Bode Miller's ultimate goal is to ski at full strength in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Last February, Miller hurt his knee while skiing in a race there. When he tried to ski on it a couple weeks later in Bansko, Bulgaria, he realized it wasn't working right. In the spring, he had microfracture surgery. While early December reports said Miller might return in February, he says in the video embedded above that a recovery may take 12 to 18 months. "If I give my knee a full chance to heal, it should be very close to 100 percent, which it hasn't been since 2001," he said. "We have a chance to really finish on a super high note on that Olympic season—where I'm really focused and draw things together and try to put together a real legendary season."
Yes, carrying an umbrella is the simplest way to stay dry when it's raining. For science's sake, let's just say it starts raining unexpectedly on a day when an umbrella just isn't a possibility and you have somewhere specific to be. What's the best way to get less wet while traveling to your destination?
We test bike gear year-round at Outside, from our desert test trip in January and endurance races like the Arizona Trail Race, Breck Epic, and Triple Bypass, to daily road and trail rides here in Santa Fe (including snow biking just this week). In the process, we beat the bejeezus out of lots of gear, and while much of it these days is very good, there are often a handful of items that we come back to again and again. With our 2013 test trip to Tucson coming up next week, we decided this was the perfect moment to highlight the top pieces of bike gear that impressed us most in 2012.
01. CRANK BROTHERS KRONOLOG This dropper post impressed us more than any other piece of
gear this year. Crank Brothers replaced the hydraulic internals of the uneven
Joplin with an all-mechanical design that has stood up to nine months of hard
wear. We prefer the Kronolog’s infinite height adjustment to other brands' two-
or three- stage configurations, as well as the simplicity of the air spring for
slowing or speeding the post’s return rate. This is not only a huge improvement
from Crank Brothers’ original design, but it’s darn near our favorite dropper
on the market, and we recommend it on any bike except for your lightest weight
racer.
Being stuck in the the city shouldn't be used as an excuse for not going snowboarding, at least in Montreal. Snowboarder Sebastien Toutant proved that when he took to the slopes of Mount Royal to weave down trails, jump monuments, and slide down rails. The video was posted this past Saturday, three days after a December record 17-plus inches of snow fell in Montreal in less than 24 hours.
Not long ago, villagers on the remote Mentawai island chain off the west coast of Sumatra lived without electricity, cell phone reception, and even a local government. But, as has happened to many other tropical paradises, word got out about the islands' exceptional surf. Their perfectly curled waves, white sand beaches, turquoise water, and coconut palms have earned the islands the nickname "Garden of Eden" among surfers, who started arriving there en masse in the late 1990s. If all goes according to the plans of developers and the newly formed island government, the Mentawais will be the next hot spot in Indonesia travel guides.
But a motivated English surfer and a group of ambitious locals are working hard to ensure that island residents get a seat at the table and that the Mentawais grow in a sustainable fashion.
In 2010, a devastating tsunami flattened the western edges of the Mentawai archipelago. During the rebuilding efforts, a Portuguese boat captain named Goncalo Ruivo struck up a conversation with an English surfer named Elizabeth Murray. Having recently taken up residence in Katiet, a surfing hub of the islands, Murray told Ruivo about a passion project to start a local school that would teach lessons in English and surfing. This struck Ruivo, since he recognized these as essential for local Mentawaians who want to prosper in the changing economic landscape. Murray, who went to college in the United States on a sports scholarship, was particularly adamant about teaching young girls to swim and surf.
In October of 2012, Ruivo visited the village where Murray was working and found himself "amazed with the success of her program," he says. Murray taught her first English lessons on the sand earlier in 2012 using a whiteboard tacked to a coconut tree. A fluid group of about 15 kids would meet in the afternoons, in the hours after school and before supper. After about a month, Murray moved her lessons into an unused community center, and the group swelled into a loyal crowd of about 90 pupils, including the initial kids and their parents. The sight inspired Ruivo to donate proceeds from a photo book he'd published following the tsunami to fund Murray's newly minted non-profit organization, called A Liquid Future.
