Gold medalist

The CEO of my company flies a lot. Enough that when Delta Airlines did a big to-do as part of their sponsorship of the World Cup Freestyle skiing event at Deer Valley this weekend, he got invited.

Except he couldn’t make it. So he sent my colleague Ed and me instead. Instead of going to work yesterday, Ed and I went skiing at Deer Valley. I know, it was rough.

We arrived at the reception room and noticed a familiar face walk in shortly after. If you followed skiing in the early 90’s, you probably had a crush on her: gold medalist mogul skier Donna Weinbrecht. Apparently they invited more than just Donna, because alpine racers Erik Schlopy and Heidi Voelker, as well as freestyle aerialist Kris “Fuzz” Fedderson—all three-time Olympians—also joined us.

They split us up into groups of four and assigned us each a celebrity “host” to ski with us. We did a couple warmup runs and Donna coached me to get my hands forward and be more aggressive as we ripped the intermediate corduroy slope. I don’t think Donna had yet realized the terrain wasn’t all that demanding for me and I was only casually making turns to avoid getting too far ahead of the two out-of-staters in our group.

After the warmups, we headed over to the Nastar racecourse. I did one race when I was ten and have never run gates since then. I was surprised how fun it was. When I went head-to-head with Erik Schlopy, I knew he would be faster, but I was shocked by just how much faster he was. I later went head-to-head with Heidi, who gave me a head start and then went screaming by. It took me about 19 seconds to do the course, and they were doing it in 15 or 16.

Impressed as I was with their skiing skills, I was more impressed with how personable the pros were. While riding the chairlift with Donna and Heidi, Donna told us about the children’s book she’s writing and illustrating (apparently she’s also an artist), and Heidi told us stories of her days doing coed skiercross with Casey Puckett. At lunch she mentioned that the stories she told didn’t even scratch the surface, and if she had another glass of wine, we’d hear some real dirt.

Here’s a photo of Ed, Donna, and me at the bottom of the racecourse:

Erik, Donna, me, Heidi, Ed, and Fuzz posing at the “medal ceremony” at lunch (they actually kept our times on the racecourse):

Of all the assignments I’ve ever been given at work, this had to be the best.

Go Jazz

I used to be quite a fan of the Utah Jazz. So much so that we (I?) watched more than one televised Jazz game during our honeymoon (it happened to coincide with the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals back when the Jazz were actually playing in the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals).

Somewhere along the way I lost interest. I haven’t been to a live NBA game in about 15 years. I’ve not had more than a passing interest in basketball in at least 10.

Last night, however, a friend called and said he had two extra tickets to the game and wanted to know if JunkieBoy and I wanted to go with him and his son. Of course I accepted. Here are a few observations:

• Deron Williams is one of the most impressive athletes I have every watched play. The game was a blowout. The Jazz were up by 20 with two minutes left in the third when Williams sat down. I assumed with that kind of lead that we wouldn’t see him again. The lead held while he was on the bench, but he came back out early in the fourth quarter anyway. He wasn’t just going through the motions, either, even though his opponents were at that point.
• Carlos Boozer could be league MVP if he cared as much about winning as Williams.
• The difference between strippers and the Jazz Dancers—at least some of whom are likely wholesome Mormon girls—is about 10 microns of nylon.
• Company seats rule. The view from the seventh row is fantastic. I’m sure there were some real fans who were bitter to see two of them “wasted” by young boys who were more interested in ice cream and cotton candy than the action on the floor.
• Sports have a way of uniting communities. I don’t know that I’d have had occasion to meet the guy sitting in front of me otherwise, but our intermittent discussion of the game had me feeling like we were friends by the time the game ended—to the point that he was high-fiving both my son and me when it was over.
• Football is every bit as exciting to watch on TV as live. Basketball and Baseball are much more engaging live than on TV.
• NBA players have way more tattoos now than they did 15 years ago.
• I came away much more interested in the Jazz than I was going in. But it’s a long season. And football isn’t over yet. So I’ll wait until the playoffs before dedicating any passion to the cause.
• Sporting events attended with my dad are some of my fondest memories from growing up. I need to make it a point to take JunkieBoy to ballgames on a regular basis. We both had a great time.

