To Dad
By Genna
Love Vivi

This is you!
And this is me

She didn’t draw herself into the picture, though. She also said that I’m wearing a brown dress, not pants and a shirt, and then laughed at how crazy that idea was.

Being a fan of nordic skiing, I got up very early to watch the webcast of the race on Swedish TV. I wasn’t disappointed, as my liveblog on my other blog shows: Both the men’s and the women’s races were great, with plenty of suspense, great tactics, and excellent finishes, but the men’s race was the culmination of a story of athletic redemption that I find kind of inspiring.

On the men’s side, this year’s race was fairly typical. A big pack of racers traveled together over the first third or so of the race – that is, 30km or about 19 miles. Over the second third, that pack was slowly winnowed down as the weaker racers dropped away and those who were feeling strong pushed the pace. In the last third of the race (the chunk that I liveblogged), the shrinking lead group was finally cracked under the relentless and rather incredible power of the Swedish skier Daniel Tynell, who surged again and again. Only three skiers could follow Tynell, who has won the Vasaloppet three times: the Norwegian racer Jørgen Aukland (who won the race in 2008); Stanislav Rezac, a Czech racer; and Jörgen Brink, a Swedish skier who was numbered among the best in the world about ten years ago, but had only recently turned to the ultra-long distance ski marathons. Over the last 10k, Tynell tried again and again to escape from Aukland, Rezac, and Brink, but he simply couldn’t do it, and finally decided to sit in, conserve his strength, and then win the sprint to the finish line in Mora.

He tried to hardest to execute that plan, but he didn’t count on Brink, who had done very little work over the previous 30 or so kilometers. As the foursome rushed toward the line, cheered on by thousands of spectators, Brink jumped out from behind Tynell and put in a big push. Tynell counterattacked, but Brink went even harder and eked out the victory by the length of a ski boot – less than a second, after racing for 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 59 seconds. (You can see the sprint at about the 50-second mark of this video.)

Winning the most prestigious race outside of the Olympics and World Championships is a momentous act of redemption for Brink, for until now he has been best known – not to say notorious – for one of the worst and strangest events in cross-country skiing, a bizarre mental and physical collapse in the men’s relay at the 2003 World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. He cost Sweden a gold medal in the race, the marquee event at any World Championships or Olympics, and the event more than any other which establishes a country at the best ski country in the world.

Wearing bib number 13, Brink started the last leg of the relay with a sizable 10-second lead over Russia and more than 20 seconds over Norway and Germany. But Norway’s anchor leg skier was the formidable Thomas Alsgaard, who was notorious for his power and speed at the end of races, especially relay races. Going into the 2003 Worlds, Alsgaard had delivered two gold medals at the two previous Olympics, and everyone at Val di Fiemme knew that he would try very hard to close the gap to Brink and win the gold for Norway.

Nobody knew this more than Brink, of course. He skied strongly until about 8km into his 10km leg, at which point – he said afterwards – he was simply overwhelmed by the stress of knowing he was being hunted down by Alsgaard. On the last big climb of the race, with basically just one long downhill to the stadium and the win, Brink slowed nearly to a stop, blacked out, and lost the race. The event happens about a minute into this video. Listen to the disbelief and excitement in the Norwegian announcers’ voices: they’ve literally never seen anything like this before.

To his credit, Brink rallied after Alsgaard and Teichmann sailed past him, saving at least the bronze for Sweden, but it was a monumental “kollaps,” and it basically ruined Brink. The phrase “do a Brink” even became a cruel bit of slang in Norway. After winning another bronze in an individual race the next week, his skiing fortunes declined rapidly and precipitously. He performed poorly enough that he lost his spot on the Swedish national team by 2005, at an age when he should have been nearing the peak of his powers. Though he tried the Vasaloppet in 2007 and finished third, he nonetheless abandoned cross-country skiing in favor of the skiing-and-shooting sport of biathlon, avowedly aiming to make Sweden’s 2010 Olympic team. Hardly a marksman, he found little success, and wasn’t chosen for Vancouver.

I think most people would have hung up their skis at this point, but Brink didn’t. Seeing that Sweden’s national cross-country ski team was now full of talent, he chose instead to try his hand at the ultra-long distance events of the “Marathon Cup,” a circuit which includes the Vasaloppet. And here he has found success, taking a hard-fought second place in a big marathon in Estonia and now winning the Vasaloppet in exciting and historic fashion.

1. Crap. I shouldn’t've been Facebooking all this time. I never did fold the laundry.
2. Good lord. That pile is taller than I am. And there’s more in the dryer. Time-management FAIL.
3. At least it’s mostly sheets.
4. Sonofabeech! Two sheets, and now nothing but the girls’ tiny little socks. Omigod. I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome.
5. Cheezis. These goddamn dryer sheets will stick to anything.
6. More sheets! Yes.
7. I just folded the HELL out of that king-size fitted.
8. Oh, no. More kids’ clothes. How can they fit into pants this small? Are these actually doll clothes?
9. Score – another set of sheets. Wait, isn’t that more sheets sets then we have beds? Wha? Are we taking in laundry for extra cash? Oh, wait, no. This is right. One set per bed.
10. Is that the bottom of the laundry basket?! Yes! Almost doooooone.
11. No. Just a white shirt.
12. But there is the bottom! Sweet. Done. Only 22 minutes.
13. And look: all the folded stuff fits in the basket to go back upstairs.
14. Hell if I’m carrying it all upstairs tonight, though. And thank Tide that everyone else is asleep. Can’t put anything away tonight!
15. Was that enough work to merit a drink? Naah.
16. Oh, faack. I didn’t notice all these socks that fell on the floor. *sigh*

The girls, our next-door-neighbor, and I built big snowman (probably a good 5′5″) in the backyard on Christmas Day. Below, he appears on the day of his creation and this morning, on what might be his last day as anything but a stub. When we build a big snowman next year, I’ll remember not to put him at the exact bottom of the sledding hill: more than one run this winter ended by crashing into his backside.

BEFORE THE CHRISTMAS STORM (12/23/09)

AFTER A WEEK ABOVE FREEZING (3/4/10)

Her mom told us that today was “Girls’ Day” in Japan, and so they had been to a party from which they were now bringing us some sushi. The mom was very careful to assure me that there wasn’t actually any fish in it, just cooked chicken, but she seemed relieved when I told her that I liked sushi. My girls, looking down into the styrofoam bowl (sushi à la mode Minnesota?), asked, “What are those yellow and green things on top?” My neighbor told them that it was seaweed, which raised their eyebrows. (At least they didn’t say, “Ohh. Interesting.”) I thanked them for bringing the sushi over, and set it out to have with dinner – huevos rancheros, as it happened.

Frankly, I didn’t have much hope that the girls would like the sushi. They chattered about how they’d never eaten seaweed before, and what would it taste like, and why did she tell us that the sushi didn’t have fish in it, because they like fish. But when I put a spoonful on their plates, both excitedly tried it, and both immediately exclaimed that they liked it. Well, Vivi didn’t like the strongly-flavored rice, but she ate the seaweed and carrots and beans and mushrooms and chicken. Julia ate everything, in big satisfied bites. And both asked for seconds and thirds. Horizons: broadened.

I love that life in Northfield can bring these little unexpected moments of contact with the wider world. I sure wasn’t trying (and liking!) sushi when I was a kindergartner!

Seen, 6:30 p.m.

“Genevieve, why do you have a Post-It on your face?”
“I dunno, Daddy. Julia put it dere. We thought it was funny.”