Wednesday morning

At this point of my day I'm already on the hill. I've just finished installing the radar for the Finish run. Amazing that the racers can actually stop on where I can hardly sideslip.

I've uploaded some pictures with comments to www.portcredit.net/gallery. Look for Kitzbuhel 2008.

As they say, revenge is sweet. Most of you have heard of our battles with the media guys. I might have mentioned that they plastered advertising all over the start hut which totally put us about 2 hours behind schedule yesterday.

Today, we had to rerun run some cables behind the aluminum walls. This required Cooper to take out about 50 Phillips (starred) screws. Well, he made a slight change when replacing them and he used Robertson screws. You know, the ones you can only get in Canada!!

We can't wait to see them start to take this apart Saturday night (unless there is a Canadian Tire somewhere that they can find a screwdriver), which they start doing about 20 seconds after the last racer has left the gate. Hopefully film at 11.

What happened to Sunday

Simply put, we went out drinking. Very late night. I never got to the update.

So, back to Sunday. Our second day on the hill and this allowed us to spend some time to really get to know the hill. OMG, what a hill. At Lake Louise there are only 3 areas that a little hard to slide slip. Here, at the Hahnenkamm, there are at least 6 areas that I can count that will make you change underwear if you mess up the slide slip that you are doing at about 60kph.

I have yet to do the last 2, and I have a choice to either do them tomorrow (Tuesday) or climb up through the woods for about 200 vertical meters carrying batteries for the radar. If you watch this on this coming Saturday, this will be the 3rd speed into the finish.

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of having lunch in the start building. Lots of history here and lunch we no exception. The start building is built into the side of the hill and has a complete living area attached to it. Joining us for lunch was Dave Pymm and the President of the Kitzbuhel Ski Club. We just lucked out with that lunch.

We spent today getting the rest of the 'eyes' in place and working. As this is the super bowel of ski races, you can just image the amount of advertising in place. It gets in our way everywhere and we have to deal with it. Advertising sells, so timing is expected to work around it. Argh.....

My job was to ensure that the 2 radar devices we are using to measure speed where installed in a good location and working correctly. When I left the start, that one was fine (it will used to measure the fastest to 100kph). When I got back there are 4:30pm (it was getting dark), the radar was no where to be found and the entire area where I had the radar mounted was now covered with Audi advertising. We can't even shoot a radar signal through the advertising, as it is built on an aluminum base.

The 2nd radar was on a part of the hill I just didn't want to slide slip down today. It might have had something to do with the Snow Cat at the bottom of the run. So, I had to climb up to it. By my calculations, it was about the same distance as walking to the top of Craigleith from the bottom (about 250 vertical meters).

In the picture above, you get a view down to the finish from Radar 2.

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?