Aubrey's Postcard from AK

Hello From AK! I want to give a  HUGE THANKS to the team for my gift!! It is absolutely perfect. I have no car and am bike commuting every day to and from work and the store and a rain-proof backpack that is bright and large is EXACTLY what I needed! I can't tell you how much I am loving it - Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alaska has been grand! I've seen some Williams Alums: Sam Sterling is in Anchorage, coaching the APU junior team along with Dylan Watts. Fiona Worcester is in and out, between finishing her master's in teaching and working in Anchorage. I was also privileged to meet one of the first women on the Williams ski team - Ellen Ellen Toll Blanchett, and her husband David Blanchett, who was also a ski team captain (their daughter Lindly is an APU junior).

I played really hard and skiied a bit when I first got here in the spring, but I've mostly been working hard lately! I am planning to race my hometown mountain this holiday weekend, but since my knee isn't 100 percent yet, I won't be racing the downhill portion. Still, looking forward to a 4 day weekend!

I've LOVED all your posts! Please keep those going! I will be taking over the weekly training posts, so plan to hear from me soon! Have a great (and SAFE!) holiday!

I LOVE my new backpack: Thanks Team!!!

Skiing at Turnagain Pass with Sam Sterling, Cole Talbot, Fiona Worcester

Skiing at Hatcher's Pass

Hiking above Anchorage with APU juniors, coached by Sam Sterling

flying over Cook Inlet on a sunny Sunday

Watching the otters in Resurrrection Bay in my hometown of Seward, AK

On a ridge across from Anchorage for National Handstand Day.

Sunday Jaunt

Kalle, Hannah and I spent a nice Sunday morning classic skiing up Greylock. After overcoming some mechanical issues (Kalle), we made it up to the summit. We took some selfies on the way up to post on our myspaces. Including some pole/ski issues and some nice scenic stops, we made it up in an hour and 45 minutes. My favorite girl (mom) was there to pick us up at the top and made us a nice lunch, except for Hannah, whose gluten intolerance ruined everything. We'll keep you posted from good ol' Williamstown. Maybe.

Hope everyone's doing well,

Kalle, Hannah, and Pat

It's a Hard Knock Life

The first weeks in Truckee have been rather eventful for the Williams California Contingent, consisting of Holly, Casey, and me. Within ten minutes on snow, I managed to snap a pole on a herringbone hill. At the time I thought that I had been the victim of misfortune. However this notion was set right when, on her first ascent up the very same hill, Holly was far more atrociously victimized—this time by a rogue Bates skier who crashed into her, in what can only be described as vicious sabotage directed toward the women’s carnival team. The resulting injury involved both a hurried trip to the regional hospital and a more than substantial 24 stitches. Fortunately for Holly (and more importantly the 2012 women’s Squad), the wound is healing nicely and hasn’t impacted training.

You don't want to see the pre-stitches pictures...

On a lighter note, training has been positively correlating nicely with tanning. Casey in particular has set his sights high—he hopes to blend in with the Cali natives by the end of the summer. Despite limited usage, my bottle of SPF 70+, courtesy of my parents and their continuing education about the dangers of skin cancer, is running dry; so if I don’t wear sunscreen for the rest of our stay, upon returning to Williams I may no longer be the whitest kid in the room. Away from this primary goal, ski training has been excellent. Brutal strength sessions with coach Martin Benes guarantee that next time Bud pops eight-minute plank reps on the team, we will be prepared. Altitude adjustment during the first week left Casey and I gasping for breath on anything but the downhills, but thanks to some hearty meals prepared by the Deeter family, and a minimum of 10 hours of sleep per night, we are feeling great and ramping up the training schedule. We cranked out a three-hour classic OD this morning, on snow. Oh yeah, did I mention that we are skiing in late June? There has been at least four feet of melt off up by Donner Pass in the past week and a half—largely due to the monotonous forecast for the Tahoe region, with 85 degrees and nothing but sun, day after day after day… But due to record snowfalls on the Sierra this year, totaling more than 50 feet over the course of the winter, we still have a few more weeks to go until we can finally get to running and roller skiing full time.

