| | Bruce Adelsman with his wife, Margaret, and their two
sons, Bjorn and, hidden under the blanket, Owen. |
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Skinnyski.com
Welcome to Adelsman's World, perhaps
the best XC skiing website in the Midwest
By Greg Marr
This obviously shouldn't have to be said, but I'll say it anyway; the Internet truly is an amazing thing. It is also true that it can be incredibly frustrating. A friend once spent hours, literally, searching for some information on the Internet. I went to the bookshelf and, in less than five minutes, had what was needed. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is best.
Still, with patience – and sometimes Sherlock Holmesian detective skills – you can usually find what you're looking for online, be it arcane or essential. A friend, new to fishing, went to the Web to find out how to tie a proper fishing knot; he found it but lost his lure anyway. As for the downright essential, I just called up the baseball playoff game in progress. (Hey, for me, that's essential.)
Frequent Web surfers have bookmarked specific sites, some we visit on a daily basis. For me, one such place is skinnyski.com. Frequently updated, even during the non-ski season, it's a fantastic place to glean local cross country ski information. As thorough as it is, what's truly remarkable is that skinnyski.com is essentially a labor of love for its creator.
Other than the vanity pages on the Internet – the ones placed by individuals sharing their innermost thoughts
with the entire world – the majority of big Web pages are at the very least a cooperative effort; few of the good ones are a one-person show. There's a business, an organization, a dot.com startup – something backing what you see when you point and click.
Bruce Adelsman does it himself. (Okay, his wife, Margaret, helps. More on that later.) Hold that thought – Adelsman doing it himself – as you investigate the nooks and crannies of Adelsman's world.
"I've always been involved with computers," says the Twin Cities-based Adelsman. "In the early '90s, I started to mess around with the Internet. It was a real fad in the early '90s to get your own home page up, and in '93-'94, we put up our interests as cross country skiers."
The Adelsmans started by listing races and places they liked. Within a couple of years, people began to send them information on where there was snow and skiing. By 1997 there was information on races and
trail reports covering the upper Midwest area.
"In the fall of 1998, after moving the page three times in four years, we finally purchased the domain name 'skinnyski.com' and set up permanent residence," Adelsman says."Every year we'd add a little more information. It's been a continual expansion."
OTHER GOOD XC SKI SITES Adelsman's website has links to many other good local cross country ski websites, and most sites provide their own links. Here are a few suggestions from the Silent Sports Links section:
www.north-stars.org: The North Stars cross country ski club in the Twin Cities. This website has daily ski trail reports from a network of over 15 people who regularly provide trail reports from the Midwest Region.
www.norwiski.com: For information on cross country skiing in northwestern Wisconsin.
www.danenet.wicip.org/madnord: The Madison Nordic Ski Club has local information and race and trip calendars, members of the club post their various ski trip reports on a regular basis, and the Madnorski page has one of the best cross country skiing link sections anywhere.
www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/hydro/OPUMKE: Over 100 sites all over Wisconsin that report total snow depth and amount of new snow (daily postings about 8 a.m.). www.iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/mi/public.html:
Upper Peninsula snow reports on a 12-hour cycle (twice/day).
ride-and-glide.xcski.jumpsports.com: A club devoted to connecting the skiing and cycling communities through instruction and workouts in the Twin Cities. www.midwestxc.org: Midwest XC's Web page is a must for junior skiers in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
www.birkie.com: The American Birkebeiner site has everything you need to know regarding the event, including registration, lodging, news and results.
www.vasaloppet.org: Minnesota's Mora Vasaloppet
page has information to register and race results.
www.masterskier.com/: The Master Skier serves the needs of skiers over age 30. They cover nutrition, technique, race results and general masters information.
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A visit to skinnyski.com begins with the opening page, where you'll find the latest news on most anything ski-related. I dropped by on Monday morning, Oct. 9, and found Adelsman had updated the weekend U.P. snowfall and even posted a firsthand account:
"Oct 8 – Marquette area: Guess what I did this morning for 3 hours?! I went skiing on real snow! It was snowing around Marquette during the last couple of days, and about 6-10 inches
fell throughout the area. Our whole team went skiing this morning for our 3-hour, over-distance workout. It was so much fun! I never thought that I would be skiing during the cross country running season! I just had a race yesterday in Ripon, WI, and today I'm skiing! I hope it stays, but it's supposed to warm up this week. (Rachel Daw, forwarded from Dave Johnson.)"
That was found in the Snow and Trail Conditions section, where
you'll also find other first-hand trail reports (e-mailed to Adelsman) from northeastern, northwestern, central, southern Minnesota, the Twin Cities, Wisconsin (primarily western, northern and some central areas), northern Iowa, much of the UP of Michigan and the Thunder Bay area in Canada. There are several weather links and weather info on the page, too.
