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!