Hey - Caldwell Sport has been absorbed by the growing global giant of the ski industry known as Boulder Nordic Sport. The Caldwell family has been abducted and installed in Boulder Colorado. Check out http://www.bouldernordic.com/ to see what’s up. Whatever you do, don’t send skis to Squamish for service. If I could figure out how to change the sidebars on this website I’d do that. But the Caldwellsport IT guy got canned during the transition and now I can’t figure any of it out. Can’t even post a picture of the new shop setup down in Boulder.

For a variety of reasons I’ve got a pretty good number of un-skiable skis in the shop. Some of them are warranty returns that I get from the distributor in order to test grinds on “trash” skis before putting final structure on customer’s skis. Others are skis that end up broken in action, or in shipping. And some are skis that just drop-out of use because they’re unsatisfactory - they don’t “make-it” as race skis. I suppose I could sell these to unsuspecting customers, but that doesn’t sit well with me. [Read more →]

I just returned from eight days on the road and found my shop all cleaned-up, organized, and ready to go. Most of the skis in there had even been flattened and are ready for final structure. And everything I finished before I left had been put through two cycles in the heatbox. I was visited by elves. That’s them to the left. I went down to shoot some pictures since the shop will never look this good again (at least not while I’m in town), but photos didn’t really do it justice.

It also occured to me that many of the friends and customers who visited my shop in Vermont have no real idea of what the set-up here in Squamish is like. So I bagged the idea of photos and decided to go for a video walking tour. Here it is…

It sure is beautiful back East this time of year. I’m at “home” in VT after a couple of days in Lake Placid at the USST camp. I need to see to winterizing my house (anybody want to buy a really nice small place in Windham, VT?), and then I’m headed over to Manchester NH to pick skis at Fischer before flying out to Denver to meet with Nathan for a couple of days at BNS Global Headquarters.

Yesterday’s Whiteface rollerski race in Lake Placid presented me with an opportunity to address a couple of comments from my previous post regarding home-made rollerskis. Ollie asked why a rollerski made from an Atomic classic ski shaft might be more prone to failure than, say, a Marwe which he understood to be basically a Peltonen ski. Well, one athlete was stupid enough to show up at the rollerski race with his Marwe skate skis in a state of sufficiently abused distress so that they experience catastrophic failure prior to the start. I don’t want to mention any names, but his initials are S. Tarling. Whoops. I must have slipped on that second initial. Sorry Sam. You idiot. Anyway, this gave me an opportinity to illustrate two points: 1 - a Marwe shaft is not a peltonen ski. 2 - the shaft ends are reinforced in exactly the way that the Atomic ski shaft ends that we “built” are not reinforced. This reinforcement is necessary to support both the compressive and shear forces associated with the attachment of the fork to the shaft. I would be completely shocked if the Atomic shaft itself were to fail.

For the record, Sam found replacement skis and went on to finish impressively in 10th place. His replacement skis were also Marwes, putting him on the same “standard” skis that most of the top guys were using. His performance was both impressive and legitimate as a measurement of his fitness against the top guys in the country. He’s still an idiot for showing up with broken equipment.

The weather has finally changed out here. It remains nice - we’re still getting our share of sunny warm days, but it’s gotten quite a lot colder, and we’re getting regular rain as well. Other signs of Fall are evident in the shop. Plenty of work - I’ve been plugging away at a big pile of skis in there. Not exactly hurrying, but getting things done with some help from Pat O’Brien. It’s really nice to have a previously trained and well qualified guy to feed skis for flattening.

Yesterday we had a visit from a friend with a broken rollerski shaft (to be fair, the thing had served well for over 10 years, and didn’t owe anybody anything). We thought about trying to repair it, but figured it was structurally shot, so we came up with a replacement. I’m sure this has been done countless times, and I’ve attempted it a few times before. But these Swenor forks and the Atomic skis seemed to mesh particularly well. We’ll see how it goes. We made no attempt to reinforce the shaft ends, so I have every expectation for catastrophic failure. The skis will only be used for double-poling on the flats, and we have a handshake agreement on no lawsuits! I wonder what Atomic would say if we tried to warranty the skis after they fail?

Speaking of rollerskiing, the loops and parking lots up at the venue are finally complete! We’ve now got a 4.75 loop that you can access (on rollerskis) from the parking lots of either the XC or biathlon stadium. This opens up quite a lot of really good terrain, and the hills above the XC stadium make for really good rollerski climbs. It’s been a long wait, but well worth it.

