Another weekend is approaching in Boulder, Colo., which means instead of focusing on this staff meeting I’m wondering where I will sleep tomorrow. Not in a sleazy way. I have way loftier motives in mind, like fresh tracks on Saturday. So my bedding options include my friend Steven’s couch in Vail, my Boulder friends’ condo in Dillon, or maybe even an interstate motel splurge. Only one thing is certain—I plan to wake up at the foot of the mountain at 8 a.m. on Sunday, not 120 miles northeast in my own bedroom at 5:30 a.m. Like many Front Rangers with ski passes, I’ll go to great lengths—and sleep on hard floors—to spare myself from 3 hours of one-way ski traffic.
Because this situation recurs every week, the accommodations quandary has actually become fun—like playing sleeping-bag tag in middle school. Here’s my decision-making strategy, based on the good old plus-minus model, for figuring out where to shack up this weekend.
a. Steven’s couch
+ it’s comfy, suede, FREE and comes with a 40-inch flatscreen
+ comes with great company and a short walk to Vail Village
—southeast-facing windows lead to a harsh sunny awakening, and combined with Steven’s scotch cabinet, can start your day with a headache
b. Dillon condo
+ super-convenient location tucked between Keystone and Breckenridge
+ guaranteed party with 14 roommates
—14 roomies = no privacy, no bed, lots of volume, lots of wet long underwear hanging
—$20 per person per night is the friend rate
c. Random Motel
+ thankfully, there are economy lodges for budget skiers like me sprinkled throughout the local peaks (The Roost, Vail; Arapahoe Inn, Keystone).
—said discount lodges usually don’t come with a slopeside hot tub. If they do, look before you leap.
—NOT free, putting a dent in the lunch and après-ski budget
d. Friends’ Vail condo
+ posh digs and furniture, complimentary homemade cookies and cocoa
+ awake to point-blank view of the slopes, steps from the gondola
—slim chance of availability
—one lick of opulence makes you want more
Blog | boulder | Breckenridge | Colorado | Front Range | I-70 | keystone | skiing | Vail | weekend | comments | ↑top
Australian three-tracker competing in Sestriere, Italy (Paralympic Gmes, 2004, photo credit: Joe Kusumoto Photography
By Tara Kusumoto
The Paralympics – often mistakenly called the Para-Olympics – are for elite athletes with physical disabilities.
An alpine skier who’s visually impaired relies on her guide as her “sight” to stay on course. A soldier who lost both of his legs in Iraq races on prosthetic legs in his first Paralympic competition. A Nordic athlete swaps her wheelchair for a sit-ski for the 10 kilometer classic cross country race.
Along with visually impaired (VI), amputee and spinal injuries, athlete disability categories include Cerebral Palsy, which affects movement, reflexes and posture, as well as “les autres,” encompassing physical disabilities such as Dwarfism and Multiple Sclerosis.
Held at the same competition venues as the Olympics, the Paralympic Winter Games feature five sports: alpine skiing (downhill, Super-G, Super Combined, Giant Slalom and Slalom), cross country skiing, biathlon, sled hockey (also known as ice sledge hockey), and wheelchair curling. Both alpine and Nordic are further separated into “standing,” “sitting” and “visually impaired” categories to fairly match athletes against like abilities.
“Every day, every year, every Games, we continue to break thresholds and increase in excellence,” said Charlie Huebner, Chief of Paralympics, U.S. Olympic Committee. “Competitors are getting stronger, sports are developing and performances are phenomenal.”
13 women and 37 men will represent Team USA in 2010, and while they certainly have podium potential, Huebner says that “having the team represent our country and perform at the best of their abilities is what success will be.”
Building Community, Developing Athletes
For the U.S. Paralympics, establishing community-level resources for kids with physical disabilities goes hand in hand with developing a pipeline of future Paralympians. The organization’s Paralympic Sport Clubs create a healthier population of kids with physical disabilities by offering them the chance to participate in daily activity and sport.
“With physical activity comes engagement,” says Huebner, “and we see every day how being integrated as part of the peer process has positive social impact on those individuals.”
Continued emphasis on developing programs around the country will help the organization grow from 114 clubs today to their goal of 250 by 2012. And with that growth, chances are we’ll see a natural pipeline of elite athletes who may one day aspire to Paralympic dreams.