Domestic life has had its ups and downs. On the plus side, I have been spending 99% of my time within a four-foot radius of the illustrious Casey Jones; he assures me that as a consequence of rooming with him, I will be “house-broken” by week 7 (who knew that floor space wasn’t meant to have stuff on it?). Without our fellow teammates to shut us up, there have been a fair number of ‘heated’ discussions on topics of great popular interest. Despite a mutual decision to ‘take a break’ from being full time once the school year rolls around, we are living it up—in no small part thanks to Rick and Kim Deeter. California is amazing and provides plenty of opportunities for excitement, not limited to a real rodeo experience, replete with cowboy hats actually being worn in a serious fashion. All in all, if we can keep away from each other’s throats, this looks to be a great summer.

Some post-workout shenanigans

Castle Peak-- we're running it tomorrow.

Long Drives and Long Workouts

I kicked off this weekend with an eight hour drive up to Williamstown to visit Hannah and get in some great OD's. We had a wonderful classic rollerski down Route 43 on Saturday followed by a 2.5 hour run Sunday. Our attempted trek up Berlin Mountain was discouraged after our third bush of stinging nettles and we settled for a lovely alternative of Bee Hill-Stone Hill-Blair. We rewarded ourselves for the long workouts with freshly picked strawberries, visits to the new candy shop on Spring Street, and enjoying sunny weather by day and candlelit dinners at night.

Following Tough Acts

One inescapable fact I've learned from my thusfar two-year education at Williams: there's always someone here who will stand up before you and give a presentation that puts yours to shame. What I'm trying to say is, words cannot describe my jealousy of Casey and Phil this summer. They took the initiative to go do something incredible with their break and at all levels it looks to be turning out just as awesome as it sounded when I first heard about it. Provided, of course, that they don't come to fisticuffs over Phil's sometime inability to be clean or Casey's all-the-time inability to be wrong. I'll be taking over/under bets on the number of times spontaneous brotherly scuffles break out, starting at 6 per month. Takers?

Meanwhile, I'm doing new things in old familiar places. I'm here in The Village Beautiful working for WOC and Williamstown Rural Lands, doing trail maintenance and clearing, sign making, bridge building, weed-whacking, and wood-hauling for span bridges and bog bridges alike. The days my coworker Steph and I have hiked this week have included 8-9 hours of hiking with a half-hour break for lunch, carrying industrial-sized shears, lunch, overlayers, and five liters of water. We clear anything we find, which may include anything from small branches to 3-foot diameter behemoth trees that have been falling in numbers due to the unbelievable storms we've had this early summer. I may not be traveling the country, but I'll have some sweet new running loops lined up for the team in the fall.

For those that don't know, this is what Williamstown looks like in the summertime. You jelly, brah?

Reunion week was a blur. Somewhere in my 96 hours of work that week I saw Joel Bradley '06, veteran of the ski team, who was coming back for his first reunion. Joel sold me my first pair of rollerskis when he was a senior in college. I also attribute part of my coming to Williams to him, because we once had a chat about the transition from Holderness to Williams, as he is also an '02 Holderness alum. I've worked at reunion for three years now, and it seems that every year I see more and more people that I remember. It makes me feel really...old. I can't believe I'm a Junior. I'm still not ready to admit that I was a sophomore this year. Every time an '11 told me that it goes by too fast, I took a deep breath and said, "that's too real. I already have that problem." I realized fairly early on in the JA application process that one of the deep-seated reasons I decided to apply to be a JA was somewhat selfishly to hold onto my Williams experience as much as possible by making it possible for my frosh to have their own great experiences and helping them through the ups and downs of freshman year. (I can hear Maddy nodding as I type this statement)

Fellow juniors, now is the time when we start to do things out of our comfort zone. We've found our comfort zone at Williams and we're slowly starting to break out of it. You guys are living in new places and surviving (??) on your own this summer, and I'm doing something I otherwise wouldn't (trail work) and taking on a responsibility with a 99% chance of making me cry and a 100% chance of making me smile during 2011-2012 (being a JA of Mills 2!!). Now, junior year, is our time to give presentations that will make others' jaws drop. Get out there and enjoy Truckee.

Meanwhile Kalle, Hannah, Patty and I are looking forward to an eventful summer of training here on the 'ol campus. And maybe my dreams of leaving for an epic summer adventure will be fulfilled next year. Until then though, I have so much to look forward to it makes my head spin. Here's to this summer. Kinda like tax returns, whatever you put in now will come back to you during late winter 2012. I'll be around here till August, getting an unhealthy amount of farmers tan and trying to dodge the disasters of Lyme Disease. Look forward to more blog posts.

