Birkie Wave Size

Does anyone know the size of the Birkie waves? I'm trying to get a
feel if Wave 1 is bigger than the other waves.

Thanks,

Jay Wenner

I had the impression that it's 500 people per wave, but one can always
dump the Birkie result roster into a parser like Excel and get the #
per wave based on bib #s.

(Sly D. Skeez) wrote in message . com...
Does anyone know the size of the Birkie waves? I'm trying to get a
feel if Wave 1 is bigger than the other waves.

Thanks,

Jay Wenner

(revyakin) wrote in message . com...
I had the impression that it's 500 people per wave, but one can always
dump the Birkie result roster into a parser like Excel and get the #
per wave based on bib #s.

....and how do you load a pdf into Excel? (Grin). I don't have an
optical character reader.

Jay Wenner

itiming.com has a pdf file that shows results listed by bib number. You
could do a quick count to see how many are in each. Quick look puts wave 1
around 560 (guessing that bib #251 is the first non-elite skier), wave 2 has
about 620. Didn't look any further or go through and eliminate numbers that
didn't race or finish.

Dave

"Sly D. Skeez" wrote in message
om...
(revyakin) wrote in message
. com...
I had the impression that it's 500 people per wave, but one can always
dump the Birkie result roster into a parser like Excel and get the #
per wave based on bib #s.

...and how do you load a pdf into Excel? (Grin). I don't have an
optical character reader.

Jay Wenner

..and how do you load a pdf into Excel? (Grin). I don't have an
optical character reader.

Try a "text select", copy and paste the data into a plain text file, and
then import into excel...depending on how the data is delineated, that
SHOULD work. You may have to play with it a bit.

e.

(Sly D. Skeez) wrote in message . com...
Does anyone know the size of the Birkie waves? I'm trying to get a
feel if Wave 1 is bigger than the other waves.

Thanks,

Jay Wenner

Last year a guy posted to RSN this cool document on precisely this
topic that I saved. He made a case to get away from the 3 year grace
period, and to get away from the ego-pleasing part where everybody has
to get into a higher wave, & so forth.

2003 birkie
171 mens elite
42 womens elite
567 wave 1 (I think it was more skiers in 2004)
520 wave 2
553 wave 3
569 wave 4
581 wave 5
435 ..6
357...7
251...8
etc, but wave 11 had 452.

Wave 1 "looked" a WHOLE lot bigger than that this year. In 2003 a
buddy was in wave 1, and he was telling some of us that it wasnt that
bad really. We saw him afterwards and he basically apologized saying
that this year, it was a LOT more skiers in wave 1 than it seemed like
last year.

It's nice to know that before my wave even started there had been about
2000 skiers already working over the trail. That's more than some cross
country ski areas get in a season. Puts the advantages of moving up one
wave in perspective, unless it's to Elite or W1.

Gene

Dell Todd wrote:

(Sly D. Skeez) wrote in message . com...
Does anyone know the size of the Birkie waves? I'm trying to get a
feel if Wave 1 is bigger than the other waves.

Thanks,

Jay Wenner

Last year a guy posted to RSN this cool document on precisely this
topic that I saved. He made a case to get away from the 3 year grace
period, and to get away from the ego-pleasing part where everybody has
to get into a higher wave, & so forth.

2003 birkie
171 mens elite
42 womens elite
567 wave 1 (I think it was more skiers in 2004)
520 wave 2
553 wave 3
569 wave 4
581 wave 5
435 ..6
357...7
251...8
etc, but wave 11 had 452.

Wave 1 "looked" a WHOLE lot bigger than that this year. In 2003 a
buddy was in wave 1, and he was telling some of us that it wasnt that
bad really. We saw him afterwards and he basically apologized saying
that this year, it was a LOT more skiers in wave 1 than it seemed like
last year.

In article
65A9375BF8C3C64DAE6306D06361D3D114D17B@BPEXU3VM1. andersencorp.com,
wrote:

..and how do you load a pdf into Excel? (Grin). I don't have an
optical character reader.

Try a "text select", copy and paste the data into a plain text file, and
then import into excel...depending on how the data is delineated, that
SHOULD work. You may have to play with it a bit.

Here's how I load data from .pdf files the time (on my mac):

In Acrobat, activate the text select (the big "T" button) so the cursor
becomes a wierd "insert" cursor instead of a "hand" icon.

Select the test of interest, do a "copy" (ctrl-C on PCs, IIRC). You
probably won't be able to take all the data in one shot.

Simply paste the data (ctrl-V) into Excel.

Once you have your data, there's an Excel feature, "Text to Columns" in the
"Data" menu. Highlight the data (it's really just one column at this
point), work your way through a few steps with the "Text to Columns"
wizard and boom,
you're done.

On 3 Mar 2004 06:25:10 -0800,
(Nevalainen, Eric) wrote:

..and how do you load a pdf into Excel? (Grin). I don't have an
optical character reader.

Try a "text select", copy and paste the data into a plain text file, and
then import into excel...depending on how the data is delineated, that
SHOULD work. You may have to play with it a bit.

That works for a page, but how can you select the text from a
multipage document?

JT

(Dell Todd) wrote in message . com...

Great, this is the info I was looking for. My impression was that Wave 1
was bigger than all the other waves, but the first 5 look similar in size.

So, here's another question. How was the Wave 1 start? Was there a lot of
pushing and shoving to get a front line spot? A while back I remember
the guys getting pretty physical up there, and I've heard some comments
supporting this, but I didn't hear anything about this year. Also, any
comments on broken poles, etc. in the 1st Wave start?

Jay Wenner

Last year a guy posted to RSN this cool document on precisely this
topic that I saved. He made a case to get away from the 3 year grace
period, and to get away from the ego-pleasing part where everybody has
to get into a higher wave, & so forth.

2003 birkie
171 mens elite
42 womens elite
567 wave 1 (I think it was more skiers in 2004)
520 wave 2
553 wave 3
569 wave 4
581 wave 5
435 ..6
357...7
251...8
etc, but wave 11 had 452.

Wave 1 "looked" a WHOLE lot bigger than that this year. In 2003 a
buddy was in wave 1, and he was telling some of us that it wasnt that
bad really. We saw him afterwards and he basically apologized saying
that this year, it was a LOT more skiers in wave 1 than it seemed like
last year.