Doing Time

When you're on CV19 lockdown in the springtime, there's no better place to be stuck than in southcentral Alaska.

It's been good touring conditions on the Anchorage hillside.

And springtime always brings out the best of the Kincaid ski trails.

This is the time of the year when many those places that are difficult to get to for most of the rest of the year become easy to access, because the rivers and lakes are frozen and all that alder, willow, cow parsnip and devils club is buried beneath several feet of snow.

You still have to push your bike occasionally, though.

I went out crust skiing with Seawolf Toby Schwoerer the other morning.  You never know where Toby's going to take you. He told me he packrafted the Grand Canyon earlier this winter. That sounds like insanity to me. Toby said it was awesome. I asked him if he got scared. He said yes.

ps. If you're wondering what a packraft is - it's one of these little things. They're about as big as a duck. Toby packed all his stuff for his 2-week trip in one of these one-man rafts. 

There's good crust skiing here in town.

And there's good fat-biking at this time of year, too. This was yesterday.

Anchorage isn't a bad place to be stuck for CV19.

Can't Let It Go

I'm not too big into the social media, the facebooking, the podcasting, the tweeting, the instagramming and all the rest of it. My smartphone spends most of its time at the bottom of a backpack in a closet somewhere, and my computer mostly gets used for office work and for checking the Viktor Brännmark blog. But in these precarious times (and I'm not talking just about the Coronavirus; I'm talking about the past few years) I've started listening regularly to a podcast about politics on NPR that's called "The NPR Politics Podcast".  I like the name of the podcast - very straightforward.  It's a title that doesn't make me feel like someone's trying to yank my chain. Every Friday, though, at the end of the podcast, they always do a segment that they seem very proud of, but in my opinion it's boring and a waste of my time. In this part of the show, called "Can't Let It Go", the reporters talk about whatever it is that's been on their mind that week, politics or otherwise. Despite my telling you just a moment ago that "Can't Let It Go" segments are boring and dumb, I'm going to give you my own version of Can't Let It Go today. Here are my two Can't Let It Go's for this week: 

Viktor Brännmark in 2013

For one thing, I can't get over how much Toom has been out skiing lately! The other day, I was chatting with him about this or that, and I guess we started talking about how good the ski conditions have been around here lately on our City trail systems.  This blog is not a place where I typically air my grievances, but I'll just note here in passing that I'm sometimes disappointed in the grooming standards on our local ski trails during the first half of each winter. But every winter, around the end of February or the beginning of March, the NSAA grooming world tilts on its axis or something, and the trails suddenly get amazing - with all the trails groomed regularly, and perfect conditions any time you get an urge to go out for a few laps around the trails. And if this spring is like every other spring, and I'm sure it will be, the crew will be out grooming those trails relentlessly until the snow has completely melted away and they're driving the Pisten Bully through the mud.  I'm a huge fan of spring skiing, so this time of the year is like heaven on Anchorage's city ski trail systems. And if our current weather trend continues we should have another month of excellent in-town skiing ahead of us. With everyone trying to avoid infecting others with the Corona, or catching it themselves, it seems everyone in town's got nothing better to do with themselves than to go out skiing.  There are loads of people out kicking around on the ski trails these days, and it's nice too see, even if it does mean you have to be vigilant if you're going to succeed at staying away from people.  

Around 8pm yesterday evening at Kincaid

Anyway, back to what I was saying about Toom. The thing that's been on my mind is the part of the conversation where he told me he'd been out skiing more than 100km every day, all week long, just because the skiing in town has been so good.  That sounded kind of preposterous to me. I've never heard of anyone skiing so much if it wasn't in the service of some kind of crazy "challenge" of some sort.  And especially Toom!  I mean, Toom's a good skier and all, and I have known him to enjoy going out for long workouts, but wasn't this the same guy who, two weeks earlier in West Yellowstone told me he'd never raced 50km before and he assumed he'd bonk badly in the last part of the Yellowstone Rendezvous race because he didn't know if he could ski that far?  Of course, as it turned out he was strong all the way through and finished third.  But all the same, racing a 50k is quite a different thing than going out day after day for 100km+ cruisers around town.  So I probably asked him to prove it or something, and he said, "Well, for example, here's where I went today..." and he sent me this:

So here's my second "Can't Let It Go" for this week: The other evening, since we can't go out anymore, I was at home watching a documentary that I'd rented about Joan Jett. I guess I was never as into Joan Jett as my sister was when we were growing up, but I've always liked her style. And being the feminist that I am, I've always respected how hard she's had to work to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated rock and roll scene. Anyway, I enjoyed the film and it sort of made me think of our old friend Viktor Brännmark  As you may recall, Viktor left us in 2013 after placing 3rd at the NCAA Championships so he could focus all his energy on his goal of becoming a regular on the World Cup in a Swedish team suit.  I've been following Viktor along the way via that social media that I claimed earlier to never use, and one afternoon last month when we were at the team house in Bozeman for the RMISA Championships, I checked in and saw that he was planning to race a World Cup in Lahti, Finland.  The next day, I checked the results on the FIS website and saw that he'd scored points with a 27th place finish!  A week later, he was again racing World Cup for Sweden, this time in the Holmenkollen 50k in Oslo, where he finished 24th! Things were getting better and better for Viktor! 

Viktor in 2020

It was bittersweet, though. The Holmenkollen 50k was raced in a silent, empty stadium. No spectators were allowed, due to the Coronavirus. And the rest of the season was, of course, cancelled.  Anyway, just like Joan Jett, who had to work her ass off for many years to make a place for herself in the music scene, Viktor has been working his ass off for a very long time to make his dreams reality.  Viktor has a full summer of training ahead of him, but he's been breaking through lately and I would love to see him pick up next November where he left off a few weeks ago, as a regular World Cupper in a Swedish National Team zoot suit!

2013 at Middlebury. If we can get a handle on this virus that's going around, we'll be back there again next March.