While I am currently in Zermatt, let’s backtrack a week back to our arrival in Munich. Let’s just say that things didn’t exactly go quite as smoothly as planned. I arrived with Taylor Shiffrin on a United flight at around 7:00 am. We picked up our bags, and went to meet my coach Peter Lange who had a car waiting for us outside. We got all the bags out to the car, until Taylor realized he had forgotten one of his bags in the baggage claim. In Europe, once you leave the baggage claim area you aren’t allowed back inside. Taylor had to go up to a Lufthansa representative to get a temporary boarding pass that would allow him to get through security. After a long wait, Taylor comes out with his bag. No big deal, we’re going to pick up Chris Acosta, Andreas Haug, and my new assistant coach Tyler Johnson at the Delta terminal. We pull up to meet them, only to have them tell us that Delta lost all 9 of Chris and Tyler’s bags. The Delta representative informed them that they would have to wait at least 24 hours to get their bags, and we had to get to Wittenberg, the site of our first block of our training camp. We loaded up our less than full car and headed on an 8 hour drive to Wittenberg, Germany.
Wittenberg is the location of an indoor ski dome located in the middle of a cow patty. It has a grand total of about 200 vertical feet, totaling around an 18 second slalom course. However, the snow there is perfectly injected and an awesome place to test skis and get back on snow. There, I got my new skis for the year, and they look sick! I also got two pairs of the new 195 GS ski, which for those of you who don’t follow skiing closely is a major change from the previous GS ski. FIS (the governing body of ski racing) had determined that the speeds and angles the current world cup skiers were getting was too dangerous and wanted to slow them down. Hence, they came out with this longer, higher radius, narrower ski that is supposed to be slower and harder to ski on. FIS is forcing all World Cup and Europa Cup (one step below world cup) skiers to ski on this ski while implementing the new ski to the lower levels next near. I am not technically required to ski on this ski this coming year, but I feel like I want to get ahead of the game and get prepared for the future to have an edge on my competitors. However, we were in Wittenberg to ski slalom, not GS.
We got some really great skiing in and I feel great on my new skis. Joining me on my adventure was the aforementioned Chris, Andreas, Taylor, and Colby Lange (Peter’s son and a little ripper). I also was joined by Nick Cohee, one of the fastest GS skiers in the world. He had a big adventure on his way to Wittenberg, which you can read on his blog at www.sicknickcohee.blogspot.com. After a 3 day block in Wittenberg, we drove down to Altenmarkt, Austria. This was a SUPER LONG drive of about 13 hours from northern Germany to Eastern Austria. At about 3:00 in the afternoon after having lunch, we stopped to fill up the cars before heading through to Altenmarkt. After pulling out of the gas station, my coach Tyler suddenly realized that he had filled up gas in our diesel car. The van started to sputter and gave out, and we pulled off to the side of the road. Gasoline and Diesel are too very different fuels and do not mix together. If gas gets into the fuel pumps of a car, it can ruin it for good. We pulled off the road, turned the car off, and called the German ADAC, which is their tow truck/repair service. We waited for about 2 hours until the guy showed up. He was really nice and spoke English, and told us that there was a 50-50 chance that we could save the engine. So we got towed to his shop and we had to hand pump all of the gas out of the engine and the fuel pumps. Then we had to tow it back to the gas station to fill it up and pray that it started. And…. Hooray! We got the engine started and we were on our way! We had a serious bump but managed to get into Altenmarkt at around 3 a.m.
The next morning, I went to get my boots made by the Fischer boot guy Hannes. Hannes is a great guy and has helped us out with gear for the past three years; he has been super helpful with my boots. After I got my boots at Fischer and Taylor got his made at Atomic, we headed out on another long drive to Zurich, Switzerland. On our way, we picked up the final member of our new team, Seppi Stieglar. This was about a 7 hour drive across two countries to the capital of Switzerland. After holing up there for the night, we made our last stretch to beautiful Zermatt, Switzerland. We will be staying here for 15 days of skiing, and I’m really excited to get on my new skis and boots and get in the course. The Internet is pretty slow here, but I’ll try to get some pictures and movies up if it allows. Thanks for reading, and have a great summer!
.)) Alex Leever
No comments:
Post a Comment