The Swiss saga continues

Hello again,

Here is another post about Hannah and my adventures in Switzerland.

We were quite active in the days following our last post. We went for another run and were stopped by a couple that asked us how we knew Williams (I was wearing a Williams shirt). Turns out he was an Economics Professor at Williams in the 1960! What a small world!

We also took the scenic train from Château-d'Oex to a village called Chamby and from there walked over to my grandmother's house. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful view of Lake Geneva the entire time and recharged our batteries by indulging in a delicious lunch where we ate fresh fish right out of the lake (yes landlocked countries can have fresh fish).

 View of the Lake with the French Alps in the background

Looking down the Rhone Valley 

The 8th marked the first day of work for Hannah so my dad, her and I decided to bike the 50 miles from my house to Kandersteg. The first 45 miles went smoothly on nice roads with great views. The last 5 miles on the other hand proved a little more difficult. We decided to stay on the bike route and the  paved road turned into a gravel trail with steep (seemed like almost vertical) uphills. Our back wheels kept spinning out which forced us to walk our bikes up a couple of the hills. But, despite minor incidents, we made it to Kandersteg and our efforts were rewarded by beautiful views and a mozarella and tomato sandwich. 

Hannah settled into her work place and my parents and I went to pick Dimitri up at the train station before heading home.

Exhausted, waiting for our sandwiches

Hannah couldn't get out of the clip pedal fast enough and took a little tumble 

That's it for now but stay tuned for some more news from Switzerland!

Elena 

Driving West

I've been trekking my way out to the West Coast over the last week to spend the summer in beautiful Truckee, CA for a summer of training. Calvin Wight (Colby 2016) and I caravanned out to Chicago with Riley Eusden and Alec McGovern of the Bowdoin Ski Team, before tackling Minnesota and the corn belt on our own. After about 300 miles of the flattest road I've ever seen, we rolled into Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We camped for the night in the park where the buffalo were roaming among the tents and watched the sun rise over the broken hills this morning. We're resting up over the next couple days in Jackson, WY before the final push out to Lake Tahoe. The training here looks sweet and I'm looking forward to seeing some more of the American West as the week goes on.

the loaded car

standard Niagara Falls Picture

Calvin doing some scrambling

inexplicably staring down the desert

chilling in the badlands

our campsite in the badlands

A skier's diet in Central Asia & biking & hiking Kyrgyzstan

 

I am crazy: Fun summer plans include the following journey by jeep and bike. I started out by riding from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and on to Lake Issky Kul and Naryn province, both of which would have amazing skiing high up where yurts are for the summer months. The riding along the shepherd's tracks is hard to beat though. Now I'm in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, waiting for a ride through the high desert to Murghab, Tajikistan. 

Obviously, whenever you do something that makes you sweat for hours on end, you need some food. But in Central Asia the only Clif bars available are the ones you bring (trust me, I should have brought more), and the only truly safe calories are those obtained from snickers bars and Coke. So I've become good at spotting somewhat safe roadside food stands, banana sellers, and the very very occasional supermarket (I am pretty sure they only exist in towns over 50,000, of which there are only about five in Kyrgyzstan). 

Here are some pictures of the delicious and normally safe things I've been eating while on tour. I hope to ski a bit in the Pamirs but acquiring skis has proved very difficult Kyrgyzstan so I may have to do as the locals and hammer some tin cans to planks.

Shashlik house in Kazakhstan. These dot the more popular highways. If you want safe-ish meat, make sure you choose the kind you want from the refrigerator and have them cook it all the way through. Expect at least 50% fat and some bone mixed in, but both are good for growing skiers.

 

Mystery liquid. Every few days I buy a big bottle of mineral water, and then pour in the rest of whatever soda I find along the way. Most small roadside shops sell Coke and Fanta, which may or may not be chilled depending on the availability of power. I keep another bottle on the bike that I use for fresh water, but in the south of the country where I am now fresh water is not always available or clean due to the pesticides and agricultural/ livestock debris. And two stage filtering sucks. And I don't mind the extra calories in soda while I'm riding. 

 

Chocolate of any kind. There is no denying that it is hot in Kyrgyzstan during the summer, with temperatures over 100 much of the time. So it would seem like a bad idea to buy it and carry on the bike. But the reality is that if you don't want to stop for chai and some shashlik, most stores on the roadside sell little other than flatbread, milk, coke, alcoholic drinks, chewing gum, and snickers. M&Ms are especially difficult to find and often limited to the larger towns. My riding diet I try to balance between 2 snickers and 1 pack m&ms per day plus and alpen gold bar. 

 

Anything found in the bazaar. I gave up on peeling fruits and veggies about 5 days into the trip. Despite warnings from locals about major food safety issues, I keep buying fruits and some veggies. I stay away from the sketchy prepared salads, but otherwise whenever I find something interesting I'll buy it. Dried apricots run around $1 per kg, cabbages about 75 cents each, and watermelons around $3 though the price will fall to 50 cents or less in August. I buy enough for a few days and hope they survive in the food-safe drybag I put them in. Soft ice cream runs around 20 cents a cone and is found in the larger towns too. The Jaymaa bazaar along the river in Osh has fallen victim to street paving some some fruits have an oily sheen, but they can only pave a road so many times.

Lagman. A staple of almost all restaurants in Kyrgyzstan.  Originally a Uyghur dish before they were mostly kicked out under Soviet policies. Choose a popular place and the meat is probably freshly cooked and the noodles are almost always safe to eat. As long as you don't think too hard about the meat, you'll be fine. I won't post the pictures I have of half-cows hanging in the 100 degree heat in the bazaar with various insects.

Casual day in the Swiss Alps

Hello everyone!

After a long day of travelling, Hannah arrived in the Lüthi household yesterday evening. We didn't waste any time and got right to training this morning and went for a nice jog in Château-d'Oex. We explored the town and passed some cows, farms, waterfalls and typical swiss chalets.

The weather couldn't be nicer and the snow is slowly melting off the mountain peaks.

Pre-jog croissants 

View from the breakfast table

 Post-jog smiles 

Last bit of snow on the mountains 

Hopefully everyone had a good start to the summer and stay tuned for more news from this side of the pond.

Hannah and Elena

more oregon adventures

                                                    Thursday morning at Mt. Bachelor

The skiing tended to be great in the morning and warmed up steadily throughout the day.  By noon the snow was ankle deep slush, but fun ankle deep slush.

                                                                 Chris crushing the climb

We went running at Smith Rock state park Thursday afternoon.  The river has carved a two hundred foot tall canyon/cliff (depending on how you look at it).  We were really tired, but the ancient spirits of the cliff gave me energy and I hammered the switchbacks.

How does one cook a yam?  Chris and I did not know, so we had a contest.  Above is a barbecued yam (by Isaac) and a mashed yam with brown sugar, nutmeg and butter, and also fried yam skins (by Chris).  It was a tie.