Jackson Illuminates Everything about Skiing

As part of the continuing series on my life as a skier, I present the tale of my graduation day from Yale, the springboard to my skiing life. It's not as boring as it sounds...

It's been a year since the pandemic shuttered the ski world. In the face of disaster, the various branches of the skiing family showed their ingenuity and resilience.  As a result, 52 weeks later, the ski universe is on track to normalcy. 

Everyone likes the idea of trying before buying, but it's not as easy as it sounds. This episode explores the business of demoing skis from all angles. 

After finishing Snowbird Secrets, my writing continued to show the effects of the deep dive Secrets required. My mind kept being attracted to big ideas that it would then condense, simplify and distill to make a highly concentrated dose of connected thoughts. On Genius was part of a post-Secrets mind purge that eventually petered out, to be replaced on my docket with hundreds of ski reviews, all of which can be found in the Realskiers.com review archives. 

Home and away games are not played by the same rules. It's not just the venues that change when you go on the road; everything changes.  I illuminate this point by citing my own experiences during my annual road trip to Snowbird, Utah. 

Ok, technically I never won the Hahnenkamm DH, but I did (barely) survive skiing the course during a press/retailer to junket to Austria in the early 1990's.  This episode is part one of a two-part tale of the most mismanaged press boondoggle of my journalistic career.  

Chapter XII of my autobiographical The Making of a Skier series, Putting Words in the Mouth of God and Other Mid-Life Misadventures summarizes my activities during the first decade of this century then neatly segues to a capsule report on my tenure as Warren Miller's copyrighter, a distinction I believe I share with no one. I also make frequent mention of Paul Hochman, who was my co-host on RSN's Gear Guys and played the role of groom to bride Carrie Sheinberg when I officiated their unofficial wedding ceremony during a ski test at Beaver Creek. (Decorum prevents from shedding any further illumination on this solemn ceremony.)  

In this episode, Stump and I finally get around to unearthing the details surrounding the creation of The Blizzard of Aahhh's, arguably the most influential ski movie of all time. (Both the founders of TGR and MSP acknowledge as much in Stump's Legend of Aahhh's.) Stump and I had so much fun doing these interviews that we may continue with this series.  There's much to chat about still, including stories of Stump's relationships with Tony Hawk - with whom he shot a Super Bowl commercial - Trevor Horn, Willie Nelson, Seal and Lukas Nelson.  But for now, we'll have to make do with this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Blizzard of Aahhh's.

To be a great bootfitter, you can't  focus on feet alone. You have to consider everything about this person's relationship to the sport, past, present and future. There are no cookie-cutter solutions. 

This polemic was penned so long ago I probably used a quill pen to compose the first draft.  Now that it has been elevated to iconic status, its essential premise has become indisputable. This is the first time - and perhaps the last - that it has ever been recorded.