On Monday, April 15, some 30,000 Boston Marathon participants will gather at the start of the iconic race,��envisioning the moment they cross the finish line on Boylston Street 26.2 miles later. (Fingers crossed��they’ll get nicer weather than last year.)��

On the women’s side,��reigning champion Desiree Linden, who last year��became the first American woman to win the race in 33 years, will return to the course alongside fellow American��Jordan Hasay. At Boston in 2017, Hasay��ran��the fastest-ever marathon debut by an American woman, and��a��few months later, in Chicago, she clocked the second-fastest marathon time ever��run��by an American woman. Injuries plagued Hasay��in 2018, so running fans have eagerly awaited her return to the distance. For��the��international women, 2017 Boston champion��Edna Kiplagat and 2015 winner Caroline Rotich, both of Kenya, are among the names to watch.��

In the men’s race, Americans��Dathan��Ritzenhein and��Jared Ward��will be��vying for the top U.S.��spot, while the winner of last year’s race, Yuki Kawauchi��of Japan, will join the international field.��

If you can’t��catch the action��in person, here’s how to tune in online or on TV.��

Where

National television audiences can watch live��on the NBC Sports Network or stream online via the , free with a cable subscription. Locals have more options��and can turn to CBS Boston’s WBZ-TV or stream from , which also requires a cable subscription. There’s a broad collection of providers for international viewers. A��full list of options is available .��

When

Start times*:

• 9:02 A.M: Push-rim wheelchairs and other adaptive racers��
• 9:32 A.M:��Elite women
• 10:00 A.M:��Elite men
• 10:02 A.M: Amateur runners, wave one��
• 10:25 A.M: Amateur runners, wave two
• 10:50 A.M: Amateur runners, wave three
• 11:15 A.M: Amateur runners, wave four

(*All Eastern Standard Time)

The post How to Watch the 2019 Boston Marathon appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Early last week, Bloomberg published a piece by Brandon Presser on the . Covering $50,000 tips, secret clubs with $250,000 induction fees,��difficult clients, and snotty celebrities, it featured all the decadence and upper-class excess you’d expect from one of America’s swankest ski resorts. But as a former instructor myself, I could not relate less. Then again, I worked at , a undeveloped��ski area in the North Cascades beloved for��its steep chutes, unbelievable��powder, and rustic charm. It’s just a��three-hour drive away from Seattle but a million miles away from Aspen’s A-list.��

When I worked at Baker as a snowboard instructor during the 2015–16 season, you’d likely find me standing in the one corner of the lodge that had cell service while checking my dilapidated bank balance instead of slurping down thousands of dollars’��worth of��champagne with my clients. And I bet that’s an experience more instructors can relate to. So without further ado, and with all due respect to Mr. Presser,��I’ve responded��point by point to his Bloomberg story to show you what��it’s really like��to teach skiing or snowboarding��for a living.

Surprisingly, There Are No “Whales” at This Pacific Northwest Ski Area…

A whale is a high-spending client, and Presser reports that the average tip in Aspen is an unspoken $100 a day, though some instructors have snagged as much as $50,000 or a brand new Jeep. My biggest tip ever? $20.

…So Avoid Getting a Morning Lesson

Since tips—and therefore the financial windfalls Presser chronicles in his Bloomberg piece—are mostly nonexistent at Baker, the best perk��we could hope for was getting out of a morning lesson so we��could ski pow. ��

There are really only two ways to do this. First��you tell a tale of grandeur to one of the younger��part-time instructors about what they could do with all that extra money if they took your spot. That never really works, so your second option is to never be assigned a lesson in the first place.

Lessons were delegated by our manager at the 8:45 A.M. check-in. They would call out the name of the instructor that had be chosen, who would apathetically sulk to the front to take their burden. Superstition held that if you stood in the back of the crowd and avoided eye contact with the manager, you may just be forgotten about and spared. However, you also wanted to seem aloof, like you didn’t��care if you got a lesson or not. Taking that logic to an extreme, a controversial approach employed by a brave few was actually the opposite: stand at the front and never break eye contact, eager to be chosen. Ultimately��the decision was already made. We were just searching for something that could give us a sense of control over our meek existences.

