A Catch-up Photo Collage

Sjusjøen, Norway


 


Well, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to correctly format and move pictures around in this blogger form.  Argh!  But like other frustrations in life, I am trying to just adapt--its not working to start typing in front of the first picture, so I'll start typing here!  So this will be a real haphazard collage of pictures and writing.   First, we were in Sjusjøen, Norway for a training camp before the season started.  I was sick at first, and there wasn't too much snow either.  But then I got better, and it snowed a bunch and then it got sunny!!  The best ski I've had all year is still the long classic ski we did from Sjusjøen up towards the Birkebeiner trail.  There wasn't much daylight but our cabins were cozy and ate lots of smoked salmon and brown cheese (not together though).

Östersund, Sweden

Highlights of Östersund included the awesome sunsets, the excitement of starting the first race of the season, and going to the Christmas Market which was full of little booths of cheese, hand-knit things, and everything in between.   Low points included having two really terrible races, not much daylight, and not particularly inspiring food.

Hochfilzen, Austria

 

 

Highlights of Hochfilzen included the great food, seeing the SUN and feeling its warmth, a cool run/hike up to an Alm (hut) that Susan and I did when on our first day there, comforters folded like hearts, an awesome sauna with a cold pool outside to jump into, and seeing all the crazy biathlon fans again.  Low points:  Another bad sprint race...and no relay team for us, so I only raced once.

Pokljuka, Slovenia (we stayed in Bled)

 

 

As you can see, I took a lot of pictures in Slovenia.  As you can also see, there wasn't much snow, especially down by Lake Bled where our hotel was.  But it was beautiful as usual...like a fairy-tale land with castles and mountains.  In fact...Slovenia was almost all highlights...cool old hotel, awesome gourmet food (I am SO spoiled), nice weather, and I had my best race ever!!!  I achieved two of my goals for the season:  to clean a sprint race, and to get a top-20 (I was 17th).  Man, hitting all of the targets in a biathlon race is a GOOD feeling.  Then I got to race the pursuit (my second world cup pursuit ever), and well...I guess that was the one low point of Slovenia.  I shot badly, but also somehow forgot to ski enough penalty loops...which is a TERRIBLE feeling.  I didn't realize until the coaches told me after the race.  Ugg.  That was a real rollercoaster of a few days.

Somewhere in Bavaria

Then before we flew home we had a team Bavarian Christmas dinner.  I borrowed a dirndl so that I could match Annelies and Susan.  

Home in VT!!

 

It was great to get to be home for two whole weeks, and to have some of the best snow of the winter (except for maybe the last few days in Norway...)  I got to spend time with my family, eat lots of yummy Christmas food, do some great long skis all over the trails in Craftsbury with my friends, and see the new Touring Center building in action.  I got to help some with the process of designing the building and modeling the energy use, and so it was really cool to see the building filled with hundreds of happy people.  There were SO many people skiing in Craftsbury in the week after Christmas...it was a truly heartwarming sight.  

Oberhof, Germany

 
And then the break was over and I was back on plane across the Atlantic.  I had never been to the Oberhof World Cup before, so it was exciting to be in a new place.  When we first got to Oberhof, it was snowy and wintery and even slightly sunny.  But then it promptly started raining and blowing and generally "Oberhof-ing".  The races were windy and rainy and wild.  But really huge crowds of German fans come to watch, and they line the course all the way up the biggest hill.  Its a great festive atmosphere.  I had a decent sprint race--cleaning prone, and then two misses in standing which I was happy with given the wind.  I was 37th, so I scored some world cup points!  But there wasn't a pursuit in Oberhof, and after a few more days of heavy rain I had to train in the ski tunnel there.  I don't like ski tunnels even in the summer, and skiing in one in January was just downright depressing.  So I was happy that this morning we left Oberhof and drove to Ruhpolding, Germany--back in Bavaria!  The food here is great, and we will have a relay team this week, so things are looking up!  And now I'm all caught up.  Hopefully now I will be better about blogging more regularly and about more recent or specific things.  There's still not much snow here either though...so if you're reading this somewhere that is snowy, go enjoy a nice long ski for me on trails that aren't a 2.5-k loop!

The Circle Game

Well, another season has come around and the biathlon racing season has already begun and I am also one year older!  EEK!!  I'm not sure how it happened so fast...

I've been trying to write a blog post for the last 3 weeks, but since I hadn't written one in so long, I felt like it needed to be a big catch-up, life-update, meaningful, important blog post and that seemed very daunting, so I kept putting it off, which meant that then I kept accumulating more different things to talk about and so then it kept getting more daunting.  It was starting to snowball out of control and I almost decided to never write a blog post again!

