Day off

I woke up today thinking I am going to "work". Then I said, "take a day off". The irony is I am sitting here typing this wanting to lay up a ski. I am not going to. I cant wait for 7 am tomorrow when I do. We constructed four different pair of Kylie 186 the last couple of weeks. Everyone was a little different. We knew they would be stiff, how stiff was the question. The outcome, too stiff and a bit heavy. Here are some reviews from our team out on the snow:

Yo... well you know those things are stiff but man do I see potential in having a pair that stiff. I need to prob put my boot sole a little more forward and ski them with an appropriately flexed boot. But I could see me skiing those in comps when i would want a stiff ski like and I want to try them in pow.I just took a few laps at a-basin today. I think I need to detune them and perhaps edge the base bevel to 3 degrees so they wont track as much but i like them.. For skiing fast, hucking cliffs and going straight they are going to be awesome. The shape and width are perfect for a big mtn pow ski. I def think softer would be fine though the stiff tail is kinda nice.I would like to try a pair with out the carbon to see if its even neccesary. So i am stoked on the skis though! Drew Rouse

I think the 186 Kylie is really pretty close. I really like how damp the ski is. It never chattered, never felt unstable, and could go from big skidded turn to big skidded turn nicely (especially when driving forward). It also carved pretty well. But you really had to be forward and in an aggressive stance. I also found I could go from edge to edge quickly and then open it up when there was more room on the hill. It is overall a little too stiff, especially in the tails. I think that is why sometimes the ski just tried to go straight. If you weren't skiing aggressively and really forward the tails just want to go straight My only other critique is the weight. It is pretty heavy. Caleb Melamed

This brings us to tomorrow! As we took this feedback and CNC a new vertically laminated bamboo core and new sidewalls. As we flexed it, we loved it. 20% less stiff in the top and bottom 20% of the ski. We then profiled it so the stiffness kicks in quick. The result will be a ski that initiates quicker and easier at lower speeds or pressure. We don't make skis for 99% of skiers. If we did that 20% less stiff would be 30% less stiff and 30% back from the tips. We don't want Grace skis to fail anyone at 40, 50 60 plus MPH. That is when skiing gets good! We

want that stiff ski to be there for us, every time. The result is a ski that demands a little more on a groomer at 10 MPH. If you want an easy skiing ski, email us and we can point you in the right direction. As for our direction, this Kylie 186 that will come out of the press tomorrow feels perfect!! We will let you know.

Two More Hints

6) If the answer to your question is right in the middle of our homepage, please don't ask me to answer it for you.

7) NO. We don't make a park/pike/jib ski. Did you even look at who we are before asking for free stuff?

5 Sponsorship Hints

After coming home to another handful of sponsorship applications in the inbox, here's what's on our minds...

1) If you are any kind of credible skier, you should know that the plural of 'ski' is 'skis', not 'skies' or ' ski's ' . If you want a sponsorship with Grace Skies, contact them, not us. They'll happily give you a pair of free clouds. Proofreading is an option too.

2) If you're trying to tell us about your professionalism, please don't refer to us as 'u guys' in your formal resume.

3) Reiterating points 1 and 2: If you take this sponsorship seriously and make it look like you care about appearing professional, we might believe you. If you capitalize your sentences, run a spell-check, and give us the information we're looking for, we probably won't notice (or care about) a typo or two. But if your request for sponsorship is a handful of disconnected, incomplete thoughts connected with an ellipsis, we might not be so forgiving. We do not expect you to use big words or correctly demonstrate the use of semi-colon, just prove to us that you passed the first grade. Being a ski bum does not entitle you to a gross negligence of basic English. Unless of course it is your second language then good for you for being bilingual, you get a pass! We are not trying to be intellectual snobs. We know the person that started this whole thing puts demands on spell check that are unparalleled, but he uses it. It's just that we can't stop twitching at your misspellings. Hint: It doesn't help you land a sponsorship if the person fielding your application is twitching.

4) If we ask for photos, videos, resumes, references, and other evidence of your talent, you won't get very far sending us an email about how well you can represent Grace Skis, without showing us that you actually know how to ski. If you don't give us what we ask for in the application, we are going to assume you're not going to give us what we need when it actually counts.

