Apologies to Head for Showing This Photo of Your New Carbonified Boots. Again.

Seem to have caused a bit of a stir with some people at Head when we leaked the photos of their new boots.  I guess people get sort of upset when they spend 1 million designing and developing a new boot, and then someone shows a photo of it before they can set the hype machine in motion.  Sorry about that, but hey, it's only ski racing.  For all of our viewing pleasure, here's the photo again:

Can't wait to ski in them!

Disclosure of sources: For those of you reading from Head GmbH headquarters, it might be pertinent to note that the person who sent the photos in is:  a) European, and b) Not someone we've ever met before.  So stop being grumpy, and start using more cardboard boxes if you don't want people to see things.


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David Dodge Hopes to Set FIS Straight

Diagram taken from this other website, which in turn took it from somewhere else.

We don't click over to skiracing.com very often because, well, it's the principle of the thing.  But recently, David Dodge had a very interesting letter published there in which he used a lot of pretty convincing language and terminology to basically call out the FIS ski length study on its lack of scientific rigor.  To be completely honest, we don't totally grasp all the details of what he's written, but it does sound good and the concept seems to make sense.  We augmented the reading with a little Googling and found this pretty handy piece of literature for those of you (us included) that might need a little help with some of the concepts.  As skiers, this is really stuff that we should all know, so take some time to read through all of it and study the diagram so you remember it.

Also, go read David Dodge's letter, and make sure you check out the comments section as well.  There are some interesting insights in there.

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Head Carbon-ish Boots Coming Soon?

Just got an email with this cell-phone photo from deep inside the Head factory raceroom in Kennelbach, Austria.  New carbonified boots from Head coming down the line?  (Hard to tell from the grainy photo, but in the smaller original version of the picture, yes, that black stuff looks like carbon fiber)

We haven't seen anyone using them yet, but maybe sales of white Krylon have ticked up lately without us noticing.  The anonymous emailer notes rumors that Head is working with Dodge Boots, and then points out that there were two pairs of Dodge boots on the shelf right alongside these prototypes. 

Hard to tell exactly what role the carbon pieces play here, although it looks to be just some inserts in the original plastic mold and not, as we had hoped, a carbon skeleton with a truth window.  Some people have noticed that the Dodge Boots might be a little too responsive, so perhaps this could be a way to balance out the flab of a plastic boot with the snap of a full carbon setup?  Or maybe Head is just about to take a trip to gimmick town?  Wouldn't be their first time, but we're hoping for better.

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Lindsey Vonn is Basically Single. Has Not Registered on OkCupid Yet.

Photo courtesy of Dustin Cook's blog (and cell phone?)

It's been a huge week for ski racing, and not only in our own minds.  Between Ted making the New York Times, Lindsey Vonn getting divorced, Mikaela Shiffrin on her way to being the best (ever, in any sport, for any gender), Bode winning Birds of Prey, and, Vonn winning a World Cup downhill by 2 seconds (Alice in 8th!), AND the World Cup tour staying in the U.S. for a while (check the photos there), this is a great moment in the sun for us.  Is this what happens when the NBA is locked out?  Ski racing goes mainstream?  Awesome.  I hate basketball anyway.

We've been taking some flack this week via email and in the comments for not keeping up with all the goings on.  Sorry about that.  Now that Lindsey is single, we've been trying to get our profile dialed in on Match.com, and have been endlessy hitting "Refresh" on craigslist just waiting for her to post.  I mean seriously, did she not get my missed connections ad?  This is getting ridiculous.  But honestly, Thomas divorced Lindsey?  WTF?  That's like J. Howard Marshall divorcing Anna Nicole Smith.  Or Brigham Young divorcing any one of his 55 wives.  Or The Dude divorcing Maude.  The best email we got had a link to this priceless post from someone who is clearly blogging above their paygrade.  If the insinuations therein (that Parker somehow drove a wedge between Vonn and Vonn) are true, it would make for one of the best stories of all time.

Speaking of "best of all time," you probably saw Mikaela this week too (5th in the second run.)  When Vonn and Mancuso were second year J2's, they were some of the greatest ever for that age, and they've largely lived up to that potential.  Vonn has gone on to become one of the greatest of all time (43 wins puts her at 4th on the all time women's list), and Mancuso is no slouch either.*  If Shiffrin follows a similar track, she could become the most successful athlete ever in history.  Lance Armstrong could be better than Mikaela, IF he could time-travel back to when he was 16-years old and get himself a top-10 in the Tour de France, and then somehow manage to avoid conflicting with his past self as he continues upwards in the bicycling ranks.  That seems unlikely, so here's to the future.

