I like to check my site statistics with some regularity, just to see how many people are visiting and how they’re getting here. Most of the referrals — pages that link to my site — aren’t anything too notable, but when I checked this morning, there was one out-of-the-ordinary referral: a forum on a Russian skiing site.

When I investigated a bit further, I found that a forum thread featured a picture of me from my trip to Boyne Mountain last Christmas. Official Mindreader dad Bob had taken a few pictures of me on the slopes, and I posted a few on this very blog, and somehow, one of the forum members found one of those pictures.

What makes this particularly interesting is the reason that picture spawned an entire thread. Since, oddly enough, all the Russian forum participants seem to speak Russian, it took some work to decipher the cryptic whoa-that’s-definitely-not-my-alphabet posts. But thanks to a marginally useful and somwhat amusing translation from Babelfish, along with some work from Official Mindreader event planner Annette, I was able to get the gist of the thread. And then I was able to laugh. A lot.

Why did that picture spawn a thread on a Russian skiing forum? Because the original poster thought I might have been skiing on only one ski. And while his confusion is understandable within the context of that one picture, from my perspective it’s still hilarious.

So, in light of that thread, let me re-introduce myself: I am Burrill, the famed one-legged skier. Hear me schuss.

(If you scroll down to the bottom of the first page of the thread, you’ll find another picture of me on skis, and it clearly proves my two-leggedness. There is another two-legged picture of me on the second page of the thread, as well. So they know the truth. But really, the illusion is so much more fun.)