Back to the front page. You'll generally find a couple of photos – on Oct. 9, a day after the Twin Cities marathon, Adelsman had
posted a photo from the run – a guide to the site and menu options taking you to various sections: Home, Trails, Lodging, Gear, Training, Racing, Notices, Links and Highlights.
Each page you visit follows a similar format of a feature with "Highlights" running down the right side of the opening page. On my last visit to the site, there was a jump to the "Snow in Wisconsin, U.P." story under Highlights and info on a variety of
other ski-related topics, including a GGSA Elk River Ski Clinic Oct. 14-15; Giants Ridge 10K roller ski race on Oct. 21; multiple coaching positions open at Burnsville High School; and a ski clinic with Nikolai Anikin and Gear West on Oct. 28-29. There's also info on getting the skinnyski.com Weekly E-mail Newsletter, which briefly highlights some events and stories related to cross country skiing.
The opening page also includes a jump to the skinnyski
Rollerskiing Expo, where "you'll find information on some of the top models and accessories in our Gear section, along with links to roller skiing guides over in the Training section. And the big project: We've started a list of roller ski trails in our Trails section."
Finally, Adelsman has a fun quiz on the page. The most recent topic was, "How prepared are your skis?"
While a brief stop at the opening page will whet your appetite for skiing, clicking into some of the other
pages is like a multicourse dinner at a fine restaurant, except you won't fee like taking a nap when you're done -– you'll want to go skiing.
Surfing through the site and stopping at Racing, for instance, will give you a main feature, the highlights and some additional racing-specific options: Feature, Articles, Race Calendar, Results, High School.
Under Training, there are currently tips from Gear West on fall programs, complete with photos. At Trails,
as the snow falls you can get information about what's open and when; right now you can check out an extensive list of favorite roller ski trails complete with maps. The only section that's a little weak is Lodging, which is a work in progress.
The more time you spend at skinnyski.com, the more little nuggets you'll unearth. Under Notices, "Slices of Skinnyski," there's an article by Margaret Adelsman, titled "Everything Counts," about getting whatever
exercise you can while raising young children. There are also press releases, job listings and an archive of past Notices that includes all the poll results.
Speaking of Margaret, Bruce credits her with being his inspiration for skiing.
"She was my motivating factor. She competed nationally, raced a bit after college but retired because our kids have kept her too busy. I got into skiing because of her. She hopes to start skiing more now that the kids are a little older."
"She's been a big supporter and my proofreader," Adelsman says of wife, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology. "She helps with some of the writing and the ski sites."
For the average person, maintaining a website like skinnyski.com would be an overwhelming task. Because of his background in computing, however, Adelsman can generally handle the updates in "a couple of hours per week" in the spring and summer. As winter approaches, that becomes "an hour or two each day."
Adelsman has worked as a state programmer but now works out of his home for himself, doing contract website development, domestic programming and selling software he's devised; all of which gives him "multiple streams of income," and the freedom to stay on top of skinnyski.com.
"If I had to contract out and have someone do this, no way. A lot of websites are just money pits. The problem a lot of people don't realize in setting up a site comes from the hidden part, maintenance. If you
don't update and have outdated information, that doesn't help you. People won't come back. Trying to keep current is what can generate revenue."
Adelsman provides most of his updates "in the front part of the week," but will update as needed during the week. He knows the pattern of most Web surfers and tries to gear content to that.
"About two-thirds of the people access from the office. Mondays are the big days, followed by Wednesday and Thursday." (The Silent Sports website also bears this out.) And people are accessing skinnyski.com in
huge numbers. In a fairly slow time like September, it might see 4,000 hits per day – an impressive number – but last February, Adelsman saw as many as 20,000 hits per day. That's an incredible number considering the specificity and regional nature of skinnyski.com.
These numbers are inspiring Adelsman to seek out some indirect forms of advertising to help with some of his expenses. One reason that the Lodging section is currently a little weak, for instance, is that Adelsman is
hoping to see lodges pay for the privilege of being at skinnyski.com.
Adelsman is continually adding new features and highlights to skinnyski.com. Look for video, for instance, in the near future. You can go to the site and see new techniques and training tips in action instead of still photos. As for photos, Adelsman has devised a new, more accessible archive system.
While you and I get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, Adelsman seems to still thoroughly enjoy what he's doing.
"Number one, I enjoy skiing. Number two, I work with computers so doing the two together is still a lot of fun." That's good for him and for us.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To see the Adelsman website, go to http://www.skinnyski.com. Bruce Adelsman can be contacted at bruce@skinnyski.com and Margaret Adelsman at margaret@skinnyski.com. Their postal address is P.O. Box 120681, New Brighton, MN 55112.
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