Season Opener

...So anyway, I was riding my bicycle home from the Anchorage International Airport late last night, as often do, and I was thinking about how the roads and bike paths were very icy and I hadn't bothered to put my studded winter tires on my bike yet.  I reminded myself to ride carefully. As I rode pretty fast through an intersection, I diverted my attention from the icy asphalt for a moment so I could look around and make sure there was no traffic coming, and that's when my front wheel went out. I crashed pretty hard on my shoulder, and then I slid quite a ways down the street until I finally hit the curb and came to a stop. My bike was totally fine, I was totally fine, and mostly I was worried that someone had seen me sliding down the road on my ass and that made me kind of embarrassed.  But there was nobody in sight so that wasn't an issue. So far, so good.

When I arrived home, I got a call from Andrew. Manon had crashed her bike on the ice last night, too. Landed on her shoulder, just like me. She was pretty banged up. She would see the doctor in the morning for an x-ray of her shoulder. The prognosis was negative.

24 hours later, things are looking a little more optimistic. No broken shoulder for Manon. No major injuries. But no ski racing this weekend, either. Ski training in Fairbanks, yes. Racing, no. She's bummed.

The ski racing season kicks off for UAA tomorrow in Fairbanks with our annual Alaska Cup race against UAF. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the season started earlier today in Bruksvallarna, where our old pal Viktor finished 2:08 behind the winner (Johan Olsson) in a 10k individual start race.

That's all I have for you today. Usually, I'd include a couple relevant photos with the blog post but since I don't have any humiliating pictures of Manon or myself crashing our bicycles, I'll post a picture of this cat who is a DJ. Because the idea of going to a party and finding out that the DJ is a cat makes me laugh even more than the thought of people crashing their bicycles.