Summer Training Begins!

View of Bend from Pilot Butte

A few days after school ended, Chris Stock (Harvard) and I headed off to Bend Oregon to do some late spring skiing and relax from exams.  We've been staying with Susan, Bob, and Casey Shannon, who have been absolutely fabulous hosts, and among many other things, great mushroom hunters.  Also  our trip has coincided almost perfectly with the US and Canadian ski teams' spring training camps so we've been bumping into such skiing celebrities as Kikkan Randall, Devon Kershaw, and even Will Wichirski.

 Either Mt. Bachelor or one of the Three Sisters

Looking towards the Newbury Calderra (its active)

The weather and conditions have been different every day.  Today it was 35 degrees, raining, and very windy, but we've also had sun, snow, and everything in between.  

 For the geology nerds among you, many of the mountains out here are volcanoes, and from my understanding the smaller ones are lava/cinder cones from previous eruptions.

                                                Heading off in the rain.  Chris is pumped!

 We went camping yesterday in Ochoco National Forest.  It was pouring rain when we drove into the parking lot and when we were cooking dinner, but otherwise we stayed dry.  On our hike we spotted some elk (or maybe mule deer) lots of hawks, a burned down forest, and two enormous rock pillar formations.  Unfortunately we didn't have the camera with us to take pictures.

Cooking tofu peanut rice curry in the rain.

email me if you want the recipe.

Till next time.  We'll try to get some pictures of actual skiing, and maybe some autographs for Vanya's collection.