Miguel Torres Winery

This post is for Kristan K from Detroit and Tomas B from Brno, Czech Republic. Wish you two had been here yesterday.

We drove about 6 hours from Santiago down the "central valley" wine-growing region to Termas de Chillan. An amazing area, with hundreds of wineries lining both sides of the road, as far as the eye can see. On the way, the owner of CASA Tours arranged a gourmet lunch for us at the Miguel Torres winery.

Beautiful place, and the food & wines were amazing. We enjoyed a fixed menu of four courses, each with its own wine. Starting off with champagne and something resembling a bruschetta, we moved on to a white wine with a salad, a red wine with prime rib, and a Riesling with dessert (a crepe).



My friend Tomas B would not have bothered buying bottles to take with him. He simply would have bought a cask.

Miguel must make one helluva wine. Check out all the awards.

More awards.

View from the lunch table. Very civilized.

Hungry skiers. Nobody left the Miguel Torres Winery hungry or sober, including Yours Truly.


The coolest part of the winery was their Garden of Variety, which has every grape they grow lined up next to each other.


This way to the Garden of Varieties

Two varieties of grape. It's the middle of winter here, so of course the vines were empty.

All the varieties.

Smog-iago

Skied La Parva today. Bluebird day, but no fresh snow. Just cruised on the groomers.

Both the Canadian and US "B" teams were training at La Parva today.

Check out these shots of Santiago, aka "Smog-iago", from the top of La Parva (11,000 feet). You can only see Smog-iago until about 10AM. After that, the little you can see disappears into a revolting cloud of smog.








I would estimate Santiago is only 50 miles from the Farallones / Valle Nevado / La Parva area, but of course the vertical distance is 8,000 - 9,000 feet and the road is barely passible. If this were a North American ski area, there would probably be a 4-lane highway (like I-70 from Denver to Vail) which would enable people to make the trip in 35 minutes. With the existing road, the trip takes about 2.5 hours when traffic is light, 4 hours when traffic is heavy.

Back in Santiago tonight. Briefly.

Off to Termas de Chillan tomorrow. BIG storm coming in. Supposedly. We hope.

Farallones / Valle Nevado / El Colorado / La Parva

The road up to Farellones is unbelievably gnarly. Getting an exact count of the number of switchbacks is impossible, but most people say about 65, then another 25 or 30 up to Valle Nevado. The road is so narrow that it is one-way in during the mornings and one-way out during the afternoons. This is the last - and relatively benign - section leading to Valle Nevado. Most of the switchbacks do not have guard rails.

The rescue chopper is more for road accidents (survivors of vehicles falling off the switchbacks) than for ski accidents.



This is the backside of El Colorado, taken from Valle Nevado. You can easily ski from one to the other, but your lift ticket doesn't have reciprosity, so unless you've got skins and are up for a good hike, obey the (very tiny) sign which tells you which resort is where and stay at the resort to which you are ticketed.

Valle Nevado, El Colorado, and La Parva are all above Farallones. Obviously, all are above the tree line as well.

A little alpenglow at the end of a hard day of skiing.

Another Sighting of the Rare Alpine . . . FOX? Hey WTF!?!?!?!

The perfect conditions at Portillo, Chile today led many to believe a sighting of the Rare Alpine Skunk was imminent. Fresh powder? CHECK. Bluebird Day? CHECK.


But then this little fella stole The Skunk's thunder. He showed up at Tio Bob's mid-mountain restaurant, no doubt drawn by the intoxicating smell of lomos roasting on an open spit. A lomo, ubiquitous at lunch in South America (where the beef is to die for) is a hard baguette roll, cut in half lengthwise, with a huge honkin' 3-lb slab of divinely tender seared cow flesh thrown onto it. Usually served alone on a large plate, simply because it's so much food, nobody can possibly eat a lomo and still have room for fries or cole slaw or any other accoutrement commonly served with a sandwich.



"WHAT NO COLE SLAW?????" sniffs the Alpine Fox


What exactly is the altitude at Tio Bob's? And it's only mid-mountain.


But could it be...the Rare Alpine Skunk shows up anyway?