Where to Watch
Both in the U.S. and around the world, Huebner observes that the Paralympic movement is making more of an impact, leading to further integration of programming with the Olympics. This year, for example, the Olympic men’s and women’s hockey coaches and the Paralympic sled hockey coaches were named at the same time.
While U.S. broadcast of the Paralympics does not yet match that of the Olympics, coverage continues to improve thanks to increased interest from the American public, and increased support from individual and corporate sponsors.
This year, you can catch Opening Ceremonies and recaps on NBC Sports and Universal Sports:
* NBC Sports Opening Ceremony highlights – Saturday, March 13, 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET
* NBC Sports Paralympics recap – Saturday, April 10, 3:00-5:00 p.m. ET
* Universal Sports nightly two hour program – Monday, March 15–Tuesday March 23, 7:00 p.m. ET (re-air at 11:00 p.m. ET)
* U.S. Paralympic Team – daily video and news highlights
* Paralympic Sport TV – live daily coverage online
I love riding with local events to find new bike routes, hidden loops, and bike-path connectors. But today Google unveiled it’s new bike tool which debuts with mapped trails and bike lanes in 150 cities. It’s more than 12,000 reasons—that’s the number of mapped miles they’ve got already—to hit the trail, the path, the bike lanes, and get on your bike. Check out their how-to video and start pedaling!
Google Bike Directions:
Blog | Cycling | google | maps | video | comments | ↑top
Michelle May, M.D.–the award-winning author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle–submitted this list of 15 things you can learn from your kids about food. It’s a good reminder of healthy habits. Enjoy!
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There are many important things that we need to teach children as they grow – but they have many natural behaviors that we shouldn’t try to change. In fact, we can learn a few things from kids! Here are some important lessons:
Eat when you’re hungry. From the time they are born, babies know when and how much they need to eat – and they cry to let us know too! As they grow, this important instinct can be un-learned. By the time we are adults, most of us have learned to eat for many other reasons besides hunger – mealtimes, tempting food, advertising, free food, stress, anger, boredom, reward and celebration. By recognizing the difference between needing to eat and wanting to eat, adults can re-learn when and how much to eat too.
Stop eating when you’re full. Infants turn their head away when they have had enough to eat, and toddlers will throw a plate of food on the floor when they’re done. But as adults, we clean our plates because “there are starving children” somewhere, out of obligation or just because something tastes good (even though it never tastes as good as it did at the beginning). I am not suggesting that we start throwing our plates on the floor again, but we need to remember that food is abundant in our society so there is no need to eat it all now.
Being hungry makes you grouchy. Being hungry, tired, or frustrated are sure to make a child crabby and they affect adults the same way. Become your best self-parent and take care of your needs –instead of taking it out on everyone around you.
Snacks are good. Kids naturally prefer to eat smaller meals with snacks in between whenever they get hungry. That pattern of eating keeps their metabolism stoked all day. Adults who need to fire up their metabolism should try this too.
Play with your food. Most kids love to examine, smell, and touch their food. Since eating is a total sensory experience, they get the most from every morsel. This childlike approach will help you eat less food while enjoying it more. You’ll appreciate the aroma, appearance, and flavors more if you aren’t driving, watching T.V., or standing over the sink.
All foods fit. Children are born with a natural preference for sweet foods and quickly learn to enjoy fatty foods. Though parents sometimes worry about it, these “fun” foods can be part of a healthy diet. In fact, studies show that overly restrictive food rules cause children to feel guilty, ashamed and lead to rebellious eating. Sounds like the last time you weren’t “allowed” to eat something “bad” on a diet, doesn’t it? Children and adults both eat healthier when they learn to enjoy less nutritious foods in moderation without deprivation.
Be a picky eater. Kids won’t easily eat something they don’t like. Think of how much less food you’d eat if you didn’t settle for food that just tasted “so-so.”
You can learn to like new foods. Healthy eating is an acquired taste. Good nutrition is essential, so providing a variety of appealing, healthful foods will benefit the whole family. It can take up to ten exposures of a new food for children to accept it. In our house, we have a two-bite rule. Everyone tastes two bites of everything; if they still don’t like it, they don’t have to eat it – but they have to try it again the next time we have it. Since that is “The Rule,” there are no battles at the table and the kids often surprise themselves by liking something they thought they wouldn’t.
Follow the leader. Face it. Kids watch and often imitate everything we do. If they observe us eating a variety of healthful foods and exercising regularly, then they will learn to take good care of their bodies. Likewise, if they don’t hear adults making comments like “I am so huge” and “She looks fat in that,” then they are less likely to suffer from poor self-esteem and a judgmental attitude.
