For the Record

By Bill Donahue and Paul Kvinta (With Chris Solomon)

Powder Burn

When the World Cup season gets rolling this month with two stateside races, the men's U.S. Ski Team will struggle to free itself from a curse that has kept it winless on native snow since Billy Johnson careened to a first at Aspen in 1984. Its initial crack comes on November 21 with a slalom at Park City, Utah, where the top U.S. contenders — Sacha Gros, 24, and Bode Miller, 22, both fledglings — hope to place in the top 30 for the first time in their World Cup slalom careers. Veteran Daron Rahlves, 25, tenders a somewhat brighter prospect. The November 27 Super G at Aspen is his kind of course — steep and winding like the tracks on which he has logged his best performances in the past, with the sort of wide-open turns that favor skiiers who, like Rahlves, adopt an especially aggressive line. Still, the experts are dubious. Rahlves has never placed better than fourth in a World Cup. Worse, he dislocated his hip while training on Norway's Juvass Glacier in August, costing him 12 days of training. "I'd put Daron at, oh, 15 to 1, maybe 10 to 1," says retired U.S. downhiller Stephen Porino. "Instead, I'd put money on the Austrians — I mean, a ton of money." Or, if one insists on betting American, forget the guys altogether and look for a women's victory. Slalom specialist Kristina Koznick of Minneapolis snagged a fourth on Park City's unusually gentle slopes last November and is, it seems, now primed to win there. "No one," she pronounces, "can beat me on the flats."

Double on the Rocks, with Splash of Fog
It was the late 1980s when Canadian "cloud physicist" Robert Schemenauer and a group of Chilean scientists first erected a series of monstrous nets atop the desert hills overlooking the Chilean coastal village of Chungungo. The polyethylene-mesh fog collectors were designed to capture trillions of water droplets — and they proved so successful that soon villagers were rinsing their hair and making coffee with nothing but fog water. This summer, Schemenauer finally received some recognition at the first International Conference on Fog and Fog Collection in Vancouver: Geographers from all over the world, recognizing a cheap solution to water shortages in poor communities, raced home to start building the devices. (This month, hydrologists will erect 30 along the bone-dry Baja Peninsula.) All of which raises the obvious question: When will this noble idea suffer its inevitable perversion in the form of overpriced bottles of designer-brand "fog water"? "Someday," sighs hydrologist Paul Ekern. "And they'll market it as the mountain dew."

Starboard! Starboard! Ah, Forget It.
"We're talking about a major navigated voyage," insists Annie Haslett, spokeswoman for the Illa Tiki expedition, "not some random drift." This month, a team of five Americans and one Ecuadoran is sailing up the west coast of Central America on a 22-ton balsa raft that boasts all the hydrodynamic advantages of a floating parking lot. Even if the "pre-Colombian freighter" survives its initial jaunt — an effort to recreate a trade route used by Manteno Indians 400 years ago — no one knows how it will perform on the second leg of its voyage: a 5,000-mile run from Acapulco to Hawaii. Thor Heyerdahl made a similar crossing from Peru to French Polynesia in 1947 aboard Kon-Tiki, but Haslett says the rudderless vessel simply blundered into the right currents. Illa Tiki by contrast, features or submergible planks, to "pilot" the vessel. "On a scale of one to 10," figures Seattle-based yacht designer Robert Perry, "that'll probably give 'em a 0.09 improvement in maneuverability over Heyerdahl."

Mon Dieu, What a Lovely Incinerator!
"It changes colors with the mood of Paris!" exclaims Jean Robert Mazaud, the architect behind Ivry Centre, an industrial waste incinerator whose special plastic exterior mirrors the City of Light while reflecting a new European trend toward sprucing up trash dumps. Dubbed "blue sky technology," the movement advocates the creation of multipurpose, aesthetically pleasing garbage plants. Mazaud has also designed a sewage treatment plant, opening this month along the Seine, that boasts rooftop gardens and fountains. And next month, at the opening of a Chartres incinerator by another forward-thinking architect, locals will be able to frolic on the plant's teak sun deck and attend an art show in its exhibition hall. With such dramatic strides in design, one wonders how long it will be before the Folies Bergeres will be dancing atop rotting potato peels — a possibility that Mazoud emphatically dismisses. "These are not nightclubs," he says.

Sand Spit
"We're stepping out of our comfort zone," admits Canadian mountaineer Leigh Clarke, 32. It was one thing when Clarke and his climbing partners — brother Jaime, 30, and Bruce Kirkby, 30 — went to the west Texas desert for 10 days of "survival training" last July to learn how to ride camels and sniff out water in 130-degree heat. It'll be something altogether different when the trio travels to Oman this month to prepare for a journey no Westerner has attempted in 50 years: trekking on camelback across the Arabian Peninsula's dreaded Empty Quarter. Kirkby and the Clarkes aren't the only ones hoping for success. "It's never good if your students die," concedes David Alloway, who trained the northern lads in Texas. "Then again, if they make it, I'm gonna promote the hell out of my role in this thing."

Illustration by Greg Nemec
Photograph by Sandra Haslett