Let me appologize this couple of days break in our blogging pace in HomeboySki.Com. I lost my hard disk (crashed) and I was not able to write articles on weekend. It all started on Saturday when I realized my laptop goes into cyclic restart. I had just woke up, made some coffee and I was about to write my second article on adjusting ski bindings. I turned on my laptop, waited awhile.. and realized that it boots again. Eh, what’s wrong? Then it booted again, and again, and again.. I realized the drive is crashed. Damn!

I was a bit nervous. I want to write daily because I like writing, but I was not able to do it. I became angry.. Well, I realized I cannot do anything, so I started to read a book, which was a good decision. It was a good book, related to my work. I brought my laptop to service and I am now waiting to get it back. Meanwhile I use a computer I borrowed from a friend of mine. Life is life. This is a little problem in my life, but annoying one, because I love writing.

Well, let’s get to the business. As I mentioned in my Friday night’s post, Janne is skiing in the Alps right now. He will shoot pictures and video, so that we can write a resort review on next week. I wish I was skiing in the Alps as well, but I am too busy with my job. I have plans to ski in Europe this year, but right now skiing in Finland is all I can do. Sometimes you just have to complete a project you have and skiing has to wait. But not for long. In February we have “ski holiday” in schools in Finland and kids have one week vacation. We are planning to go skiing in northern Finland because part of my family lives up there. Later in spring we will probably head to Chamonix, once again.

It is almost the end of January, which means we are getting busy with our praparations. New things are coming up in this blog and we are currently preparing for those. So what is coming up? May be the most interesting thing from reader’s point of view is that we will start giving away free and valuable stuff. As you see, there are few ads in this blog. Those make us few dollars a day, which is used for hosting this service (webserver outsourcing and domain name). We have received a bit more dollars than we need, so we will give them away. No, not actually dollars, but valuable items. We will give out DVD’s, books and many skiing and outdoor related items. The more people comes into this blog, the more dollars we receive froms ads, the more items we give away.

Now, how this is going to happen in practise? We are preparing a weekly newsletter to which people can subscire. The newsletter will provide skiing articles that you cannot read anywhere else, as well as interesting news, competition information, resort reviews and skiing related product recommendations. All those who subscribe to our newsletter join a monthly lottery in which someone always wins free items. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you automatically join the lottery every month. If you decide to unsubscribe from the newsletter, then you naturally won’t join the lottery anymore.

Another interesting thing coming up is that we are going to provide interviews of top skiers and players in skiing industry. As we are enthusiastic skiers, we have a great network of pro skiers and people working in skiing industry. We are going to provide interviews of interesting people, race skiers, photographers, backcountry skiers, skiing entrepreneurs, etc. We are excited about this and I believe we will be able to provide you very interesting interviews!

We are also going to provide more ski reviews, because we have noticed that reviews are what many people are looking for. As mentioned, we have a great network of people which includes also those who run ski shops. We have negotiated a deal in which we borrow new skis for review purposes and go testing them in various ski resorts.

Man, there are gazillion ideas in our heads and we are so eager to bring them all live that I just don’t have words to express. I just want to say, there are interesting things coming up soon, not just those I already mentioned, even though those you will see first. We go forward step by step and try to finish one thing before jumping to the next one, even though it would be so nice to do this and that..

All in all, the very first HomeboySki.Com newsletter will be sent out in the beginning of February and the very first giveaways will be given out in the end of February. What will it be? I can tell you that in February we will give out a very nice package of skiing DVD’s. First interviews will also be published in February. So stay tuned, subscribe yourself to the newsletter in the beginning of February, and get yourself free items and nice readings!

Oh, by the way, it is a real winter here in Finland! We finally received a good amount of snow. I love it!