What's the significance of your avatar?

[gibbons]

I just changed mine to this skiing picture my son took of me. I used to have a picture of the rear right corner of my car. When I took that picture, I thought there would be enough detail to show the proportions and tread of the WR 235/60 tires. But the tire looked like a blob at 80x80 pixel resolution.

Despite low resolution, avatars are still intriguing because they tell something about the person. My story is that I have always been a skier, I worked in a ski shop in college. I am 5'7" and used to ski 210cm GS skis. Now I am on these 160 slaloms that carve like scalpals. I used to ski bumps, now I am a gold ranked NASTAR gate skier. My how things change. Especially me, I can't believe we have two station wagons! But wouldn't have it any other way.

It would be fun to say that the Volvo gets us up the hill to the resort. But we leave it in the garage and drive the Subaru. Skiing parking lots can be terrible on cars

What's the significance of your avatar, if you don't mind sharing?

[coastal]

Mine's just a pic of the back window of our car, with my company logo somewhat readable, pretty boring

Nice pic gibbons, willing to share that in a little higher resolution?

I'd love to get a few pics of my skiing, but problem is I usually ski solo on weekday mornings on Cypress, a relatively small, local mountain compared to the almighty Whistler! Tough to find friends who have the same scheduling flexibility and are willing to spend money skiing Cypress when Whistler is so close. That said though, hopefully I'll get a few shots from one of my weekend trips to the big hills this year

And not to downplay the importance of the other off-topic threads, but this one probably belongs over in the Off-Topic forum. That said though, we all know this will get a lot more exposure here and I'm quite interested to see the replies it will receive. So, I'll leave it here for the time being

[barrysharp]

I've always liked speed. Fast cars, planes, rockets, computers, etc. As a child I was tired of just flying my glider so I attached a jetx rocket to it such that when it's propellant exhausted it was perfectly balanced with a very shallow glide angle. The rocket allowed the glider to soar quickly to around 500 feet and then it glided gloriously above the trees with me running like crazy keeping it in sight. I'm a performance freak. Fast is good. Striving for performance usually brings out the best in any design, has mind-boggling/interesting/unique challenges and the techniques and solutions often employed are directly usable in and benefit 'lower-end' products of similar design.

My avatar is a military plane flying at high speed with a standing compression wave sitting on it. This lasts but for a few moments and is quite difficult to capture on film.

[Raynald]

I think I'm pretty boring too!

Someone wanted to know where in the world I got my name written on my XC's tailgate. It will stay a secret for generation to come!

[tooberand]

Mine is pretty obvious as well. A buddy of mine took this picture while descending around 40mph down a road in Castle Rock, CO. He was in front of me and holding the camera behind his back, aiming with a few verbal hints from me, and then took the shot. It's probably a once in a lifetime shot considering all the luck involved in lining up the shot correctly.

I was putting in around 2,500 miles/year but sadly, I think I've only been on my bike twice since my daughter was born a little over a year ago.

[Francisd]

Mine is the first pic of the XC when I got it home!

[dlr97]

I just added one. Considered a picture of me climbing Mt. Shasta with a shadow of the mountain behind me. But I decided on an automotive theme; me and my last road race car on starting grid at Thunderhill Park, CA. The car is a 1994 Neon ACR ("American Club Racer" model). I raced this car from 1996-1999 and won an SCCA "National" road race at Sears Point in class SSC, 1998.

I also ski (mostly 3 pin telemark skiis these days), do a bit of mountaineering, backpacking and biking.

Cheers,
Dave

[Art]

The XC is the perfect vehicle for our paddling exploits. For the past six years, our home base for sea kayak trips has been Vancouver Island and our favourite spot to paddle has got to be The Broken Group in Barkley Sound. The scene in the avatar was actually taken two summers ago on Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park.

That said, ya gotta love that avatar of Barry's!

[littlewaywelt]

I've spent a long time in the ski arena. I've been a volunteer ski racing coach for the last ten, coaching athletes at the Junior Olympic level through the club level, a volunteer ski patroller for the last four, and a ski racer for 15, 14-15 here and a year in racing in Europe.

We do a lot of video analysis so the coaches are always getting filmed with the kids. The pic is from some random GS training at our hill.

My passion for skiing is just a hair ahead of my passion for climbing, but behind my passion for my wife and kids. What position is Bill in the line? Like Tooberand, kids keep me far too busy for me to enjoy much cycling, climbing or skiing anymore.


If we had an avatar vote, I'd have to go with Barry for having the coolest one, followed closely by cbob.
By the way, how do you guys make the avatars move?

[Big]

A buddy of mine took this picture while descending around 40mph down a road in Castle Rock, CO. He was in front of me and holding the camera behind his back, aiming with a few verbal hints from me, and then took the shot. It's probably a once in a lifetime shot considering all the luck involved in lining up the shot correctly.

Sometimes the story of the photo is more interesting than the photo itself! (It is a nice photo, too.)

My avatar is from a video I shot at the Drive For Life event at Laguna Seca. It shows an XC90 during the moose avoidance maneuver. Seemed appropriate. Guess I could have done a gif animation.