sounds of the rest of the car falling apart masked the bearing issue so I did my best to keep her over 80 the rest of the way south and I made my flight with time to spare. Here I am 10 days later, hoping that the old ’95 Honda Accord Wagon will have enough energy to make it back up north to Gilford, NH tonight.


So right now – best case scenario – I get into Boston at 8:30, collect my luggage, rip up to Gilford, dump my car off at Union Ave Auto to have Phil give the old lady some lovin, grab my dad’s truck, and then rally off to Stowe bright and early tomorrow morning. Then I’ll have a couple days home before I flew back here for U.S. Nationals. God it feel like I’m back on the college tour. Not to mention, I’m laying down right now stretching my hamstrings because my back and slalom aren’t friends. I really hope I have a reclining seat on this next flight. Hahaha, but seriously. Good entertainment on the spring tour.


Hope you’re all doing well, w


Congrats to Thomas Biesemeyer for being the overall Not-Am Champ, Ryan Cochran Siegle for crushing the two SG’s, and Tim Jitloff for scoring some 6 point races in GS.

posted by Warner at 3/21/2011 03:32:00 PM

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