Getty stock photo shoot

I was fortunate to be included in a stock photo shoot on Easter Sunday 2008 with Getty Images at the bobsled track in Park City, Utah. I wasn't even supposed to be there, but they made a last minute decision to include a separate two man sled crew in the shoot. I spent my first season in Lake Placid doing both bobsled and skeleton, but my bob skills were a bit rusty. I was also a bit cautious as it was the two week anniversary of my appendectomy.



The art director for the shoot, Stephen Schauer, posted an excellent entry ("Operation Snowflake") on Getty's blog that describes just about every aspect of the shoot in some detail. In addition to a good read, there are photos from behind the scenes and also a few from the actual shoot. Ryan McVay was the lead photographer, and he was supported by a great crew who were really down to earth and friendly. Amy Uratsu was in charge of everything else such as catering, logistics, procurement, wardrobe, you name it. The shoot was a great experience, and it was fun to literally be the last person through the finish line for the season. After the shoot, they closed the track down until next winter.

POV video from late February training

Without further ado, I give you POV footage from the GoProCamera Helmet Hero camera. Two of them at the same time actually. These cameras are brilliant, and so is the company! The cameras are durable and produce fantastic quality video. Of course, YouTube compresses it pretty severely, but you can check stills from the original video below (minor jpeg compression).



(Click for the full sized images)
The ice was relatively slow this day, and you can see there is a good bit of snow on the track.


Even with slower ice, I am still moving just shy of 80 mph here and you can clearly see my coach with a video camera.

When using the cameras in the cold, it is critical to use lithium batteries. NiMH batteries lose their mojo rapidly in the cold, and alkaline are even worse. Even with the lithium batteries, I made a point of keeping them as warm as possible right up to the moment I used them because I didn't have the luxury of further ice time for retakes.

Here is a frontal shot of my jury rigged mountings.

I used the bike helmet adapter to mount the rear camera to my saddle, and you can see why the video is crooked. The front camera is actually attached to the flat plastic from the display case, which I covered with my sled covering and bound with a piece of wire for good measure. The track crew does not like to find debris in the track and they are wary of POV cams because they often become expensive debris. I was pleased with how secure the hardware remained after several runs and happily left zero debris in my wake. My deepest sympathies in advance if you are able to knock a Hero camera off of your helmet while biking, because doing so will likely cause great trauma to your head.

Yes, I cover my sled in a yoga mat. One of the great things about these cameras is how easy they are to activate. Even wearing gloves, it took only a few seconds at the line to press the power button and then hit record.



I received these cameras from GoPro back in early December just before leaving for Italy. I was totally excited to put them to use, but I couldn't use them while forerunning for the World Cup. Then I had zero chance in Italy because every run I took was either official training or competition. When I came home, literally every training session took place at night right up to America's Cup. Again, no electronic gear is allowed during cup training or competitions. I left less than two hours after the AC races to fly to Munich and again, we had zero runs outside of those for official training and competition. St Moritz would have been such a cool track to film, so I will have to go back when I am not racing. I found myself already into February without any opportunities to film, and of course our training sessions were once again all at night right up until a few days before our final ice time here in Park City for Western Regionals. I was able to get five runs shot - two on the first day and three on the second. During both attempts on my first day I managed to shove the front camera with my shoulder so that by turn four it was looking down at the ice. I adjusted the frontal camera position for day two and things worked much better.

Even though my noggin gets in the way here and there, I think it turned out pretty good. Maybe it's just in my head, but I was surprised at how the aft camera seemed to convey the speed more than the front. I tried a few different video hosts, but YouTube has recently upped their compression quality level and it seems to be better than either Google Video or Blogger.

Corporate marketing...

I received this envelope from Accenture a couple days ago. Just before I left for Italy, someone in the corporate marketing department inquired with me about using my image on the mailing label for a package to several thousand c level execs. It finally shipped, and so they sent a copy my way. Look carefully and you can maybe tell that it's a picture of me going through curve 6 in Park City. I guess curve six doesn't go the right direction for their purposes, so they flipped the image. The photo was taken by my friend Bruce Boyes.

Ending up on a mailing label was precipitated by my former manager, Sebastien, submitting me as the subject of an interview about my sliding. I provided the image for use with the interview and it ended up on the front page of the corporate intranet. This same article was then repurposed for a recruitment site. Meanwhile, another photo from that article is now in an Accenture image gallery online. I just sent a revised draft from yet another article based on a different interview for an outsourcing site. Pretty crazy how all of these marketing departments cross pollinate stories and images.

Farewell appendix

This past Saturday was friends and family day up at the park. I was up bright and early at around 5am because of abdominal pain. I was at the park around noon, and by this time I was verging on excruciating pain. I really wanted to see my friends go down the hill and take some pics, and in all reality I had planned on volunteering catching sleds or sending them down or something, but all I could manage was laying on the floor in the finish house and listening for their names on the PA. The moment my last friend got down the hill, we beelined it home.