A lone man shouting in the wilderness

At the risk of offending some of you (since when has that ever stopped me), I’m going to come right out and say it: I don’t care if you read my blog. Sure, when I started this thing, I looked at the site traffic every day. I was really worried that I’d be the Internet equivalent of a lone man shouting in the wilderness, prophesying to a congregation of nobody.

But once I got to maybe ten readers a day (yeah, my expectations were that low), I realized that wasn’t the case. Once I got to 50 readers a day, I felt somewhat more secure. When I got to 100 readers a day, I stopped caring about traffic altogether.

While I don’t see any point in publishing a blog that nobody reads, I don’t write this blog for anyone but me. I like to write. It’s cathartic. It reduces my stress levels. And it provides a convenient record of some of the stuff I do on bikes and skis as well as the random ideas in my head.

Which is not to say that if you read my blog, you know me. You know SkiBikeJunkie, but he likes to exaggerate. Sometimes just for the sick humor of it. He also makes cynical inside jokes that probably nobody else will ever get.

If you’re a lurker and decided that my off-topic (as if there were a “topic”) posts are boring/annoying/otherwise killing you, and you decided to quit reading tomorrow, I wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest. If you decided that my spraying about an off-the-podium finish in a Cat. 4 race was grating on your nerves and that you didn’t want to read the ramblings of such a blow-hard, I wouldn’t care. Because your attitude about my blog has no bearing on how I feel about anyone, myself included, in real life or otherwise.

As indifferent as I am, however, to the attitudes of readers, from time to time I have the good fortune of interacting with people from the blog world in the real life world. One of these is my friend, Pat.

Pat and I met at Hell of the North last year. In case you don’t know, Hell of the North was the worst, most miserable race I have ever done. It was cold and snowing, and instead of skiing in the most epic conditions of the season, I was inducing hypothermia racing my bike in the wet and mud.

One of the participants, however, seemed impervious to the cold. As the pack regrouped after every corner, he was smiling, asking how I was feeling, apparently happy to be suffering as the mud lacerated his eyeballs every time he blinked. It was Pat.

I thought there was no way a guy this happy-go-lucky was going to last. I was buried and couldn’t muster the energy to smile. He was wasting too much effort being social. When I lost track of him on the last lap, I figured he was off the back. I was wrong. He was up front, setting up to take the win.

Pat and I got reacquainted at RMR where we had fun, even when our tactics were bad. I was saddened not to race with him when he crashed and broke his collarbone at another race. This summer he spent a bunch of time doing power and VO2 max testing for Steve and me, gratis. Sure, we were lab rats for his research project, which will benefit him, but we were both more than happy to get the data at no charge.

Once you spend ten hours in a lab with someone, you’ll probably either like him or you won’t. In Pat’s case, I came away liking the guy more than I already did going in.

So even though I claim that blogging is a selfish endeavor of catharsis, keeping records for my benefit, and spewing random nonsense, it’s somehow also led to some real-world friendships that I genuinely enjoy. And for that, I am quite thankful.

Snow, burning books, and white horses

We’ve established that my neighborhood gets a lot of snow. The thing I don’t get, though, is that the most oft-cited reason for people moving out of the neighborhood is the snow. Did they think they’d like it and now they don’t? Or did they just not realize how much there would be?

If the first, that’s understandable. Sometimes things we thought we really liked can get old and grate on our nerves*.

*Like the Killers. I downloaded one of their albums and adored it the first three times I listened. Now whenever one of their songs comes up on a playlist, I shudder, cough, and quickly reach for the skip forward button. My apologies to fans of The Killers—I really did like them at first. I’m hoping I don’t come to feel this way about Band of Horses, because right now I’m really digging their stuff.

But if the second, I don’t get it. Salt Lake City gets a lot of snow to begin with. The ski resorts get way, way more snow than Salt Lake City. The elevation of our neighborhood is closer to that of the ski resorts than the valley below. Did they come look at the house in the summer and think “oh, it’s nice and cool in the summertime at this elevation—I bet the winters are equally mild”?

