sports

Leadville Ski Joring Championships

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This weekend was the 2010 Annual Leadville Ski Joring Competition. The Leadville ski joring event has been going on in since 1949 and is considered the premier event of its kind in the country.

The sport it is a timed race with skiers being pulled by horses on a track with large jumps and flat landings. In between the jumps the skier must try to spear small circular rings while swinging from one side of the track to the other – at speeds in excess of 40 mile per hour. Missed rings add 2 seconds each to your time. With average times of less than twenty seconds a single missed ring, with skiers of this caliber, will cost you the event. The winner will have the most rings and fastest time. Ski joring is no simple feat – particularly the Leadville race.

Last year, for the 60th annual race, I had the good fortune of making the draw and was able to compete. I wiped out on the first jump. My apologies to the rider and the man who wagered $250 on me. Video evidence below.

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My wipe out was nothing compared to Chris Anthony’s (former Alaskan Extreme Skiing Champion, veteran of 9 World Extreme Skiing Championships and 20 Warren Miller films) fall in the 2007 races. He didn’t walk away from his. Video evidence below.

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To get a real idea of the sense of speed, tradition, and community this ski joring event brings to Leadville watch this documentary by Foresight Multimedia. To get a sense of what the skier is seeing watch this first person video on youtube. To get a sense of my attitude before the race, read my interview in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

The Physics Of Moving Ski Moguls

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As an avid skier I have always considered moguls to be large, immovable, obstacles. Solid piles of difficulty that haphazardly push my skis around with no regard for my intentions.

Three researchers in Colorado, David B. Bahr, W. Tad Pfeffer, and Raymond C. Browning, have discovered that moguls actually move! And not only that – they move up hill!

The math goes something like this:

A specific representation for the erosion–deposition wave W at position x created by a skier n may be given by the sinusoidal form Wn(x) = a sin(2πx/2rn + ϕn), with positive W corresponding to deposition.

The layman explanation goes something like this: as a skier turns on a mogul, snow is scraped from the bottom of one mogul to the top of the next one, having the overall effect of “moving” the moguls. And, although skiers invariably push snow down the mountain, the ski moguls move uphill.

Mogul Diagram

Below is a time-lapse photo of video showing the uphill migration of ski moguls on the Riflesight Notch ski run at Winter Park Ski Resort. The movie spans five months, starting in early December and ending in late April of the 2006/2007 ski season. Each frame of the movie represents one day.

Opening Day

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Opening Day

Today is the Colorado Rockies opening day so yesterday my dad and I took a tour of Coors Field. If you’re a fan of baseball, and in particular a fan of the Rockies, I highly recommend the tour. It’s a really interesting and insightful. It lasts about 90 minutes and you get to see the entire ball field from top down and the guides are full of unusual facts and little known tid-bits about the Rockies home field.

Below is the purple stripe leading down Blake Street to Coors Field marking the way for the opening day parade.

Opening Day Racing Stripe

More pictures below.
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Josh’s Art Opening

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Josh's Scuplture
Last week I went to my friend Josh’s art opening. He was showing lots of new stuff that followed a similar vein as his last showing, but using some new mediums including willow and steal, and taking a more architectural bent. I recommend you go check it out if you have a chance. The showing is currently held at the Icelantic Gallery. If you haven’t yet heard of Icelantic, they’re a local Denver company making some really cool, short production, skis. All their models have some incredible graphics (by Travis Parr), and from what I understand, a pretty sweet ride.

The Art Of Skateboarding

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Artist/designer/sculptor Andrew Lewicki has created some high-end skateboard art. His pieces “Gold—Plated Skate Rail” and “Walnut Skate Ramp” raise the bar on these everyday skating staples. The press release mentions:

“…the city of Los Angeles has explored civic “solutions” to such practices [rebellious skateboarding behavior] by installing legal skate parks and authorized graffiti walls, a tactic Lewicki exposes as both antithetical and irksome to the rebellious spirit inherent in these exploits.”

Lewicki presents an interesting, if not an almost Utopian, response with his pieces.

Jumbotron!

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The free corporate tickets my company gave me to last nights Rockies game are on the third tier. From up there we could see me girlfriends’ firms tickets – front row directly behind the cameras next to the visitors dug out. We also saw that one of the guys she works with had two empty seats next to him. A couple of text messages later and we were right there practically on the diamond. You couldn’t get any closer to the game.

As I was scarfing down a bowl full of deluxe nachos and a beer, an usher brought a group of six young boys, all decked out in there little league uniforms, up to the cameras right next to us. He set the boys up in a staggered line with the smallest kids in front. On the ushers cue, one of the cameras stopped filming the game and swung around to face the boys. The kids went crazy cheering and pumping there fists. And then I noticed they were on the jumbotron.

Now was my chance!

I leaned way over in front of a kid. Never taking my eyes off the jumbotron I put a big smile on my face and popped a deluxe nacho dripping with cheese, chili, and jalapeno into my mouth. I did it! I finally made it onto the jumbotron at a major sporting event. Eating nachos for the world. An then the camera immediately turned off. I wasn’t on the screen for even a second. And to be honest there is some dispute as to whether my face made it onto the screen or if it was just my elbow. But I swear me and my nachos were on there for a-half-a-second.

The Rockies may have lost but I got to put another check mark on my bucket list. Next time I’m bringing my camera.

