I’m not talking about the best alpine skiers in the world here. This is about the finest mountain crews on the tour that allow the skiers the opportunity to do their thing. And they just happen to reside in North America, most notably, Beaver Creek. The enormity of staging a World Cup race cannot be overstated in the first place. The work that goes into preparing the hill, rolling out fencing, setting gates and marking the course while ensuring that it measures up to World Cup standards would be sufficient in itself to make it a huge undertaking. But factor in things like what happened early last week in Beaver Creek and the efforts of the crew becomes epic. When it started dumping in feet over the Rockies, the entire weekend was thrust into jeopardy. As it was, only the Thursday Super Combined had to be cancelled which was a minor miracle. Some 20 snowcats and hundreds of volunteers worked through the night to make sure that the marquee event of the weekend, the downhill, would go off as scheduled on Friday.
Think about this for a second. In other sports like baseball or football, you have a grounds crew that only has to maintain a flat playing area roughly a few hundred yards around and merely has to pull a tarp over the surface when bad weather hits. When it clears, they unfurl that tarp and we’re ready to play ball. Many surfaces are now made out of field turf, the synthetic blend of artificial turf and natural grass so the maintenance process is that much easier as well. Sure, a golf course has more real estate, but riding atop a lawn mower while soaking in 75 degress and sunshine could be worse. Not to belittle their work because there is also care that goes into maintaining the quality of these various playing fields, but the sum total of their workload does not even approach what mountain crews go through.
First of all, for speed events like a downhill, you are talking about a course that can be in excess of two miles long. TWO MILES! That’s over 35 football fields. I get tired shoveling my driveway, try clearing two feet of fresh for over a mile at 11,000 feet. Most courses are carved out of the trees on extremely steep slopes and with a lot of undulating terrain as well. And because they are at altitude, the weather can be more turbulent and unpredictable, not to mention changing at a moment’s notice. So crews like the one at Beaver Creek are up on that steep slope working in the middle of the night, in the biting cold, moving snow they can barely see and many are not even getting paid for it. As volunteer positions go, passing out flyers at the local polling place doesn’t sound half bad in comparison.
It’s one of the reasons that the Beav is so special as I pointed out in my last post. The folks there take great pride in staging some of the best races on the World Cup. It is a comprehensive community effort. Getting a mountain race ready is no easy feat in the best of conditions, but when mother nature strikes on top of it, only a few places on the circuit really respond with equal force. And for this, the Beav is the best.
By the way, I’ve unintentionally started this little routine of ending my posts with a total non-snow related observation. Don’t know exactly why I started really. Perhaps just too much time on the road and instead of running up the company tab with pay-per views in the hotel, why not ponder the little things such as…appetizers. I mean, it’s not like we have bigger problems in the world right? Oh, the economy may be crumbling, but don’t cry to me about bailouts when all I care about is finding a good calamari. Seriously though, why do we call them “appetizers”? By definition, that would imply that they increase our appetite. Get us hungry in the first place. So why would we be in a restaurant if we weren’t hungry already? Since when do we have to go there just to get hungry? And is a huge plate of chicken nachos really the recipe for jump starting someone’s desire for more food? They should just call appetizers what they are: more food. What, is it too embarrassing to order a plate of buffalo wings and a 20 ounce T-bone? We need to be lulled into thinking we are simply priming our palates for the main course? Please. Don’t be shy. If you’re hungry, eat. Only tell it like it is. Just as linguini is listed under pastas and lobster can be found under seafood, it’s time that giant stuffed mushrooms and cheddar cheese covered potato skins are relocated to a more appropriately labeled section of the menu.
I’m all for “MORE FOOD.” Just thinking about it is quite the appetizer.
