pDear Inventor and Followers of Catskiing. The Cat Ski thing. Stop it. Just stop. Stop with the techniques. Stop going to the Birkie expo. Stop the Cat Ski World Championships. Stop it./p
pNot because I think it will catch on. Not because you are ion to something./i Stop because what you are doing is so pointedly absurd, the nordic ski world, the ireal/i nordic ski world where people try to get better through legitimate training techniques (running, rollerskiing, cycling, strength work, tai-chi, virtually iany damned physical activity short of cat skiing/i, ) finds your schtick SO hilarious. So patently absurd that they keep emailing me with requests to put it here. On a slow day in June, when there just isn’t much nordic news going on, I put it up for a laugh. iLook at the silly guy on Cat Skis/i. iLook how silly they are. Oh the silliness/i. But now I feel dirty. This is absurd. So I’m going to take you seriously for about 300 more words. Here they are:/p
pWhy One Should NEVER Cat Ski./p
p1. Cat skis are a terrible training tool. Late kick, poor replication of the glide. Sillier looking than even rollerskis. Your “testimonial” page goes to a broken link on your website. Nothing is more fitting./p
p2. Cat ski techniques are not new or groundbreaking. People did them in the past on wooden skis way iway /iback. They weren’t faster. That’s why people don’t do them any more. It like you rediscovered pine tar…or t-grips. Congratulations./p
p3. Cross country skiing suffers enough from how remarkably different it is from the rest of sports. People think it is odd and for un-athletic driven people. You are confirming this. This is something that you are perpetuating through your continued and absurd allegiance to your ski-spin off hobby. We have enough legit spin offs. (Think biathlon, nordic combined.) Hence the oddities that adhere themselves to nordic skiing like a lamprey sucking the life out of a legitimate sport need to be poisoned or burned. (Think ski archery, nordic ski ballet and, yes, Cat-skiing.)/p
p4. You seem like a fellow with a lot of energy and ingenuity. Use it to ihelp/i skiing. Take a 100 level USSA course, help teach other people to ski, get folks into the sport in ways that bring us closer together not divide us. What you are doing is tantamount to bringing a dodgeball to a softball tournament and demanding that the pitcher huck that over the plate. It iain’t/i the same sport. Let’s face it, as satisfying as it is to clock that rubber ball with a softball bat, you look ridiculous./p
p5. If you must continue to work on this Cat-ski thing, please start by taking the clearly sizable profits you’ve reaped soaking the snow-starved masses back in wave 17 of the Birkie and purchase an island. Move there and rename it Catskitonia. Pack all the cat skis with you. (all 2 dozen pairs) Bring Cloxxi. Don’t worry. We’ll meet you there when we piece together, on our own, what iunbelievable/i training you’ve created./p
