Jimmy's first ski

St. John's University has some great X/C trails, maybe 10 miles or more of groomed joy. With the thaw of the last 2 days, and some freezing rain followed by a little (too little) new snow, the trail were icy today, but that didn't keep Matt, Ben, Jim, and I from putting in 3 hours of fun out there. I think Jim won the falling contest, both in quantity and in style points (I was just behind in the quantity but just didn't have the panache).

Give him a break--it was his first time on skinny skis since last March. Actually, I'm not giving him a break, since I called him numerous times in the last 3 weeks to go skiing with us, but he sent text messages back that just said, "hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

Today was payback time, Mr. Bell.

Unfortunately, I forgot the spy cam, so no actual footage is available of the near lethal plunge that Jim took about an hour into the ski. Here's something similar, but not as funny:




Jimmy's fall was more like a slow-mo, and he never actually lost contact with the snow, although numerous parts of his anatomy were in contact at various times. It was not lethal to him although he fell, landed squatting on the back of his skis, and shot down the hill toward a tree, bailing out at the last second only to end up sliding down the rest of the hill on his back, legs akimbo.

No, it was nearly lethal to Matt, Ben, and I who watched the whole thing from the top of the next hill, and laughed so hard we fell over. I think Matt slid into a tree, and I almost fell back down the hill we had just climbed up. It took us about 5 minutes just to get the use of our legs back, we were so weak from howling. Mr. Bell took it well, and spent quite a bit of time trying to get up but failing because he, too, was weak with laughter. DOC'S ADVICE: don't try to ski when you are laughing that hard--it could be lethal, or at least you might pop a hernia.

I am bidding a fond farewell to an old friend: my KHS CX bike, AKA my old winter bike. I don't do much CX (mostly because I'm pretty bad at it), but I got a great deal last winter on a Scott Team Cross bike, which I used as my winter bike for most of last winter. So, my KHS hung in my garage all year collecting dust and pining away. Enter my friend Ben, whose wife got him an early Christmas present of some really swell winter riding gear (like Lake boots, winter tights, etc). His only road bike is a really nice one (a Trek Madone or 5500 or something like that), so he needs a winter bike.

It needs a little work until it's rideable (minor things like re-installing the front cantilever brakes and putting decent tires on it), so Luke will do his wrench magic, and hopefully Ben will be out on the icy gravel with the rest of us nuts next weekend.