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It's a powder day whenever you call us! We have on Blue Extra wax. What do you have on? Together we can make a fantasy come true!
Come stride with us! The sun is bright, the air is 25 degrees! The snow is perfect and the trail goes right where you want it to!
Call 1-900-HOT2SKI right now! We can't wait for you! We're going to ski NOW!
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
Broken-Field Running
Skate skiing on the thin, chunky cover we're trying to use right now reminds you to keep your weight on one ski at a time. This may seem opposite to what should be stable, but you're better off if you can hop from a ski in trouble to a ski running smoothly.
In skating you must be on one ski at a time anyway. On soft touring skis you can get away with a shuffle, but skating turns into an exhausting waddle if you don't shift fully. However, when the skis are running by themselves, pulled by gravity, you may be tempted to ride them both. At times this is fine. On a jumbled surface, it's not a good idea.
Maintaining a rhythm from foot to foot even when you could be gliding, you can easily speed up the tempo to hop through a section of obstacles. Gliding flat-footed you have to unstick your feet before you can maneuver. This is good to remember even if you are on soft touring skis. Keep the feet shifting so you're ready to react when you need to.
In skating you must be on one ski at a time anyway. On soft touring skis you can get away with a shuffle, but skating turns into an exhausting waddle if you don't shift fully. However, when the skis are running by themselves, pulled by gravity, you may be tempted to ride them both. At times this is fine. On a jumbled surface, it's not a good idea.
Maintaining a rhythm from foot to foot even when you could be gliding, you can easily speed up the tempo to hop through a section of obstacles. Gliding flat-footed you have to unstick your feet before you can maneuver. This is good to remember even if you are on soft touring skis. Keep the feet shifting so you're ready to react when you need to.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Competitive Types
You can tell by looking that some people have something to prove. The way they carry themselves, the way they look around like haughty birds of prey, you know they would like to find something small and furry to swoop down on and impale.
Today, a couple of them just circle high above. They either fed earlier or consider me too small to be worth the dive.
Non-traditional sports like cross-country skiing and cycling provide an outlet for competitive types who might not have flourished in the more customary confrontational sports requiring pads, and balls, sticks and pucks. Or they might have crossed over from those arenas. It makes for a rich and varied mixture. Many of us got into non-traditional sports so we could get away from all that. Some even get into it for the social life completely free of competition. You can't do that when you socialize in a setting built around a game played for points.
Competitive types come up with their own point system if the activity doesn't readily provide one. You may never even know how they decided your score. If it doesn't matter to you, who cares? But sometimes they swoop in to peck your eyes, or at least drop a load of whitewash on your head to impress the rest of their flock. It's fun then to invert in your seemingly helpless flight to flash your own talons or, failing that, pull out the shotgun and just blast them into a cloud of feathers.
Fly away, birdie.
Today, a couple of them just circle high above. They either fed earlier or consider me too small to be worth the dive.
Non-traditional sports like cross-country skiing and cycling provide an outlet for competitive types who might not have flourished in the more customary confrontational sports requiring pads, and balls, sticks and pucks. Or they might have crossed over from those arenas. It makes for a rich and varied mixture. Many of us got into non-traditional sports so we could get away from all that. Some even get into it for the social life completely free of competition. You can't do that when you socialize in a setting built around a game played for points.
Competitive types come up with their own point system if the activity doesn't readily provide one. You may never even know how they decided your score. If it doesn't matter to you, who cares? But sometimes they swoop in to peck your eyes, or at least drop a load of whitewash on your head to impress the rest of their flock. It's fun then to invert in your seemingly helpless flight to flash your own talons or, failing that, pull out the shotgun and just blast them into a cloud of feathers.
Fly away, birdie.
Tune My Skis
A slow day. In walks a smiling couple with a couple of scabrous planks.
"Do you tune skis here?" the man asked.
I said we do.
"These could use some wax, and the edges are really rusty,"the woman said.
Two little scaly strips of dark orange flanked the rough, gray-black, abraded base of each ski.
