toys...
I’ve mentioned before how much I love to clean. It’s right up there with sitting in the middle seat of a stuffy airplane, right between the guy who keeps sneezing and the guy who needs an extension for his seat belt. At some point, you have to suck it up and figure out a way to survive that flight because the only way you are going to get to Utah to test skis for Backcountry Magazine is by enduring, and by finding a polite way to ask that bratty little bleeper behind you to kindly stop kicking your seat.
So now that I’m back from the Ski Test, it’s time to start cleaning. The reward for cleaning my office may not be as amazing as the Ski Test, but it will be largely satisfying in it’s own obsessive compulsive way.
My office is insanely messy. The part where I pretty much stuffed three different events into boxes and shoved them quickly into my office right before I left for Utah certainly had something to do with it. But I’ve been chipping away at it and…
happy hour...
What’s that? You don’t care about my cleaning? But it’s a funny story! No? You’d rather hear about the Ski Test. Are you sure? Ok. Fine. Ski Test it is.
The dining room of the hotel served as our main meeting area. The breakfast counters and tables were covered in some combination of ski test forms, coffee cups, PRB tall boys, pizza boxes, popcicle sticks, Kinko gloves, Girl Scout cookies, ice buckets, sunglasses, Rob’s missing ipod and slew of ski straps, popcorn and other assorted crap. A knee deep pile of boots, poles, boxes and ski bags was stacked by the doors. About 100+ pairs of skis had been precariously placed against the walls and the huge retro ski art that hung there.
“Maybe we should set those skis on the ground,” someone suggested. There was a moment of silence followed by a collective groan, similar to that heard after mention of any good idea which may require a pause in fun. But the groan wasn’t so much a reluctance to put down our drinks and work for a few minutes, as it was a reluctance to move those skis any more than we really had to.
You see, part of testing 150+ pairs of skis requires some interesting logistic hurdles including getting them to the hotel, from the hotel to the ski area “base camp,” and then out to the racks and back in each day. And then of course the grand finale of bringing them all back down and getting them
Rob took on a supervisory role...
back to the reps. And there are also about 60+ pairs of boots, poles, boot molders and more amazingling heavy and awkward to carry items integral to the test. And we get to move it all.
Yes, yes. Someone please call the Whambulance. We bitch and moan. We set the skis on the ground for now, only to pick them up and move them again and again. We go back to drinking our PBRs and greeting fellow testers as they roll in. Bromances are rekindled, the Beer Mingo has returned. The Ski Test is on!!
The Ski Test is for Backcountry and Telemark Skier Magazines. We test at Powder Mountain in Utah (which I swore to the locals I would tell you all to never go there!) Basically we take a pair of skis for a couple runs, trying to vary the terrain and conditions to see how they perform. Second verse, same as the first. Over the course of a day, testers get anywhere from 4 to 12 tests in, including skis, boots and/or bindings.
Schedule of Events
Then we write it all up and hand in our test forms each night so Drew can “do his thing,” and keep
the test running smoothly. (BTW – thanks for a job very well done this year, Drew!)
And then after the test forms were in (we really did do most of our homework first!) the testers would gather and socialize in our own unique way, turning lawn ornaments into drinking vessels, using surfboards as bars, giving each other hair cuts at midnight and documenting it all on film of some sort. It’s just what we do.
Now I can’t really give away anything specific from the test – you’ll just have to pick up your own copies of Backcountry and Telemark Skier Magazines to get the full scoop, but what I can tell you is the following:
-
one of many hotties
Fat is Sexy Yeah, some of the skis could have used a little diet, but most of the fatties really knew how to throw their girth around. There were some very pleasant surprises that left me actuallyconsidering a 110 underfoot model as an all mountain ski for the East! Yes – really! What was surprising was how these floated in even small amounts of snow. Models that got their rocker dialed in were as tasty as apple pie with a dollop of ice cream on top. Hello Calories – let’s be friends…!
- Rocker? But I don’t even know her! The latest technology craze in the industry is Rocker. Companies now apply some level of rocker (or
Rock this baby
reverse camber or splay,) to nearly all the skis in their line ups. Rocker in some part of the ski, be it the tip, the tail or both, at lengths from 3 to 18 inches, allows the ski to pivot and float with greater ease than traditional cambered skis. And while last year, many of these skis felt like they were just rockered because everyone else was doing it, this year a lot more manufacturers got it right. Many skis that I hated last year, rocked the rocker this time. Many skis that I liked last year, I was down right smitten with this year. Rocker? But I saw her first!
- In Your Face Jim Rose! One of the best parts of ski testing is geeking out with other fellow gear heads pretty much the whole time.
comparing notes
From the moment you walk in and see all the goodies to the moment you have to say goodbye, the topic of gear is #1, (followed closely by the schedule of the Progressive Party, how the intern managed not to puke on the bus, and whether or not Sassy is going to take his shirt off again.) Talking someone’s ear off about the performance of your skis just isn’t the same when there are no test forms to be filled out. (Apologies to my non-testing ski buddies for rambling on all lift ride!)
some of the crew
For more information about the ski test, check out Backcountry Magazine’s Web Page. While you’re there, you should get a subscription to it and to Telemark Skier Magazine! Both offer tremendous ski porn, eh-hm, and of course great articles!
So there you have it. And my office still isn’t clean…