I’m assuming they had to have looked at the house in the summer, because for six months of the year, the yard would have been covered in snow, and they’d have no excuse not to notice it. Of course, I shouldn’t complain too much about people not thinking the “cool in the summer” thing through to its logical conclusion—I come from a family of seven kids, and if my parents had thought things through during those sacred snooze sessions, it’s likely that I and/or several of my siblings would not exist.

It’s not like I’m shedding tears over most of the people that move out of the neighborhood. Because the people I like also seem to enjoy the snow. And though we’re not a majority, if it’s not obvious that I’m not in the majority and don’t care to be, you haven’t been paying attention.

Speaking of the local majority, I recently checked out an audiobook from the library that I daresay many of these folks probably wouldn’t agree with. As I pulled the first CD out of the jacket, I thought “it really wouldn’t surprise me if one of these CDs were intentionally scratched by some nutjob who thinks he’s doing the world a favor.”

I put the first disc in and pretty much immediately it started skipping. I popped it out and saw a scratch running hole to edge. It looked like it was put there with a car key. I haven’t seen any announcements, but I can’t help but assume these folks have got a book burning scheduled for the coming weeks.

We should be thanking them for their activism, however, because we’re all clearly doomed. In case you haven’t heard, the Constitution is dangling by a thread. A silken one. And it’s about to snap. But the wannabe governor of Idaho is going to get on his white horse and save it, thereby ushering in a new era of illegal wiretaps and foreign invasions made under false pretenses civil liberties.

Water

Sitting on my desk is a well-used plastic cup from Mile High Stadium, one of two souvenirs I have from the last AFC Championship game the Broncos played in and the only NFL game I have ever attended. It gets filled with water and drained several times a day and has considerably outlived the single serving of Coke it was originally sold to contain.

The human body can survive weeks without food but only a couple of days without water. Perhaps even worse (if the pain is anywhere near how it’s been described), if you don’t drink enough water, you get kidney stones. Clearly, water is important stuff.

Benefits of clear, pure water notwithstanding, humans have been flavoring it for pretty much as long as there have been humans. Tea is the most popular beverage in the world. We measure time from the birth of one who turned water into wine. Coca-cola is among the best-known English words to non-English speakers. I wonder if part of what has enabled us to evolve into human beings as we are today is our flavoring of water, which in the process treated it and made it safer to drink. Certainly cooking our food was a factor in our evolution—why would treating our water not also be?

Those of us who live in industrialized nations hardly have to worry about safe drinking water. Boiling it into tea is something we do because we want to drink the tea, not because we need to make the water safe. Yet when I think of Fall Moab, I also think of the cold Diet Coke after the last ride on Sunday. When I think of Saturday’s tour with Alex, I think of the hot lemon honey tea he shared from his thermos while we put our skins on. The cold water I drank on both occasions doesn’t come to mind. What is it about human nature that causes such strong associations between a context and the beverage we enjoyed therein?

Although we can’t live without water, most of us don’t want to drink nothing but water, either. But if you could only choose water and one other beverage, what would your one other be? Why? If your belief system constrains your choices, would your unconstrained choice be something different?

The sheep pen

Today’s post is an attempt to rewrite what was lost by my stupid PC, adjusted slightly to include a bit about this morning’s tour. I hope it comes out OK and doesn’t end up being a rotting, nasty, Pet Sematary-esque likeness of what I meant to write.

So you remember in The Music Man* during the train scene at the beginning when all the other salesman are predicting Harold Hill will fail because he doesn’t know the territory? Well Wasatch backcountry users can be kind of like that, too. At best we likely know just part of the territory, but that part is typically the part nearest our doorstep.

*Yes, I’m quite familiar with The Music Man and still know the lyrics to most of the songs in it because it was one of the musicals we did when I was in high school**. I’m not too proud to admit that I like show tunes. One of the finest evenings of my life was sitting on the sixth row, smack in the middle, of a West End production of Phantom of the Opera when I was 18. I did not fall asleep.

