Skippy!

As far as I'm concerned, any day without skiing is a wasted day.  Live to ski and ski to die - that's what I say!  With all this Corona virus going around and no snow on the ground, it's been pretty boring around here lately. And when things get boring I do just like any sane person would - I get on the internet and surf around for some skiing.  If I can't go skiing myself, at least I want to see someone else skiing.

Fortunately, there's this thing I heard about called The Equator and the word going around is that everywhere south of the equator is in winter's icy grip right now. It seems crazy but I checked it out and it's true. Upside-down places like Australia have snowstorms and ski races when the regular, normal part of the world is in the middle of summer. Turns out we all know someone who's holed up in Australia right now - our old friend Casey Wright! She likes to ski almost as much as me, so I googled her and I found her lickety-split, all over the internet, winning pretty much everything there is to win down there.  Australia's having their biggest, most important races this week, and Skippy's putting on a clinic.  (She's not really putting on a clinic; that's just a figure of speech that means she's winning all the races.)

Casey raced in the 2018 Olympics for Australia. And I bet she'd like to ski in the Olympics this coming winter, too. But Covid restrictions have been very stringent in Australia from the very start of this pandemic fiasco, and it's been a long time since Casey did any ski races at all. I'm sure it's a big relief for her to find that, in her first races back after... what... a year and a half(?) she's winning the sprints and winning the distance races too!

Check out this TV show:

If you can't understand the words in the video, let me know and I will send you a transcript or something. I hung out enough with Skippy while she was here at UAA that I eventually got so I could understand most of this jibber jabber and can translate it into normal english.

Summertime Rolls - Part 3

The Skiwolves fled Anchorage months ago, scattered to the far ends of the earth for the summer. About half of them went to Norway and the other half to Canadia. One lone Skiwolf went home to Lake Tahoe in California, but it seems that's where all the action's been this summer, with his family's house serving as the UAA Ski Team's auxiliary training center and boarding house. First, Espen stopped in for a couple of weeks before flying to Oslo for the remainder of the summer. Next, it was Sigurd and Magnus who arrived, to spend the bulk of the summer in the Sierras with JC and the local training group. No sooner did Siggi fly back to Alaska last week when Astrid and the Tuvas arrived in Tahoe to find out what all the fuss was about. 

Despite all the personnel changes at Casa Schoonmaker, one thing has remained constant. Every Skiwolf who's spent any time in Tahoe this summer has had opportunities to go out training with Brandon Herhusky.  That's because Brandon, who's also from the Lake Tahoe area, has been hard at work preparing his mind and body for his new job as assistant nordic coach for the Harvard Ski Team! I hope we'll get to see Brandon at the NCAA Championships next March in Utah, even if he is wearing Harvard red instead of Seawolf green.

Meanwhile, here in Anchorage it's been just the coaches holding down the fort. Toom was generous enough to take me out for a hike this morning at Alyeska Resort. As I headed back to Anchorage afterward to rest and recuperate for the next few days, I saw Toom pulling his bike out to go for a long afternoon ride. And then another hike up Alyeska was on his schedule for the evening. 

We did have some excitement here in Anchorage a few days ago when word got out that former Seawolves Steffi and Karl Schauer were in town for a visit from Germany. So a bunch of Seawolves from around the 2008-2012 years got together for a little reunion at Trond's house on the Hillside. It was like nothing had changed!

Here, Laura and Steffi's children, who are younger than Trond's children, are learning from their elders how to play with fire.

Trond and Laura

The party got so crazy that we forgot all about taking any pictures until a lot of the group had already left. But here are a few who were still hanging around when the camera came out:  Trond Flagstad, Laura McKnown (Rombach), Steffi Schauer (Hiemer), Karl Schauer, Jaime Bronga, me, and Toomas Kollo. All except Toomas were on this team ten years ago. Toomas, was, of course, just a little baby back then.

Although they had left the premises the time we remembered to pull out the camera, we were also joined by Kelsey Boardman (Coolidge), Lex Treinen, Sadie Maubet Bjornsen, Max Treinen and Paul Schauer. It was so nice to see everyone again!