Saturday - tour of the hill

Morning started off pretty good. Some sun, but we got to head up and take a tour down the Hanekam. Make sure you watch the race next Saturday. If you haven't read Ken Reid's book, The White Circus", the start WILL get your attention.

To describe this, if I left the start, I would be in a FULL and I mean Full slideslip.

You then stand on your right ski to greet the Mausefalle. It is a 75% slope and so far you are no more than 10 seconds into the race. Pucker factor is huge, but it won't be the worst your are going to see. That is coming later.

Anyway, once we finished the tour, we spent the afternoon in the drizzle putting together the Alge video wall. 6 panel wide and 4 panels high. You can see this from the next country once it is running. Each panel weighs about 40 kilos and we have to hoist them with a rope up as we assemble it like a lego set.

Not sure what the weather is going to bring, but they have been talking about it all day. It was above zero most of the day, and it is either going to rain or snow like crazy. I might actually have to get my poles out some days this week.

As I post some pictures here, try to have a look at the slope based to the person in the picture and how they are standing on it. Look at the attached picture and you see Coop standing on an off camber turn into the Steilhang. Now imagine you are doing 100kph. The racer comes from the right of the picture and exits out the back. One heck of a right hand turn.

Kitzbuhel

We made it in time for dinner on Friday night. Our last part of trains, planes and automobiles was Ted picking us up at the train station in Kitz. He showed up in the 'happy van'. The HV has room up front for 1 (but their was 3 of us). The HV is a large windowless panel van, so that meant that Coop and I had to get in the back.

The back is filled up with the entire video wall. Large panels that make up the entire score board for the finish area. It wasn't too bad, since the drive is only about 10 minutes. Talk about sensory deprivation. We did just fine until Ted had to slam on the brake for someone who pulled out in front of him and Coop went from the back to the front in .2 of a second. That was followed by us hollering from the dark back "We're OK!".

Today, hill inspection for us. A thousand thanks to The Skunk for taking my skis in to be sharpened. Apparently the tech spent hours breathing life back into my skis which were last out to play in Lake Louise. If you remember, there wasn't a lot of snow there. Skunk claims he can't even find a single scratch on the bottom.

Off to breakfast.

Arrived Munich

Arrived here at MUC 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Why does that happen when your not in a rush?

To boot, my bag was #2 down the chute. Again, this always happens when you have 4 hours to kill while we wait for Coop to arrive.

At YYZ

Amazingly slow here at YYZ and that with only a few people in line. Must be all those that never fly!! Even lining up for security with 6 people in front of me took 30 minutes. The line kept getting bumped with wheel chairs. I counted 9.

My good looking seat turned to crap when AC changed to an older plane.

BUT, the gate agent kindly found me 2 seats to myself at the back of the plane. Excellent!

Andy made it to 1st class. I'm in the back.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Here it is... Another race, this time the super bowl of races in Kitzbuhel Austria. We will be doing a Super G, Downhill and a Slalom race late next week. With that includes 3 days of downhill training and who knows what else.

I depart today from Toronto later tonight, meeting up with Andy who is doing the Montreal, Toronto, Munich route. To add to our troubles, Toronto is going to get snow later today (after basking in +15C earlier this week and 100kph winds yesterday).

When we get to Munich tomorrow morning at 8am local (2am ET), we get to sit around and wait for Cooper to fly in from Calgary. Next, the train part. 4 trains from Munich to Kitzbuhel. At that point, we get picked up by van (we hope) so we can slug all our bags to the Villa Mellon (http://www.villa-mellon.at/).

Some of the best web cams you might want to check out are at http://www.kitz.net/. Look for the Wettercam and you can surf around down and even seen the start hut (more like start cottage).

Off to finish packing. Can I keep it under 70 pounds?

Ladies Race Day

Very cold today. Stuck with all the layers of clothes all day. Base Layer. Turtle neck. Helly Hanson sweater. Tag Heur equipment vest. Down vest. Full length Coaches coat.

Left the hotel room 'knowing' I had forgot something. Yep, just as I was getting my boots on, it was ski socks I forgot to take with me. That means I had to dry out the only pair of socks I had with me. Won't make the same mistake tomorrow.

It is pretty awesome to watch all of these athletes get ready to start. Each has their own pattern. Some have their coach rub snow on the back of their next. Others take time to say hi. Some just look straight out the door the entire time. It is very clear that those that are somewhat relaxed do much better.

Today was a full TV presentation. Live in Austria, tape delay in Canada. Not sure in the US of A. I still have not seen 1 minute of the show. However, it is all taped at home, so I will get a chance to review it next week. The camera that you see the racer start from is manned by Brian from CBC. All the CBC guys are great. Anyway, you might have noticed that the camera seemed to be hand-held during the first few skiers. Brian could not get his camera connected to his tripod as the latching mechanisms were frozen. What a professional.

The local timing volunteers planted both a loonie and a quarter on the start ramp. Clearly it worked today. Go Canada Go as Britt managed a 3rd place finish in a very tough crowd.

The second the race is over for the athletes, the race starts for timing, television and media to move to the Super G start for tomorrow. However, the new start ramp wasn't even built yet. We tear out our wiring, working around the media/advertising guys and then hump all the staff down the track and pile it up at the new start. We then ski down for a warm up break, resulting in us getting back on the lift about 4:15pm just as the sun has set.

By the time we get to the new start, it is just about built and we can start to get some of the wires for tomorrow's race in place. Still takes a few hours. We then get to ski down about 6pm in the total darkness with head lamps on. Pretty nice actually.

Tomorrow is our last day for this team. Once the Super G is over, we bring down everything. Ted will stick around for the NorAm race which is great as it means we don't have to pack up everything tomorrow.

It looks like our next gig might be Kitzbuhel, Austria. Maybe I will actually get to see one of the most famous races this time.

Saturday morning

I'm at the start. No wind but the air temp is -22C.

Feet are already cold.