Note the complete absence of any clouds.


Just to show he didn't mind having his thunder stolen by our foxy friend, the Rare Alpine Skunk showed up anyway.



Meet my new friend Bode (yes, that's really his name). Bode is from Holland. He snapped the photos of the Rare Alpine Skunk. Here he admires our powder-8s. Bode can flat-out SKI.


Flying the KSC / Hahnenkamm colors in front of the Hotel Portillo.


This guy must share a press agent with The Fox. He wants in on the act, too.


Portillo is a gorgeous place, but it has its quirks.....

All the upper pistes, and I mean all the upper pistes, are only accessible via these homemade contraptions. 4- and 6-person, hand-welded steel Poma-type lifts. And they're not even on a loop, they are set up on two opposing cables, like the Snowbird cable car. The crazy Chilean cowboys running the damn things send you up like you've been shot off a catapult on a carrier deck, FULL THROTTLE.








Try riding one of these damn things with a couple of snowboarders. At 35 mph.



The cowboy, er "lift attendant" prepares to launch this poor motherf@%$^er like an F-14 Tomcat off a carrier deck.

When it reaches the top, the damn thing just STOPS. You're standing there BACKWARDS (ski tails pointing downhill) with a steel pipe holding you up by your crotch. One by one, the riders have to peel off, ski backwards, and slide out of the ride track, like an alpentour turn.

Every time I completed a ride on one of these things, I checked between my legs just to make sure the original equipment was still intact. Needless to say, I saw dozens of people (especially snowboarders) crash off these things, all day long. On my first ride of the day I was next to a snowboarder, and he ate shit after less than 10 seconds.

Now that I ponder that first ride, I think I LOVE these things. They eat snowboarders by the half-dozen.

JANE! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!!!!!!!!

Micah in Fuerteventura

My friend & cycling partner Micah Buzainis, multiple-time World Windsurfing Champion, is currently in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, racing World Cup.


Micah (US-34) first around the mark. Look how F$#%^&*ing windy it is, and look at the humongous sails these guys are holding down.


11-time World Champion Bjorn Dunkerbeck eats it.



Finian Maynard (KV-11), Micah (US-34), Antoine Albeau (FRA-192)



Probably not a World Cup competitor. Who cares?

Thanks to Micah's father Jay, another friend & cycling partner, for sending along these pikkies. Jay, myself, and Bill Darrah won the Maui Team Time Trial cycling race two weeks ago.

Teeing It Up For Chile

It's dumping right now in Portillo. Reports are that this has been one of the best snowfall winters in a decade in the High Andes.

Trust me on this, skiing in August in South America is so much fun, even crappy snow doesn't spoil it. But a few good solid powder dumps sure don't hurt.

The fantastic wines, winter in August, the spectacular beef and exotic foods, the jaw-dropping scenery...they are enough to motivate even an old burnt-out road warrior like me to fly 10,000 miles. Each way.

My fave Scott P4 skis (110 underfoot) are in the closet at my friend Gary's house in Utah, so I scored a new pair of K2 Coombas, with G3 skins, to take with me.






Toys are good.

In addition to Portillo, I'm scheduled to hit Termas de Chillan, Valle Nevado, La Parva, El Colorado, Pucon-Villarica, and Corralco.

Watching the weather reports and getting psyched. The Rare Alpine Skunk will be making an even rarer August appearance.

Red Bull United States Grand Prix - MotoGP @ Laguna Seca

Hey Laguna Seca Raceway! 1968 is calling, they want their scoreboard back.

Start/Finish line from Red Bull VIP Hospitality suite.

Turns 1 & 2 from Red Bull Hospitality suite.

Who's this guy? I can't quite recall the name. He sure can ride that beeyotch, though.


Christo stuffs his face at Red Bull VIP Hospitality. Fantastic breakfast, an even better lunch, and of course an open bar.

The famous Corkscrew section.

Arguing couple does no damage with Cheetos

link

Well, duh. According to my rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, you could hit somebody with a Cheeto traveling just shy of the speed of light and still not do any damage.