Moving on:  The equipment thing is taking on a life of its own.  It's big when it makes the New York Times.  It's huge when some dumbass emails Guenther Hujara to call him a Nazi.  I mean really, do we need to get all Sarah Palin in here and starting throwing around the word "Nazi" when we really mean "a-hole"?  In related news, it would be great if whoever is running the SkiersPRO Twitter account would reach out for some help on how to put hyperlinks into a Tweet.  Right now, they're just filling my Twitterverse with Twitterrhea.  Here are all of their Tweets from the past 3 days, in order, in their entirety.  See if you can pick out the pattern:

Press release: Alpine athletes' specific demands of FIS
Head boss slams FIS ski change
Bode Miller slams ski officials over new rules
Pressemitteilung: Dezidierte Forderungen der Ski-Athleten an FIS!
Press release: Alpine athletes' specific demands of FIS
Bode Miller slams ski officials over new rules
Press release: Alpine athletes' specific demands of FIS
Pressemitteilung: Dezidierte Forderungen der Ski-Athleten an FIS!
Bode Miller slams ski officials over new rules
Skiing Protest Leads to Cancellation | http://skiers.pro - Ski Athletes Network http://fb.me/QFjgbx7U **

Skiing Protest Leads to Cancellation | http://skiers.pro - Ski Athletes Network http://fb.me/QFjgbx7U **
Press release: Alpine athletes' specific demands of FIS
Head boss slams FIS ski change
Bode Miller slams ski officials over new rules
Press release: Alpine athletes' specific demands of FIS
... ad nauseam

That's a total of 4 distinct Tweets (translations don't count), repeated 39 40 times as of this publishing.  This has gone on since they opened the Twitter account almost 2 weeks ago, and it needs to stop.  Or else all 19 of their followers are going to "Unfollow," and then where would we be?

In other news, double victory today for America.  Bode won at Beaver Creak by .04 over Beat Feuz (both on my fantasy team, thank you very much).  Vonn won at Lake Louise by a margin so large it's almost not worth talking about.  I mean seriously, there hasn't been a margin like that since Andrew Wagner beat up all the new kids at Nub's Nob (sic) back in '06.  After the race, Marusa Ferk Tweeted, "98% of people who were in LL or watching on TV are so naive, because they don't know what is really happening and giving 'smart' comments-NOT."  But then again, she was 3.6 seconds out in 33rd place (and admittedly, it's possible that she was referring to something else, like maybe farting in the finish or picking her nose on camera.)  It was extremely windy, granted, but still.  2 seconds in a World Cup Downhill is 2 seconds in a World Cup Downhill.

That's all we have time for right now.  Sorry about the thumbs, but you have to admit those pictures are pretty great.  Now, back to work.

*Ironic understatement.
**The truth is not really what the headline implies


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New Boots From Atomic Coming Soon?

A friend emailed us these pictures of some new boots from Atomic.  No word on whether/when they'll be available to you, but they look like a pretty sweet mix of carbon fiber and plastic - and hopefully no plastic disguised as carbon fiber.  Anybody know anything about these?  Looks like the carbon is bonded with the plastic and maybe gets anchored near the sole of the boot?  Also, Redster?  Somebody should help the Austrians with their product names.

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New FIS Ski Lengths: Stupidity Reigns. What's the Point?

Let's all enjoy some 40-meter radius GS skis!  And DH stackheights circa 1986.

As most of you have heard, these are the changes that FIS is set to make for ski dimensions over the next few years.  It's befuddling, to put it mildly.  Stupid, to say it factually.  At the very least, it's completely misguided.  It even defies discussion to a great extent.  Really, what is there to say?  It just leaves us sitting, wondering, "What?  Why?"

Who wants this?  Who asked for this?  Nobody.  The explanation for the new regulations lies with the desire of FIS to be progressive in its protection of athletes, and because they want to do what they can to avoid being responsible for some hypothetical pandemic of injuries.  That's the European way.

