A Few Jokes...

Skier's Dictionary

Alp

One of a number of ski mountains in Europe.
Also a shouted request for assistance made by a European.

Avalanche

One of the few actual perils skiers face that needlessly frighten timid individuals away from the sport. See also: Blizzard, First Aid, Fracture, Frostbite, Hypothermia, Lift Collapse.

Bindings

Automatic mechanisms that protect skiers from serious injury during a fall by releasing skis from boots, sending the skis skittering across the slope where they trip two other skiers.

Bones

There are 206 in the human body. No need for dismay, however; the two bones of the middle ear have never been broken while skiing.

Cross-Country Skiing

Traditional Scandinavian all-terrain technique. It's good exercise, doesn't require purchase of costly lift tickets. It has no crowds or lines. See also: Cross-Country Something-Or-Other.

Cross-Country Something-or-Other

Touring on skis along trails in scenic wilderness, gliding through snow-hushed woods far from the hubbub of the ski slopes, hearing nothing but the whispery hiss of the skis slipping through snow and the muffled screams of other skiers dropping into the puffy powder of a deep, wind-sculpted drift.

Exercises

A few simple warm-ups to make sure you're prepared for the slopes

1. Tie a cinder block to each foot and climb a flight of stairs.
2. Sit on the outside of a fourth-story window ledge with your skis on and your poles in your lap for at least 30 minutes.
3. Bind your legs together at the ankles, lie flat on the floor; then, holding a banana in each hand, get to your feet.

Gloves

Designed to be tight around the wrist to restrict circulation, but not so close-fitting as to allow any manual dexterity; they should also admit moisture from the outside without permitting any dampness within to escape.

Gravity

One of four fundamental forces in nature that affect skiers. The other three are the strong force, which makes bindings jam; the weak force, which makes ankles give way on turns; and electromagnetism, which produces dead batteries in expensive ski-resort parking lots. See also: Inertia.

Inertia

Tendency of a skier's body to resist changes in direction or speed due to the action of Newton's First Law of Motion. Goes along with these other physical laws:

1. Two objects of different mass falling side by side will have the same rate of descent, but the lighter one will have larger hospital and home care bills.
2. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but if it drops out of a parka pocket, don't expect to encounter it again in our universe.
3. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object. See also: Tree.

Prejump

Maneuver in which an expert skier makes a controlled jump just ahead of a bump. Beginners can execute a controlled pre-fall just before losing their balance and, if they wish, may precede it with either a pre-scream and a few pre-groans or simple profanity.

Shin

The bruised area on the front of the leg that runs from the point where the ache from the wrenched knee ends to where the soreness from the strained ankle begins.

Ski!

A shout to alert people ahead that a loose ski is coming down the hill. Another warning skiers should be familiar with is "Avalanche!" (which tells everyone that a hill is coming down the hill).

Skier

One who pays an arm and a leg for the opportunity to break them.

Stance

Your knees should be flexed, but shaking slightly; your arms straight and covered with a good layer of goose flesh; your hands forward, palms clammy, knuckles white and fingers icy, your eyes a little crossed and darting in all directions. Your lips should be quivering, and you should be mumbling "Am I nuts or what?"

Thor

The Scandinavian god of acheth and painth.

Traverse

To ski across a slope at an angle; one of two quick and simple methods of reducing speed.

Tree

The other method.

Top 10 Ways to Simulate the Experience of a Ski Weekend

10

Visit your local butcher and pay $30 to sit in the walk-in freezer for half an hour. Afterwards, burn two $50 bills to warm up.

9

Go to the nearest ice skating rink and walk across the ice 20 times in your ski boots carrying two pairs of skis, accessory bags, and poles. Pretend you are looking for your car.

8

For ski boot simulation at home, put a pebble in your street shoes and tighten a C-clamp around your toes.

7

Buy a pair of gloves and immediately throw one away.

6

Go to McDonald's and insist on paying $6.50 for a hamburger. Be sure to wait in the longest line.

5

Clip a lift ticket to the zipper of your jacket and ride a motorcycle fast enough to make the ticket lacerate your face.

4

Drive slowly for five hours - anywhere - as long as it's in a snowstorm and you're following an 18 wheeler.

3

Fill a blender with ice, hit the pulse button and let the spray blast your face.

2

Dress up in as many clothes as you can and then proceed to take them off because you have to go to the bathroom.

1

Repeat all of the above every Saturday and Sunday.

A Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FROM: THE TREES

StoP tHE LogGINg oR wE WiLl coNtInUE To KIll oNe CeleBrITY EacH WeEK.

theRe ARe nO SkIinG "aCciDenTS".

A new toaster

Day 1

My boss, an engineer from the pre-CAD days, has successfully brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corp's engineering labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us in the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored when he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.

Day 6

We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing vice president today to hammer out the project's requirements and specifications. Here at Acme, our market share is eroding to low-cost imports. We agreed to meet a cost of goods of $9.50 (100,000). I've identified the critical issue in the new design: a replacement for the timing spring we've used since the original 1922 model. Research with the focus groups shows that consumers set high expectations for their breakfast foods. Cafe latte from Starbuck's goes best with a precise level of toastal browning. The Acme 2000 will give our customers the breakfast experience they desire. I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this project and final delivery in seven weeks. I'll need one assistant designer to help with the drawing packages. This is my first chance to supervise!

Day 23

We've found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it's a well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost $1.50 lower than our goal. Our rough prototype, which was completed just 12 days after we started, has been servicing the employee cafeteria for a week without a single hiccup. Toastal quality exceeds projections.

Day 24

A major aerospace company that had run out of defense contractors to acquire has just snapped up that block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie family in the '50s. At a company wide meeting, corporate assured us that this sale was only an investment and that nothing will change.

Day 30

I showed the Acme 2000's exquisitely crafted toastal-timing mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor. The single spring and four interlocking lever arms are things of beauty to me.

Day 36

The design is complete. We're starting a prototype run of 500 toasters tomorrow. I'm starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My new assistant did a wonderful job.

Day 38

Suddenly, a major snag happened. Bob called me into his office. He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those on high feel that the Acme 2000 is obsolete -- something about using springs in the silicon age. I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at using a microprocessor but figured that an electronic design would exceed our cost target by almost 50% with no real benefit in terms of toastal quality. "With a computer, our customers can load the bread the night before, program a finish time, and get a perfect slice of toast when they awaken," Bob intoned, as if reading from a script.

Day 48

Bill Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea of using a dedicated 4-bit CPU. "We need some horsepower if we're gonna program this puppy in C," he said, while I stared fascinated at the old crumbs stuck in his wild beard. "Time-to-market, you know. Delivery is due in three months. We'll just pop this cool new 8-bitter I found into it, whip up some code, and ship to the end user."

Day 120

The good news is that I'm getting to stretch my mechanical-design abilities. Bill convinced management that the old spring-loaded, press-down lever control is obsolete. I've designed a "motorized insertion port," stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three cross-coupled, safety-interlock micro switches ensure that the heaters won't come on unless users properly insert the toast. We're seeing some reliability problems due to the temperature extremes, but I'm sure we can work those out.

Day 132

New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We've replaced the 8-bitter with a Harvard-architecture, 16-bit, 3-MIPS CPU.

Day 172

New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.

Day 194

The auditors convinced management we really need a graphical user interface with a full-screen LCD. "You're gonna need some horsepower to drive that," Bill warned us. "I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM." He went back to design Revision J of the pc board.

Day 268

New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We've cured most of the electronics' temperature problems with a pair of fans, though management is complaining about the noise. Bob sits in his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like clockwork, his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I'm worried about him and mentioned my concern to Chuck. "Wife?" he asked. "Wife? Yeah, I think I've got one of those and two or three kids, too. Now, let's just stick another meg of RAM in here, OK?"

Day 290

We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows CE. The auditors applauded Bill's plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 Mbytes of RAM. There's still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely impressive. Four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a gigabit of hard-disk space. "This sucker has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years ago," Bill boasted proudly.

Day 384

Toastal quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling fans keeps the electronics to a reasonable temperature but removes too much heat from the toast. I'm struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the thrust of all these fans spins the toaster around.

Day 410

New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We switched From C++ to Java. "That'll get them pesky memory-allocation bugs, for sure," Bill told his team of 15 programmers. This approach seems like a good idea to me, because Java is platform-independent, and there are rumors circulating that we're porting to a SPARCstation.

Day 530

New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. I mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans and the heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the toast. We found a thermal grease that isn't too poisonous. Our marketing people feel that the slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than compensated for by the "toasting experience that can only come from a CISC-based, 32-bit multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform software."

Day 610

The product shipped. It weighs 72 lb. and costs $325. Bill was promoted to CEO.

Collection © 1997 Indian Hill Ski Club Back to the home page.

Tue Nov 17 20:32:50 CST 1998 Mail Dave Bodenstab with questions/problems about this site.