There is more to a party than cake and ice cream! Invite a child to a party and they’ll want to know what they are going to get to do. Invite an adult and they’ll wonder what food will be served. You don’t have to avoid parties to manage your weight; just focus on the real purpose of social events – to be social!
Eating with your family is fun. Since babies and toddlers must be fed by their parents, they naturally love eating with other people. Family mealtime is your opportunity to model good habits and connect with each other. Now that my children are older, we sometimes play “High-Low” at dinner. Each member of the family takes a turn telling the others about the best and worst parts of their day. What a door opener to great conversations.
Being active is natural. The best gym in the world is the playground. Too bad most adults have learned to associate physical activity with punishment for eating. Our kids will learn to hate it too if they hear us say things like, “I was bad so I have to exercise for an extra half-hour.”
It’s boring to just sit around! Toddlers seem to be in perpetual motion while they are constantly exploring their world. Young kids love to run in the grass, play on the playground, and challenge themselves and each other to increasingly more difficult activities. Of course, as they get older, television, computers, and electronic games compete for their attention. In our family, to encourage other activities, we use “screen time” which limits how much time our children are allowed to spend on anything with a screen. Sometimes adults would benefit by limiting their screen time and exploring their world a little more.
Sleep is good. After a full day, children need a good night’s sleep to prepare for all of the adventures that tomorrow will hold. Wouldn’t we all benefit from a consistent bedtime to make sure we get our rest too?
Live in the moment. Kids are masters at living in the present. They don’t waste a lot of energy worrying about what has already happened or what might happen tomorrow. They are fully engaged in small pursuits like discovering where the ants are going, chasing the dog, or seeing how deep they can dig with a plastic shovel. We, on the other hand, continue to scurry around, chasing after our dreams, and all the while, digging ourselves deeper and deeper. We can learn a lot from children!
Michelle May, M.D. is the award-winning author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle and the founder of the Am I Hungry?® Mindful Eating Program (www.AmIHungry.com) that helps individuals learn to break free from mindless and emotional eating to live a more vibrant, healthy life. Copies of the book are available for purchase at www.amazon.com .
Women’s Adventure magazine is doing a shout out for Alaska photos and stories on Facebook. I submit this one in honor of our now four-and-a-half-year old son on his adoption day. I read this as part of a longer piece, in court, the day he went from being a foster kid in Boulder County to having a forever family with us.
Logan Thompson Theall
Adoption Day: September 21, 2007
You are my son. It as if you have always been my son. Before I met you—before you’d been on this earth for even a year—God told me your name. In Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, miles from anywhere, in a place where orphaned peaks remain nameless and eternally wild – I found Mount Logan. It rose into the sky as an expansive range towering above the clouds. To see its summit, I had to ride in a plane. I never saw it’s beginning – the place it met the ground. But, I know that at its birth, it struggled to grip the shifting soil—to make something solid from the crumbling earth beneath it. The fight made it strong and grand, and its presence changed the landscape around it forever. You are this mountain to me.
I dug out my 2002 Daytimer today. I wanted to see what had been happening in my life when I decided to launch Women’s Adventure magazine (www.womensadventuremagazine.com). The words I’d used to describe what I see in the first three months of that year are: chaos, sorrow, winter, doubt, anxiety, and displacement.
My partner and I sunk our money into our first home together, and the contractor was a year behind before he decided to disappear altogether. We lived with a friend, in his basement, for six months. We’d made four moves prior to that, emptying and repacking storage units like luggage. The dot-com world imploded and left me collecting unemployment. My grandmother passed away. I had the first symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. The fog over us metastasized as my partner’s father got ALS, and both my dogs had to be put down. I tried to find work. Every idea I produced, failed.
Once a Prozac-induced spring kicked in, I found not one, but three jobs at different magazines. But they didn’t satisfy me. And I couldn’t settle anymore. In July 2002, as I spread my malamute’s ashes across the mountains where he once lived, I decided to create a magazine I wanted to read—one that had never existed. One that would tug at the emotional core of women’s connection to the outdoors and adventure travel. I described my new vision as “Oprah, With a Backpack,” minus the car giveaways and crying.