5) If we specifically say in our list of sponsorship criteria that we want to know something about who you are as a person, a couple photos and list of accomplishments might not cut it. Give us more than what we asked for, not less.

Just had to rant and add some quality hints for the world of sponsorship

300 LIKES on facebook

In the spirit of 300 LIKEs on facebook yesterday, here is one of our favorite movie reviews.

I just saw a movie that'll give your eyes boners, make your balls scream and make you poop DVD copies of THE TRANSPORTER. It's called 300. I don't know what the title has to do with the movie, but they could've called it KITTENS MAKING CANDLES and it'd still rule.

It's about these 300 Greek dudes who stomp the sugar-coated shit out of like a million other dudes. I have a feeling that a lot of high school sports coaches are going to show this film to their teams before they play. Also, gay dudes and divorced women are going to use screen captures for computer wallpaper.

The movie takes place about a million years ago, and it's sort of like a prequel to SIN CITY. Except way less guns and cars but twice as much skull splitting.
If you watch this movie and go into a Taco Bell, and say to the cashier, "I need some extra sauce packets"
guess what? You're getting twenty sauce packets because your face will punch him in the brain.

I can't spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN'T ONE. Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that's hitting someone's balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey.

TWO COOL THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE AND ONE THING I DIDN'T
LIKE:

COOL THING ONE:
HEAVY METAL DURING BATTLE SCENES

Who gives a shit if the music isn't historically correct? LORD OF THE RINGS could've used some Journey.
This movie has that chu-CHUNG kind of metal that you hear in your head when your shift supervisor at Wetzel's Pretzel is telling you that you'll have to stay for clean up and you wish you had a sock filled with quarters in your hand.

COOL THING TWO:
FOES, MINI-BOSSES AND A BIG BOSS

Basically, the Greek dudes are fighting these Persian dudes, but the director, who must have a dick made of three machine guns, does it all like a video game. The Greeks fight through every death metal video from the last ten years. There's wave after wave of giants, freaks, ninjas, mutants, wizards, and a hunchback who looks like he's got Rosie O'Donnell on his back.

Would I have been happy if Dom DeLuise from HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I had shown up? Maybe, but this movie more than makes up for that glaring oversight.

NOT SO GOOD THING:
DUDE NUDITY ("DUDE-ITY")

These are Greek times, when there were a lot of naked women around. And there are some naked women in this film, but almost every naked woman scene has a muscular dude giving the screen an ass picnic.
Dude-ity is something directors put in their movies so people will think they're serious, I guess, and not just throwing in naked hotties.

Any directors reading this - IT'S OKAY TO JUST THROW IN NAKED HOTTIES.

Can't someone make a movie about naked Amazons and call it PAUSE BUTTON?

My final analysis is 300 the most ass-ruling movie I've seen this year, and will probably be the King of
2007 unless someone makes a movie where a pair of sentient boobs fights a werewolf.

Moving forward and looking back

We started this crazy Grace Ski idea 15 months ago or so..wow. Started out with an idea and pushed to produce a ski that we enjoyed. We did that and now we need to keep moving or we get run over. We received two emails this week to sponsor guides in Telluride and Ak. What a testing ground. These are tremendous athletes guiding on slopes that demand ski performance. Scary for us really. Can we deliver? We just skied on two pair this week that we couldn't even bend. Terrible skis really. We don't think the top sheets are adhering very well either. Lots of questions moving forward...but we keep moving forward...

free heli skiing would be nice... making the best heli ski would even be better. maybe they go hand in hand..

Back to the CNC

We skied on two pair of the Kylie team issue skis. Cant say we loved them on the hard pack at A-basin. We need to keep it in perspective...so here is the perspective.

We designed these skis to be stiff, an aggressive core profile, carbon and different VDS layups. The result was a ski that didn't want to bend into or out of a turn. Not a great ski for a groomer day on man made snow. Over all they were a D. The bright spot was speed. They had no top speed and didn't even as much as wiggle. Stable as stable gets. We landed a few small jumps and one could feel the VDS in the tips. When the snow softened they surfed like a stiff board should.

If one had these skis on a 6 inch day at Vail, the bowls would be child's play, turning would be for the weak and the speeds would be very high...for an everyday ride, they wouldn't cut it. To beat anyone down China bowl on a crud/powder day they would slice it up!

