April 1 – September 30

I focus on Winter sports, but we all know astronomical and meteorological Winter are done. What does this mean? It means my focus will shift from skiing to other things. My writing will consist of a grab bag of topic from ski-dreaming, to biking, to gardening, to photography, to making firewood, to IT and web design, and working behind the scenes for next season.

I have set a goal for myself to maintain a 1 post/day rate.

That will be a challenge and I suspect I will rarely exceed that rate.

As I note above, expect posts on a number of my different activities: cooking, photography, gardening, taking care of the yard, golf, making firewood, fishing, hunting, water-skiing, and others. It will lose the focus, but even ski resorts have to come up with something during the off season and for them I am sure it is the same, a number of different activities.

On the technical side, I have set a number of goals. I want to revamp the Map. The map lost a couple of stars and I found removing a star is not a trivial task. I have an overall plan to revamp the map and will add in hospitality businesses as well as the ski resorts. I want to redo the theme adding vibrancy and improving the search function interface.. I want the search to be easier for you to use and I will review and rethink my categories and see about revising them.

I will add more revenue streams to this site. I do not have to tell you, the domain is not free, the hosting is not free, and neither are lift tickets, food, transport, housing, etc. I am not trying to guilt trip you into anything, I am hoping I can broker meetings between those in need and those who can satisfy that need, and catching a little bit of that rain. The new revenue streams will be made from a number of small efforts and one major project.

Another project is to create more video. This is actually ambitious because while I do understand photography (to a certain extent) I have never really done any sort of video production, but I am not afraid to give it a try. I have a goal to produce a video and place it in the header or in the about page and will most likely be myself explaining The Wisconsin Skier. I am excited about this project. I am planning to produce videos on making firewood and others topics too! This will also be good motivation to get me working out again and to do so with an eye towards getting myself and motivating yourself to get into better ski shape, so expect articles on getting into and keeping in ski shape.

One last thing I will be doing is to promote a group I joined and that is The Daily Crushers. Get on Facebook and look up The Daily Crushers, a great group of people looking to give each other a boost.

I know I have some regular readers out there and I want to take this moment to say thank you. Your visits (and even from the occasional reader) and the feedback I have received via Twitter, Facebook, and other channels has been encouraging.

Good Stuff!

4 Comments

  1. I have several oak trees here that are doing a fine job of making firewood! I’ll be interested to see how you do it. I’m also interested in doing more with video, I look forward to sharing ideas!

  2. El Jefe,

    The firewood currently seasoning consists of two batches. The first is a smallish amount of maple. We obtained a permit form the US Forest service and my Dad and I searched out downed trees. We harvested some for the cabin and a bit for myself. That wood we found, we cut it into 8′ pieces, got it back to the cabin (or my house) and then bucked it and hand split it. The majority of my wood is white oak. That wood was purchased by a semi-tractor-trailer load and the person I went in on that purchase with had quite the setup. He had a mini-crawler with a bucket, he’ld pick up three-four logs and we’ld attack with either a 16″-20″ bar Stihl saw or maybe the 4′ saw! This fellow also had a tractor driven hydraulic splitter. Not done yet, this guy had a large dump trailer and two loads of that and one load of my Dad’s Chilton trailer and we had the wood at my place all split and ready for seasoning. Some of the wood was already seasoned, but I had to pick through it.

  3. I admire your sticking-to-it when there is no snow. I have been contacting pro skiers and getting interviews on how they stay in shape in the off season. They are more accessible then and also more willing to chat for longer. Great stuff Mark!

  4. LOL! Timely comment Patrick, we have about 4″ of fresh snow on the ground! My typical comment about this is 1½ months ago I would have been pumped and excited about this snow, now it is just a four letter word! Cheers!

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