Not one to turn down a little income when a little is all we're getting, I checked them in for surgery. But I ask you: if a person had lost a quart of blood, would sticking a couple of tablespoons of it back into him make that much of a difference?
Waste your money if you will. Tune your skis once a year, or once every two, three or five years. But why were they fine to ski on all that time, and now, suddenly, you're looking for a better quality experience?
It doesn't have to make sense.
Most skis that get abused this way will not instantly turn into World Cup Nordic rocket ships just because they finally got a little love. Poor touring skis are born to be abused. The ski companies know it. I did truly unspeakable things to my first set of touring skis. From time to time I go into the crawl space, where their battered, bindingless carcasses lie, and apologize to them one more time.
"Go and sin no more," they whisper in a thin, ghostly voice. "Let us have suffered so your future skis will not."
I have to admit I still have a couple of beater pairs that I take out in all conditions. But at least their wounds are from valiant battles against rocks, stumps and thin cover in the wild woods, not rookie road crossings and scrapes along the roadside gravel in Maryland slush storms. I know better than to tease them with spa treatments of wax at five-year intervals.
Humans love their good intentions. I know I've made good starts at a number of things and then been drawn away by the physical limits of real life. So what the heck. If there's time, I'll do what can be done for these accident victims. Here's your two tablespoons of blood and a sticky bandage across that gash. Best of luck out there.
"Do you tune skis here?" the man asked.
I said we do.
"These could use some wax, and the edges are really rusty,"the woman said.
Two little scaly strips of dark orange flanked the rough, gray-black, abraded base of each ski.
Not one to turn down a little income when a little is all we're getting, I checked them in for surgery. But I ask you: if a person had lost a quart of blood, would sticking a couple of tablespoons of it back into him make that much of a difference?
Waste your money if you will. Tune your skis once a year, or once every two, three or five years. But why were they fine to ski on all that time, and now, suddenly, you're looking for a better quality experience?
It doesn't have to make sense.
Most skis that get abused this way will not instantly turn into World Cup Nordic rocket ships just because they finally got a little love. Poor touring skis are born to be abused. The ski companies know it. I did truly unspeakable things to my first set of touring skis. From time to time I go into the crawl space, where their battered, bindingless carcasses lie, and apologize to them one more time.
"Go and sin no more," they whisper in a thin, ghostly voice. "Let us have suffered so your future skis will not."
I have to admit I still have a couple of beater pairs that I take out in all conditions. But at least their wounds are from valiant battles against rocks, stumps and thin cover in the wild woods, not rookie road crossings and scrapes along the roadside gravel in Maryland slush storms. I know better than to tease them with spa treatments of wax at five-year intervals.
Humans love their good intentions. I know I've made good starts at a number of things and then been drawn away by the physical limits of real life. So what the heck. If there's time, I'll do what can be done for these accident victims. Here's your two tablespoons of blood and a sticky bandage across that gash. Best of luck out there.
Northeast Outdoor Recreation
With the death of New England Nordic skiing apparently at hand, we need to find some other way to move across the varied surfaces we now find in the season we called winter.
The best answer is a giant gerbil ball with studs on the outside of it. You know those little plastic hollow balls people can put their pet rodents in so they can roam freely around the house? Imagine one big enough for a human.
The ball will protect you from whatever form of precipitation the spiteful season throws at you. The studs will provide grip in snow, ice, mud or frozen ground. The ball will float, so you can navigate across small streams and rivers.
Within the ball you can run, walk or crawl. With proper padding you can even let it roll down slopes while you just bounce around. That may not be the best idea, but it's no worse than a lot of things people do already.
Nordic areas already mark their terrain to indicate the difficulty of it. Those markings will apply equally well to Terrain Balls. All the usual warnings about liability will also transfer to anyone who wants to try rolling across the landscape. Very little needs to be done except to equip your Nordic area with a rental fleet.
Come on. There's money to be made, if you just have the balls.