The Instructors Are Watching You in the Parking Lot

Presser starts off his piece with examples��of how the instructors at Aspen size up their clients before they even get off the first lift of the day.��And while that’s universal among instructors, at Baker��that reconnaissance started well before our clients even got to lift. We’d scope them out before they'd even leave��the parking lot, often��from the back window of a��camper shell��after a good night’s sleep. Some are scouting out the known ice patches, looking to get a live view of the day’s first casualties, but mostly��we’d watch��the parking lot fill up and��make��estimates on how many lessons there’d��be that day.��

Most Clients Don’t Know What They Want, Because They’re Ten

Aspen’s clients��apparently prefer “fun young guys” with Australian accents as guides because, as Presser writes, “Women want to date them; men want to bro out with them.” In my experience, the best guides are ones who are good with kids. Group lessons��at Baker often resemble a day care more than a ski school. Powder-hungry parents are ready to charge, so instead of wasting the morning cruising greens with their kids, they’d delegate that responsibility to a totally capable college freshman.

One time a parent skied up to me with about ten��minutes left in the lesson, said it was too good of a day��to ski with a kid—in front of his kid—and asked if it was cool if he took another lap. I agreed, hoping for a better tip, but as the dad skied off I turned to see the��kid staring down at his snowboard in a way that seemed to suggest he was experiencing his first existential crisis. We didn’t do��another lap—I took him inside for a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. When the dad returned, he thanked me for buying the little dude a drink��but didn’t offer to reimburse me, much less��tip me. I mean, I had gotten the hot chocolate for free, but he didn’t know that.

The Unspoken Rules of Flattering Moms

At Aspen, instructors may be paired with clients through a process akin to matchmaking. At Baker, group lessons were assigned more or less by luck of the draw. And since most of the group lessons were for kids, the most consistent adult interactions I had were the��short conversations with their moms.

Moms were unequivocally the best, and not just because they are consistent tippers. They’re also patient with their kid’s progress, punctual for pickup times, and will even ask after your own physiological needs. This being the case, it is advantageous to flatter them and attribute all the positive qualities of their children to the maternal lineage. And maybe tease Dad a bit—I mean, men, am I right? Even if you don’t get a monetary tip, you might snag a snack and a juice box, which is what I’d buy with the money anyway.

The Best-Regarded Clients Are the Ones Who Pick��You Up on the Side of the Road

You won’t hear any celebrity name dropping in the Baker locker room. Instead��the best client may be the kid whose family gave you a lift to the base village that morning. With some help from your thumb and a family-friendly smile, it’s usually easy to make it to work on time after waking up in a��random house in Glacier (the closet town)��wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Still, sleeping off the rest of your hangover in the back of a minivan while a ten-year-old gazes at you in a way that implies both curiosity and disappointment doesn’t make for the best morning. That��kid will only be more disappointed when they��see��you again in your green instructor jacket and realizes you’ve been trusted with teaching them a highly specialized skill in a formidable environment.

Après��Is Nonexistent, But Sometimes You Get a Free Burger

Ah, Aspen’s famed après scene, where champagne flows like water. This slope-side ritual is not really an��option��for Baker’s instructors.��If you happened to receive a meager tip, you could buy a beer at one of the two base��lodges, but they would usually empty out by 5 P.M.��As for sustanence, dinner was served at the employee lodge at the senior-citizen-special hour of 5:30 P.M. It happened��that��early because many employees were required to rise before dawn, and the rest were so burnt out that they were��asleep by 8 P.M. anyway.

All the Other Employees Hate the Instructors��Because They Think We’re a Gang

Presser equates Aspen’s rival gangs of instructors��to secret societies. That’s not true at Baker, though it’s certainly a popular opinion.

A friend once told me that he hated the instructors because��“they’re so full of themselves, always together, with their green jackets,” before quickly adding that I was one of the few cool ones. I can confirm that I am��in fact��somewhat cool, and that instructors did��in fact��wear green jackets. But those jackets didn’t mean we were some sort of exclusive group. We just stuck together because we did the same job on the same mountain. And I can tell you that��if there was a secret society, I was definitely not invited.

Ski Patrol Is the Varsity Football Team

If there was one exclusive group on the mountain, it wasn’t��the instructors. Ski patrollers��had their own shuttle, their own lodge, and they got all the girls and guys. But, they deserve it. The patrol at Mount��Baker is a bare-bones staff of badasses. They have to be in order to keep this rowdy, gnarly, and amazing place under control.

The post What I Learned as a Snowboard Instructor at Mount Baker appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

On Thursday, the FDA announced that it is beginning a process to update regulatory requirements for sunscreen products. The proposed rules seek to bring over-the-counter sunscreen regulation into the 21st century.

“Some of the essential requirements for these preventive tools haven’t been updated in decades,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said . “Today’s action is an important step in the FDA’s ongoing efforts to take into account modern science to ensure the safety and effectiveness of sunscreens.”