Check out www.bouldernordicsport.com to sign-up for the mailing list for the new informational magazine that Nathan has created. This is a project that he and I discussed back in the Spring as a tool for marketing the services that we provide. The marketing model in this case was to provide really good information on a range of services from ski selection and grinding to boot fitting and coaching services. The original idea was that I would provide a whole bunch of content, but most of the load fell to Nathan, as usual.

This is not a catalog - you will not find product descriptions, prices and ordering instructions in here (don’t get me wrong - we want you to buy stuff - but the website is the best way to do that). Instead you’ll find technical information on everything we do. This sucker is dense - it’ll live on the coffee table (or the back of the toilet) for a couple of months before you really finish with it. It is a marketing tool - so help us out and sign up for the mailing list. We want to help foster your addiction to the best of Nordic equipment and services.

I’m slowly emerging from the worst illness I can ever remember having. Fever for several days, topping out at 103.5, and a throat that looked like this.  And as I emerge, I’m realizing that we’re pretty looking at ski season. NOW. I ground a big batch of World Cup skis for the USST while they were here for their September camp, and sent them back to Utah on the 10th. Peter Hale brought a carload of Madshus skis up to fill the space that the USST skis left.

This is the time of year when it’s tempting to say that things look really busy, but when I also don’t want to scare anybody away from sending skis, because I know it’ll only get worse later. The best reason to get grinding done early this year is that I’m leaving for several weeks in mid-november. I’ve got some business to attend to back East, and will carry-on to Sweden and Finland for the Gaellivare and Kuusamo World Cups the last two weekends in November before returning December 1. This means that I need to have all pre-season skis in the shop before the first of November, without question. Start planning!

I’ve been back in Squamish for 9 days, and it’s been nine nearly perfect days. I know, I know - I’ve been on about this all summer. The weather has been perfect. Whatever. But what you need to understand is that I’ve been talking up the misery of Squamish weather far and wide, and a lot of people are unimpressed with my dire warnings. Pat O’Brien came out with me on this last trip, and he’s been downright jolly the whole time. The summer was a bit wet back East (I hear - it was nice for the week I was there), and Patty has got unnatural levels of happy sunshine hormones in his bloodstream right now. The outlook doesn’t look much better either. This morning is the first time I’ve ever seen that weather graphic on my google screen.

Yesterday Patrick hiked Blacktusk with Rosie Brennan. I was grinding skis. I really need to get up there. It looks unbelievable.

There has been a proliferation of little inukshuks in a couple of spots around Whistler Olympic Park. The fence at the biathlon stadium has a pretty good line-up of the things, but the original breeding ground was the area around the big inukshuk that stands near the jumps. The spectacle got compelling enough so that sightseers found it physically impossible to drive past without stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures. No, the signs didn’t help.

Well, today the construction crew took some serious pest management steps. As we rolled up the road to the venue for the sprint relay session there was a big front-end loader mowing inukshuks. I don’t know if it’s possible to actually eradicate these things. I guess we’ll see over the coming weeks.

I returned to Squamish yesterday from a trip back East to visit family and pick skis. The various coaches and athletes of the USST were all busy arriving at about the same time. Some drove, others flew, and they all made it in last night (aside from Chris Cook who is at a wedding) and hit the ground rolling this morning with a rollerski session at the Olympic venue. Pat O’Brien accompanied me back from VT to train in Squamish for the Fall, and Dan Roycroft arrived yesterday. For today’s session Pat, Dan and Jesse Heckrodt of the CVTC joined Kris for a skate session while the rest of the USST crew did a double-pole. Kris and Pat doubled-poled yesterday for a couple of hours - hence the skate. [Read more →]

I made a trip to Austria in June to pick skis, but that’s old news. Recently I’ve been trying to coordinate my Fall schedule - trips back East to pick skis, Period One World Cup trip , another Austria trip, and Gunnar’s schedule around Amy’s various camps and races - it’s a bit of a puzzle. But the pieces are coming into place, and the first piece is coming up soon. Nathan has just finished a trip to the Fischer warehouse, and the end of August is a bit early for follow-up on BNS orders, but it’s a good opportunity for me to get back East to ensure that the stuff I picked in Austria (which has arrived) is going to the right places. It does present an opportunity though - if you missed the Austria trip, or Nathan’s recent trip, it’s not too late to contact either me or the guys at the home office to get on my pick-list for the last week of August.

I’ll fly back to Vancouver on the 30th - the same day that the USST arrives to begin the September dryland camp in Whistler. By my reckoning that marks something of a seasonal shift. At least from my point of view, it’ll be all skis all the time when I get back. I guess that means one more week of Summer. Oh well.