Postscript challenge: find the breathing creature in this photo.

Close Quarters

A journey across the continent began with the rise of a new Williams star, Benji Jones. After watching my younger brother Benji graduate from high school, I piled two and a half months of sweaty clothing into the family’s Subaru hatchback and set off for my first destination, Lyme, New Hampshire. After a fairly uneventful drive, I met up with Phil, and our voyage began in earnest. Luckily, Phil brought half as much luggage as I did, but between two ski bags, six pairs of roller skis, one trunk and four duffels, our car was packing some serious weight. We woke up at the ripe hour of 4 A.M, and motored away with no fanfare. This first day of driving was wrought with multiple story lines, as it was Phil’s second day of driving a stick shift, and it was the only day of driving that had any cohesive plan. After spending some time on our beloved Rte. 7 through Bennington, we slogged across New York with a total of $14.60 in I-90 highway tolls. Phil’s stick shift driving skills were sorely tested by ventures through Buffalo, Albany, and Toronto, and I imagine the Subaru will one day forgive Phil. With empty pockets and light hearts, we stopped at Niagara falls to experience one of America's great wonders in typical tourist fashion. We briefly contemplated a dip in the rapids right above the falls, but in the end, the water looked a little bit too cold.

Luckily, Phil had managed to hold on to his passport, so our entry into Canada was largely uneventful. We quickly learned that while Canada has many great passions (see ice hockey, curling and mispronouncing words), none could compare with the national obsession for Tim Hortons. We managed to avoid any such contamination, and ate at our trusty, American, Subway. We did, however, color our adventure into Canada with a brief stop at Lake Ontario, which provided a great view of Toronto. We finally re-entered the U.S. only to find that Michigan residents have clearly avoided taxes for a number of years. The state of the highways we drove on made for a jarring ride, and reinforced our doubts about the Midwest. The generous hospitality we received from the Hammond family in Beverly Hills, MI assuaged our feelings towards the state, as well as a luxurious movie theater complete with reclining, leather loveseats.

We then entered the uncharted, unplanned part of our trip, not to be confused with our larger summer schedule. After ten minutes of deliberation, we decided to celebrate Phil’s 20^th birthday with a visit to Chicago. The 105-degree heat wave we encountered forced us inside, and we celebrated with a deep-dish pizza and an edifying visit to the Chicago Art Institute. After finally discovering the difference between Manet and Monet, we headed out amidst rush hour traffic. A brief review of our map revealed Iowa to be a place one drives through, but not to, so we decided to push through and make the 18 hour drive to the continental divide. With healthy doses of caffeine and oreos, we managed to persevere through 4:00 a.m. crash and witnessed the sun rise over Nebraska. We reached our campsite by mid-morning, and decided to go ski up the Arapahoe basin. With sunny skies and deep snow, we managed to make it up to 12,800 vertical feet before we turned around and skied back down. After 16 consecutive hours of sleep, we drove through Colorado and onto Utah, with pit stops in the Glenwood Canyon and a hike up the Garfield Mesa. Special thanks to Liz Sneath for putting us up for the night, and a shout out to Pat Noonan, a childhood friend of Keith and Caleb’s we met on our hike.

The drive from Salt Lake to Truckee was a miserable affair through the deserts of Nevada, but our campsite on top of the Tahoe-Donner ski resort made it all worth it. We ended our road trip by meeting our host family, the Deeters. They have been incredibly generous, and we have some sweet digs. Somehow, Phil and I have managed to avoid beating each other to a pulp, but we still have two months, so we’ll keep everyone posted. Pictures of the incredible on snow training will follow soon.

Racing in 90 Degree Heat

I have been making up for the lack of great rollerskiing options in Maryland by doing a lot more running. I have found a road runners club that has a fun race series and I competed in my first one today- in 90 degree heat and extreme humidity. That was still 10 degrees cooler than yesterday! My strategy for avoiding melting in the sun has been early morning workouts so I get up at 6 each morning when it is only 70 degrees (which is about as hot as it ever is at home in the summer). I then spend the rest of the day in a freezing cold air conditioned lab so on average I am at a comfortable temperature.