The FDA has reexamined some common active ingredients in sunscreens, and will continue to do so, looking to determine whether they are safe and effective. Of the 16 total active ingredients the agency is evaluating, two have been approved and two have been determined to be unsafe. The agency is asking the industry and other interested parties for additional data on the remaining 12, which includes the active ingredient oxybenzone.

Rowan Jacobsen wrote in�����ܳٲ������’s recent online feature “Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?”��that oxybenzone has been found to be a hormone disruptor “that can be detected in users’ blood and breast milk.” It has already been banned in Hawaii and the western Pacific nation of Palau because it “mutates the DNA of corals and is believed to be killing coral reefs.”

According to David Andrews, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, the burden to prove whether active ingredients like oxybenzone are safe is on the industry, and, if it cannot do so, those will be disallowed from over-the-counter sale. “In the meantime, those ingredients can stay on the market, they're not coming off the market, but the clock is ticking on them,” he said, adding that oxybenzone is in the majority of products that might be found at your local pharmacy. ��

The two active ingredients that have already been marked as safe are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. The two that are no longer considered safe and effective for use are PABA and trolamine salicylate, which, according to Andrews, have not been in products on the market for years.

In issuing the proposal, the FDA is looking to establish what it calls “final monograph regulations” for over-the-counter sunscreens, something that is required by the Sunscreen Innovation Act. Essentially, this would create clear cut rules for the sunscreen industry. The deadline for that monograph is November.��As for those ingredients still outstanding, “They can't be a part of the final monograph if they are not recognized as generally safe and effective,” said Andrews.

The FDA says additional data on sunscreens that come in the form of powders is needed to determine their safety. The same goes for new products such as wipes, towelettes, body washes, and shampoos.

In addition to the proposals regarding product form and ingredients, the agency also addressed labeling. The maximum SPF on labels is set to increase from 50+ to 60+ and active ingredient information would have to be conveyed on the front of the package, much like other over-the-counter drugs. Also, as a sunscreen’s SPF increases, its UVA radiation protection would have to increase by a similar magnitude, “to ensure that these products provide consumers with the protections that they expect.”

Andrews said the current rules were written when people would apply sunscreen when they went to the beach. Now, people apply it everywhere, all the time. According to him, the new proposal will even the playing field between the established companies with their preferred active ingredients and the ones popular in other countries that are vying for U.S. approval. “All these companies need to step up to the plate to validate themselves,” he said. ��

The post The FDA Wants to Make Sunscreen Safer, Finally appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

On January 25, the last day of the government shutdown��as politicians played a game of tug-o-war over President Trump’s demand for a border wall, Corbin Kunst was on a��rope strung between Mexico and the United States. The 27-year-old ropes-course technician from Petaluma, California, balanced��on a slackline connecting Big Bend National Park with the Mexican Parque Nacional Cañon de Santa Elena, hundreds of feet above the Rio Grande. His friend, 26-year-old Bend, Oregon-based filmmaker Kylor Melton, directed the filming of this feat. On Monday, the��team released this footage, a��trailer for a longer film about the highline to come out soon.

In addition to Kunst and Melton, the team included several other Americans and Mexican nationals, including one more slackliner, Jamie Marrufo, who also completed the walk between��the two countries. We had questions about the project, so we caught up with the young duo.��

OUTSIDE: Why slackline the border and why now?
CORBIN KUNST: I first saw a picture of the canyon, Santa Elena, a couple of years ago actually, and it was always kind of a pipe dream. I thought, “How cool would it be to break this epic highline over the Rio Grande and it connecting two countries?”��From the beginning the idea was to always have a Mexican team and a U.S. team working together and have that harmony—have it be this symbol of trust. When you rig a highline, you're literally putting your life in your team’s hands. I always thought that would be really beautiful, simple, and a really powerful project. As things developed in our current times—tension with Mexico politically going as far as it’s gone—I told my idea to Kylor.

KYLOR MELTON: This was like three weeks ago. Corbin hit me up with this idea and was like, “Hey, I have this super distant idea that I'm thinking about doing.” And I was like, “Bro, can you be at my house tomorrow?”

What went into making this idea come to life? What were the logistics?
CK: The Mexican team rigged their anchor and we rigged our anchor and it was completely up to them. I know everyone on the Mexican team, and I helped form that team. I already had trust in them—I knew that they knew what they were doing. No one had to guide them or guide us. We just kind of split up and worked together, which is really cool.

So, we threw a tagline, which is just a thin piece of paracord, and strung each side down into the river and a team member connected the two lines at the river. That tagline goes up and then the actual slackline is fed across that. I think that trust is a very powerful message. It about us coming together, working together, on all those levels.

KM: The trust is inherent. The message is that we wanted to come together. Be two groups of people coming together to accomplish and stand for what they believe.

