Skiing is one of the most beautiful things we humans do, and one of the most
wonderful things we can feel.

It's great to spend time trying to understand it more deeply. It's great to
be able to theorize a new way to use a muscle, and then go out and _feel_ it
engaged in my actual skiing. It's fascinating to try to connect my
subjective feelings with objective video clip. Fun to try out new mental
images that people suggest on this newsgroup, even when I don't get the
physics yet.

If ski technique were only about "tell me the right motion to use to go
faster in a race", that would get boring for me real quick.

I got into skiing when I was doing grad-school research on robotic
perception and control. As I tried to program a multi-finger robot hand and
arm to do even simple tasks, it hit me that _human_ perception and control
is so much more interesting. And why let the robot be the one to have the
fun of executing the motion?

Then I spent lots of years analyzing (and doing) downhill skiing and
telemark and backcountry exploring. Four years ago, Sharon got into
groomed-track XC skiing, and to my surprise I've found that the techniques
for this are also fascinating.

Ski technique analysis as a hobby for me offers the fun of doing research --
but way better than grad school: It's a topic that I can still love a year
after I chose it. I can give it up any time I want. I don't have to write
a dissertation.

Ken
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Jay Wenner wrote
I can see the value of getting yourself video taped and
trying a few new things, but trying to analyze it to such
depth seems like a whole hobby in itself.