The Wisconsin Skier

One item that came up for discussion this weekend and now it is something I am seeing other talk about is your true ability to turn when you have to. I ski down run-X and can take nice long turns and can take some tight turns (how tight depends on if I am in the groove or not). If you can carve then you are most likely comfortable turning on your own whim.

However, turning when someone else demands you to turn can be daunting, and that is what the whole idea of racing the gates is based on. Can you turn on someone else’s command and can you do it quickly and safely?
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You may have heard of the Dancing Bears aniconic set of bears associated with the Grateful Dead. Well, I am working on putting them into ski gear!

It is a fair amount of drudgery, but it is funny how labors of love (an oxymoron) do not seem like drudgery but you keep pushing on and driving on till you reach your goal. I want to add boots and perhaps actual skis rather than the black lines I drew. Still I like it! Also, I am using images I captured and modified for a java applet I wrote around 15 or so years ago!

I took a scan of the bumper sticker, isolated each bear, and smoothed out the edges (in some cases pixel by pixel), and then cloned and colored the bears. So, each color set had one bear in each dance step. I then coded up a java applet to put the bears through their dance steps.

As you can see, I have other plans for the Dancing Bears. What I really need is larger images, the one above is 55 pixels square and a lot of detail gets lost when ski gear gets scaled down from let us say 200×250 to 20×25!

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One of the things us skiers do is to tuck, that is to assume a more streamlined body posture. It makes a huge difference, especially when the time between the first place and the out of placing is measured in hundredths of a second, and that is no exaggeration.

If you have watched competitive skiing you know what I am talking about. Racers spend from more to less time in a tuck from downhill races to slalom. The more and tighter turning required means less time tucking and more time in a more upright position.

Now, what does a good tuck look like? Read on!
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Congratulations! You are about to take your first ski trip to an Olympic capable resort, but you never skied outside of Wisconsin, Michigan, or Minnesota and are worried about finding appropriate runs for your ability.

Do not worry, but understand a few things that I have noted in other posts. The key thing is — resorts grade their trails on a curve based solely on the runs at their own resort. The uber-tough runs are double-blacks, the tough ones are blacks, the intermediate ones are blues, and the easiest are greens. Do know, a black (or even a 2xblack) at your local Wisconsin ski area may be tagged as a green in Colorado or at Killington.
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Ski Brule March 6 & 7, 2010.

The sun was bright, the weather warm, and the snow melting. However, the children were focused (for the most part) on ski racing.

The skiing was fun to watch. On Saturday, the children successfully and slowly skied slalom, I expected faster times. I have skied at Ski Brule many times when the USSA races were on and am accustomed to a lot of zooming youngsters on all the ski runs. They fearlessly tuck and schuss, lay down incredible carves, and really work their skis; so I expected faster times.

To be fair, the weather made for slow snow and looking good free-skiing is easier than skiing fast and turning on another’s whim! Also, their courses were longer than the NASTAR course I am used to running, and most the extra length is on relatively flat terrain. They were also skiing a slalom course with more and tighter turning.

It was interesting watching the youngsters and no matter where I was watching, I could pick out the better skiers. No matter whether it was at the starting house, in the middle of the course, or at the finish line (however, by the finish line time it was obvious). Some of this is obviously related to the skier’s age, the older children are obviously more powerful and more experienced, still within age groups it was obvious.
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A young racer skids to a stop after crossing the finish line. This photo was taken at the USSA J4/J5/J6 Finale Races at Ski Brule on Sunday March, 7 2010.
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How long indeed?

Obviously, there is no statutory definition or some sort of arbitrary of Wisconsin’s ski season.

Short answer, it depends. For the long answer read on.
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My latest video on the slopes effort. I strapped the camera to my body again, but it came loose, so I ended up handholding the camera. The camera I am using here is my Panasonic Lumix at about 5 Mpixel, I should break out my dedicated video camera and see what I can do.

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A racer carves a turn around a slalom gate.

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Even after skiing all day long and skiing hard the children were still full of energy. Climbing up on the ramp and looking for others to play with.

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