Garrett McNamara recently broke the world record for largest wave ever surfed. McNamara was towed into a 90-foot wall of watery death at Praia do Norte, Nazare, on the southern shores of Portugal. The previous record of 77 feet was set by Mike Parsons in 2008.
Gnarly!
And in case you were wondering, the biggest wave ever recorded by scientists measured 1,720 feet in height and killed two fishermen as it slammed down into Lituya Bay, a fjord located on the coast of Alaska on July 9 1958.
Grantland is now up and running. Grantland is Bill Simmons’ new sports/pop culture thing with ESPN. Grantland will feature long-form articles and has an impressive roster of contributors including Malcolm Gladwell, Dave Eggers and Chuck Klosterman, Katie Baker, Molly Lambert, and others. The New York Times Magazine did a great profile of the new site last weekend. The site takes its name from the legendary early 20th century sportswriter Grantland Rice.
In some respects, Grantland is meant as an antidote to the revolution Simmons helped start. The site will more closely resemble a traditional print publication than a Web site. Its name is a homage to the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice; its designer is a former art director for New York magazine and Esquire. Unlike news aggregators like The Huffington Post, Grantland will feature only exclusive content. Stories will run long and often include original reporting.
A lot of people have been disappointed that Grantland doesn’t have an RSS Feed. It’s a little hard to find, but it does. Here is the official RSS feed for Grantland. Try this if you’re looking for the full-article feed for Grantland.
A few days ago, on May 28th, Jed Mildon attempted and successfully landed the first BMX Triple Backflip in history. The trick was done in Taupo, New Zealand on a 20 meter (66 foot) roll-in ramp. The height of the ramp in the first part of the video is enough to make me squirm a bit.
Although Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) used the tagline “There are no rules!” in the early 1990s, the UFC did in fact operate with limited rules.
Butting with the head.
Eye gouging of any kind.
Biting.
Hair pulling.
Fish hooking.
Groin attacks of any kind.
Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.
Small joint manipulation.
Striking to the spine or the back of the head.
Striking downward using the point of the elbow.
Throat strikes of any kind, including, without limitation, grabbing the trachea.
Clawing, pinching or twisting of the flesh.
Grabbing the clavicle.
Kicking the head of a grounded opponent.
Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.
Stomping a grounded opponent.
Kicking to the kidney with the heel.
Spiking an opponent to the canvas on his head or neck.
Throwing an opponent out of the ring or fenced area.
Holding the shorts or gloves of an opponent
Spitting at an opponent.
Engaging in an unsportsmanlike conduct that causes injury to an opponent.
Holding the ropes or the fence.
Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area.
Attacking an opponent on or during the break.
Attacking an opponent who is under the care of the referee.
Attacking an opponent after the bell has sounded the end of the period of unarmed combat.
Flagrantly disregarding the instructions of the referee.
Timidity, including, but without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury.
Professional Waterman Chuck Patterson, skis down the face of Jaws. Peʻahi, also known as Jaws, is one of the largest surf breaks in Maui. Chuck takes it on like nobody else in history ever has. Be sure to watch this HD video in full screen.
Chuck Patterson wasn’t the first to ski on waves. Mike Douglas and Cody Townsend skied on waves in Hawaii a year before Chuck but the waves Mike and Cody experimented on weren’t nearly the size of those produced at Jaws. Needless to say, I would NOT like to be underwater with ski boots and poles on – waves or not.
Over the next two days some areas of Colorado Rockies are expecting up to eight feet of snow. Avalanche danger is already high and expected to get much worse. Be careful out there folks.
Being caught in an avalanche is like being buried in cement. You can’t dig yourself out of an avalanche. When buried, you can’t even move. Even if you could move, which you can’t, you wouldn’t know which way is up. And although it may be cold being buried in the snow it is actually suffocation that kills you. Your only chance of survival is if your friends (you are with friends right?) dig you out.
The first person video below gives you an idea of what it might be like to be caught in an avalanche, and being rescued.
The scratching/ruffling back-and-forth sound you hear is his chest rising and falling and the noise that his jacket makes. You can actually hear his breathing become stressed and accelerate, even in the short amount of time he was buried. The intermittent whimpering noise you hear is him trying to swallow and get some air.
He was only buried for 4 and a half minutes which is incredibly short. I cannot stress these next sentences enough; that in and of itself to be unburied in ONLY 4:28 is miraculous if you have any understanding of being caught in an avalanche and what it takes to be found. It could literally be some kind of “world record” just on how good the guide and supporting cast of other skiers was in getting to him.
Have some fun out there but respect nature.
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Craig Robinson pointed out over at his website Flipflopball that there are at least four different versions of the of the Yankee’s “NY” logo in use. One for print, one for the cap, one for the batting helmet, and another for the home jersey.
Here I have resized three of those logos so that the Y is the same height on each of them. I couldn’t find a good quality image of the batting helmet “NY” so rather than approximate, I’ve left it out. This is what a composite of the three logos looks like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
