"Modern Marvels" airs tonight

Be sure to catch the History Channel at 8PM tonight to see a segment of "Modern Marvels" featuring luge. This was filmed in November, before we left for Russia. I expect we will see Aaron Barge putting his best foot forward for the interviewer.

Russia

Luge team in Riga Lativa

Homecoming

We head home tomorrow, and I think about everyone is about ready to be with family and in familiar places. I will be in Lake Placid for the next week, and promise that a high priority of mine will be to put things on this blog that I intended to over the last few weeks, but never quite managed to find time for. Ellen, your requests for pictures will be honored !!

Good Job in the race today everybody. Good luck tomorrow boys. Hope you guys have a safe trip home.

Winterberg Race Schedule

After only three days of training runs here in Winterberg, the season finale of the Junior World Cup circuit begins tomorrow. Friday will start with a Team Competition, followed by the Doubles and Youth A Women races. Then the Junior Women will race in the afternoon. On Saturday, we will race Junior Men and Youth A Men.

In other news...

the Italians seem to have caught our stomach virus from Igls. I understand that viruses mutate quite readily, but this one seems to be targeting fewer athletes and more coaches as time goes by. Only one of the three Italian coaches was able to attend our group's training session on Wednesday.

The skies have cleared, but Winterberg is still feeling the effects of a snowfall, the likes of which have not been seen here for 30 years. One of our vans was stuck at the track today for almost two hours. Jake Hyrns put on an impressive demonstration of his shoveling talents, as six of our team members worked hard to get Curt's van out of a snow bank.

Contact info for Winterberg

We've done it again: left Austria in our wake and driven north to Germany. This time, Winterberg. And it is snowing here like I've never seen before...gotta be at least three feet on the ground, and still it comes down. So I'm not going anywhere tonight, that's for sure!

We are staying at the Hotel Winterberg Resort.

Tel: 011 49 (2981) 9190

Fax: 011 49 (2981) 91 91 00

Here's how to reach us in our rooms here: 011 49 (2981) 9192 xxx

105 Pete

106 Keith

107 Curtis

108 Robby

109 Jake, Andrew

113 Taylor, Aaron

115 Summer, Emily

213 Kate, Lea

215 Shane, Zac

Super Rad Week

Unlike the NSA kids, I am fully caught up in school and as a result I merely sit here in study hall facebook stalking my friends from home, all of a sudden sir. keith asked me to post on the blog. Well last week, I am sure you all heard we were all puking our guts out; our hard earned body weight just melted off our bodies. I was chugging water in order to gain my weight back for weigh in and it was quite a sight to see, all of us huddled in the TV room of the our apartment while curtis cooked up some europeans chicken noodle soup. Curtis decided that Jake was the loudest puker, and we all looked like ghosts. I was a rough day but by the end of the week we were humbled and just glad to be able to burp without breakfast coming out too.

On thursday night we had opening ceremonies and after dinner the out on a show for us. They had the world champ parkour biker come in and do cool jumps and rad stuff like that. They announcer man asked for a volunteer and well, summer was the one dumb enough to raise her hand. She went on stage, laid down and the bikeman did jumps over her and pretty much nearly landed her face more times than I can count. I got a raspy voice just from screaming for her. Well that was a fun night and then we raced over the weekend.

THEN I think the highlight of the week was the water park we went to on monday. They had this one slide that was huge and you had to have a tube in order to go down. The slide goes down and then empties out into a room where we all of the tubes collide. Well the boys figured out that if we held hands and grabbed each others' tubes to create a huge line, we can get the most speed possible. Of course the luge team would figure this out because speed is our forte. As we went down the slide holding hands, we would crash into the walls of this room and almost every time we were off our tubes. One time Zac was in front and went so fast that he hit the ceiling and we were all laughing. I definitely hit my head too many times and we all woke up this morning finding bruises in the most random places. Well I gotta bounce cause study hall is over, and I think a nap is in order before dinner, PEACE