The best answer is a giant gerbil ball with studs on the outside of it. You know those little plastic hollow balls people can put their pet rodents in so they can roam freely around the house? Imagine one big enough for a human.
The ball will protect you from whatever form of precipitation the spiteful season throws at you. The studs will provide grip in snow, ice, mud or frozen ground. The ball will float, so you can navigate across small streams and rivers.
Within the ball you can run, walk or crawl. With proper padding you can even let it roll down slopes while you just bounce around. That may not be the best idea, but it's no worse than a lot of things people do already.
Nordic areas already mark their terrain to indicate the difficulty of it. Those markings will apply equally well to Terrain Balls. All the usual warnings about liability will also transfer to anyone who wants to try rolling across the landscape. Very little needs to be done except to equip your Nordic area with a rental fleet.
Come on. There's money to be made, if you just have the balls.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Life's Little Ironies
After its initial popularity in the 1970s cross-country skiing got the reputation of being hard work on skis that were difficult to control. This was the result of so many people actually trying it. Skis were long. Boots were floppy. Grooming was sketchy at best.
Downhill had all the advantages. You could ride up the hills. The snow was groomed. The boots were stiff. Skis were wide. You could spend a whole day within sight of a huge, heated building full of food.
By the late 1980s, the cross-country ski industry was working hard to create an image of fun. Engineers tried to improve bindings and skis. Grooming got better, because even the dedicated Nordic skiers appreciated a nice trail. By the mid 1990s, trail conditions and equipment had become far more accommodating to all levels of cross-country skier.
Coincidentally, as Nordic skis and trail preparation improved, winter deteriorated. Right now we could lay down a twelve-foot swath of immaculate corduroy in one pass with the big machine and launch a regiment of skiers of all abilities on equipment perfectly matched to their tastes. All we need is snow.
Winter used to dominate the year here. The weather would turn cold by November, after the stronger and stronger frosts that followed Labor Day. September was solidly part of fall, even though the first 20 days of it officially belong to summer. We worried about having the wood stacked and the chimney clean by late October at the latest.
Snow might not actually get deep until the end of December, or even early January, but ponds and lakes froze. Snowpack built up in the higher mountains. Ice climbs came in. It was winter. Except for a January thaw, it remained winter through the end of March. Snow receded from all but the heights through April, but one might find a patch in early May in a shaded hollow after a snowy winter.
A warm day was a gift, when winter ruled. Warmth was relative. After days of single-digit cold, the teens feel pleasant, the twenties tropical. Strong sun after mid January invites the cold, itchy hut-dweller to strip off a few layers and bask on a windless day.
As the climate warms, not only do we miss the fun that winter precipitation used to bring, we also look around uneasily, not trusting this change. We know it can snap back in short order, though only briefly. In that time all pleasure and all danger rise to their former levels. But we lack the period of adaptation we used to get, and the steady strain of what had been a normal winter. It's like jumping into a hard weight-lifting workout with no chance to warm up, then sitting down again, unable to warm down.
Meanwhile, people come in because they've heard that cross-country equipment is a lot better than it used to be.
"We're downhill skiers. We want to try some of this new equipment."
Cocooned in their world of manufactured snow, with just enough white spray paint on the ground beside the trail to make it look like a real winter, they've overlooked the fact that great gear is no help on an inch of rime over snaggly rocks and dirt. We, unfortunately, have to tell them.
Downhill had all the advantages. You could ride up the hills. The snow was groomed. The boots were stiff. Skis were wide. You could spend a whole day within sight of a huge, heated building full of food.
By the late 1980s, the cross-country ski industry was working hard to create an image of fun. Engineers tried to improve bindings and skis. Grooming got better, because even the dedicated Nordic skiers appreciated a nice trail. By the mid 1990s, trail conditions and equipment had become far more accommodating to all levels of cross-country skier.
Coincidentally, as Nordic skis and trail preparation improved, winter deteriorated. Right now we could lay down a twelve-foot swath of immaculate corduroy in one pass with the big machine and launch a regiment of skiers of all abilities on equipment perfectly matched to their tastes. All we need is snow.
