Unexcused Absences

The final race of the Beaver Creek Town Series went off with a number of hitches, sadly for the Coyote Cafe team. The format was a dual head-to-head GS down lower Centennial, a formidable pitch suitable for World Cup action.

The trouble started right out of the gate (so to speak), our two star skiers, Burke and Drew, took off side-by-side, Drew fell at the 3rd gate and took out Burke right next to him, resulting in two DNF’s for our team. To make matters worse, the next thing we heard over the radio was “ski patrol to lower Centennial,” but fortunately what looked initially like a broken arm for Drew turned out to be just a deep bruise to his elbow.

Coyote Cafe Team - Drew, Ron, Katie, Kent, and Michael (Burke not pictured)

Katie, Michael and I all got our golds, but with only five racers per team, getting two “no results” applied a brutal hit to our season standings, and we fell from solidly in second place into a tie for third. With third we were still “in the money,” podium-wise, but after flirting with first place a few times during the season it was a bit of a disappointment. On top of that, because the organizers didn’t expect a tie, there was only one set of third-place prize mugs, so we (graciously) offered the mugs to the team we tied, since the Coyote Cafe team is made up of Race Department folks. C’est la vie.

Still, we had fun at the after-party at Agave, with a tasty Mexican buffet dinner and some truly stupendous prizes – how about six pairs of new skis & bindings, four GoPro video camera systems, a $150 bottle of champagne, and a lot of lesser booty. Yours truly won a set of top and bottom Mountain HardWear baselayers, worth about $100. Not the new skis, but not the lime-green BudLite hats, either. (*whew*)

Next season’s Town Series is only 10 months away!

The following day held the finals of the Instructor Race Series, which was a mogul competition down Gold Rush. What a hoot! I had not done a bump competition since about 1992 at Snowshoe, West Virginia. Moguls seemed so much softer 20 years ago! Still, it was a fun time. I beat my boss in the Race Department (I’m still on the fence whether that’s a good thing or not), and took first place for the season standings in the Men’s 40+ division.

For my efforts I won a nice pair of Schneider padded racing gloves, which were too small for me but fit Heather perfectly (hmmm…). I suspect that my favorite wife secretly conspired with the organizers to make sure that first prize in the Men’s 40+ division was a pair of… women’s racing gloves. That’s ok, she still owes me dinner for a bet we made last weekend!