Grand-Am's "off-season" is pretty short. For those of us in the KONI Challenge, we've got a three-month hiatus between the season-ending race in Virginia and the 2009-opener in January. In between, we need to build new cars, arrange crew member schedules and finalize our driver line-up. It's really not that much time.

Which means that it's difficult to schedule in some R&R (that's rest and relaxation) with our guys. But the early snow in southern Ontario this year meant we had to make time to hit the slopes just before the Christmas break.

A few of our crew and drivers are avid snowboarders, including Yours Truly. I've been boarding since the early nineties and have rarely gone back to twin planks (although I do when there are moguls around; I've never figured out how to get a snowboard down the bumps!).

In fact, the last time I was on skis was New Years' Eve 2005, during which my final run of the day saw me rushed to the hospital for a broken collar bone. Our fine Canadian medical system repaired it a scant 48 hours later (I am the proud owner of a titanium clavicle -- you can read the entire sorry tale here).

So no skis for me for the past few years, just my beloved old-school Burton Air! Technical Director Ray Lee was proud to show off his brand new gear (all Burton as well -- Fisher Skis sponsored one of our cars last year but they don't make boards!), and he welcomed a return to snowboarding after a few years on skis.

As well, recently-signed team driver Matt Pritiko made the drive to the hill from snowbound London, Ontario, while full-time crewman Petr Havelka and my father Phil (who takes care of logistics and catering every race weekend) rounded out our group.

We found some good terrain and the conditions were absolutely perfect! We found some great jumps as well (although we steered clear of the terrain park on this outing), which resulted in some pretty spectacular yard sales. I managed to remain upright, however, ever mindful of not damaging myself, while getting some reasonable air.

In all, a truly wonderful day on the sunny, snowy slopes of Mount St. Louis! It's given us a boost of energy while Petr, Ivan Ceccato and Ray complete work on our third new Honda Civic Si in preparation for the Daytona race. In the interest of cost savings, the team and our signed drivers have elected not to attend the test days later this week, and given the current economy, this seems a prudent decision. With that said, we will return to battle in late January to, we hope, continue our strong podium run at Daytona (Travis Walker and I were third last year, and in 2007 Billy Johnson and I took the win).

In the meanwhile, I'll be joining my wife and kids on the slopes over the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to trying out my new unidirectional carving board...

Labels: gablog