First, a little history so you can understand my demented rationale for not going straight to the hospital. I have had several appendicitis episodes over the past year or so. The first one happened while I had a flu or something, so I figured it was just a really, really bad flu. It subsided after a day or so. This happened a few more times. Most recently was the flight to Italy in December. So, these episodes always passed within a couple of days. I figured this one would as well, so I waited through a sleepless Saturday night. By Sunday morning I decided that I wanted to know what was going on. I still wasn't sure it was my appendix because I wasn't showing some of the "classic" symptoms like nausea and vomiting. The fact that it had come and gone before didn't jibe with what I understood about appendicitis either. I thought it set in and didn't stop until you removed the appendix or it ruptured.

I drove myself over to St Marks just before eleven and was reeling in pain waiting to get checked in. A nurse took pity on me after about a half hour and brought me to an examination room to get things rolling. I've never had morphine before, and I can't say I am a fan. Makes me feel constricted in my head. My blood work showed an elevated white cell count. The cat scan confirmed appendicitis. They moved me to a normal hospital room to wait for surgery. Finally, they trucked me down to the holding room for surgery. I have a friend who is a colorectal surgeon, who had said he would stop by for the surgery. I was pleasantly surprised when he walked in the holding room ready for surgery. Nice to have a friend there for your inaugural surgical procedure. The procedure was a laproscopic removal, and my friend ran the scope while the other surgeon did the operation. I turned blue and thrashed for air while coming out of anesthesia, I think because the lubricant they use to insert the air supply tube into my windpipe clogged me up momentarily when they removed the air supply line. This caused one of the three entry point to bleed a bit, but apparently it is okay.

I am healing up well enough, and I have only good things to say about the process at St Marks. Luckily, my season ended naturally two weekends ago with Western Regional Qualifiers. I placed second every day, and consequently second overall. I am happy with this. At the very least, I am qualified for team trials again next season, which was my main objective. I used the same sled that had been squashed on the way to Europe, but set it up as straight as I could with shims and put a new saddle axle in place. I feel that it was still running slow, but I can't complain.

There is no more sliding available in Park City for skeleton athletes. Although there will be ice for at least another month, it will be allocated to revenue-rich passenger rides. Ice will be available through April in Lake Placid. Everyone that I will be competing against in team trials either already lives at the Olympic Training Center in LP or will be training for at least some, if not all of April in Lake Placid. This puts me at a disadvantage on several fronts for skeleton. I could really use some more ice time to square away equipment for next season, and I am not as strong a slider in Lake Placid as I am in Park City which stands to hurt my trials ranking. The reason I am not going is that more unpaid time away from work would jeopardize me in just about every other category of my life.

Back from Europa Cup

I got back to Salt Lake late Sunday night. Took Monday off from work, which worked well considering the blizzard. My sleep schedule is still really off and I am fighting a mild cold that set in after getting back home. I have been remiss in posting, just as with Italy, so I will try to recap as best I can. First things first - I have had it with United, Lufthansa, and the TSA.

I travelled with Kelly Magnuson from Frankfurt to Salt Lake via LAX on the way home. Both of our sleds got stuck in LAX. United tried to deliver her sled to my house Monday afternoon. Then they tried to deliver my sled to the house she is staying at 6am on Tuesday. My sled didn't arrive until Friday at 2:30 AM! At which time they knocked on my front door to deliver it. Seriously! I called them Thursday afternoon to see where my sled was, and why I hadn't been contacted for a few days. They told me it was slated for delivery between 9pm and 3am. He said I could sign a note and leave it for the delviery guy, but I would waive my rights to reporting damged items. I told him that I would sign for it, but had him contact the delivery agency to let them know not to bother after 11pm. He came back and said it may be as late as midnight, and we left it there. I was fairly certain that they would botch this as well, and they did. I really want to put my airline experience behind me as it was abyssmal from start to finish.

Even before I set foot in the airport to head to Europe, I had hassles trying to use a United voucher that I had received in October when my sled didn't arrive at the airport with me for team trials. During that situation, the way the agents took care of things from check-in to reclaiming my sled redeemed the situation and I was looking forward to using United again. I was also hoping to use the voucher to defray my expenses. I was going to book on United.com, but there was no way to redeem the voucher there, so I called an agent. I booked the flight and was told I had over a week to mail the voucher to them. I went online and chose seats. Two days later the system couldn't find my reservation. I called and it had been cancelled - apparently the original agent set a 72 hour window for the voucher. I rebooked the flight at a slightly higher faire and had the agent choose from whatever seats were available. Kelly booked the same itinerary, and she discovered that the fare had dropped a few hundred dollars. United gave her a voucher to cover the difference. By the time I called the fare was higher than what I paid. I received a call from United a few days after re-booking to let me know that I couldn't use the voucher because one of the legs was on Lufthansa. Great! Why didn't either of the agents I talked to tell me this?