We’d turn down diet ads and vow never to run a “thinner thighs in thirty days” article in our pages. We’d give female athletes and inspiring adventurers the spotlight they deserved. But first, I needed money. I decided I’d be willing to jump off the cliff if advertisers agreed to go there with me. So, I made a mock up of the magazine, along with a media kit of proposed rates and demographics (for readers I didn’t have yet, but would!), and rented a copper-colored Kia I called “Penny” and drove her from San Diego to Seattle meeting with running shoe, backpack, sunglass, auto, and energy bar companies. Before a single issue hit the press, Asics, Teva, Woolrich, Salomon, Vasque, Oakley, and notably Title 9 Sports supported the launch of the title (at that time called Dandelion). I formed a team. We started design. We leapt.
Eight years is a long time. I learned (many times the hard way) about every facet of running a magazine. Three years into it, I heard that magazine publishing has the second highest failure rate next to the restaurant business. In our first five years, we had two minority owners, one name change, and countless underpaid staff and interns. Women’s Adventure turned its first profit in year four. In our fifth year, I sold the title to Big Earth Publishing and agreed to continue running it. Shortly after, the economy collapsed, and Big Earth’s commitment saved Women’s Adventure. But the stress of layoffs and the constant reshuffling it took to keep the magazine alive affected my health. Two plaques (MS lesions) in my brain doubled in size within eight months.
My decision to leave the magazine was a relatively easy one, but sad nonetheless. Easy, because I have a staff in place that has handled the magazine in such a way that I’m seriously a non-factor in its success or improvement. I’ve learned everything I wanted to know in my position. I’m satisfied and proud of this title and my role in it. I created my dream job. How many people can say that? And, I didn’t just do it for me. I did it because I believed there were millions of women out there who wanted (maybe even sometimes needed) a title like this to exist. Women’s Adventure is still the only women’s outdoor sports title on the planet. And that’s really something.
So what’s next? I’ll continue to contribute to Women’s Adventure with a regular column and blog (www.michelletheall.com/blog). And, I’ll also keep running the Creative Conferences for aspiring writers and photographers (www.creativeconferences.com). Beyond that, I’m working on a memoir, Teaching the Cat to Sit, and trying to keep up with our four-year-old son, Logan.
For those of you reading this who are part of our Women’s Adventure audience, I wish you all the best as you follow your adventures. It’s been a privilege creating this magazine and getting to hear your stories over the years.
It’s no coincidence that the US Women’s Ski Jumping team started petitioning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the right to compete in the Winter Olympics in the year 1998. After all, that’s the same year the IOC decided to add Curling instead. Yeah, I’d be ticked off too. No offense to curlers, but c’mon. I think ex-NBA basketball player, Charles Barkley, summed up my sentiments quite well yesterday when he said, “Curling is not a sport. I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal because they have dusting in the Olympics now.”
1908 Curlers Working up a Sweat
Admittedly, Curling takes skill and strategy. That’s why it’s been called “chess on ice” (please note that as of the time of this post, the IOC has refused to comment on whether or not it will consider chess for the Summer Olympics). I’d say that even cheerleading takes more athletic ability than curling, but I don’t want to insult cheerleaders.
Okay, so knocking one sport isn’t going to benefit the others. I get it. But, the IOC’s decision in 1998 to accept one sport over another justifies this scrutiny. The curlers are innocent. But the IOC is not.
Everyone knows ski jumping is a viable Olympic sport. We know this because men have been jumping in the Olympic games since the very first Winter Olympic Games in 1924. Yet, ski jumping remains the only Winter sport where women are unable to compete for medals like their male counterparts. And that is a tragedy.
Rather than admit discrimination, the IOC argues that women’s ski jumping does not have enough participation or countries with women’s teams or world-class competitions to warrant official status in the Games. Um, but the gal ski jumpers have more competitors than women’s bobsled, snowboard cross, or ski cross did when they were sanctioned. I smell a rat.
But, if that doesn’t work out, they’ve still got another four years to switch over to Curling.
Leave it to a place like Devil’s Thumb Ranch to lull you into the peaceful trance that says “yes” to everything. With over 6,000 acres of groomed nordic terrain, I could have just defaulted to my go-to winter sport of running with Yaktrax on, but the PR woman, Holly, convinced me that I was a wuss if I didn’t try Classic Nordic Skiing when she had all the equipment ready for me, along with one of the best instructors around. I’ve not been on a pair of Nordic skis ever, and hadn’t been on Alpine planks in fifteen years. So, I had reservations, and lots of questions. The biggest one was: I thought this was like snowshoeing. You mean, it’s difficult enough to require lessons? The answer is yes, if you want a solid start into the sport. Okay. I’m game.
