MikeSandy.net

February 2006 Skiing Archive

Performance Good; Comfort Bad

SNOWBIRD, UT — Today would be my first ski day after my latest boot adjustments. This week I had my right boot widened (perhaps not enough), and I had heel shims added to the outsides of my the boot liners, which helps keep my heels locked into their respective heel pockets. Please excuse the boot discussion in this article. I try my best to leave those issues out of these ski day reports, but this saga is one in which I must document, because it's had such a huge impact (financially, performance-wise, and many other ways) on this ski season.

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Hopefully I'm Building Character

SNOWBIRD, UT — This ski day was very short. I drove up to the resort, put on my gear amidst the absolutely clueless throng of vacationers, and headed out to the mountain. After the short tram ride up, I attempted to ski Primrose Path, which is my favorite run. Unfortunately, an apparent thaw/re-freeze pattern overnight had left the trail strewn with bowling ball-sized chunks of hard snow. Instead of continuing down the minefield, I traversed skier's right down to Chip's Run. By this time, my right foot had gone completely numb, as usual. And today, my right heel decided to lift during every turn initiation. In short, I again had no control over my right ski, and I wasn't even three turns into this ski day.

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Hit and Miss

SNOWBIRD, UT — Today was a hit and miss ski day. Some runs I exhibited flashes of brilliance; some runs I skied like a wounded duck; and most runs I found myself falling at least once.

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Continued Problems

SNOWBIRD, UT — I've rarely been so discouraged with skiing. While I'm not having a bad time skiing terribly (after all, skiing terribly is more fun than doing most other things well), it's extremely discouraging to me that I cannot enjoy skiing as much as I did the few weeks prior. What's even more discouraging is the near-certainty that it's my equipment that is causing most of my performance problems, which leaves me little that I can do on the mountain to fix the problem(s). Specifically, I'm almost certain that my boots are causing my problems, despite having paid a ridiculous amount of money to ensure that they would no longer cause me any problems.

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Subpar Performance

ALTA, UT; SNOWBIRD, UT — This day I skied with two of Brendan's friends from high school at Alta Ski Area. The last time I skied Alta was about three years ago when I visited Utah during Spring Break of my senior year at Syracuse University. It felt good to be back. With that said, I still felt lost at Alta. I didn't know where to go to find the good stuff. Thankfully, on this day the good stuff was easy to find: the groomers had the best conditions on the mountain.

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I Skied Like Crap

SNOWBIRD, UT — This day was my first back on my own skis. I was eager to get on the slopes after a false start on Friday (there were no parking spots at the park and ride parking lot, so I couldn't go skiing). The mountain had received 7 inches of new snow over the night, so things were looking good.

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