Skiing and More Skiing!

December has come and gone, and with it, has arrived a much awaited and over-due fall of snow in Valdres! I’ve made much use of it at the ski centre, both on my telemark and cross-country skis. In mid-December I was in Beitostølen with my “langrenn” class where we did a 10km classic time trial. I was expecting to get my but kicked by the Norwegians, but as it turns out, I managed to come within a minute and a half of second place! I’ve also experienced some fairly significant improvement on the slopes, but not without some fairly entertaining falls! During one of my more recent trips, after a 50cm “pudderalarm”, I went head over heels down the mountain side, effectively ploughing the snow away right down to the rocks- with my face. I was fairly painfully winded, and after lying there covered in snow for a minute or two, I struggled onto my feet clenching my wrist. But it was all in good fun, because I managed to recover my poles and goggles from beneath the snow and my bindings had held themselves together this time!
Valdres Alpinsenter is not the largest ski hill but its big enough and its not usually too busy, which makes it quite nice. There’s a great view from the top. I took in a nice sunset during my last run before the Christmas holidays.

Of course, as often as I`m out skiing, and as often as I write about it, there are other things at the school with which I occupy myself. After all, something must have been keeping me from posting on my blog all this time!
In pre-emptive preparation for the Christmas season, I’ve been spending many hours on the stationary bike in the school gym.
Also in preparation for Christmas, I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing guitar with my band class, practicing for the school Christmas ball at which we performed. Although we had difficulty adjusting the sound equipment, the performance went over half-decently.

The “Jul ball” continued with what, to my knowledge, is a uniquely Scandinavian tradition. I had previously thought it existed only in cartoons and Dr. Seuss. There were about 150 students and staff in the gymnasium and we all gathered in circles around a tall Christmas tree. We sang carols as we walked and ran and jumped and clapped and spun around the tree in what was at first, true Christmas spirit. There were three or four circles going around the tree in alternate directions. It was nice to experience Christmas from a slightly different perspective but by the time we started singing the twentieth song, I conveniently remembered that my only set of bedding had been forgotten in the washing machine! Not wishing to wet my bed, I mean not wishing for a wet bed that night, I ran down to the laundry room, hoping to make it before they locked the doors for the night. On my out, I was greeted by many Norwegian Grinches, who had also left the celebrations, clearly tired of the Whoville atmosphere. One friend commented:
”It’s fun with little kids. But when there are over 100 people dragging their feet around the Christmas tree, hanging their heads [like empty stockings], and no one is singing, its just…” [When I actually come up with a good simile I can’t help but use it!]
For the record, many people were singing, as I was one of them!

The event-planners took a blind-date approach to the evening, and I had been set up with Hillegonde, a girl from Holland. We had a good time and I sent her home with some poetic words (of the type only a non-native English speaker could appreciate) accompanied by a rose and some guitar. Turns out lameness is cool after all! Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention that we were named King and Queen of the night! In reward we received two Norwegian “crowns”. Fitting, but not enough to buy half ‘ a chocolate bar in Norway.


I’ve also been out dog-sledding again. This time we took it off-road! Or off-piste I should say. There wasn’t yet a ton of snow, so it was a bumpy ride, but it was incredibly fun and exhilerating. The dogs love to pull and the sled miraculously held up to numerous tree stumps and clumps of earth protruding up through the snow. I’m no expert and I still find it quite difficult to steer the sled or direct the dogs (okay, I’ll be honest, I can’t direct the dogs in the slightest!) but we had a blast.
 

It’s been mostly things like this keeping me busy lately. As for the “blog-ly” Norwegian-progress update, it still seems to be improving, and I’m feeling more and more confident in conversations. I’ve decided for myself that at the ski resort, every time I sit with someone on the lift, I have to spend the entire seven minute journey speaking Norwegian. It is actually a fairly helpful tool, because it’s in short chunks, which makes it easier, and it adds up to quite a large amount of time when you ski two full days every weekend. I’m speaking Norwegian more and more often now, but it’s good to give myself some mandatory practice.

One thing I’ve been missing is hockey. It’s never on TV and no one talks about it. Aside from myself and a friend from Sweden, it doesn’t seem as though there are many who play very much. Over the holidays, they are supposed to be flooding a rink at the school, so I will be looking forward to it when I get back. Go Habs Go!
I have been out skating once though. Some friends and I went down to the lake and skated amid falling snowflakes- at two in the morning! We had a great time and it felt nice to finally be back on skates. We glided through the snow for a solid hour and a half before unlacing and trekking back up to our dorms for a couple hours of sleep! We may have been later if we hadn’t noticed a particular sign in the middle of the lake.
”What is that sign there?”
”I dunno. Let’s check it out.”
”It looks like a person swimming.”
”No, isn’t he drowning?”
”No, he’s breaking through the ice!”
I realise that this is a serious matter, especially at two or three in the morning, and that we may have been lucky, but what’s done is done, and what is there to do but laugh? I guess next time they should think about putting the sign nearer to the shoreline so that you don’t have to go all the way out to the middle of the lake to read it!


I hope you have all been enjoying the holiday season. I wish a belated Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year! I’m currently celebrating with relatives in Denmark and I will be heading up to Sarpsborg (Norway) for the New Year shortly. Next time I will give you all the low down on what has, so far, been a very enjoyable Christmas!