Car racing, sailboat racing, bicycle racing: they all have heavily regulated equipment specifications, all top-down regulations in the name of safety and fair play.  Car racing has huge safety concerns because of the incredible speeds and the proximity of spectators to the competition.  Sailboat racing has all manner of different classes and categories to keep it fair and to keep participants from being priced out of competition.  Bicycle racing has vestigial safety concerns, left over from an era when the desire to develop superlight alloy components outstripped manufacturers’ ability to make those components strong enough to be considered safe.  When your average speed over the ground is upwards of 150 miles an hour, or when the price of a junior racing boat could range into six figures, or when a broken wheel or bike frame can endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of athletes at once, you have a problem on your hands.

Ski racing does not face those kinds of equipment concerns, at least not with regard to safety (cost is a different issue.)  The new FIS regulations amount to a statement that skis, as we use them now, are dangerous.  Paradoxically, we already know this to be both true and untrue.  Is skiing dangerous?  Yes.  Is skiing too dangerous?  No.

Many people do consider speed events to be too dangerous, especially for certain ages and abilities.  But I doubt very much that those people would ascribe that “too dangerous” label to anything equipment related.  Why is Downhill dangerous?  Make a top-10 list and see if standheight or ski width makes the cut, or even factors into the discussion.  But FIS, in the classical European Big Brother way, claims to know something we don’t.  They say they have data that proves that ski lengths, widths, and standheights are leading us through an injury epidemic, although nobody on this side of the curtain seems to have ever seen any such data.  We know what we see everyday, and we assume a pretty well established level of risk when we ski.  Sometimes we pay the price, but it is a rare person for whom that risk is too great.

This entire subject raises a question that we are facing as a national ski racing community: What can you do about it?  The answer is, unfortunately, probably nothing.  FIS probably doesn’t care what you have to say, and it’s not like we’re going to stop showing up to races just because we don’t like the skis.  Right?

Well, maybe.  You have to think that if FIS gets enough feedback from enough of us, something might change.  The manufacturers have raised their voices already, and certainly there are rumblings of discontent from those on the ground, but will FIS listen?  History suggests that sports governing bodies, maintaining the monopolies that they do, are not inclined to proceed with anything but their own agenda, a concept that is entirely un-American but holds true even (especially?) in this country.  You have no congressman to write to, no representative to call.  What will you do?

And yes, we will continue to show up.  The length of the skis may drive a few people out of the sport because, let’s face it, it won’t feel as good.  But really, the things that will drive people away from the sport are things like the incredibly high financial cost, not the buzz you're missing as you hammer the apex.

Here are some questions that we would have preferred FIS answer instead:

1. Are ski dimensions really the safety agenda item causing us the most harm?  Is that what makes this sport dangerous?
2. What will FIS do to address the rising cost of involvement in our sport?  Many individuals have already been priced out of competition, and even more are sure to come in the future, and yet FIS has done nothing to mitigate these costs.
3. What about helmet design?  You don’t see these guys rocking open-face helmets with a half-inch of padding (watch the whole video, it is time well spent.)  FIS doesn’t see this as a problem.  Their logic is that a head injury is caused by a fall, which is caused by ski dimensions.  The truth is that a head injury is caused by too hard of an impact with the ground, which needs to be directly mitigated by a more adequate helmet.
4. What about venue protection and safety?  Is b-net really the best answer that we can come up with?  Not only does it barely contain many crashes, but it’s also decimating ski club budgets left and right, and the manpower involved in setting up a safe venue is preventing many of the best locations from hosting as many races as they might want to.  FIS has failed, utterly, to address this.
5. How about actual binding safety testing and regulations?  DIN settings are supposed to be standard across brands, but anyone who has worked with the different platforms available knows that they aren’t the same.  A Marker set on 14 is not the same as an Atomic set on 14, which is not the same as a Look 14, which is not the same as a Tyrolia 14.  Couldn’t we just as easily blame our safety troubles on bindings?

These new regulations are ridiculous and completely arcane.  Frankly, they do nothing to address the real safety issues that we face in our sport.  It’s 2011.  Neither binding nor helmet technology in our sport have really evolved at all in about 30 years, and fencing has only evolved into "bigger and more."  But FIS says that longer, less responsive, more ungainly skis are the answer.  It’s a shame that they have wasted so much time and energy on this project when, in fact, we have much bigger concerns that have gone completely unaddressed. 

