View Ski Areas on Google Earth

The Grays on Trays web site has had a directory of North American ski areas for a while.

Now thanks to Google Earth and the hard work of a 30+ rider, you can download a map of U.S. ski areas. Click here for instructions on where and how to get the goods.

Many Start, Few Continue

In "I Give Up! A Sport People Love to Quit," the Wall Street Journal notes that the golf industry is looking for ways to attract and retain golfers. John Paul Newport, writing in the August 12, 2006 edition, comments on 6-hole courses, structured programs, and so forth.

The reason for this activity, of course, is money: if players quit, so do the cash registers. Each year, roughly 3 million people take up golf; and roughly 3 million leave golf.

Still, says Newport, golf has it pretty good compared with some other sports. (Yes, this is where the snowboarding connection comes in.)

One can easily get the impression, listening to the industry's hand-wringing about the game's lack of net growth, that retaining golfers is an urgent problem, almost of crisis proportion. But in fact golf's retention rate for beginners -- 50% overall after one year -- is much better than that for tennis (20%) or skiing (15%).

The article doesn't say whether that 15 percent number includes children and adults, or adults only. It also doesn't mention whether "skiers" means only downhill skiers, or whether it includes snowboarders.

I suspect--and have no hard numbers on this--that more adults are more likely to start skiing than snowboarding, but that the retention rate is higher for snowboarding. More adults may be able to imagine themselves skiing than riding.

Snow Sports Language

Since the name of this blog and web site stems from an old insult, it's time to mention a few words relating to snow sports.

Grays on Trays, of course, refers to adults who ride snowboards. Published reports of it suggest a minimum age of anywhere from 20 to 50.

A less flattering term of a snowboard rider is knuckle dragger, perhaps as in "knuckle-dragging Neanderthal," or troglodyte.

A far less commonly found term in winter sports (there are less than two dozen hits on a Google search) is disco sticks. I take this to refer to the long straight skis of the 1970s. Oddly enough (or not), I first heard this in about the same time someone was playing a song from the 70s-era band (though not disco group), Styx.

Another snow term? Several instructors I know teach both skiing and snowboarding. One of the more ardent advocates of snowboarding calls such individuals crossdressers.

It's an odd term, really. Ski and snowboard instructors wear the same gear from head to ... well, not toe, but to mid-shin.

A Day with the Snowboarding Staff

This summer heat has been oppressive lately, so how about a little reminder of colder days?

Near the end of last season, the snowsports instructors got together for a day of feeding our faces and sliding down the snow one more time.

We started out with a potluck breakfast. The snowboard instructors joked about whether we would let the ski instructors eat our food. A few did, but mostly they had their own food. Chalk it up to people seeking out the familiar.

After breakfast, we went out to try some tricks. The snowboard leader gave us a lesson in doing porpoise turns. I certainly didn't get it--for one thing, my board is far too stiff; for another, my body is far too stiff. But it was entertaining to watch everyone else.

We spent a lot of the time in plain old follow-the-leader: ride the lift, pick a line, and go.

We also did a few drills, such as "the human gate." In that exercise, person A rides a short distance down the hill and stops. Person B rides to the side of A, goes a bit further, and stops. C weaves between A and B and stops. And so forth. It's both a trust exercise (as in "trust that the person coming down the hill won't plow into you, or alternately, that you can get out of the way") and a precision maneuver.