It has begun...

Today was Day 1 of the UAA Ski Team's 2012-2013 season.  All the athletes and coaches got together for a day of meetings, photos, form-filling, paperwork, and general orientation.  I'd tell you more about it except that I wasn't in attendance.  I am en route to the high desert of Nevada, where I will spend the next seven days with my "desert friends" in the Black Rock Desert.

The Black Rock Desert is a barren, windy, dusty, scorched, prehistoric lake bed where there is no wi-fi, no cellular service, and (except for about 1 week each year) no people.  Thus, there will be no blog updates until next week when I emerge from Black Rock City.

Chena Training Camp

For their last week of freedom before school starts next week, Lukas and Lasse decided to spend five days in Fairbanks to take advantage of the good rollerskiing and running that's available in interior Alaska.  They've been rollerskiing on the Steese Highway, north of Fairbanks where Lasse reports seeing no more than around ten cars in a two-hour workout. Yesterday's workout was a "Chena Triathlon".  They rollerskied toward Fairbanks from Chena Hot Springs, then traded rollerskis for running shoes for the three-hour return trip to Chena on the Angel Rocks Trail, and finished with a "swim" in Chena Hot Springs.

It looks to me like fall is coming - the leaves are already turning yellow in Fairbanks.  But Lasse reports sunny, warm, beautiful days and 70 degrees.

Arrivals

This coming Sunday, the entire UAA Ski Team gets together for the first time in many months for "Seawolf Start", the annual beginning-of-the-school-year meeting with the rest of the UAA Athletic Department and sports teams.  The word on the street is that most of the Nordic ski team will be arriving in Anchorage later this week.  Fifty percent of this year's team will be new to UAA - an unusually large number of freshmen. 

In the meantime, several members of the team are already here.  I was doing a strength workout at UAA on Saturday when I heard the sound of medicine balls banging against the floor next door - a sound that could have only been made by Lucky and Lasse throwing those medicine balls around.  So I joined them for the second half of their workout.  They left town on Monday for a five-day pre-school mini training camp in Fairbanks, where the rollerskiing and running should be excellent.

In the meantime, I am working frantically to catch up with the office work that built up while I was biking in Hawaii last week.  I only have about four more days before I leave for another week - this time to visit my friends in the Black Rock Desert.

Lutz and Davis conquering the Dolomites

Lutz, Nevio and Davis in South Tirol

Vacations

Seems like all the UAA Ski Teamers are on vacation lately.  Davis flew to Europe recently, where he apparently got on a train and went somewhere with Lutz:

Here's Davis eating echte Deutsche Kuche with Lucky:

And Laura must be down from the Karwendel in Bayern because here she is visiting with Davis and Lutz in front of her house in Neukirch in Schwarzwald.

Last I heard, Davis was heading south on a road trip to Sud-Tirol.  Nobody's heard from him since.  When he comes back over the Brennerpass, he's probably not going to be the same Black Knight we knew before...

Meanwhile, Lasse's parents came over from Copenhagen to spend three weeks getting Lasse's guided tour of Alaska and Yukon Territory.  His parents kicked him out of the car with his rollerskis about 30 or 40 km from each town they stopped at for the night and made him ski for his dinner.

Andrew, Calisa and Sylvie have spent the past month visiting family in Colorado and Wisconsin. 

And last week, after waking up to another rainy Anchorage Summer 2012 day, Danielle and I bought plane tickets to Hawaii, and two days later we were riding our bikes around Maui and going to the beach.

...and we're not coming home until next week.