Since I last posted a lot of things have happened. I'll tell you about it in pictures because pictures are more interesting.

This is our "kitchen" in Lake Louise. It's actually the bathroom...

 As well as cooking in a bathroom we also went skiing so early in the morning that it was still dark out! As you can see in this picture. It was also really really COLD in Lake Louise! -30!!

 But we had fun getting our pictures taken in the ice sculptures.

 Steven is too tall for this one.

 Hansi had a particularly fun time on the second GS day when he came 1st in the J1 category...

 And 2nd over all!

 Jumping ahead to Apex, here we have Hansi in 3rd place on the J1 downhill podium. His medal didn't fit around his helmet though. It was really funny.

 He did get it on properly in the end though. I'm almost disappointed.

 We didn't do all that much racing in Apex though because it snowed A TON. Here's a lovely picture of me hucking my meat through some sick pow.

All in all Apex was fun even though I didn't have any great results in the races. Downhill is always fun though, who doesn't like tucking down a hill at 114km/h?! Unfortunately this downhill isn't that fast so 114 was my max speed. A few of the top guys got up to 125km/h on the fastest days though. We also competed in a for fun "Candy Bar Cup" night slalom! I came second, I was so close to the leader though! The timing was done on an iPhone though so there was room for error. Back to recapping Lake Louise a bit. I had some misfortune in 3/4 of the events with 2 falls/hikes and a 360 in the courses. However I had one career best result in the GS which was lovely AND I managed to avoid getting frostbite! Right now we're getting ready for the GMC cup series at home! 2 GS and 2 SL on Red Mountain Feb. 25, 26, 27, 28. I can't wait to race at home, it's been 3 years since I've raced at home and also 3 years since my parents have watched me race! Hopefully I can pull off some good results at home with home hill advantage and all that.

Embarassing Yet Funny...

A lot of funny things happen in my life, most of them are funny at my expense. Luckly I enjoy laughing at myself almost as much as my teammates enjoy laughing at me, almost. While we were in France I had one of these "funny at my expense" moments that my team particularly likes to bring up all the time. It involves pasta. Let's start from the beginning.

While in Frace we were on a meal plan in our hotel and so for each meal we ate from a buffet in the hotel. Let me start off by saying that the food was good, especially the dessert (there is another embarassing yet funny story about dessert but we'll save that for another time.)

In case you were wondering that dessert looked better in person.
So back to the story, one day I was standing in line for food with Edmund and I said "YES! They have spaghetti! I love spaghetti." Little did I know that this expression of love for spaghetti would lead me into a crazy downward spiral resulting in utter humiliation. I calmly began to put some "spaghetti" onto my plate while Edmund stared at me with a bewildered look on his face. Eventually he said "That's not spaghetti Una." Now I would like to point out that I was well aware that the pasta I was eating looked like this:

Not this:

However because I grew up in a household where my parents spoke mostly Croatian and a bit of poor English. They called all pasta either spaghetti or noodles. We use these two words interchangeably. So after a lifetime of referring to pasta as noodles and spaghetti I didn't see what the issue was and replied "Ok noodles then." Edmund however did see an issue because then said "It's not called noodles either!" So I said "Fine pasta then it's all the same" But Edmund was determined to teach me the correct term for the food I was eating so he said "It's called penne, not spaghetti, and not noodles." Then I laughed and said "What are you talking about that isn't called penne it's called panini!" At this point Edmund probably felt like he was trying to reason with a 5 year old and I was thinking about how funny it was that Edmund thought it was called penne. How absured right? Penne, pfft. Edmund tried to tell me that I was wrong and he was right but I wasn't having any of that I was 100% sure that it was called panini (although in my head it was spelt penne just pronounced panini). So the two of us finally filled our plates with food and sat down at the table with Steven, Kali and Hansi. In order to settle the argument between Edmund and I, I immediatly asked "So this pasta we're eating is called panini right?" Needless to say they started to laugh uncontrollably.
I did not see what was so funny.
They informed me that it was in fact called penne and not panini. This revelation really hurt for two reasons 1. I just argued that point for a good 5 minutes and 2. I ACTUALLY THOUGHT IT WAS CALLED PANINI MY ENTIRE LIFE UP TO THAT MOMENT. How did I live for 17 years 5 months without realizing that I didn't know the name of one of my favorite foods? Why didn't anyone inform me that panini was actually a sandwhich? To be honest with you I have no idea why I thought penne was called panini. I was never lead to believe that it wasn't called penne, the spelling certainly did not look anything like panini and I was also called paninis paninis. I don't think I will ever discover how I managed to bend logic inorder to convince myself that penne was called panini. There are few things in my life that I was more certain about than the same of this pasta so this has thrown me off a bit. What if blankets are actually called beanies!? I was just as sure of panini as I am of blankets! However I think I've been coping pretty well.
Now whenever someone on the team says "panini" we are all reminded of this event. You would be suprised how often the word panini comes up. Converstations often go like this:
Una: "Steven did you just (insert stupid thing that Steven did here)?!"
Steven: "Panini"

Merry Christmas!

