Time, the enemy of Nordic skiers

I'ma go a little Kikkan on you today and give you a Randall-esque short story/long story post, since the Bates day 2 description has to wait on the coaches getting a little well-deserved rest. Enjoy.

The short story:

I signed up for the Stowe Derby. It snowed, and I thought about doughnuts. I missed my start by 20 minutes. Then, I couldn't find the start. It was cold. I fell a lot. Then, I went home.

The less-entertaining story:

Not skiing in carnivals has its ups and downs. Being able to choose which races to attend is a plus. However, not being guaranteed team transportation is certainly a low point. Being home this weekend and looking for an adrenaline rush, I decided to hit up the Stowe Derby. For those not familiar, the Derby is a roughly 18k race with about 5k of super-technical downhill, beginning at the top of Mt. Mansfield and ending in the town of Stowe, VT. It features a (very cold) chairlift ride to the top, and a (very cold) descent into the valley, followed by some of the best rolling groomed terrain in the area and the worst snow-shoveling jobs I have ever witnessed. This year I was the only team member who opted to go—which I was secretly excited about, since it meant I would get to play music at full volume the entire ride without controversy.

Ignoring all the winter weather advisories I saw about Sunday, I packed my bags Saturday evening and woke up early Sunday morning, departing campus in my parents' car around 5:50. I planned to roll into Stowe High School at a leisurely 9:20 and be on a bus to the mountain by 9:45 for my 10:40 start.

About 30 seconds after starting the Prius, I began to regret the way I planned my drive time. There were three inches of soft snow pretty much evenly distributed over the road, which after a while looked a lot like the confectioner's sugar I imagined on the jelly doughnuts being consumed that very moment by the Vermont DOT. This is the kind of snow that insurance companies love, because it is essentially frictionless and completely prevents you from stopping or making turns. Route 7 was a slidefest. I think I saw three accidents before 7:30. When I turned on to Route 4 in Rutland, the supposedly efficient Prius I was driving was getting a flow of gasoline not often seen in NASCAR. In typical Aubrey-esque fashion, I think I used a half-gallon of wiper fluid in the first hour of driving.

The drive took me four hours, during which I probably put my life and the life of my parents' bluebird Prius in danger more times than they want to hear about. (Stopping for yellow lights was literally impossible in the deluge, for example, which I discovered by experience). At 9:58, I literally drifted my way into town. I skidded into the high school and as I was running out of the registration room I failed to hail the shuttle that was on its way out of the parking lot. So I threw my stuff together and jumped on the next bus at about 10:05, expecting it to pull out in three to five minutes so that I could catch my lift in time to make my start. For the next twenty minutes, patrons entering the parked bus looked at me, looked at my number (408) and asked me why I wasn't already coming down the mountain. I explained the decision to drive up from Williamstown the morning of the race, threw in some thinly veiled threats at state snowplow drivers, and tried increasingly hard to keep my patience as more and more time passed. Several times I thought about making a dash for my own car but stopped, reassuring myself that the shuttles must run fairly frequently. Some non-nordic skier dude entered the bus and asked if he could be dropped off at a motel in town, and it was about that moment I knew it was not my lucky day. At 10:26 we pulled out of the high school parking lot, dropped that one dude off at his motel, and meandered through the town and up towards Smugglers' Notch. We got to the base lodge at roughly 10:37 according to the clock on the bus, which left me a solid four minutes and thirty seconds to get to a place a mile and a half away and 2500 feet above me. On the lift I began to feel my body temperature slowly dropping to unhealthy levels, despite my choices of extra windproof and thermal underlayers.

I think the worst part of my day was when, as I neared the end of the lift line at an unknown time after ten a.m., the chair stopped to let some clearly underexperienced alpine skiers hop on the lift in the opposite direction. These two (attractive twenties-looking women, as it were) were clearly nervous that they would miss the opportunity to sit squarely on the chair. So, when it came around to sweep them up, both sat down prematurely and fell immediately onto their posteriors. All parties involved, including both lift operators, consequently burst out laughing for what could only have been a full minute and a half of mirth which in all other situations would have been endlessly amusing to witness. However, being the time-concerned skier I was raised as, I was left with a difficult decision: either wait patiently for the slumber party to end, or jump the roughly ten feet into the powder below and risk equipment and limb in an attempt to save time that I had certainly already lost. Just as I raised the bar and began to assess the drop, the lift operators apparently decided that any more flirting would be unprofessional and restarted the lift. I got out of my chair as quickly as a could and looked around, expecting to see a timing crew, sign, displaced nordic skier, or any hint that I was actually in the right place. Desperate, I tapped on the lift operator's window and asked where the start of the Stowe Derby was. He pointed up towards the end of the main lift, further up the mountain, and said simply, "S'up there." So, I skied up to the top, drawing no shortage of sideways glances from the gravity-obeying patrons. Once again I saw not one iota of anything Nordic. Looking around, however, I did see a "Toll Road" sign, and decided that since that trail was featured in the race description, it was my best bet. So, without a Buff or other face-protecting implement, I finally started racing. The questionable decisions continued.

The race itself was exciting, but not worth rambling about. I will strongly urge future participants not to crash before the end of the alpine area, since bombing at sustained 40 miles an hour with a wet face and hands is roughly equivalent on the pain meter to having an uncontrollable urge to chew thumbtacks. Another thing I will say is that as great as this race's volunteers are, I think they need three minutes of tutorial on where to shovel for maximum effectiveness. One particularly icy corner featured simply a duffel bag-sized mound of powder at the apex, over which I had to do my best imitation of a mogul skier, and one road crossing contained a bit more "road" than "crossing." (I can't imagine how Enman feels about his probably now former pair of race skis). But speaking as a ravenous 20-year-old, it was all totally worth it in the end when skiers were provided with free food and drink at the finish.

Congrats to Dimitri for cementing his dominance this year with a solid podium finish in the 20k!