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skiing with ipods and the Nine.9

I recently went skiing out west, and one of the biggest things i noticed from last time i went skiing (two years ago) was that pretty much everyone now skis and snowboards with iPods or equivalently equipped MP3 players, but mostly iPods.

i brought my iPod to ski with as well, but i was a little concerned about the safety of doing so...but using the stock apple iPod headphones which don't do much in the way of noise cancelling - i think it did enhance the experience, especially on the 10 minute lift rides. at low volume, you can still hear most conversations as well on the lift, so i quickly became convinced.

the second biggest thing i noticed was that pretty much everyone was using their cell phones all over the mountain. granted this was breckenridge, where they have always allowed such outside distractions - but it was surprising as well...in fact, i had my son in ski school and they required that you had a cell phone, else you had to rent a pager from them. and amazingly, T-Mobile had service even at the top of the mountain. 5 bars. I get about 3 bars at my house in surburban chicago.

so it's only natural that the ski/snowboarding accessory companies would pick up on this trend.

enter the Giro Nine.9 helmet pictured here with an OEM Skullcandy link [amazon], which splits your cellphone and music player signal in such a way that if the phone rings it overrides your music player and becomes a mobile phone headset.