After the race series last weekend/at the begining of this week we've had a bit of a break for Chirstmas. I took the 22nd off skiing and rested after the races.
It was boring.
Naturally, I went skiing the day after that.

I skied with the Freeski academy which was fun. I got some coaching from a freeskiing perspective and I was told to work on almost the exact same things as I was in racing.

I can say that freeski training is much more relaxed than race training, and you don't have to set up gates! I don't think I'll switch to freeskiing anytime soon though, people always make fun of my bent poles...
On Christmas eve, Hansi and I went skiing.

Hansi had never skied on Granite before and he got to try out his new powder skis which I am really jealous of! While we were skiing we decided to take a look at the infamous Microwave and saw two guys standing at the top of a cliff on Microwave.

  

Unfortunately the cliff is behind the trees in this picture so you can't really see it but trust me when I say it was big. We were impressed, they made it look easy though.

One guy was a ski patroller and right before he jumped off the cliff he yelled "I love my job." I would love my job too if I were him. Hansi and I continued to ski after that although nothing we did was as impressive.

Later that day my family opened our presents. My family opens presents on Chirstmas eve because after my brother and I found out the truth about Santa Claus (He drops the presents off early because he can't actually go around the world in one night; who would have guessed?!) we insisted on opening the presents on Christmas eve. I don't know how old I was when we started doing it (my dad says it started when my mom got soft), but it's been a long time since we actually opened presents on Christmas day. I got ski vises, YES!

After this I didn't take more pictures (sorry) but I went skiing again on Christmas day but we didn't get up until about 12. After that we had our traditional Christmas dinner at our neighbors house. My dad wore sandals for the walk next door. Every year bad jokes about "driving home" are cracked, somehow it never gets old. We ate dinner and played Timbits. It was fun. Next year our Christmas dinner will have an extra member, our neighbor's son's wife is pregnant, the baby is due in Febuary! I'm really excited because babies are really cute and there is currently no one close to me who has a baby. Other people's babies are the best!

Today nothing exciting has happened, I'm taking a day off skiing because we have a long block of training coming up and I'm excited to get back into gates!

Next race: Lake Louise GMC cup! Two Slalom, Two GS. Departing January 6th, can't wait.

Nakiska Races!

Last night I got in from my first race series of the season in Nakiska! 2 slaloms and 2 GS races. I'd like to start out by saying I'm sorry I didn't take one picture while I was there. This will be a pictureless blog post. It was however very scenic at the top of Nakiska as it usually is in the Rockies.
The day before the races I was in Panorama with the rest of the team and we trained a really, really, really rough slalom on Hayfever. The men's Nor-Am slalom was there the day before and it was water-injected and not groomed so there was some crazy cross ruts. I can only imagine how brutal that slalom must have been for the guys starting at the back (Hansi) in the Nor-Am. Anyhow it was good training. Anyhow after that my coach and I hopped into the truck and drove to Banff where I failed to recieve the bindings that I was supposed to get, which kind of sucked but what can you do? Then we drove to the hotel, a lot of confusing things happened, and that pretty much sums up my Friday.
Saturday morning was the first slalom race and I was SO EXCITED TO RACE. Unfortunately life didn't think this was a good idea. In the first run I crashed on the 2nd gate. I was sad, it happens. However that day I saw the benefits of being a 1 person team. Phil and I did some technical freeskiing and then went back to the hotel when I felt like it. Oh and I forgot to mention that it was about -20 that day so I guess on the bright side I didn't spend a lot of time freezing cold in a downhill suit. Brr.
Sunday morning was the second slalom race and I was SO EXCITED TO RACE. This time I did not DNF on the second gate. I didn't have a great day either though, I don't think I skied as well as I could have but in any case I did score some points* (although not many) which is always a step in the right direction. Oh and it was way way way too cold again.
Monday morning was obviously the first GS race. This was by far the best day of the series. I scored some good points and skied well although I did make some mistakes, which is good because it means I could have gone even faster! Also Monday was considerably warmer (only about -10!) which made everything way better.
Tuesday was the last GS race and it was not as good as Monday but I still scored a few points because it ended up being my 2nd best GS finish (next to Monday's finish) and it was only -3!!! This has been the warmest I've ever seen it in Nakiska in the winter time. The only time that I was there skiing and it was warmer, was for spring series last year but that doesn't count because it was April and it's supposed to be warm then!
All in all it was a good trip.
Oh and Hansi had a nice medal haul after the boy's race series in Panorama! He had a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd on the J1 podiums which is awesome. The only day that he wasn't on the podium he straddled a gate and didn't finish. Also Sasha (former Red Mountain Racer) won Monday's race (in the over all not on the J1 podium because he is not 15 or 16) and came second yesterday which is awesome!
Sorry this is boring and has too many words =)


*The points system in ski racing is really complicated. I'm sorry if you don't understand. All you really need to know is that less points is better, and if you score points it actually means your loosing points and inorder to score points you need to have a result better than atleast your 2nd best previous finish. So if you score points every race, you are improving every race

Ski Season!

