Old Skool Skiing - A Christmas Time Gift

With school getting out for both Mrs. Beavon's class at Liberty Bell Junior High and Mr. Peck's 5th graders in Leavenworth, I thought the time couldn't be better for a little old school skiing from Billy Koch. I vividly remember watching this for the first time at my boyhood friend Scotty's house. He'd commandeered a copy and fired up the 16mm reel player, and seconds later I watched transfixed as the king of momentum did his thing on his skinny Silver 44s.

Adjø Norge, Hello Home

After five weeks of practicing my rough Norwegian, eating brown cheese daily, along with a journey north of the Arctic Circle to Rovaniemi Finland, along with a trip for a little city sprint action in Dusseldorf, it's been nice to get back to the Northwest. Along with getting in a couple kilometers on the old familiar trails of Leavenworth, I dropped into Mr. Peck's class and caught up with Mr. Peck's class before heading a little farther North to the Methow Valley. Up here. I'm getting back in touch with the seventh and eighth graders in Mrs. Beavon's AVID class that looks to close the achievement gap of these talented and inspired, though sometimes sidetracked students. It's pretty cool to see how much progress the kids have made in class here. Also out the door here the snow is piled high, almost reaching the windowsills of my little cabin in the woods.

Beitostolen, Norway: The Season Starts

Norway: The First Days On Snow

For the past week I've been calling Sjusjoen, Norway home. The mountain town sits twenty kilometers outside Lillehammer. The place is pretty sweet, with incredible facilities, both from the long tradition of sport here, and the influx that came here for the 1994 Winter Olympics. The ex-pat Mike Meyers set me up with a nice little cabin by the lake beside the Rustad Hotell. If you're ever in this neighborhood, you should check this place out: http://www.rustadhotel.no





While in Norway I'll be racing with Team Sjusjoen. The team is a professional outfit, and is actually the oldest team of its kind in Norway. Former World Cup podium boy John Anders Gaustad took over the coaching duties this year for this team of ten. Here JA and I get in a couple hot laps around the tracks here. I also picked up a couple good pointers from the man himself. Good times, good stuff.





Here Team Sjusjoen gathers around the training table. This evening, though, was a bit more special. As the last night of the last training camp before the racing season kicks off in Beitostolen, Norway we had a julbordet, or Christmas Table. You know, eating all those delicious Scandinavian specialties like rotten fish, salted pork and lefsa. I know your jealous...

And a lil quick viv for you interested ski fans out there:

Stripped down to bare steel...

... then building it back up again.



The old air-cooled bike might not yet quite be road-worthy, but the CB750 Tourer is no longer the oily, dirty rheumatoid tosser purchased earlier this fall. In the last days it's become an avenging angel of misery; only of the prettiest kind.

That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. ~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

FInal Rollerski of the Year

Power Training, XC Ski StyLe

With snowy mountains in the horizon and the days down to the single digits before I'm waking up to stride-and-glide most every morning, my power training has been changing with the season. And while Mr. Hazle or Karl Erickson or Mustafa might call into question my defining this as "power," the time has come for me as a more endurance-oriented athlete to turn gains in the squat and clean into something I can use in the ski tracks. If you got a minute, check it out ...