How to make this point to FIS?  We’d like to hear your suggestions in the comments.

In the meantime, pop on over to Facebook and hang around with this group, though you’ll have a tough time with anonymity, if that matters to you.

Also, here’s the protest letter from the ski manufacturers.  It’s signed by Michael Schineis (sorry, that’s DR. Michael Schineis), president of Atomic Austria and president of Winter Sports Equipment at AmerSports, which also controls Salomon.  Also signed by Franz Foettinger (CEO of Fischer), Klaus Hotter (executive VP of winter sports at Head), Jonathan Wiant (Managing director at Völkl/Marker), Reto Rindlisbacher (Managing director at Nordica, formerly at Völkl), Bruno Cercley (CEO of Rossignol), and Beni Stöckli (CEO of, you guessed it, Stöckli).  The scribes appear to have misspelled Stöckli’s name on the letter.

In the letter, they say that a GS ski with a 40-meter radius “is bringing the GS skis twenty years back.”  They suggest a 35-meter radius, “Given the limited impact of the difference between 35m and 40m shown in the tests,” which also suggests that the manufacturers have seen the data that we have not.  And they state, rightly so, that “equipment specifications are by far not the most relevant factor in connection with safety… The ski manufacturers note with regret that…so far at least, no other concrete measures seem to be forthcoming.”

Enjoy the letter below, or you can download it here.  You can download the above equipment spec sheet here.

And seriously, don't shortchange yourself on this caliber of sporting entertainment:

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Better Late Than Never: The Fischer Vacuum Boot is the Sh**

Pearson Neal and Chris Smith are master Compressor Vacuum boot fitters.

Slow to the line with this one, but hey, boots are tricky to judge.  The process is shown below, but here's the bottom line: it's awesome and you should seriously consider this boot.

To answer the most common questions I got:  Yes it works, and yes you can re-mold them.

The Fischer "duck foot" stance has been an integral part of their lineup since Fischer first introduced alpine boots back in about 2002, when they coined it the "Soma Stance" or "Somatech," whatever "soma" means.  Any Latin students in the audience?  9 years later, they've dialed in a pretty nice race boot that's available to the public, and a really sweet looking race boot that's not available to the public.

That not-available boot does not have the duck stance, or at least it's a much lesser degree of duckiness.  The boot that you and I can get is toe-out about 3-degrees.*

This was my first experience on the duck boot, and when I was running in a straight line getting off the lift, I noticed it immediately.  In my first few turns, I was amazed at just how quick it felt to the new edge.  However, I initially felt that it lacked power in the apex.  Somehow I just couldn't get the grip I wanted to really crush the ski.  The snow was soft though, so I chalked it up to the conditions for the time being and gave the performance of the boot a "maybe."

I wear a size 13 Adidas, and I have a 28.5 Head B1 as my standard footwear.  Normally, in a 28.5, I punch and grind the left toe, and just grind the right toe.  When we did the Fischer vacuum fit, we padded my left toe with one foam pad, and we didn't pad my right toe at all.  In retrospect, we should have padded the left toe double, and put one pad on the right toe.  My left foot is about 1 size bigger than my right foot.  The first day I spent 5 hours straight wearing the boots (with brand new liners) and they felt amazing all over, except for a little discomfort on the big toes.  If you get this done, I recommend one foam pad on the toe/heel if you normally grind in that spot, and two if you grind a lot there (or punch and then grind, as I do).  Based on my experience, I really don't see anybody but Sasquatch needing to pad the ankle or the 6th toe, just pad for length because the boot doesn't stretch that well in that dimension.

The second day, I spent 6 hours in the boots, but the toe pain overcame me after a few hours and I switched into my broken-in Head liners.  That freed up a little too much room in the ankle, but it took some of the pressure of my toes so I went with it.

That second day of skiing was a much more fair test of the boot, and I liked it.  I still felt a slight lack of *umph* approaching and leaving the apex, at times the edge just felt a little looser in the snow than I was used to.  But, there's research that suggests that loose is fast, so I'll let you be the judge.  Duck stance aside, the fit was absolutely dead on and felt like a snuggly yet business-oriented teddy bear wrapped around my ankle.

In some ways, the most impressive part of the fit is how it sits against the top of your foot coming into the ankle joint.  It feels perfect and the contour is dead right.  Someday, you'll spring for a nice set of wheels on your mountain bike and you'll have this feeling like "Hmm, I never even knew I was missing that."  That's what this was like.  You don't know how lonely that part of your foot is until you wrap some toasty plastic around it and let it cure.