Sister Golden Hair Suprise

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The Chutes At Mary Jane
Last Sunday probably wasn’t the last day of the ski season for me. Arapahoe Basin will most likey be open long into the spring (I once skied A-Basin on the 4th of July) and I’m sure I’ll get one last day in there. But Sunday was was the last day to ski for free on our passes. Mary Jane was much more crowded than we expected. The last two weekends have been practically empty but it seems, this time around, everyone had the same idea as us and it ended up being a lot of fun.

The entire place was a giant party/cookout/ski fest. There were at least three bands in the parking lot – a punk band that drew all the young snowboarders, an “old persons band” that rocked out the classics like America’s Sister Golden Hair (One of my many favorite songs from the 70’s), and an acoustic duo that was barely audible above all the party goers.

The entire day was a blast and the whole mountain was going off. We had bluebird skies and weather in the 60’s. We had hot dogs, beer, and a grill. We had enough snow that the chutes were open (see the photo above) and the skiing was nice and heavy and mash-potato-ey at the bottom. Lots of people were dressed up in costumes or bikinis. It was probably one of the more fun days in what was one of the better ski seasons of my life.
Party In The Parking Lot

Go Colorado Rockies

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The Colorado Rockies are entering into the world series for the first time ever tonight. Exciting stuff. I’ll be watching the game and cheering on the Rockies. Will you?

I too am embarrassed and a bit disgusted with how the ticket sales for the Rockies world series home games went (as many of you are). Right now there is no real way to let Rockies management know how disappointed its fans are with how the whole thing has been handled. Here is my idea: every Rockies fan boycott next seasons first nationally televised home game. Simply don’t attend. This will hurt both the Rockies managements ego and their pocketbooks. We’ll have to wait for the 2008 schedule to come out before we find out if this game will be opening day or not (if so, plans might need to be changed) but regardless, if enough people do this, it’ll let Rockies management know how upset us true Rockies fans are. What do you think? Another website to check out is Crashtober if you are interested in trying to do something about it.

In the mean time, go out and route for your favorite team!

Below is a photo I took I took while watching the Rockies win the National League Championship. Also below is a quick video I took of the scene (unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries and I only got about three seconds of video).

The Night The Rockies Won The National League Championship

A quick video clip of the celebration

Spelunking Fulford Cave

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A bunch of friends and I went up to do some exploring in Fulford Cave this weekend. We didn’t arrive till late on Friday night and ended up setting up our tents in the dark at the Yeoman Park Campground. We still had enough time in the evening for some s’mores and a few beers though.

We woke up relatively early in the morning. I had my traditional camp breakfast of eggs-in-a-corned-beef-hash-nest. Then we headed up to the cave. The cave entrance is about a mile climb up the side of the hill just outside of Fulford Campground.

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Once you reach the top of the trail there is a culvert that is about two feet in diameter and 75 feet long, with a broken, metal ladder that drops you into the cave.

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The cave has two separate levels. We only explored the lower level this time around but we still spent about three hours underground, in the complete darkness, exploring and climbing around. Getting around is slow while trying to take note on directions to get out. Multiple tight squeezes, rope climbs, slick surfaces, and a bunch of scrambles through mud, water made the cave physically challenging. Fortunately we came prepared for the consistent for 40 degree temperatures inside.

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Thoughts of the recent mining accident, knowing the fact that you are several hundred feet underground, memorizing your way around, and a several minor claustrophobic episodes made the experience mentally challenging as well.

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There were all kinds of cool features inside. The large cathedral-like rooms the Lower Room and the Breakdown Room were probably my favorite areas. But many enjoyed climbing the underground waterfall the most.

There were also plenty of strange geological features.

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After the cave we headed back down to camp for some relaxation under the wide open sky’s of the Holy Cross Wilderness. The caves are a lot of fun for you adventurous types. If your interested in visiting, Margaret Harrison, over at Colorado Caving as a great write-up about the cave. Here is fairly detail Map of Fulford Cave. Also, if you’re not into the cave thing, both the Yeoman Park and Fulford Cave campgrounds are beautifully located in large aspen groves with surrounding beaver ponds and fishable Brush Creek running through it all. It is all located on the edge of the holy cross wilderness and has some great hiking trails to boot.

Chaos On The Rink

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I guess I’ll try and catch up on some of my recent doings.

Last Friday was opening night for the Denver Roller Dolls. We got some free tickets for donating to Denver Safehouse which, of course, made the event even sweeter. Dang, roller derbies are an absolute blast. It took me a little while (about one and a half periods) to figure out the rules and how the scoring worked but it was fun to watch even when I had no clue what was going on. It was a home team match with the Bad Apples and Green Barrettes facing off against one another. I was rooting for the Bad Apples which was unfortunate as they lost. I remember the roller derby days of the early 1980’s and watching the bouts on late night television and it is so much more fun to watch live

DRD’s two home teams will face off once again in September, and it will be interesting to watch such an even-matched game once again. You should go. Donate to Denver Safehouse regardless. It should also be noted that the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls have a bout against the Pikes Peak Derby Dames (Colorado Springs league, these women look like full-on slamazons. Yikes!) next Saturday.

The Derby Dolls are heavy on the internet which is cool in my book. Just about all of them have a blog or myspace account. Azraelisa and Paisli were a referees on Friday. And Tammytoes retired.

Cassie at Wayward Panties put together a rough & tumble playlist for the bout.

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