Things that surprised me:
1) The boots are comfortable. You could dance in them if you wanted. Onlookers were thankful I didn’t.
2) The skis and poles are so thin and light, you’ll forget you’re carrying them. My apologies to everyone I clocked in the noggin’ on my way to the trails.
3) The tip that worked best for me (in terms of stance and posture) was when the instructor told me to pretend I was staggering forward after drinking too much. Who knew he’d tailor the lesson just for me?
4) The number of times I ended up on the ground. I was told it would be overkill and nerdy to wear my boarding helmet.
5) How comfortable I felt in zero degree weather with no hat and just a baselayer. Truly, there is no warmer way to be under a blue sky, moving your body, shadowed by 12,000 foot peaks, than gliding on a nordic trail. Sitting by a fire would not have taken the chill off as well as Classic skiing did.
All and all, I had a blast, learned a new sport, and only have a few bruises today. The bottom line: Nordic is an extremely beautiful way to get out in the snow and get a hip-flexor-stretching, glute-burning, quad-strengthening workout.
Jonathan Edwards and Tiger Woods. Those two names don’t make me think about health care or golf. Instead, especially when mentioned in the same sentence, they bring to mind words like infidelity and lies. Let’s not be fooled. Playing a great round of 18 holes doesn’t make you a moral man and neither does running for office. Edwards and Woods made vows to be faithful to their wives, not to me. So it’s weird that I feel cheated and disappointed (but not at all surprised). We’ve come to expect and perhaps accept that married men stray. Cheating isn’t like tripping over a curb. You don’t “slip up.” No one’s pants breakaway like they do in some TV comic pratfall. You don’t “fall” into bed. It’s action and decision. Just like marriage.
Marriage is essentially a legal vow to be each other’s one and only. And, it doesn’t mean one and only Scrabble partner or bill-paying buddy. When you get down to it, what essentially separates “lovers” from “spouses” is a formal agreement to be sole sexual partners, until death do us part. That’s the biggest distinguishing factor. After all, your best friend can be a lifetime companion for you, emotionally and financially. And a lover might say forever, but those are just words and only words when there is a legal option available to show you “really mean it” and sign on the dotted line.
For 2.5 weeks now, the courts have listened to testimony to decide whether or not to overturn Prop 8, the proposition banning gay marriage. No matter where you sit on the fence, gay, straight, married, or single, you have to admit that marriage has been cheapened by public infidelities and a 50% divorce rate. Still, gay people in this country are fighting for the right to marry. Maybe there’s something better, a step above marriage they should be legalizing for their relationships instead. After all, if you want to learn to be a great golfer, emulate Tiger Woods. But if you want a lifetime commitment, why not aim higher?
We’ve all heard the stories of unexpected rescues: folks who end up stranded on a cliff face, stuck on a backcountry road mid-winter, or picked up in the middle of the desert. It’s actually surprising that more people don’t need to be rescued on a regular basis. But, I’ll admit to being disappointed when I read about a K2 base camp rescue recently in the New York Times, ( January 17, 2010: K2: A Trek to Danger’s Doorstep ).
Author Graham Bowley and his cousin-turned-photographer trek to the base-camp as a research project for Bowley’s upcoming book, “No Way Down,” which hits stores this June. His travelogue opens with an intro to K2’s nasty statistics: few summit attempts, fewer successful summits, and a 28-percent fatality rate for folks who have conquered the 28,251-foot peak. Despite the fact that Bowley’s research is focused on the dangers of the mountain, he and his cousin, 29-year-old architect Andrew Ensslen, get choppered off the mountain after Ensslen succumbs to serious altitude sickness. Altitude sickness is dangerous, but also totally preventable, and if these explorers had known the symptoms of and been honest about how they were feeling, it’s likely that they wouldn’t have required such dramatic rescue. If a researcher who’s actively researching death on K2 can’t even recognize the symptoms of one of its biggest dangers, what hope is there for the casual adventurer and explorer who unknowingly gets in over her head?
One of our missions here at Women’s Adventure it to give women the tools and resources to adventure safely and, as our tagline says, thrive in the wild. Clearly, Mr. Bowley could use the same thing. Maybe I’ll send him a copy of our next issue.