Sponsorships!

If you're reading the blog you've probably already heard, but...
Grace is looking to sponsor a couple more athletes this winter! Sponsorship info can be found here.

Ben White's adventures

One of the perks of this job and the ski community is "meeting" kids like Ben White. Ben White skied all the peaks in New Hampshire that are above 4,000 ft. He is the first to do it in a year. We did a quick Google search on this skier from Massachusetts.

http://14erskiers.com/franksblog/2011/05/ben-white-skis-new-hampshires-4kers/

We have visions of this kid heading out West and doing some real damage to some 14,000ft peaks, then on to BC and Europe...time will tell. make the ski world proud Ben, we have our collective eye on you...

Working all day tomorrow

As the wall grows with finished skis the Basin blows snow...so what to do? You guessed it, a few of the Grace crew are actually going skiing tomorrow. We know 99% of you think we are idiots. (We would make fun of us) One run, huge lift lines and a bunch of over zealous first year locals doing their best to be local. We however have a motive. We get the honor of testing skis. Bend them, spin on them, butter them around, angulate a knee through a GS turn around the zealots. We are getting feedback tomorrow only skiing can deliver. We are actually working....

PS "angulate" isn't a word but we use it too much to care

Watching The Laser Work

We have 20 minutes until the laser finishes her cut, Fred the dog is asleep and we started out having a pretty bad day. Bad in the sense that things didn't go as planned. Our new cassette, in all her 3/16" thick glory was tough to manage. Easy fixes to make it perfect but fixes none the less. After a rant of emails Patrick set us straight with words to live by:

"Nothing is a waste of time. It is all learning. And in your darkest hour, think about the cantaloupe farms that recently

killed 17 people and don't even know why their fruit has a killer bacteria."

So, in the end, we didn't create a killer bacteria, we just made a sub par ski, that in the end might tell us something when we extract it tonight. Maybe it came out perfect or as planned. We shall see in the next hour! Don,t worry, we have another one ready to press.

What makes Grace Different?

The number one question we get at Grace Skis is, "How are you different"? We make skis about the same way every manufacturer makes skis. We design shapes and profiles into those skis not so different then any other manufacturer. We use wood cores, plastic, fiberglass, carbon fiber, epoxy etc, you guessed it, just like most ski manufacturers. So then what makes us different?

Here is what we look forward to, a scenario played out in our future...

"I was pleased that I got what I paid for, A ski that was in my price range, made in Colorado, by hand, by a group of skiers that ski. But what really blew me away was _____"

This is where we will be different, this is our community, this is what will set us apart. The part that fills in the blank!

But what really blew me away was......

the community I found through this purchase. I was now involved with a "crew", "posse", "club" or "tribe" that skis, cares for the environment and straight out rips while having a great time on and off the snow.

The skis just bring us all together. The head tilt in the lift line recognizing fellow skier who made the same purchase is just the start. Recognizing the simple bamboo appearance in a blur on Bear trap from ones roost on Pali is just the start. See a 9 year old free skiing with a pair, knowing this company recognized the grom as the future and his parents believe in the company, is just the start.

We will make skis, that is the easy part but YOU will make a community that skis and delivers that quintessential head tilt of recognition, that reinforces the movement and what makes us different...The Ski Grace Community makes us different.

Join us, fill in your own blank....

Kylie 186 Beta for Team member Drew Rouse

We are sandwiching a Kylie 186 for Drew Rouse tomorrow. The shape and and camber are all set in stone. The flex, we are playing with. This particualer ski will have 2" 9oz. uni carbon in 3/4 of its length. We added VDS in stategic places to dampen the overall ski and keep it from humming at speed. Our hope is a ski big enough to float, quick enough to spin the chutes and trees, stiff enough to surf from middle to tail and damp enough to flat out fly. We want Drew to land everything, so the supple front will engage bumps and takeoffs and the stiff tail will send him off everything with pop and keep him in the driver's seat, if he lands in the back seat. I am sure Drew will help us with feedback! Be ready Drew, the snow is falling...

Simplify

"We have the power to create happiness, to make this life a wonderful adventure"