Posts from — April 2009

Wordle is an online toy for generating “word clouds” from text (or URL) that you provide.

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

We love playing with Wordle – so much so we’ve created three below from our week as ski testers for ski press magazine.

What follows is a unique and creative way of getting the essence of our week in our own words… but remixed thanks to Wordle.

The first wordle cloud below was created using all the words we used in writing blog summary reports for 5 days starting last Sunday when we arrived in Ste-Anne. You can read all of them here if you haven’t already.

Click on each word cloud to see full size!

The next wordle cloud below was created using all the words Sasha used in writing her comments and impressions of the 30+ skis she tested over 4 days. All the comments were captured into our laptop (independent of ski or manufacturer) before handing in the booklet at the end of day 4.

The next wordle cloud below was created using all the words Phil used in writing his comments and impressions of the 30+ skis he tested over 4 days.  All the comments were captured into our laptop (independent of ski or manufacturer) before handing in the booklet at the end of day 4.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see a consolidated Wordle cloud from all testers published in Ski Press Magazine next fall as part of their profile of the testers?

We sure think so… and have emailed the suggestion to Sophie at Ski Press for consideration.

We came. We skied. We tested.

About 35 skis later and we’re drinking a glass of wine looking over Baie-St-Paul.

Today wasn’t the epic day we were expecting. The weather was predicted to be 9 degrees and sunny, instead it was about 4 degrees and cloudy but that didn’t take away from the experience.

These skis were meant for cruising

Today I had short-turn carving skis and Phil had more of a cruising type ski. As the day warmed and the snow really softened my skis didn’t like the conditions but that didn’t stop me from testing their limits. Because I’m so light and because most of those short-carving skis have such fat tips I can use them to plow through the crud.

But Phil was on cruisers that just allowed him to really go through it all. I spent my day just trying to keep up while my skis just wanted to make all these little turns.

As we handed in our booklets with our notes about all the skis we had tested I couldn’t help but smile. What an amazing four days – amazing skis, the great people I had met, and skiing with Phil for the most consecutive days all season. I can’t wait to go back again next year (well at least I hope so)

Every great beginning should have a great ending

As we were finishing our day the sun came out to shine. Phil and I finished the day with one of those epic bump runs – huge, but super soft, bumps with blazing sunshine as I chased Phil down to the bottom. We said good-bye to the great friends we met and headed our ways. No matter where we all came from, we all had a common value; we all loved to ski.

We’re going to ski Le Massif for a couple of days together; apparently Saturday is their Reggae Festival. And then we’re off to Old Quebec city for a night of luxury before we head back to reality.

After two days of mostly cloudy, foggy and what could be described as Ontario hard pack conditions, we finally saw blue skies on day three – although you’d never know it by the picture above which was taken in the morning.

Unlike day two, I had a full schedule with 9 skis to test while Sasha had 7 skis to test. We were both testing carving categories and although I was told most of my product would be geared towards intermediates, I ended up riding several top end skis that were well suited for experts.

With an average of 40,000 feet of skiing vertical a day, my body was reminding me that I was not in peak condition. My lower back tightened up as the day went on and my T bands were so tight that i was getting knee soreness.

Our legs were both feeling a bit rubbery by the end of the day – but we were also skiing hard and tracking at least 3 runs per ski…. while many others cruised in a lower gear and averaged 2 runs per ski.

Our reward for a long hard day on the hill was a scheduled massage at 5pm. Unfortunately there was some confusion over scheduling and a french tester ended up taking Sasha’s spot! Knowing I was in worse shape, Sasha insisted that I take my scheduled massage which I gladly did

Wednesday night was also our last night together as a group, so we decided to do a group stir fry dinner at our neighbors condo. Sasha volunteered (well maybe volun-told since i suggested it) to cook while our new friends both bought the food and prepared it for her.

Needless to say, dinner was a big hit with the 12 assembled – even the french tester who had stolen Sasha’s massage slot who ironically showed up for dinner was appreciative.

After finishing up on Day 4, Sasha & I are heading to Baie St-Paul where we are staying at a lovely chalet just outside Le Massif. We had planned on booking something last minute and as it turns out, one of our friends from Collingwood happened to own a rental property and offered it up at a great rate.

Our first day started out as an adventure. We got to the top of the mountain fairly early and decided to take a run down the south side. Since we’ve arrived there has been some rain and it’s been warm.

We scooted over to the top of one of our favourite runs, the super s, and we found un-groomed ice bumps with a trace amount of dense powder in some of the troughs. It made for a tough warm-up run.

Our first test run was one of the epic runs – perfectly groomed and firm

After our ‘warm-up,’ or survival ski, we headed over to the tents for some more testing. Our day was to follow the theme of yesterday and test some more big mountain skis. Phil had a few ‘holes’ in his day, so he threw on his world cup slaloms and I chased him down the hill.

With all the test runs we’re doing we’re doing over 40,000 in vertical per day

The wind had died down so all the manufacturers had their tents lining the ‘catwalk.’ It was a great site, all the big ski names, some smaller ones too, and a whole bunch of people lining up to get their next skis to try.

On our way down the mountain after our day on snow we skied by the Super S and noticed that they had closed it off! We sped down the mountain and into the apres-ski where I won a long sleave shirt from Icebreaker. Most of the testers ended up at Laventure for dinner, but unfortunately they couldn’t handle the group and we spent 3.5 hrs waiting for dinner. All we could do is sip decent wine… so needless to say we were pretty much ready for bed after dinner.

Next we are trying the carving skis. It should be an epic day with the promise of warm weather and blue bird skies.