Who was the group comprised of?
KM: Our team consisted of friends. We had a small group—I think there was five of us on our side.

CK: Including filmmakers.

KM: So our side was pretty small. The Mexican side was something like six people. From all across Mexico, Chihuahua, Mexico City …

CK: … Monterrey …

KM: … There was like a really diverse group of friends there. We had a filmmaker on the Mexican side that was helping document that part of the story.

Can you give us some specs on this line? How long was it? How far from the canyon floor? What long did it take to walk across?
KM: So our laser pro-pointer broke somehow, but, if we had to gauge, about 100 meters long.

CK: We're estimating that we were about 400-plus feet from the canyon floor. This wasn't your average slackline walk because we were filming, but if we were just walking across it, it only takes a few minutes.

KM: It’s like a 100 meters, so you could walk that in 45 seconds. Not on the highline, like on the ground—highlining takes a little bit longer. But they crushed this line. I don't even think they fell. I mean they fell like once or twice.

They fell? How does that work?
CK: Highlining is actually a very safe sport—we were always tethered to the line. Just like in rock climbing—how most people are using protection, very few people in the sport free solo—it’s the same thing in slacklining. So free soloing is not what highlining is all about. Most the time when we highline, we're tethered.

So what were you thinking about in the middle of that line, in the middle of performing this stunt?
CK: I don't like thinking of it as a stunt. It was much more than that. I mean for me it was the most important slackline I have ever walked. It had so much power in it. That so many people came together and wanted to do this idea with me. The idea wouldn't have gone anywhere unless people also felt that this was a powerful message. So, for me, as I was walking the line, that's what was going on in my head the whole time. Everything in my whole life had led up to that point of people trusting me and trusting this idea and believing in it enough to actually show up and do this. After I finished, I was pretty blitzed out. I was ecstatic.

It looks like this project was filmed with a drone. Did you have permits to use the drone in the national park?
KM: You only need permits to film in the park if your doing a commercial shoot and by all standards this is a passion project, right now. So we didn't have a permit, and the government was shut down so even if we tried to get a permit, we wouldn't get one because there were no resources to accept, acknowledge, or give us a permit. Also, the drone itself was all flown from the Mexican side. It's an interesting area. The government says as long as you’re outside the park boundaries, they don't have any control. So you can be on the border and fly into a national park.

How do you respond to skeptics that say the highline, politics aside, was illegal and could have unnecessarily put park rangers in danger if tasked to perform a rescue?
CK: We did everything, to our knowledge, legally. The fact that the Mexican team rigged their own anchors, we rigged our anchors, we floated down the river with a river permit. Everyone that goes down the river is basically taking the same risk as we were. We were on a river trip. We did the slackline. All of us are proficient riggers and I talked to a lot of lawyers, attorneys, before the project to make sure we were actually doing everything legally.

KM: It may not be perceived as safe—you hundreds of feet up, dangling on a wire—but there's actually very few injuries, deaths or anything like that in highlining.

CK: On the U.S. side, we were not allowed to bolt.

KM: Bolting meaning drilling hole…

CK: … And put a bolt in and a hanger and rig off those bolts, which is very common in rock climbing and slacklining.

KM: But we did not do that.

CK: We respected the park's rules by rigging it naturally. So I just literally slung massive boulders with a rope. In that way, we were trying to do our due diligence of respecting the park's rules. They bolted on the Mexican side and there's no rules against that in the Santa Elena National Park.

KM: In every way we respected the laws and regulations. This isn't about disrespecting those laws, this isn't about fighting a war with Trump, this is about people coming together. These people from different lands to tell a story of bringing people together rather than separating us with that fear-based division mindset.

Okay, so what’s the next move and when will the movie be out?
KM: That’s a good question. Right now I am deep, deep in the editing cave cranking away at it. I’m doing everything in my power to essentially channel energy behind this idea, to get eyes on it, and to begin to have people care about it. I'm hoping I’ll have this film ready very soon.

Anything else to add?
CK: Something that I would like to add is we also want to give voice to our Mexican friends, who were the whole other half of the team. The more and more that we reveal of this story, the more it's going to be in Spanish. We want that perspective shown too. We want this to inspire people and be a catalyst for conversation about bringing people together. I know people are going to start getting political and being like, “Oh, why are you trying to divide us? Why are you trying to put out a political video? Why are you trying to polarize us?”��And I really want to bring it back to the fact that this was was a Mexican team consenting with an American team to come together to be one team. This is us being a symbol and connecting, and learning about each other, having a cultural exchange using our passion of slacklining as that medium. We want to show others, “What are you doing with your life to build bridges?”

