roadtripping

From Bend, with its 25" of pillowy powder days in the high Cascade Cinder Cones...


To the verdant valleys of Steinbeck and Co along the California Coast.

Coming To A School Near You

Stop! The season's not done quite yet, as it's time to shake out yesterday's 50km race and begin the first ever North American Tour de Ski tomorrow.


Then, it's off, with a return to the Great Northwest to come.



And soon to a school near you.

Beginnings & Endings

I wonder what I will remember. Not now, but years from now. Settling down by the water's edge at the family cabin, watching the alpenglow slowly fade away, I wonder then what I'll take - what I'll feel the most - from these last days. The days and reminiscences under the banner Vancouver 2010. The highs. The lows. The gutters and strikes, peaks and valleys. A question whose answers can come only full with the perspective of time. My hope is that the good memories outshine the rest, and I'll be able to pick up all the pieces from the rest, and, to steal a line from Jimi Hendrix, make an island / might even raise a little sand

Seeing Bill and Johnny race away from their final pursuer up the final climb into the Olympic stadium, the rest of the world's best nordic combined skiers strewn somewhere behind sent shivers up my spine. To see my old roommate headed to the finishline, arms overhead, taking America's first ever Olympic gold in the nordic disciplines is the kind of moment I can only hope lands these boys on the front cover of the Wheaties box, and inspires many other Americans to get out and inhale and exhale a little oxygen. Especially in the cold of winter.

The feeling of equipping oneself well, to laying out the performance I could on a big day - even if it wasn't up to the standard that gets one's name etched into the annals of time, that's up there with seeing so many family and friends coming from near and afar to pack the sidelines, and cheer me and my competitors on live trailside. Thanks. Sometimes its the grandest of gestures and the simplest of words that mean the most.

Then there's the image etched in my mind of walking to the front doors of Osborn Elementary a group of fifth graders steal a couple glances back before breaking into a giggle, then running into the building and down the hallways to announce their penpal's unannounced arrival back in class. Thanks girls, that made me smile then as it does now to retell the tale.

Is it one of these I will remember? Only time will tell.

The Family out on Course

Like a Thunderbolt,

the Olympics are almost here!

To Seek...

It's on the outskirts of the Banff National Park where I find myself for the last days of preparation before West to Whistler. Isn't this the way it always is, headed West, leaving the stepping stones behind for the land of new adventures and experiences. In my mind's eye I can see the big mountains as I can breathe in the wet, slightly salty maritime air. Ah, sometimes life's too good, isn't it?

Writing these last lines reminds me about what it's all about - the universal appeal of sport and the Olympian's quest. It's to fully inhabit the most traditional and hallowed sense of the world amateur; a lover of. What a feeling it is to wake up every morning, pop out of bed, let out a big, boisterous Shazaam! and get right to it, loving every minute of the process. Maybe it's encouraging to know (somehow, it is for me anyways) that this state of perfection is beyond most Olympian's daily way and means. This, though, is the personal standard. The one most worth striving for.
When you get to this level, hold it, cherish it, nourish it, share it and carry it's memory with you always. I'll try to do the same.

A friend says, "It's so easy to die before the fact of it." This reminds me of the Jack London penned poem, the work urging one to be the spark that burns out in a brilliant blaze, to be that meteor, every atom in magnificent glow.

To this I say, raise high that roof beam, carpenters! To use every fibre of our bodies in taxing effort, to beat back the deadening effect of habit, to abhor merely existing and instead shine, shine, shine like that exploding star shooting across the dark night sky.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

It's a quiet Sunday night as I begin to write. At first it's all stuttering and stopping, cross and erasing. The creative complexity of writing, of making language flow from thought, escapes me. I'm trying too hard. I'm thinking too grand.

I go back to the basics. Write about what you know. Use single, short declarative sentences. Always seek the active voice. Show, don't tell. Write. Put pen to paper. Then, only then, let the inner copy writer's voice come out.

Finally it comes. Yes, this is. If I had to compose a group of words to live by, these might be mine.

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