This weekend was the official start of my favorite season in Rossland, ski season! Yesterday Silverload and T-bar were open and today they opened up the Red chair as well. Unfortunately it was RAINGING today. In one run I was absolutley soaked but it was worth it. We got 22cm over night so I got in some powder skiing. It was really heavy because it was raining but it was worth it. My legs were buring after a few turns; I thought I was in good shape! It was an awesome day anyway, now I'm at home sitting by the fire wrapped in a nice warm blanket. I didn't take any pictures because it was too wet out, the less I moved around in my ski gear the better. This is my last day skiing at Red for a while though because I'm headed back to Nakiska for my first races of the season. I'm super stoked to race because I'm really feeling ready to race (unlike previous seasons when I had only skied about 8 courses before the races!) and I've felt ready to race for quite a while now so I can't wait to actually go out and do it. Unfortunately I'm gonna be a one woman team in Nakiska because Kali is still recovering from a concussion and the boys are racing in Panorama. I'm going to be roommateless! First I lose a coach then I lose a roommate?! C'est la vie.

Panorama Preseason

So right now I'm in












There is a lot more snow here than there was a week ago which is great. Now there's 4 runs open! And it's snowed a bit more too.

 

You can't really see the snow in the picture unfortunately. One thing that is not so great is our tuning rooms. They are cold and they are far away from the hotel! The heating is on a timer that goes up to 6 hours but even after 6 hours it's not very warm in there. It was the worst the first day when it was -15. Steven got the bright idea of duct taping the timer in the on position.

Then last night after getting in bed and almost falling asleep I had the crazy thought that maybe this would make the tuning room burn down. So Kali and I got out of bed to untape the timer. 

As you can see we were not happy to be in the tuning room when we should have been in bed. In hindsight we (ok I) probably over reacted but you never know! Anyhow it made for a good story. Also the lights in Panorama look really pretty at night!

There's no one else staying on this floor so we took advantage of this today and played loud music in the hall way while doing a dynamic warm up in the morning. It was more fun than I just made it sound. I took a video of us doing it and it's pretty funny but it would probably take days to upload because the internet here is SO SLOW! I also hate doing dishes. These are two things about panorama that also suck. For the most part Panorama is really nice though and the views are super nice here. I love the Rockies when it's not -20!

Nakiska and Panorama

I am currently home at home enjoying  working hard on school work. About a week and a half ago however I was in Nakiska. After our day off when I last wrote a blog we had a wicked day of GS see look how stoked I am:

The next day we couldn't train because it snowed so much so we decided to go freeskiing for fun.
Bad idea.
Three runs later we were helping Mike onto a toboggan so that he could be taken down to first aid. He broke his leg. So long story short, that sucked. Actually it still does. The next day we were coachless. Naturally, when we lacked an adult weird stuff happened:

But mostly we were really bummed that Mike broke his leg and wouldn't be able to coach us for the time being. Luckly, Phil rushed out to coach us and we only had to go for one day with out a coach. On our coachless day the weather decided to be extra supportive. We went from -5 C to -18 C. Then the next day it was -20 C and finally on our last day in Nakiska (and thank goodness because it only got colder from there) it was -25 C. On our last day we did a really quick slalom session before hopping in the truck and going to Panorama and it was actually a really gorgeous day:

It was prettier in real life. Also the closed sign had an elephant drawn on it?  Normally in -25 I wouldn't take my hand out of my gloves for any reason but I was so stoked on this elephant that I did it and decided to take a picture of the view while I was at it because you know out of place elephant drawing on closed sign > gorgeous view. So here's that amazing elephant:

Was it worth the frostbite?* Yes.
As a ski racer a question I often get asked is "are those suits you wear warm?" to which I usually answer with "does it look warm?" What people don't often ask (but I think is a much more valid question) is "are those boots you wear warm?" Generally ski boots are warm because they have to protect you from the elements right? Well race boots are a different story. They're designed to help you ski as fast as possible, warmth is a  seriously neglected factor. What I'm getting at is, MY TOES WERE FREAKING COLD! This is the inside of my boots after skiing:

And if you think that looks cold, you should have seen Hansi's boots! Not to mention how thin my liners are! This is the truly cold part of ski racing. In anycase after this painfully cold weather we went to Panorama where it was significantly warmer! It was like -5 to -8 C which was fantastic in comparison. Since we were only going to be in Panorama for 2 days Kali and I didn't take the time to put all our stuff away. What this means is our room was a disaster:

Lovely. Panorama was short but sweet. Cooking for myself wasn't that bad, washing dishes was. Panorama was short but sweet in anycase and it was great because it shortened our drive home considerably so that was awesome. So I'll leave you with Hansi and I looking frosty in Pano: