Whistler one more time

Several rafting trips are taking shape for my summer and fall, but right now I’ve still got a little bit left of the ski season to enjoy. This Friday is another Whistler trip. Last trip up there was almost a month ago, so I’m due. But I’ve gotten a little rafting in since, which is good. Living in Seattle is nice like that. A couple weekends ago I did a “NW Biathlon” – floated the Green River Gorge on Saturday and skied Stevens on Sunday.

Another fixation: earlier this year I took my GPS to Whistler and was surprised to see that we travelled more than 100 miles in the two days of skiing, including lifts and runs. Pretty cool. Ya gotta love Whistler; the place is HUGE! But the cool part was that they were grooming the Dave Murry Downhill course for the world cup event held a month or so back. We hit it early and hard and got the GPS cranked up to 52mph!! Not bad, given that I’m 57 years old! Also not bad since I was on my beloved Dynastar Legend Pro Riders, which are VERY FAT! They look like those old Cyprus Garden-variety water skis, where they ski around doing human pyramids!

So the GPS sort of brought the idea to mind of ‘skiing your age’. Golfers make a big deal out of ‘shooting your age’. But I figure the numbers work in your favor with golf. So here I am, at 57. Can I crank it up to 57 mph? I gotta try, but it’s not happened yet. Conditions have to be perfect. It’s gonna get much tougher every year from here on out. I’m within striking distance, so that has got to be a goal for next year.

But it will be as much about the conditions as anything. And when they have the nets up on the downhill course, it gets you pretty stoked. The course by the way is pretty damn cool. The world cup kids were ranting about it. None of the teams have skied it in competition since something like ’98 when they held some early season world cup races at Whistler and got rained out on consecutive years. The course reminds me of wicked-big staircase. Real steep headwalls onto flats, which then lead to falling off the next headwall, etc., etc, until you need to have your knees removed from your shoulder joints. Oh yea, and there is one massive jump right above the finish. Those world cup kids are crazy. I scrubbed a bunch of speed approaching the lip of that jump, given that I’m old and wise!

This weekend is the second weekend of the Telus festival so it’ll be a pretty crazy place. All the people, all the music. My friends and I hang out at Monks where they play the music from our youth (Stones, CCR, etc.) It’s always fun to see 50-somethings dancing on the tables!)