I always make sure, when I register for the Birkie, to check my skier confirmation, because the Birkie has, from time to time, screwed up and put people in the wrong waves. (And who can blame, them, they only have a few thousand people to keep track of.) But skier confirmation is always validated with a birth date, so you can’t just look up any old skier to see their wave. Right?

Well, not quite. If you stroll over to the media section, the Birkie is happy to help any of you aspiring journalists out there find people to talk to about the Birkie. (Of course, if you wrote about the race in the Washington Post and want to find out who made the jump from the second wave to elite, it’s probably best to hit up our statistics section—and it helps that I know the top two guys in that category.) But it’s also nice, because you can search for Birkie skiers by name, ZIP code, really anything. For instance, if I search “Ari” I find two Aris, two Arins and an Aris in the race. How many, say, Oklahomans are in the race? (One, Jakob, just you.) Let’s say you live away from Birkieland and want to find local skiers. Easy: enter the first three digits of your ZIP code and it will find people from all those ZIPs. Maybe I’ll have a Birkie party some time out east.