**What? You weren’t in drama in high school? If you weren’t, this should have been a no-brainer as far as meeting women was concerned. Sure, cheerleaders are supposed to be the domain of the football team, but when there’s 100 of you and 10 of them, the odds pretty much suck. For people like my brother Steve, who played quarterback, dating and eventually marrying a cheerleader is a possibility. But for some reason head cheerleader Kim wasn’t all that interested in dating an undersized left guard, so I had to look elsewhere. Besides, unlike the football team, drama practices are coed, and kissing someone of the opposite sex may very well be one of the drills. Frankly, the only things I did in high school that rivaled drama were being on the stage crew for the dance company (best-kept secret for meeting women pretty much ever—you move a box or a light stand every ten minutes and spend the rest of the time hanging out with scantily-clad dancers—cha-ching!) and being a cheerleader (one of the stunts involved holding an attractive girl over my head by her butt while staring up her skirt to make sure she was properly balanced).

For instance, I’m quite familiar with the Bonneville Shoreline Trail between the Zoo and City Creek, because I can ride this from my office. I’m similarly familiar with Corner Canyon, which is rideable from my house. As wonderful as the trails are in American Fork and Millcreek canyons, I know quite a bit less of them because they require actually driving to the trailhead.

On our way up Little Cottonwood Canyon last week, Jon S. was picking my brain about Scotties Bowl, a line I ski all the time that also happens to be closer to my house than pretty much anything else. But Jon lives in East Millcreek and works downtown, so it’s out of his way. Conversely, however, when Jon took me up Mill D, it was only the second time in my life I’d skied anything on the north side of Big Cottonwood Canyon Road.

Some might chalk this up to laziness, but the reality is it’s more due to the embarrassment of riches we have here in the Wasatch. I’ve heard many people refer to the tri-canyons area as the “Sheep Pen” because there are so many backcountry users in such close proximity to one another. And yet, when there’s powder to be had, I haven’t struggled to find it. And that’s not because we’re all doing such a good job spooning our tracks, either. There’s just that much good terrain that close to home.

From time to time, however, it’s worth getting out of my comfort zone and exploring new places. It was with this in mind that Alex and I ventured out on Saturday for a point-to-point bi-canyon tour starting in BCC and finishing in Millcreek.

I wish I had time to do tours like this every week, because in addition to enjoying quality snow, largely ignored terrain that’s as good as anything I’ve ever skied, and great company, the sense of discovery and joy of just going somewhere new would have made the day worth it by itself. Of the five tours that most stand out as enjoyable days on skis, four of them were memorable because I went somewhere new and really cool. In fact, for two of those, the snow was crappy and I didn’t care because the destination was so great.

Other days the tour is memorable not so much for the destination, but for the company. Like this morning. I got out with some usual partners, Dug, Rick, and Tyler, as well as some new ones, Daren and Bart.

It was a great time, if starting a tour with 20 minutes at threshold followed by an hour and forty minutes at whatever pace you can muster with what’s left is your thing. I made sure Daren knew afterwards that going like that is NOT normal. Bart is simply super-human, an uber. Rick did his best to keep the pace. The rest of us were chewed up and spit out the back.

A couple hours after we got back, the following email exchange took place:

Rick: New rule. Bart G is banned from the group. I’m sitting here with dried salt all over my face and a blank stare at my computer screen.

Dug: Luckily he had little impact on me because I couldn't even see him for most of the day. But when I went into the big handicapped stall to change, my base layer was still soaking wet. Ick.

Me: My legs are cooked and I've had the shakes all morning from the effort.

Rick: Totally kidding about the Bart rule.

Tyler: I thought it was a good rule. 

Bart, we love you mang, but next time you’re short ropin’ our sorry butts to the top.

I’m a mac

Early yesterday morning, I had a post mostly written about the awesome tour I did with Alex on Saturday. All I needed to do was add photos. Then yesterday afternoon my machine had to be restarted and the post (written on Windows Live Writer) was gone. That same restart cost me nearly an hour in lost work for my real job.

Office crashed last Thursday and very nearly cost me three hours of work. Instead I spent an hour trying to get it going again, which I was able to do but could never repeat if it happened again. Bear in mind that this machine is a developer workstation, so it’s supposed to be super-powerful and crash-resistant.

Wanna know how many times my macbook has crashed? None times, that’s how many. I hate you Windows.