The Dual Prooo Slalom!

Today was definitely a highlight of the trip for me! It definitely did not seem that way when it began, but it sure did turn itself around. When we got to the hill today for the race and upon checking the start list, I discovered that I was paired with Shane Anderson. For those of you who don't know who Shane his, he won the three races at nationals, and he also has two world cup podium's. So I was at least a little nervous. As it turns out, racing against Shane was the best thing that could have happened. In the first run, I actually beat him, in time! Although as it turns out one course I skied was faster, but still I beat him. The second run, I didn't beat him. However my second run time was faster than his first run time, and My first run time was faster than his second run time. SOOO, when the race was over I was in the leadd!!! However I had to wait for FOUR HOURS before the results came out. They went like this "In sixth place, Jack Long, in a tie for fourth place, Jeffery Gay and David Hobbs, and in third place Charlie Dresen, in second place, Shane Anderson (by this point I was freaking out!) and your winner, CORY SNYDER!!!!" I won, how crazy is that, no penalties for the top 4, I was legitimately faster than everybody. I am incredibly psyched!!! Right now its off to bed before our early flight tomorrow!! WOOOOHHHHOOOOOO

GS!

I am not quite sure what to think of my performance today. After the first run, I sat second in just raw time. The snow was extremely hard so the skiing was oddly familiar and I definitely took advantage of the hard snow and the turny set and laid down a sweet run. There was one point where I could feel myself accelerating onto a straight section. The jump was not to big and most guys were overshooting without even jumping. So I really only jumped a little and I cut it just a little too close. My second run was not quite as fast but still clean and The jump, unfortunately, went just about the same. Overall I ended up 5th, so I am definitely happy with a career best finish today. I was hoping to get you a few photo's from today, maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow is the classic and I am definitely super stoked to rumble tomorrow. I always love a good classic :)

UM visit/WHITEFISH!

UM made a pretty big leap up my college list today...The campus reminds me of UVM minus the environmental friendliness. I took a tour of the Health and Human Performance lab's and did the usual admissions meeting/tour. It was very cool to see the HHP lab spaces and what machinery they have available right there on campus. It looks like they do some pretty cool stuff there. They had an altitude chamber, a heat, chamber, a water scale, and assorted pieces of machinery measuring power output and other such statistics. The campus as a whole is pretty big, but at the same time the buildings are close and the campus screamed "SINGLE SPEED BIKE" to me. The whole city of Missoula has bike lanes built into the street and from the notes I was able to take it looked like there is never a shortage of things to do out there! Its pretty late so I don't want to talk too much, but I had to blab about how much I loved that campus. I definitely want to visit another school and their lab to compare but UM looks pretty good right about now! So goodbye from the "fish" and we will talk tomorrow after the TELEMARK GIANT SLALOM!

UM visit/WHITEFISH!

Missoula!

I made it to Missoula in one piece after one really long day of travelling. We got up at 3:30 to make it from my uncles house in Stowe, VT to the Burlington Airport and our flight at 6:02; rough. We had a short layover in Chicago, but I had to check one of my carry on's through to Missoula because they ran out of room on the plane, so we couldn't eat the lunch that I had packed, which I was really looking forward to! Oh well, we have had worse. Then we had a miserable 4 hour layover in Denver. We got to the airport so early that we had to walk around for a long time before they even had our flight listed in the Departures screen. That sucked. When we finally we able to find our gate, which for the record looked like it had been added on as an afterthought: It had the appearance that It was formerly an equiptment or a boiler room or something along those lines, we had a gate change and we had to walk to the other end of the termianl. It was great to get out of Denver. The flight from Missoula to Denver is quite senic and the parts that I was awake for were pretty amazing! I managed to accumulate around four hours of sleep today :) We did not have any problems with our baggage or rental car and our hotel is sweet! Its a shame we are only staying here for one night. It has a hunting cabin appearance with all sorts of modern amenities such as giant flat screens and ihome's in EVERY ROOM!! Plus it's called the C'mon Inn, how could we have not chosen it. My uncle has a friend that knows all the good places to eat here in Missoula and we ate a spectacualr dinner at the little Brew Pub. It was really quite tasty! Tomorrow I have some meetings at the University of Montana so I am busy writing down all fo the questions that I want to make sure I ask. Well I have now been kicking for what feels to be about 19 hours so I am going to hit the hay!

Nice knowing you!