The boot fitting process was simple and expedient.  I bet you could do the whole deal in under 20 minutes if you know what you're looking for, and nobody even has to wear safety glasses.  There are some pictures of the process below, but here's the rundown:

Things I liked:

• Incredible fit even with brand new liners.  Just perfect.  Except I messed up with the toes.
• Quick and easy fitting process
• The boot felt like it was RIGHT there when switching edges
• I love the cuff buckles
• The feel on the top of the foot is weirdly amazing

Things I didn't like:

• A little weak feeling when trying to hammer the apex, but it's possible that I just don't ski that well (this was also a 130 flex boot, a fair bit softer than my normal setup)

Here are the pictures I took during the process, like a nerd.  Huge thanks to Pearson Neal and Chris Smith for getting me dialed in on these boots!

Some shots of the "vacuum" machine:

The boots go in the oven:

Then you put them on and the cold packs go on over them, followed by the inflatable air bags. The cold packs get refrigerated in the machine's built-in freezer and are basically just medical ice packs.  They cool the boot faster so you don't have to wear it for hours on end while it cures.

Then the inflatable air bags get hooked up to the machine by air hoses, and then they inflate.  Technically, the system should be called the Compressor (or more likely, the Kompressor, but Mercedes already has that locked up) instead of the Vacuum, but Fischer's been in love with the word "Vacuum" since at least the early '90 's, so we'll let it slide.

You wait 8 minutes while all these nifty screenshots go by.  You can increase or decrease the air pressure to change the conformity of the fit.

Voila.  A new par of shoes.  The plastic is allegedly neither polyethylene, nor polyurethane.  Rather, they call it "Vacu-Plast."  We find this kind of hard to believe, as every other ski boot is made of polyethylene or polyurethane (or leather, if you're skiing on rocks).  It felt like polyethylene, but really, who cares?  Notice how the boot on the left is a little more contoured than the one of the right?  It was more noticeable in person, my photography skills are lacking.

The cost of the Vacuum boots is the same as the cost of the regular boots, so there really isn't any reason to get the regular boots.  Make your life easier (and more comfortable) and get the Vacuum boots!


*Unless you are on a National Team, you can't have the straight boot.  Unless you buy them from someone who is on the National Team...


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Coming Up: We Test The New "Vaccu-Plast" Moldable Boot From Fischer

Plastic is moldable.
Ski boots are made of plastic.
Therefore, ski boots are moldable.

Pretty simple logic, but it's sure taken the ad wizards long enough to come up with that one.  Fischer claims their new plastic is neither polyethylene nor polyurethane, which is what every other plastic ski boot is made of.  According to Western Fischer rep Chris Smith, the new plastic "has some weird name in German that we can't pronounce or spell, so we just call in Vaccu-Plast."  The process is simple but involves some specialty equipment that has apparently been 6 years in the making, alongside the development of the new plastic.

We got a fresh pair of 130's molded last night.  We'll let you know how they ski, and go more into detail about the molding process and fit, after a day or two on snow.

Does Atomic Have a Problem?

This season, with the advent of Atomic's new Neox RS binding platform, there has been a rash of high-profile pre-releases that have led many to question the quality of the new design.  Watch here as two different skiers lose their ski in the same place on the same course doing the same amount of "nothing out of the ordinary."  Hitting a slalom gate with the upper instep buckle is common practice, but now it may be grounds for your ski to fall off. Upon seeing this, one Austrian coach commented that he had spoken to the Dons in Altenmarkt and had been told that there was no problem with the new binding.  "But," he said, "believe me, they have a problem coming.  A big problem."  Victor Malmstrom might agree.  The athletes in this video, Luke Laidlaw of Australia and Marcus Sandell of Finland, have subsequently increased their DIN setting to about 19, but only in the toe.  The heel piece doesn't seem to be a problem.  Seems a little high, doesn't it?

Looks like Atomic might want to consider issuing another one of these, although this video doesn't technically show an increased "falling risk."

Also, this counts as Run of the Day.  Holy offset! Sorry for the poor quality edit on Luke's run.  It's supposed to be some first half/second half double angle action, though it's hard to see that.

