Norway and such

Hello Eph nation!  I apologize for waiting so long to make my first blog post, I kept forgetting to make the post.  Today though, the first snow of the year came in Trondheim, so I had to post something!   I woke up to a few inches of fresh outside of my window and I decided to go in the trails and investigate.  Up high there ended up being a fair amount of snow, probably a good 6 inches or more.  I realized halfway through my run that if we were on the east coast we would have taken out the rock skis, but I resisted my inner Ben Corwin and decided not to destroy my skis to walk across slightly snow covered rocks for an hour.

The ski trails with Trondheim in the sun

First snow stoke

Unfortunately the forecast calls for a few days of higher temps and rain, so it won't stick, but I am optimistic about my chances to get on snow in October!  Some people went skiing a few K outside of the city and my and one of my friends might drive there tomorrow and check it out.

Tunnel life

To catch people up to speed, my fall has been a series of different trips just trying to enjoy the outdoors (and indoors) of Scandinavia as much as possible.  I kicked off the season with a trip to Torsby, Sweden to ski inside at the ski tunnel there with Henning Skiklubb, Hans' club from his gap year.  I had been to the ski tunnel in Voukatti, Finland, but the tunnel in Torsby was better because the music they played was less weird and just because it's not in Finland.  The training was great, despite my love/hate relationship with ski tunnels.  As much fun it is to ski in September, spending 4 hours a day on a 6m loop definitely gets tiring after a few days.  The worst part is when people start trying to one-up each other with how long they can ski in the tunnel, or tunnel syndrome.  Just as people were trying to one up each other in the tunnel, it seemed like the ski companies and nations were trying to do the same in the parking lot, by the end of our trip Salomon, Madshus, Oslo Sportslager, Canada, and Sweden all had crazy expandable trucks covered with funny slogans and intense pictures.

Wax truck city

The next week after Torsby I went back to Sweden, albeit to do something completely different.  I and a few of my friends went to Åre to go mountain biking at their world famous bike park, which was unreal.  From jumps and banked corners to steep twisty forest trails, the biking was unbelievable.  After a summer with a lot of high quality biking in Sun Valley it felt great to get back in the saddle again.  It was also odd because Åre is the only real ski town I have seen in Scandinavia, and it was like a weird European twin of a ski town in the US.  The funniest thing was all of the "rasta swedes" with long hair and laid back style, something you don't find in Norway that often.

Rippping

 I have also been on some kayak trips, which has been awesome!  Victor from the alpine team is here, and he is a pretty unbelievable paddler so being able to get some time in the water with him in some beautiful locations has been great.  The only thing that isn't so great is when you are kayaking in near-freezing water when it is under 0 degrees C out, without a drysuit.  Kayaking when there is snow just a few hundred meters up in the mountains is never warm, and usually a questionable idea.  Swimming when it is around 0º sucks, and it always leaves a bitter taste in your mouth...

Victor killin' it

Other than that though, I have just been trying to keep up with school and experience Trondheim, where there is always something to do.  I have been to ski film tours, seen concerts, had barbecues, seen the northern lights, hucked off the 10m platform dive, and a bunch of other stuff.  The training has been really good too, I have been partially training with the NTNU club team, which is basically a bunch of marathon master blasters, except they are my age, and some people from Henning who are living in Trondheim.  For strength I have been lifting with Victor, which is always humiliating but really motivational at the same time (except on the Canadian strength test), and occasionally throwing in some speed workouts with him as well.  I don't think I have ever been as sore as I am right now, after an explosive strength session and track intervals in the same day... But based on the blog I am probably not as sore as the team in Williamstown, looks like it was a hard week!

I can't wait to meet up with you guys in Quebec after christmas, I have been missing Williams and the team, especially the storied Mtn. Day exploits.  See you in a few months!