In order to assemble enough Cheeto mass to do any damage, you'd have to pack about a cubic meter of Cheetos into a compactor, smush it down to, say, a cubic centimeter, and only then - with a really powerful slingshot - would you potentially generate enough kinetic energy to where somebody would actually say "ouch" if they were hit with it.

Any physicists out there want to argue about it?

Dog At Freight Trains

I'm not a big dog lover, but this pooch, I must admit, is pretty cool.

Link

Filmed at Ma'alea (over near the Maui Aquarium) last week. The break is "Freight Trains" aka "The Fastest Wave In The World". The surf was epic here last week for 4 or 5 days straight.

The big fat doucheknuckle who owns the dog repeatedly drops in on the surfers behind him (typical Standup Paddler fuckwad), however, in this case I can overlook his lack of etiquette.

Check out the shortboarders behind the SUP getting fully shacked.

And that, dear friends, is why we love Hawai'i.

No, fella.....It's JUST THE NAME OF THE STORE

From the "it's just a figure of speech" department.............

Link

"Dude, we don't have any actual diamonds....but can I interest you in a nice golden fleece"?

You Gotta Love Dwight Howard

Even though he choked away Game 4 of the NBA Playoffs by missing two free throws with 11 seconds to go, I just have to love Dwight Howard. As if his T-Mobile commercials with Chuck Barkley and Dwayne Wade weren't hilarious enough, this 23-year-old Superman with the gap-toothed silly grin, the scariest raw talent in the NBA since Michael Jordan, is just so damn likeable.

Check out his goofy impression of Orlando coach Stan van Gundy:

link

Here's a guy who is already the best Center in the NBA...and he doesn't yet have a jump shot, a hook shot, or a post-up game. Yet. That's akin to a tennis player who wins Wimbledon with a lousy backhand and serve, no net game, but whose quickness and forehand are just so ridiculously good that nobody can beat him.

I sincerely hope, after he has won the 2, 3 or 6 NBA Championship rings that he will inevitably garner, that he maintains his affability.

And speaking of T-Mobile, the NBA Playoffs have been great entertainment this year, even better now that I have HD, but I think perhaps the thing I will miss most when LA gets finished kicking Orlando's ass are the T-Mobile commercials. Despite having seen it 50 times, the one with Yao Ming still makes me laugh ("YAO SAYS EAT THE HEAD!"). The one with Dr J is even better (old geezer with walker: "Hang up the phone Barkley, I'm taking you to the hole").

There are so many horrible commercials out there ("Video Professor" may be the worst TV commercial of all time), I really have to hand it to T-Mobile's ad agency.

And as an old Philly boy and a Sixers fan, I must say Charles Barkley is pretty damn entertaining for an old re-tread. Most re-treads, like John McEnroe, Kenny Smith, and Rusty Wallace, are fingernails-on-the-blackboard annoying. Somehow, Barkley pulls it off.

Albrecht Back On The Snow

link

Daniel Albrecht is working out with the Swiss team. Amazing.

A couple of strange things, however.

Albrecht says he barely remembers being a ski racer. How odd it must be to snap into a pair of skis and not remember how to ski, yet he can instinctively ski like the World Champion he has been in the past. Wow.

Another strange thing....look closely at the photo accompanying this article. Granted, Ski Racing is one of the worst publications in sports, they are consistently lame, and publisher Gary Black invariably either screws up or ignores facts when he goes off on his wacky, jingoistic, I-Hate-The-Austrians editorials. But to me, the photo looks photochopped. First of all, Albrecht appears to have straddled the gate with his knees, but not with his skis, and yet the flag appear to be behind his head. It looks to me as if somebody chopped in that blue gate pole. The gate pole also appears to have opacity, as his left knee can be seen through the pole. The other odd thing is the angle of his skis don't seem to match his body. There's no way one could view his ski bottoms at the angle shown if his body were in that position. Who knows, perhaps he threw on somebody else's skis on the spur of the moment and the ATOMIC people made them photochop ATOMICS into the pikkie. It's strange to falsify a photo in this context, but when it comes to Ski Racing, they publish so much wacky shi'ite that I've given up being surprised at the depths to which they will stoop.

