So, here is what happened...

The plane arrives from Toronto. Pulls up to the gate and the flight attendant opens the door, but he/she forgot 1 thing. To move the little leaver that tells the plane that it is not in flight anymore, but park.

Well, apparently the emergency exit slide has now filled the ramp exit. Can you image the poor guy on the other side? I hope he is still alive. Wow!!

I've now heard that they have to drop 60 people from the flight since they have one last slide. Oopppssss

What a morning

Woke up to an awesome mountain morning. Not a cloud in the sky, no wind and about -2C. But, all good things must come to an end.

The drive to Munich had everything from very twist narrow roads to doing 190k on the automate.

I'm now at the airport with time to spare, but something is going on in a baggage ramp that does not allow us to check in bags. So, I have to stand around and wait for who knows how long. And, this only affects Air Canada.

Long over due update

Wow, I just reviewed this and realized that I have not updated this in a while.

Carrying on from my last update, my back is much better. I have a new belief in chyropractors. This lady that my next door neighbour sent me to just rocks.

So, that brings me to the last week of 'stuff'. Work brought me to London earlier in the week. However, I've decided that when it is remotely possible, that I would make the odd detour. This time it was to Austria (after a meeting with a customer in Germany).

I've spent the last 2 days skiing at Kitzsteinhorn (http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/). For the last 2 morning, I have woken up to rain and fog. Yesterday, I only made it up for half a day, but what a half day. 3200 vertical meters in fresh snow (somewhere between 6-12"). Then, today again the same thing. However, this time, I made it for first tracks and skied the morning in the fog with the brail technique. But another foot of snow fell. I was wearing my Garmin Forerunner 305 heart rate monitor and it tracked me doing over 6000 vertical meters. So, in 2 days of skiing, I didn't hear my skiis scraping over the ice once (you guys from Collingwood hearing this?).

In the picture above, have a close look at the red and white tower. Now, notice the size of the chairlifts running on the surface. That is the tram tower and they only use it to get from the bottom of the glacier to the top. NOT from the parking lot to the bottom of the glacer (also called the alpine center).

There is alot of history on the lifts, including the underground railway that used to take you up from the parking lot. http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/information/gletscherbahnen/history.htm. Read about how a fire killed 155 people back in 2000 on the underground lift. You can read more about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1018153.stm.

I could see where this lift went into the mountain, but still don't have a clue where it exited at the top.

If you really like, you can spent the night in the igloos (http://en.kitzsteinhorn.at/news/?we_objectID=299). I'm not kidding. These have to be seen as they are huge.

This trip is now over

It is amazing how Air Canada can keep planes that came out about the time of the Wright Brothers still flying. My back is still killing me from yesterdays 9 hour flight home from Munich. Ouch

Many thanks to the Kitzbuheler Ski Club for sending a driver to pick us up and drive us to the Munich airport. Made for a very relaxing morning. Had we gone by train, we would have had to get up at 4am to make the train.

Did you know that Google has a language pack called called "Elmer Fudd"?? Go into preferences and you to can have a "hunt wabbits" option. Cool!

We never got to see what happened with the Robertson screw episode as we had to move the start down with an hour to go to the start. I'm sure we will hear about it.

That's about it. More pictures will be loaded on the web site later today with any luck.

Packed up - ready to leave

It is now Monday morning. We've packed up 2 tons of equipment and it will be shipped out to various parts of the world this week. We are all headed home to various parts of North America.
Andy gets home for one night and then is off to the NHL All Star Game. Coop goes back to Calgary and is there to help his kids with their math homework sitting across from them at the kitchen table. Ted, back to his other ventures with a trip to the UK on the way with James (The Skunk) joining him. BTW, if you want to read the Skunk's blog, you can see it at http://www.themightyskunk.blogspot.com/. Be aware, he is a little more colourfull that I am.
Yesterday was a great show with Bode winning the Classic Super Combined. ORF is so much better at doing a ski race then CBC, but then again, CBC is much better at Hockey.
I will upload some more pictures when I get home later tonight.
BTW, Scott MacArtney from the US who had the big crash in the finish on Saturday came out of home coma yesterday morning had 3 questions:

• How fast was I going (he was the fastest at 141K)
• How are my knees (they are fine)
• Did I break my skiis (who cares)

He will likely make a full recovery.

The Kitzbuhler Ski Club is sending a van to take us to the airport in Munich. It arrives in about an hour.

73....

Downhill Race Day

We've spent a week getting ready for today. Then, with less than 1 hour to go, we find out that we have to move the start to one of the lower starts due to the wind on the mountain. So, in 40 minutes, you have to connect all the timing equipment to new wires. But, you have to wait for the media guys to move the facade that says Audi first before you can run your wires. Then, you have to resync all your timing equipment.

Coop's team pulled it off with minutes to spare. Well done!

The race did not disappoint. Racer #2 had the highest speed on the Zeil Schuss of 141kph. However he missed judged the jump into the finish and landed so hard that it left him with a serious concussion. Both Ted and I actually thought he was dead or was going to be shortly. They air evac'd him to the local hospital, but then moved him to Innsbruck. Fortunately (from what I hear) he will make a full recovery. As well, there were 3 other crashes that seemed very horrific, however it is clear that the netting did its job.

Today's amazing thing is the crowds. In the first picture above, look up the hill and count the people. Then, later today (at 6:30pm) they do the bib draw. It is dark, and even a little foggy. There must have been 20,000 people there when I left and then kept coming. They are all singing, drinking, waving flags and firing snowballs. You can click on each of the pictures above to see a larger picture.

More pictures on the gallery at http://portcredit.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=28

Wow - 1 hour to go

And we just heard that we are moving to the fowl weather start due to wind. Coop's 3 person start hut team will be hauling ass to make this happen in 30 minutes. We are live on TV at 11:30am.

I'm my crampon hike down from Ziel radar, what was once hard as concrete is now so soft that I sunk right up to my hip. We have to get this in the bag before this course flows down the hill.

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