And to finish, here is an updated picture of the wooden skis that I made so long ago. Varnished, signed and refitted with new bindings (after they broke as I was putting them on for their maiden voyage).



Happy skiing!

Same Old, Same Old

Potatoes and fish. Hallelujah!

Need for Speed

I returned from London last week to discover quite an exciting schedule. First thing after the holiday, we put the pedal to the metal and made the trip to Lillehammer’s Olympic bobsledding facilities! I’ve always thought bobsledding to be a fairly extreme sport. Fortunately, we did not have to expose ourselves to such a risky discipline. Instead, we tried skeleton!
In all honesty, I was not actually all that scared or nervous during the pre-run build-up. It was not until a few seconds into the first run that I began to seriously ponder my chances of survival. I’m afraid I won’t be able to provide you with the same rush that I experienced but I will do my best to describe the adrenaline.
Imagine yourself with your face only centimetres from the ice, so close that you can’t actually focus your vision. Imagine the ice shooting past you at speeds of up to about 90 km/h. Imagine realizing that you have absolutely no control of your fate, with your legs and shoulders slamming into the side walls. Imagine a sudden three “G” (plus) turn, which you notice not because you can see it coming, but because you feel it in every part of your body, aside from your hands, which are clenching the sled handles, almost literally in a death-grip.
Now imagine the overwhelming relief that rushes through you when you finally dismount at the bottom, and you realize that you’ve survived!
I’m not even going to tell you to imagine how awesome it was (or how scared I was)!
When everyone had finished their first run, we were given the opportunity to give it another go. Of thirty people, there was only one who actually had any desire to do it again… That number eventually grew to five risk-takers, of which I was one (not to be outdone by four girls). It was not until I had made my decision to take the dive once more that my friends asked me, “Did you hear what happened to Martin?”.
”No, why? What happened? Actually, don’t tell me.”
Having already experienced the terror of the track, I was now quite nervous about gong down for a second time, but once you’re on the way down, there’s no stopping. However, despite the heaviness I felt at the start line, I inexplicably acquired a false sense of confidence somewhere before the first mind-boggling turn. I made it down in one piece.

”Martin. What’s up? The others told me something happened to you on the way down!”
”… Yes… Well…”
”Well?”
”I fell off.”

It wasn’t enough to scare me! I was two for two and I needed a faster time. My third and final run got me through 1.5 km in a mere 72.07 seconds! The track record is 53 seconds so I guess I have a little work to do, but, really, what’s 19 seconds?


The Norwegian is still improving. I’m seeing some things happen that certainly weren’t possible in my first month here. Helping friends translate a Norwegian word to English for instance, or better yet, providing them with the appropriate Norwegian word! Rare events but satisfying nonetheless. Of course, there is also the other side. I sent an e-mail to my Danish relatives, giving an update and inquiring about Christmas plans. I took up the challenge and wrote to to them in Norwegian, to which I received surprisingly positive responses! Of these, my favourite is, “godt at se at du skriver en blanding af norsk og dansk! (good to see that you’re writing in a mix of Norwegian and Danish)”. Thanks Holger! (Not to worry.) I guess there’s always room for improvement.


Last week, someone discovered bed bugs in one of the kitchens. Great! It was announced at lunch and we were told to pack sandwiches for supper because dinner would be cancelled. Fortunately, they were not found in the building where I’m living, so I wasn’t as worried as some. Inhabitants of the infested dorm got to opening windows and putting bedding (and even beds) outside in the cold (-20 that day). Every window in the whole building was open, in order to freeze out the pests.
Instead of dinner, there was a meeting planned to discuss the problem. It was here that we learned the whole thing was one big joke! The “meeting” was followed by a surprise “circus” put on by the school staff.
That night, windows were closed, and beds were sheepishly returned to their places. The best part is that the dorm’s heating system quit that evening!


The ski hill has opened since my trip to London so I’ve been spending the weekends there trying to improve my telemark skills. It’s a lot of fun; I’m going faster and I’m starting to make tighter turns. Of course, I have some falls too. On Sunday my ski slipped out halfway through a turn and the binding broke… It was kind of a damper on such a sunny day but I returned to the school and helped with the construction of my dorm’s Rube Goldberg Machine for yet another of the school’s many “inter-dormal” contests.


Yesterday, I returned from a class trip to the school hut just above the valley. It was quite a relaxing trip; we slept two nights in the cabin and went for a day trip up to one of the nearby peaks (it was the kind of hiking trip where people spend more time tripped up or pushed down on the ground than anything else- great time). On our way back, instead of taking the bus, we took sleds down the road, which was mostly downhill. It was fun, but it didn’t work so well and we had to carry the sleds most of the time. Mostly we just hung out, stayed up late, and had fun; it was a good trip.


My dog-sledding option class is starting to get pretty fun; last week we tried ski-jouring and this week we tied the dogs into the sleds. Ski-jouring was nice but the sledding was incredibly fun, quite difficult to steer though. And you have to dress really warm! With more than 30 dogs it got pretty loud at times but once the ropes were all untangled and you got on your way, the dogs were surprisingly cooperative. It was really nice.



All these trips and outings mean a lot of laundry. I had misplaced my woollen toque, and I couldn’t seem to find it anywhere. It eventually turned up while I was extracting my clothes from the washing machine… It must have made it into my pile of dirty clothes somehow. I think I managed to un-shrink it enough for further use.



Let it snow!