Winter used to dominate the year here. The weather would turn cold by November, after the stronger and stronger frosts that followed Labor Day. September was solidly part of fall, even though the first 20 days of it officially belong to summer. We worried about having the wood stacked and the chimney clean by late October at the latest.
Snow might not actually get deep until the end of December, or even early January, but ponds and lakes froze. Snowpack built up in the higher mountains. Ice climbs came in. It was winter. Except for a January thaw, it remained winter through the end of March. Snow receded from all but the heights through April, but one might find a patch in early May in a shaded hollow after a snowy winter.
A warm day was a gift, when winter ruled. Warmth was relative. After days of single-digit cold, the teens feel pleasant, the twenties tropical. Strong sun after mid January invites the cold, itchy hut-dweller to strip off a few layers and bask on a windless day.
As the climate warms, not only do we miss the fun that winter precipitation used to bring, we also look around uneasily, not trusting this change. We know it can snap back in short order, though only briefly. In that time all pleasure and all danger rise to their former levels. But we lack the period of adaptation we used to get, and the steady strain of what had been a normal winter. It's like jumping into a hard weight-lifting workout with no chance to warm up, then sitting down again, unable to warm down.
Meanwhile, people come in because they've heard that cross-country equipment is a lot better than it used to be.
"We're downhill skiers. We want to try some of this new equipment."
Cocooned in their world of manufactured snow, with just enough white spray paint on the ground beside the trail to make it look like a real winter, they've overlooked the fact that great gear is no help on an inch of rime over snaggly rocks and dirt. We, unfortunately, have to tell them.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Looks Like Snow,Only Smaller
A few inches of unexpected bounty have actually packed down to something skiable.
Yesterday I floundered around on some Fischer Superlights. The snow squalls probably obscured the view from the lodge windows. I hope so, anyway. It was my first formal exercise in two weeks, except for a few moments of stretching or a quick set of tele dips.
Today was more like the real thing. I skated off on verifiable packed powder. Other skiers had been out, so I had marks to show me where the rocks lurked. I actually got my heart rate up from the hibernating amphibian cadence I'd exhibited while buried in the mud for two weeks.
Honestly, working a sedentary job and driving everywhere, I should just wear a bib to catch the drool. Lower jaw and eyelids hang at the same slack droop. Periodically I raise the back of one hand to rub away the saliva headed for my chin. Can't ride? Can't ski? While not ready to seek death, I might not get out of the way of the speeding train if I happened to be oozing, sluglike, across the tracks when it bore down. I might work up the energy to grunt quizzically before impact.
The weather forecast quivers indecisively between a possibly fruitful wintry mix and buckets of warm phlegm. We won't know for sure until it's on the ground.
Meanwhile, we have skied. People look straighter, springier, smilier. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Yesterday I floundered around on some Fischer Superlights. The snow squalls probably obscured the view from the lodge windows. I hope so, anyway. It was my first formal exercise in two weeks, except for a few moments of stretching or a quick set of tele dips.
Today was more like the real thing. I skated off on verifiable packed powder. Other skiers had been out, so I had marks to show me where the rocks lurked. I actually got my heart rate up from the hibernating amphibian cadence I'd exhibited while buried in the mud for two weeks.
Honestly, working a sedentary job and driving everywhere, I should just wear a bib to catch the drool. Lower jaw and eyelids hang at the same slack droop. Periodically I raise the back of one hand to rub away the saliva headed for my chin. Can't ride? Can't ski? While not ready to seek death, I might not get out of the way of the speeding train if I happened to be oozing, sluglike, across the tracks when it bore down. I might work up the energy to grunt quizzically before impact.
The weather forecast quivers indecisively between a possibly fruitful wintry mix and buckets of warm phlegm. We won't know for sure until it's on the ground.
Meanwhile, we have skied. People look straighter, springier, smilier. Enjoy it while it lasts.
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