Razorskier1

Keep after it y’all.

It’s all good and I’m OK, but the time has come

In short I’m done skiing

Appreciate more than you can know everyone’s thoughts and prayers.

No two days are the same. I try to walk every morning and lift every afternoon with Susan or the kids. Some days I have to dig awful deep to find that energy. Today is one of those days. Keep digging.

I think you all know I lost all of my left peripheral vision in my November surgery and can no longer drive a car. Obviously this also impacts other activities. We will see

Highly unpredictable @Than_Bogan Lots of unpredictable ups and downs. Trying to figure out what I can and can’t do

I believe I skied my last tournament round last fall. Ah well. What can you do? Maybe I’ll get lucky and get another shot sometime.

Hey guys. Fighting hard here. Avastin and keto seem to be shrinking the thing in my head. Just doubled steroid dose. Brain inflammation is a lingering problem. Left arm and leg don’t like it. More steroids and more frequent Avastin at a higher dose should help. We fight on

More a goal to ski and just have fun regardless of course, open water or rope length.

Science is all hard

Slowly recovering from second surgery nov 6th. Will be tapering off of anti seizure drug and steroid starting today. Had substantial brain swelling. Good news was no new tumor, just lots of radiation necrosis. So back to regular scans and waiting for what comes next.

Great webcast! Thanks @JeffSwain

I was signed up but my November brain surgery shot that all to heck

Ya that happened. But we stretched the field folks! Thanks to my Mayo team for their competence and compassion! This round goes to me. Thanks y’all!

Good news this time! Lots of detail but The short Answer is we bought time with a break from treatment. Scans one month out.

I’m leaving the hospital. 24 hours since surgery finished

Thanks all. Looks like 7:30am game time is confirmed in central time

I have a new large and fast growing mass in my brain. I have surgery on Monday at Mayo after which we will get pathology results. They believe it could be either benign or cancer and they won’t know until we take it out,but it has to come out as I’ve been symptomatic for several weeks already.

Been true for me for a long time. If I need a big turn in a pass I hope I’m going to 135 offside. Very co doesn’t I can do anything over there. Conversely, if I’m going to lose ground or make a pass ending mistake, Always the on side.

Yep. Skied yesterday afternoon, then winter set in. Got the slalom course mostly out today put heat and a cover on the boat. Didn’t have time or energy to get it out today. Probably pull it this weekend sometime and then off to storage. I hate winter.

Thanks @bananaron - I feel it is my responsibility to myself, my family and my friends to make this look easy. If I can inspire others by pushing through this with strength and dignity, then I've achieved something. PS: my left knee needs replacing too, but I'm just wearing a brace on it to ski and it seems to help. I don't really want any downtime under the circumstances, so pain is probably the better choice.

Soon it will be 9 months since my diagnosis with glioblastoma. All feels like a blur right now. Anyway, surgery, six weeks of chemo & radiation, then six months of chemo done and, for now, I'm off of treatment. This is the standard protocol for GBM. Now what is left is that I get scans every two months for the rest of my life looking for new tumors. As long as we can go without a new one, I won't have any treatments. Statistically recurrences typically occur between 8-14 months. I'm hoping to do better since I had a complete total resection (no evidence of any tumor post surgery), enhanced radiation protocols (I was in a clinical trial for targeted, high dose radiation), and general good health. Nevertheless, we will continue to plan life 2 months at a time, from scan, to scan. So far all have been clear. Next scans November 2nd. A strange journey. Thanks for all your support.

Every year I eventually come back to simple keys to skiing well. Most often, they revolve around some aspect of "get high on the boat, do the right things behind the boat, and let the turns take care of themselves". When watching the Bu Open, I heard April commenting on how still Regina is through the wakes. Her posture doesn't change, and her handle doesn't move. April defined this moment as "handle control". In prior years @Chet has told me the same thing - "don't give up your hands", he would say. More recently @adamhcaldwell told me that if I could just stay stacked with my handle close at the second wake, I'd be amazed at how easy things become. So . . . wait for it . . . this year's singular thought. Get high on the boat, turn in, AND don't move anything all the way through both wakes. What do I mean? Well, as an older an arthritic fella, there have been times in the past (ask Caldwell) where at the second wake I controlled my handle, but broke at the hips, thus creating space between me and my handle. So my focus is ENTIRELY on keeping the relationship between my hips and my handle constant through both wakes. This simple visual/focus area has made my October skiing so frickin easy. I feel more balanced, my handle stays with me longer (out to the ball), and I really don't even think about reaching or turning. Reaching happens when the boat pulls me to the ball. Out, back, and the turn is already done before I could even think about it. Then it's off to the races to the next ball with exactly the same focus. Keep the relationship of the handle and my hips constant through both wakes. If it is late season where you are and you aren't skiing for scores, give it a try. If you are skiing for scores, give it a try anyway. This is something the best skiers all do better than the rest of us. It requires focus and constant vigilance. But done right it sure makes passes easy!

The front floor screws on the pylon aren’t easily accessible, but in my case that was it. All other brackets were tight, but the pylon moved across the bottom of the floor.