Cloudy sunrise on Teton Pass Weds morning.
Another 14″ of snow fell Tuesday night, but steady gusts in the 50’s overnight made the snow a bit on the creamy side. I got out on the pass for three laps up the Glory bootpack. I took all three runs on First Turn, because I like the quick turnaround time, and never crossed a track. Pretty mellow vibe on the Pass these days as I think everybody has had their fair share of powder skiing this year.
Props to the crew of freeskiers who competed in Jackson last weekend. I didn’t catch the event, but the Subaru US Freeskiing Series put up some cool videos on their website that show all the qualifier, finals, and super finals of all the sick skiers. Plenty of time wasting potential to be had. Click on ‘video’ in the top menu…and then look for the Jackson 08 tab above the video selection area. Every time I watch this clips, it amazes me at how these guys hold their bodies together…not to mention thier knees. Congrats to BD rider Mark Welgos for taking the top spot.
As locals get ready for their spring adventures, we have been getting alot of people coming into the shop and asking about plastic water bottles…and which ones can kill them. From the research I’ve checked out, the answer is…none of them! The scare is about the chemical Bisphenol A, which can cause cancer and make some water bottles stronger an has been used in the food industry for years.
From what I’ve read and heard, the chemical only leaches out of the plastic when it is in contact with boiling water…and it is in such small abouts that you are more likely to have a humming bird poke your eyes out than have any effects from ingesting any Bisphenol A. And if you are worried about one chemical in just a water bottle, think of all the other chemicals that are in contact with what we eat and drink every day. For those that are worried about it though, know that some of the CamelBak bottles coming out next season…don’t have any Bisphenol A in them.
Dude…$200,000 for a corn flake? I guess if it is looks like the state of Illinois it’s worth it…until Ebay pulled the listing. Word is that Ebay had something against the auctioning of food. The corn flake is back on…at least a coupon for it is and it has stirred up a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon with other corn flake look-a-likes (including Hillary, Barack and McCain), buttons and t-shirts celebrating the Original Illinois Corn Flake. Deadline for bidding is on Friday.
Here’s a tip from the domestic front. I find when I wash my clothes these days, I tend to separate my cotton stuff from my synthetic/wool layers. When you wash and dry it all together, I find lint from the cotton tends to stick to the other clothes…making them not perform quite up to snuff and taking longer time to dry when they get wet from sweat or moisture from the sky. Ciao for now!
Hey Steve,
The plastics industry says plastic with bisphenol A is safe, but numerous independent research studies have found the opposite. Extremely minute quantities of Bisphenol A have very adverse effects, even more than larger concentrations of the chemical.
Its a huge controversy that I’ve been following for a couple years. Recently the Mountain Equipment Co-Op in Canada got rid of all water bottles containing Bisphenol A – the 1st retailer to do so.
Personally I converted all my clear Nalgene to pee bottles last year, after reading of researchers going home and purging their households of ploycarbonate. I now use the older style Nalgene High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) which doesn’t contain Bisphenol A.
If you want to look at the studies the links below are a good place to start.
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Researchers Fred vom Saal and Wade Welshons, at the University of Missouri-Columbia, reviewed 130 studies (119 funded by government and 11 funded by the plastics industry) involving low doses of bisphenol A, and 40 published studies involving higher doses.
109 (84%) of the government studies reported adverse effects, and the 11 industry funded studies found negligible effects.
See this paper, “vom Saal, F.S. and Welshons, W.V. Large effects from small exposures: II. The importance of positive controls in low-dose research on bisphenol A. Environmental Research, Online November, 2005.”-
http://endocrinedisruptors.missouri.edu/pdfarticles/vomsaalEnvResBPA2005.pdf
More info also at:
http://endocrinedisruptors.missouri.edu/pdfarticles/pdflist.html
Would be great if your shop also stopped selling Nalgene with Bisphenol A, or at least start warning consumers that they contain a controversial chemical 🙂