Since it was a mad dash to the airport after the final America's Cup race, I didn't have time to remove my runners as usual. Instead, I packed the sled with the runners still installed as is actually standard procedure. The special sled bag is designed to protect them from even an abusive trip through the airport. The downside is that the whole package weighs quite a bit. Allen Blackwell offered to drop me at the airport, which is good because the roads were not great and he drives an Audi wagon. I-80 was severely congested - essentially closed, so we weaved through the city to get to the airport. I made a decision at the airport that I would lash my other two pair of runners to my sled instead of taking a seperate runner case. This left me with my sled, another checked bag, and then a carry on. I would come to regret this decision in about five minutes.

I raced into the airport with my gear to check in, and saw that Kelly and Audrey were midway through the process. In order to expedite things, I went to another available agent. He informed me that my sled would cost $381 in overweight fees. Kelly and Audrey were already gone at this point, so I asked the lady that had helped them. She echoed that that was the correct fee. I petitioned the guy at the counter. Then a baggage guy chimed in and said that the agent had no choice otherwise he would be risking his job. Odd statement, but all would become clear.

I had about twenty minutes until my plane left, so I slapped down some plastic and made my way to security. Ironically, I ran into John Ball (Chair of the Board of Directors for the USBSF) in security and told him about the charge. The board, which had expressed their mission as being focused on raising funds and finding sponsors, was new in August of 07. I don't know much about these matters or how long it takes to get things in the pipeline, but at that moment I was compelled to ask why we still had no sponsors or even agreements with airlines. I really like John, but I was pretty upset about my freshly charged fees. The coincidence of seeing him moments after being skewered seems too perfect - like I was some real-world object lesson.

To add to my ire, Kelly informed me that she had only been charged $100 for a sled of the same weight. Audrey just $50, although her sled weighted less than mine or Kelly's. Apparently the deal their agent gave them had somehow made a baggage guy upset. He was of course standing over the shoulder of my agent as I checked in. The nice agent is now being reprimanded and possibly fired.

Flying to SFO, I was reminded of the lameness of United by the aroma of the adjacent lav. Then another twelve hours with a metal box where my feet would have liked to gone. Seats I had carefully tried to avoid the first time I booked. But of course, I was still glad to be going and focused on the excitement of competing in St Moritz.

We arrived in Munich on Sunday at 6pm and drove to St Moritz, arriving around midnight. Our first day of official training in St Moritz was set for the next day around noon. Luckily my sled was still assembled from Park City, so I had no real sled prep to do. Monday morning we did a partial track walk and then went to get our sleds prepped for the day. For me this meant simply putting rock in the runners. Only at this point did I realize that my runners were very bent. I got some help to bend the runners as best we could in the minutes before training began.

Later on, I took the sled apart and found that whatever force crunched my runners also gouged the rod that holds my saddle. That is some serious force, and it left my sled misaligned and slow for the duration of my competitions. Thanks United/Lufthansa!

America's Cup

I made a promise to myself to get rest and take care of my body before my upcoming races and travels, but it hasn't panned out. I have been running on very little sleep while trying to juggle things as well as I can. Setbacks are always lurking. My car started to overheat last week and has been in the shop, sitting since they told me that it would be almost $1000 to fix. My plan is to defer tackling that until I return, inconvenient as it is. I have spent late nights getting my gear squared away, still working out runners.

Yesterday during the first day of America’s Cup training, I was one of a few US sliders who forgot their FIBT license and will be fined $20. Should have known better, but I have been so scattered lately I am not surprised that I forgot.

I had the fastest training run for the US by just a bit, although I am still off from where I want to be. I also know that many sliders hold back during training, and this portends to be a very competitive race. My first run felt great – the best run I have had in a long time. Not the fastest, but track conditions went from mediocre to poor due to a bit of snow.

It was good to see people I have met throughout the season again, as well as seeing the US sliders here for the overlapping Intercontinental Cup race. There were even a few faces from way back. Yesterday was the best coaching we have had for a race in some time due to the help of the IC sliders and a visiting Chris Hedquist. It’s nice to have a home court.

After the race we watched some video of our runs and I received a long rumored team speed suit. I was pleasantly surprised that it was accompanied by some other Speedo goods. It will be great to look like I actually race for a nation for the five remaining race days of my season.
Training started early and went late because of the size of the field. I am concerned that those of us going to Munich after the race will be severely pressed for time getting to the airport.