More to come on these seemingly unrelated subjects, but first

This Week's Bullet Points

Track 3 Ski Day is Friday at the Club- Margaret Isberg has organized another great day for a great cause, with gate training, races and much more. Click here to get more details and register.
Regular Friday gate training is SL at 9:30 and 1:00. Contact Laurel to register.
Training is on the usual schedule - gates will be SL at 9:30 Saturday and Sunday, Adult Tech will meet at the National chair at those times and Fast & Female will be Saturday at 9:30. Look for signage and Natalie's newsletter for hill space details.
Interclub race is at Caledon on Saturday afternoon - TSB and his deputies have been busy putting in place the building blocks for the finals at Craigleith on Saturday the 20th - a trip to Caledon is key for many of the team members.
GDHL this weekend is the long SL on Sunday with inspection from 12:15 to 12:45. The race starts at the top of Millennium and runs down to Venture, then all the way back to the Millennium finish line. Oxygen bottles prohibited on course. Bibs 10 and 20 are held by Rich Lavery and Steve Jarvis, respectively. Remember, they can be transferred but no racer may use a preferred bib more than once in the season.
No GDHL next weekend, but we will have a GS on Big John on Saturday the 27th and the final GDHL race will be combined with the GS race in the Club Championships on Saturday 5 March.
The GDHL closing dinner will be held on the evening of 5 March - find a date and save the date.

So What Am I Talking About?

Sunday afternoon in GDHL land brought the season's second slalom on Comet. Think back to our opening weekend when Kate Ryley made history as the first female overall winner of a GDHL race. This time, Kate was busy fueling the overheated Toronto real estate market on behalf of Blue Elephant Realty, but the elephant was still in the room, or at least at the finish line, as spectators wondered whether an asterisk would loom over the day's results. Meghan Barber set the early pace, ultimately finishing 12th, before being surpassed by Allan LaChance and then the nemesis of the ranking committee, Warren McDougald. (Warren's continuing success led me to revisit my notes to confirm that I had indeed received advice from an otherwise fairly accurate source suggesting Warren was about on par with a guy who finished 85th last year. There's one every year!) Jeff Sutherland (5th) and Greg Cavers (4th) had stays in the hot seat, but Chris Barber's first run left little doubt as he finished almost three seconds clear of the rest of the field, helped by DNF's from two of his usually close rivals. Phil Ruffolo put together the fastest second run of the day to tie Spencer Jackson for second on the men's overall podium, while Kate Veer and Jayne Clarke followed Meghan in the women's overall. There really is some magic in the slalom helmet and poles that Chris and Meghan seem to share! Other notable performances towards the top of the table included Craig Shibley (9th), Patrick Pedlar (13th), Glenn Blaylock (17th), Jamie Deeks (19th) and J-F Courville (22nd). The biggest movers, after Warren, were Bob Waite, Ed Barnicke and Dougie Craig (up 45, 44 and 43 places, respectively, with solid jumps from Mark Reidl and Sarunas Lenauskas, as well as all those lower in the rankings who showed up and took advantage of a smaller than usual field to score big points. Full results are here.

Turning to other business, I had an email about 6:15 am on Monday from a racer wondering why the data base was crediting over 200 points on the season to someone who had only one finish. The answer is that, after four races are completed, the data base makes season-end adjustments for those who don't have four races. The formula is that those who are short of finishes receive average points less 10 per race for their missing races. This means that team standings will now be less affected by poor attendance, but remember that it's best four races to count, so you can at least get rid of the penalty for missed races and hope to replace your weaker scores with strong ones in the last races of the season.

On the theme of growing the GDHL, I've heard that there may be even more younger members ready to join us next year. If you know them or anyone else who's a candidate, please encourage them to race in the Club Championships this year so that the ranking committee will have some results to review in the hopes of not relying on memories of performances in days of yore.

And before we forget real estate, your interclub team would be delighted if you stepped up to buy the house that Mary Riopelle is supposed to be having an open house for on Saturday, so she can come to Caledon with a clear conscience, and we'd all be happy if you turned to our loyal sponsor Locations North for some advice in that connection :)

Diversions

*Families that cross-block together stay together - Liam, son of Glenn Kilmer and temporarily retired GDHLer Tory McKillop*

Nothing to do with ski racing, but very amusing I think.

And finally, a man was seated next to a boy in an airplane. The man turned to him and said "Let's talk." The boy replied "Okay, what do you want to talk about?" Thinking he would have a bit of fun, the man said "How about nuclear power?" The boy countered "That's a very interesting topic. But let me ask you a question. Horses, cows and deer all eat grass, but deer excrete pellets, cows produce flat pies and horses have big clumps of manure. Why is that?" Puzzled, the man said "I don't know, what does it matter?" To which the boy replied "Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear issues when you clearly don't know sh*t?"

See you on the weekend!

James Mathers