Haha, just kidding. But it did seem daunting.   But then I started drawing some cartoons.  Some of them came out really negative.  But...whatever...here they are anyways, in roughly the order that I made them.  

First I started out with a little update about how my summer training went:

yeah...so that was pretty negative.  But to be honest, it did feel like sort of a rough summer of training.  There were a lot of good parts, but also a lot of injuries and problems.  So my confidence was not at its highest coming into the season.  But at the same time, the injuries helped me work on some weaknesses of mine, like no-pole skiing and standing shooting.  I felt like it was still a solid summer of training.  Then we flew to Sjusjoen Norway for our preseason training camp, and I got sick as soon as I got there.  But then I got better, and got to go on a realllly nice ski on a sunny day after a snowstorm:  

After Sjusjøen, we went to Östersund, Sweden for the first world cups.   In Östersund it was quite dark but there were lots of pretty sunsets and its fun to ski under the bright lights:

Next I wrote a few cartoons about life back on the road in Europe:  

And then we raced, and I didn't want to write a blog post because I didn't want to make it too negative:

But a few days of perspective, talking to my coaches, and looking ahead put me in a better place.  (And a little change of scenery and food never hurt either):

And that brings you, via cartoons, to the present!  I'm in Austria now for the Hochfilzen world cup.   There's not really snow here but it is sunny and beautiful and it was nice to go for a little hike this morning.   I had some bad races in Östersund, but when I look back, I have bad races every year at this time.  Every year its tough mentally, but after more racing I get faster and remember how to race again and because of that it gets more and more fun.  So that is what I'll do this year too!  After all, biathlon is just a funny game of skiing around loops and shooting at circles in cool places all over Europe.  

Cheesy Cornbread

I made some cornbread today to go with my leftover chili.  It was so pretty, I had to paint it.

Oh yeah, just so you know mom...I stole a few dish towels when I moved in here.  Thanks!!

Feeling like Fall

In the last two weeks, the weather here in Lake Placid took a sudden turn towards fall.  Cold nights, crisp days.  At first I resisted it, and wanted more summer.  But then I gave in and now I'm happily enjoying the sights, smells, and habits of fall.  I'm still holding out on turning on the heat in my apartment and so I am bundled up pretty much all the time, whether I'm inside or outside.  I've been drinking lots of tea, and making soup and applesauce.

But the leaves are only just now beginning to catch up with the chilly weather and turn red.  I was impatient to make a fall painting, so I got a photo from a bike ride we went on last fall from my teammate Annelies.  So no, the leaves aren't this bright quite yet.  But they're on their way now!

a happy painting

I did quite a bit of painting in Finland, but in the end I didn't quite paint every day.  Sometimes you just can't force it, I guess.  But I did break through that initial inertia that makes it so hard to start painting at least!  This is a painting I did just for myself--something to make me happy.

Nils flying a kite. 

I also did a few little paintings from Finland.  Nothing special, but I figure I should post them anyways.  I have to get over the fact that I won't be happy with every painting I make, and thats totally fine!

The abstract one was inspired by the colors of smushed blueberries.  And I was experimenting with using salt with very watery paint to make some interesting textures. 

Other types of art, and a challenge!

Well, I've been bad about painting for quite a while.  I'm not sure why--I always love it when I get in to it.  But sometimes its just hard to start.  BUT, I have been doing other creative projects.  And I've also set a new challenge for myself.  I just arrived last night in Joensuu, Finland for a three-week training camp (one of those weeks will be in Sweden), and I've decided that I have to paint at least a little bit every single day I'm here.  It shouldn't be too hard...it's light for so long, I could paint outside right now as I write this at 10:30 pm!!

SO, keep a lookout for my painting challenge posts.  I'm doing 4 small paintings on one page, so I think I might just post every 4 days, but I haven't decided yet.  I did my first one today, but I think I'll make you all wait.

But here are a few of my latest creative projects from back home in Lake Placid!

Nope, this isn't a post-modern sculpture.  Its the pile of junk dorm furniture that all of the wood for my next projects came from.  The "free wood" Craigslist listing turned out to be a jackpot!  I even got three fully functional chairs for my deck.

My favorite projects:  funky fabric shoulder bag, sitting on top of the coffee table.

The coffee table was made out of old pieces of a bunk bed frame and a broken piece of granite countertop that an old tenant left behind our house.  Another jackpot!!

I made a bedside table too.  Not the most beautiful, but it works, and its way better than the milk crates that I had stacked up before!

My "garden" is also in a bunch of drawers from the junk wood pile.  This is from a little while ago.  The plants are bigger now and I've even been able to harvest some beans and spinach! The zukes are coming along too, just in time for me to be gone for 3 weeks.