Eastward Migration

It seems everyone's headed to Europe these days. Is that east or west from here?  Or north?

Marine Dusser went east first. She left town last month. She found herself an internship with Rossignol and will be based in Voiron, France until spring. If I understood her correctly, she'll be working on the development of a line of Rossignol products, though I'm not sure exactly in what capacity. Whatever it is, I'm sure Marine will be good at it. She sure did a good job of converting a lot of fast Alaskan skiers to Rossignol skis.  Her boyfriend Erik, a rising star at APU, made the switch to Rossignol over the summer and next thing I knew most of his APU teammates had followed him to the brand. Coincidence? Who knows? But Marine sure had good skis, and her UAA teammates were always trying to borrow them for races. I'm happy to say that one of her pairs of skate skis even found their way into my garage. After her winter internship with Rossi in Voiron, what next?  I don't know. Marine doesn't know. Nobody knows. I hope she comes back here, though.

Marine and one of her fans.

Marine with UAA teammate Karina Smith.

Lukas Ebner left for Europe last Tuesday.  After graduating last spring and spending summer and fall working as an intern at The Alaska Club here in Anchorage, Lucky has spent his free time training for this winter's ski racing season. Perhaps his most important races of the year are coming up this weekend on December 6 and 7 in Germany - early season races that the team will use to determine early season OPA Cup team rosters, etc.  If Lucky skis well there, he would be off to a good start to the season, representing Germany at international races in Europe.  Good luck, Lucky!

Marine and Lucky

And Manon has left for Europe, too.  I'm pretty sure she left town the same day as Lucky, last Tuesday. Maybe they were on the same plane, I don't know. She plans to race in some qualifying races this coming weekend in France, and I think she's trying to earn a spot on the start list for some December World Cup races before coming back to start the college season with UAA in the beginning of January.  But truthfully, I've heard all this information second hand. I'd have done a better job researching this story but I haven't seen Manon in quite a while. I missed a bunch of Nordic workouts recently because I was in Colorado with the Alpine team, remember? So lay off.  I'll find out what I can and get back to you about Manon.

I stole this photo of Manon from the Dauphi Nordique web page.  Thank you, Dauphi Nordique!