Blowing & Drifting

Friday’s snowfall – mini-blizzard, at best – laid down an excellent layer of snow, and by gum Northfield’s intrepid skiers had created some excellent trails by the afternoon. I enjoyed a good hour-long ski (actually, 40 minutes of skiing and 20 minutes of happy conversation with other skiers and a bowhunter [!]) in the near-perfect [...]

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You probably didn’t notice, but Saturday saw the start in Sweden of the cross-country skiing World Cup – the sport’s highest level of competition, and (I’m not ashamed to say) something of an obsession of mine. Don’t get me wrong: I know nordic skiing is well beyond obscure in the context of international sport. Honestly, [...]

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Riding my bike around and around the Arb today, I was pretty happy even though my legs were heavy (thanks to having gone two weeks without any exercise) and my lungs were full of blech (thanks to a lingering cold-and-cough thing). It was cold, 20° or so, with a nasty northerly wind, but it felt great. [...]

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It’s not much of a ski trail (a very flat .15 of a mile), but it’s my ski trail, right out my back door and sufficiently tiring if I ski it really hard. Plus, I’m on snow before the middle of November! Sweet. And dark.

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I think this is my favorite stretch of trail in the Arb: a 260-meter length of path that with a nice dogleg in the middle and a steady change from flat to sloping and then to steep, right at the end. It’s fun to run, ski, and bike up, and fun to bike and ski [...]

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The cottonwood fluff was thick on the ground outside our townhouse yesterday, but alas: not thick enough that it could be skied.

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Sometimes spring skiing is great: warm temperatures, sunshine, interesting and fun snow. Today was not that day here in Northfield, but goddamn if I didn’t have One Last Ski™ - a solid and sweaty hour in conditions that included foot-deep slush, inch-thick ice, and various obstacles. I prefer to think of these obstacles as increasing the [...]

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I guess winter is well and truly over. Yeah, we might get one last storm, but even a colossal one won’t save the skiing, which is now finished until December – November if I’m really lucky. This isn’t all bad. The snow looks horrible right now – brown, filthy, icy junk – so it definitely [...]

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The 86th Vasaloppet, described as the largest (15,000 skiers), longest (90km), and oldest (1921) ski race in the world, was run in Sweden on Sunday morning. The race is an amazing spectacle and a magnificent athletic event. The Swedes pay attention to it the same way Americans pay attention to the Super Bowl, with the [...]

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In five (or six) units… 1. Articles I Read: A. Popular “God Said Multiply, and Did She Ever” (Joseph Berger, New York Times, February 18, 2010) When Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she [...]

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The nordic events at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games were colossally exciting to watch. The best single moment for me was Billy Demong’s gold-winning attack in the last nordic combined race, last Thursday. Demong’s medal – part of huge American haul in nordic combined which also included two silvers from Johnny Spillane and a silver [...]

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I know that for really fit and fast skiers, the men and women who win citizens’ races and better, 50 kilometers is a serious but not frighteningly tough distance to ski, either as training or in a race. On the other hand, this middle-of-the-pack racer found 50 kilometers to be an awfully long way to ski [...]

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In today’s nordic combined event at the Olympics, Americans Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane raced extremely well, working together to take over the race and then, with just one Austrian skier in tow, to launch a vicious attack that brought them to the finish line for a gold and silver. A GOLD AND A SILVER! [...]

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For nordic skiers in the US and other snowy regions of the world, late winter means ski marathons – long races that focus the fitness built up all fall and winter into some tough competition. The biggest ski marathon of them all, the 90 kilometer (56 mile) Vasaloppet, takes place in a couple weeks in [...]

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Today I was lucky enough to watch the second half of the nordic combined team event at the Vancouver Olympics, a 4x5km relay race in which the teams are seeded according to their ski jumps earlier in the day. The American team came in as one of the favorites, along with the 2006 Olympic champions, [...]

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