You’ve got to love the internet in West Yellowstone. I guess it’s just a part of the experience out here. Yesterday I was running around trying to get the results posted, trying to get my articles posted, then *poof* internet dies again. Shucks.

Oh well, they’ll just have to go up late. The race organizers seemed to get the race results up fairly quickly after yesterday’s race, so if you want to see them as fast as possible, just go to the summit timing site. That’s all I’m going to check anyway. http://summittiming.com/races/race_results.php

I wake up, hit the trail to watch the race, try to talk to as many badass racers as possible, then do my best to get back to a place with good internet to finish up phone interviews and try to get three articles out before the sun goes down. Usually I end up hauling ass from start to finish to get the digs on the race, and it turns into a real workout.

It’s so easy to get out and ski twice a day while you are here. Yesterday I finished myself off with some short intervals after cruising around watching the race. After writing the articles I headed out for a *great* moonlight ski around Deja-Vu. Yeah, that turned into 30 minutes of wooping and hollering and skiing super hard. Tanked.

So I’m talking to some sweet young Canuk on the phone, and suddenly the phone rings on the other line, and my “other” boss in LA calls. You know, the one that pays my rent? The german voice is unmistakable. Remember Flea playing the Nihilist in the Big Labowski? “Wheeerreees the muuunney, Labooowskiii…..” It’s almost comical. Like Arnold but higher pitched.

“Patrick, we reeelly neeed to steppit up hee’a. Ze deadline isch approaching. Ze Programm codes aar not funktioning as exschpekted. We aar becoming veery stressd out ova hee’a.”

Stress. Race results, race commentary, writing code. Shit, I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time condensing all these interviews in, and now I have to fix bugs in this freaking orchestra sampler software.

In other news, I cracked or bruised a rib playing American football the day before I drove up, and as soon as I hit that first double pole I knew classic skiing was out. Skating barely works. It hurts to inhale all the way. Sleeping is tough, but that’s tough anyway. Nice one Pat.

There are a few Canadians here, and I have to mention that they are exceptionally enjoyable to interview. I talked to Shayla and Dasha yesterday and they are really chipper about everything and pumped to be here. What a joy. Hope to meet some of the guys on Friday.

We are supposed to get some bright green jackets to run around in, which would be awesome. It’s a little weird being the only person at the venue that’s providing any coverage of the races and not having any badge or tag or otherwise distinguishing feature to say “Hey, I’m here for a reason, so let me through!” I just have to go on face recognition for now.

When you are around, try to stop in at Free Heel and Wheel. I love that store. Not only are the girls hot, but they have food and coffee and sell wind briefs. On that note, I’m going to put together a “hottest chick on the World Cup” poll.

Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.