For the first two Saturdays of December, I was asked to help the Steamboat Winter Sports Club AND the Aspen Valley Ski/Snowboard Club with their annual fund-raising gala events. I have a connection to Steamboat because my brother Chris was the alpine director there for two years and his wife Wendy is on the committee to put on the event. A special thanks goes to Michael Collin at Kjus outerwear for donating a Mac jacket and to Kipp Nelson for donating two VIP tickets to the Telluride Jeep King of the Mountain event. It was a great dinner and auction that ended with a bunch of coaches, parents, and VIPs shakin’ their asses on the dance floor to some quality Motown. The AVSC Winter Whiteout Gala is tomorrow night after the women’s World Cup downhill, and it promises to be a blowout party and a great fund-raising effort for the club. They’ll be auctioning off Chris Davenport, Dave Stapleton and myself for days of skiing in Aspen. That should bring in the big bucks!! Then, I heard, Blues Traveler is going to come by and make a guest appearance at the end of the night. We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, I have been forerunning the women’s downhill for a little training leading into my first competition in Telluride next week. At first, I was a little hesitant to strap on the 215s and launch myself down Spring Pitch and Strawpile at 85 mph after not running DH in four years, but after one run I was totally fired up. The DH is so much fun, and it’s great to forerun because I get a clean track and there’s no pressure to get any result. It’s a good thing too, because those girls are fast! Lindsey Vonn chicked me in both the first and the second training runs. While it is a little embarrassing getting smoked by the wife of my longtime competitor Thomas Vonn, I think it’s great she is dominating the sport, and I’ll be rooting for her to get her second straight win of the season.

My first race is coming up next week in Telluride, and I think I’m ready to go. Other than being beaten by Lindsey in the Aspen DH (I’m blaming it on the wax ), my confidence is high, I’m healthy, and I’m ready to kick some @#!$.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am and is filed under caseypuckett. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.