This Is Not What Your Skis Look Like

Be wary when ski reps tell you things like, "This is the good ski."  Because, just when you think you're getting "race stock" skis, you realize that, in the parlance of our times, you should have said "World Cup stock."  And once you've sweet talked your way into those, you look carefully at Universal Sports and realize that the skis that are on course at the World Cups look nothing like the skis that you have.

Well, these are those skis.  Does that make you sad?  No idea whose they are, but if you ski on Nordica or Blizzard skis, even if you're "sponsored," your gear doesn't have this sweet of a tip.

Also, these pictures help to confirm suspicions that Nordicas are Blizzards and vice-versa, though the faces of both companies will vehemently deny any such suggestion.  Given the move to this same tip shape by Rossignol/Dynastar (starting last year with their World Cup skis) we have to wonder what's going to drop next from a company like Volkl, whose concepts have changed little in the last 6 or 7 years.

Here's a link to the Blizzard GS ski and the Nordica GS ski, just as a frame of reference.  The difference in tip shape is obvious, and the square-tipped skis have been around for months, so it makes you wonder:  if they designed something that they knew was better, why don't they just sell that ski instead?

Spillway Back Up and Running

The lovely lift riding experience that is Sugarloaf’s Spillway Double has risen from its earlier defeat and is now back in service.  Yes, now you can once again enjoy the second half of the classic 25-minute ride to the windiest place on Earth, the only lift-serviced above-treeline skiing on the East Coast.  Reports are that if you don’t know where the lift broke in the first place, you wouldn’t totally be able to pick it out now because they’ve done such a nice job repairing it.

Sugarloaf has also announced what had been rumored before the crash:  they’ve been planning on putting in a high-speed quad there all along.  The Spillway is the kind of lift that makes you think twice sometimes, so it’s unfortunate that the worst possible thing actually did happen with it before the ‘Loaf could give us all the good news about the new quad.  Now it just looks like they’re trying to re-shape their image, even though they’ve been planning the new lift all along.

Too bad America just can’t learn a few things from other countries.  Surface lifts, anyone?

Before:

After:

Malmstrom's Tough Day

Pretty classic video, better late than never.  Schmidiger puts down a decent run.  Malmstrom walks out and is not shy about showing his fury.  Does Pinturault know Malmstrom is out?  Probably not.  Either way, he's all class in his approach to the run and the ensuing disappointment.

Gives you wings

Alright, so it’s not exactly Lindt, but still, the Swiss army is well equipped when it comes to fueling their healthy bodies.  Although the soldiers who gave us this chocolate, which is technically probably classified technology, swore it was disgusting, we rather liked it.  No word on the biscuits yet as things will need to get a bit more dire to find them appealing.  How did we score the Swiss version of the MRE?  An inappropriate joke about French people, followed by “but I love Switzerland.”  Done and done.  Yum.  Oops, looks like we've got wikileaks on the line.  Too bad we ate all the evidence.

The Swiss Army: Precise like a watch, and with all the nice features like date, time, and the ability to go up hill with the flip of a switch

This was the scene yesterday in Crans-Montana (though technically the race ends in Barzettes) as the Swiss Army did their thing in helping to prepare the venue for World Junior Champs.  Lots going on in these photos, so we'll leave it to you to interpret for us in the comments.  But let me just say: compulsory military service is one thing, but setting b-net from the bottom up?  That's just cruel.  Incidentally, the people carrying the fences up the very steep trail were also waiting on a helicopter to drop off more supplies at the bottom.  A beautiful analog watch ticking away in a Timex world with an Indiglo sun.

On another note, and a pretty awesome one at that, a pair of Stockli skis appears to be standard issue for these men (no female soldiers were seen). In America we have some law that government vehicles have to be American-made.  Switzerland appears to have a similar law regarding military ski equipment. A little different from the old 210cm matte white rides of the 10th Mountain era, but not much, the Pit Pro appears to carry an all-metal top sheet, has a convenient hole to latch your skins into, and, made in Switzerland, a nice pair of classic Fritschi bindings, adjustable to fit anyone from Captain Morgan to Lieutenant Dan. Incidentally, helmets in the Swiss Army are apparently neither standard issue nor mandatory.  Live free and/or die.

Bon chance!

How can you tell it's about to get serious in northern Quebec? A block heater on your gasoline powered Dodge Neon. Good luck!