For updates on the project, sign up for a newsletter on .

This interview has been edited for clarity.��

The post Why These Guys Slacklined Across the Mexico-U.S. Border appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

On Tuesday, climate researchers published that took 540 North American urban areas and matched each of their projected future climates with the current climate of another. The purpose of the study was to��provide a more relatable assessment of climate change’s impact.

This got us wondering: What do the predicted changes mean for the kind of places our readers have dreamed of living? So we decided to take our 2017 list of best towns and see what their climates would look like in 2080, which is the year the researchers used for the process they call “climate-analog mapping.”

St. Petersburg, Florida Transforms into Ciudad Mante, Mexico

The town we selected for “Best Paddling in the Gulf” was actually not included in the study’s climate pairing. However, St. Petersburg is part of the Tampa Bay metro area, which was included.

Tampa Bay’s typical winter is supposed to be almost 75 percent drier in 2080. But, according to , the coastal areas might not feel drier, per say, because by that time, with unchecked emissions, sea level there is projected to be 3 feet higher. That would put most of the place we used as a pillar of our best paddling selection, , completely under water, likely altering the preserve’s mangrove tunnels and making its necklace of islands nonexistent. Luckily for the residents of Ciudad Mante, their city sits at 272 feet above sea level. ��

Anchorage, Alaska Becomes Powell River, Canada

This projection is absolutely nuts.

According to the study, the typical winter in Alaska’s most populated city will be 24 degrees warmer and more than three and a half times wetter in 2080.

Currently, the metro area we named the best for “Making the Most of Summer” receives an average of about between the months of December and March. That number would jump to just over 11 inches. With winter being two dozen degrees warmer, that precipitation would likely mean more rain than snow. These factors would make the climate resemble that of , which sits on the province’s upper Sunshine Coast and within the traditional territory of the Tla’amin first nations tribe.

In 2017, we wrote that Anchorage “is the kind of town where you can do a 50K nordic race within city limits”—this doesn’t look like it will be possible in 2080.

Bend, Oregon Turns Into Spanish Springs, Nevada

The future climate of our “Best Multi-Sport Town” will resemble that of our “Best Low-Key Hideout” town, Reno, Nevada, of which Spanish Springs is a suburb. Bend’s typical summer will be more than 10 degrees warmer and 44 percent drier.

This one might not be that bad. Our 2017 listing for Bend��highlighted the craft brew scene and the town’s . Those two things might not change much, but what about skiing��?��As for Reno, we also commented favorably on the Biggest Little City’s libation scene, its own proximity to , and the located at the Whitney Peak Hotel.

But��to say that Bend would be just like Reno would of course be a vast oversimplification. And, with a much drier summer, the Deschutes River, which runs right through the middle of town and includes the , would likely be much less of an attraction.

As for Reno, its 2080 climate would resemble that of Hurricane, Utah, which does not experience the high levels of moisture its name might imply. In fact, the typical winter there is about 6 degrees warmer and 41 percent drier.

Missoula, Montana Resembles Lewiston, Idaho

We awarded Missoula the “Best Big Sky” town—pretty much the best town in Montana—for being a place where “loggers, guides, CSA-loving parents, ranchers, and University of Montana students all blend in together.” However, in 2080, the typical summer in Missoula would be almost 9 degrees warmer and almost 9 percent drier, putting it on par with the current climate of Lewiston, Idaho, where the biggest employer is a .

Portland, Maine Will Be Baltimore, Maryland

Named the “Best Top-End Food in Zero-Degree Weather,” the typical winter in Portland would be almost a dozen degrees warmer, meaning there would be far less opportunity to enjoy that top-end food in that zero-degree weather.

In 2080, Portland’s climate would resemble that of Baltimore.

Santa Fe, New Mexico Is Now Clovis, New Mexico

The New Mexican capital was named our “Best Combination of Mountains and Margaritas” and is also the home of ���ϳԹ��� (we like mountains and margaritas). Clovis, a small town near the state's eastern border, feels��more like Texas than New Mexico. That's how the capital city would feel too with the��typical summer projected to be 8 degrees warmer and over 14 percent wetter in 2080. ����

Find Your Hometown’s Climate Analog

The researchers created the climate analogs for these 540 North American urban areas to “provide an intuitive means of raising public awareness of the implications of climate change.” In pursuit of that goal, they matched locations that would be accurate representations of the potential climate of the future for those places while also being potentially familiar to residents. So, the best way to make the data hit home is to find your town on this .

The post How Global Warming Will Change ���ϳԹ���’s Best Towns appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.