NetBooks

Dear SkunkBlog Readers,

Have any of you done extensive research into NetBooks? I've got to buy one in the next few weeks, and I've been wading through all sorts of product documentation & reviews.

If you've already got one, or have looked into getting one, and your research came up with a clear winner, then please let me know by leaving a comment herein.

Features I'm looking for include a 10" screen, integrated webcam, and the brightest screen possible, as my eyes aren't what they used to be. Models I've looked at so far are the HP 2140, the Aspire One 150, the Samsung NC10-14, the MSI Wind, and the Lenovo S10-1208. At this point, they all seem to spec out pretty much the same. The Samsung has the brightest screen I've been able to get specific specs on, at 308 NITs, so that one is at the top of my list. The Lenovo no doubt has the best keyboard, as the Stinkpad keyboards pretty much kill everything else out there.

Any comments?

NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge

Just got back from the NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge in Charlotte. Really, really cool event. Tons of pressure to get it perfect, because the show is very tightly coreographed, and so much is happening simultaneously, it would be difficult and time-consuming to go to manual backup. We got it perfect, but I was not without sleepless nights.

The show was live on SPEED for two hours. TV graphics in HD 720P. My AKISPORT CGs performed admirably, the graphics really looked crisp. I designed a cool lower-third animation which blasted the two clocks and two NASCAR door numbers onto the graphic with lightning bolts, and it got on the air a couple of dozen times, which was something I wanted out of the deal.


Had a nice dinner with my friend Trampass and his wife at my favorite Soul Food restaurant, Mert's Heart and Soul.

Check out this photofinish. Almost a dead heat. The two teams weren't actually running against each other, they were running against the clock, in a qualifying round.




Time for car 24: 23.846
Time for car 39: 23.855

Margin of victory: 0.009 (Nine one-thousandths of a second)

39 was later assessed a penalty for this push, so they were docked 3 seconds (for a loose lug nut). So ultimately, it wasn't this close.

The cars are moving very slowly (they are being pushed by the crews, not driven), and the event in indoors in Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, so JimmyBob (operating the Lynx) had to back the speed of the Lynx camera way down, since the lighting isn't that great. The frame rate we were using here was well under 1000 fps, although my Lynx Pro 5000 camera, under ideal lighting, is good for 5,000 fps. Calculating out the various factors, but without having a speed trap or RADAR to know exactly how fast the cars were going at the finish, my figures tell me the margin of victory here was about 1/2 cm.

It's a good thing JimmyBob sighted in the Lynx carefully.



And it's a good thing we replaced all the clown-nose switches just before the event. A redesign of the pit wall enabled the crews to use the clown-nose as a vaulting point. Even though the clown-noses are solid steel, I worry.



The calm before the storm.



Think these guys aren't taking this seriously? Given the financial trouble the teams are experiencing, and the subsequent mergers & consolidations, 1/10 second more or less in this competition may very well be the difference between keeping your job and hitting the bricks.



Very possibly, there's nobody who takes it more seriously than Yours Truly. Sitting with two NASCAR officials.



But then again, perhaps Tony Stewart aka "Smoke" takes it more seriously than I do. Here he's looking at the clocks on the Daktronics displays, trying to figure out exactly what happened. By the way, Smoke won the All-Star Race two days later up at the track.



Floor coordinators Anne Stamper and Michael Verlatti from JHE Productions are taking it pretty seriously, too.


The Skunkware timing team talks things over. The blurry figure in front of the gas cans is Jay Howard, principal of JHE Productions, and the brains behind this entire concept & event.



Locked & loaded in our aloha crew shirts, waiting for the Preliminary Round, which is held before the doors open as a TV rehearsal.



Preparing for Media Day.


Keyboards & laptops, anybody? Actually, we used less equipment in 2009 than in 2008, since the AKISPORT GS2 CGs each do the work of three of the old Matrox CG machines.

Getting Andryroo-san ready over in the TV Graphics department.




Special thanks to Mike Walker Photography for these most excellent pikkies: http://www.walkerphotography.ca/