Blowing and Drifting - Christopher Tassava

Julia is semi-obsessed with the cafeteria at her elementary school. More than once in the past week, we’ve had to look up the menu on the school website and talk about all the options. And since Julia is Julia, this has led to art: a drawing of kids getting their food. It’s pretty accurate. You can almost smell “Big Daddy’s Pizza.” (Click through for notes.)

Genevieve drew this portrait of me last Sunday. The text reads as follows:

To Dad
By Genna
Love Vivi

This is you!
And this is me

She didn’t draw herself into the picture, though. She also said that I’m wearing a brown dress, not pants and a shirt, and then laughed at how crazy that idea was.

The 86th Vasaloppet, described as the largest (15,000 skiers), longest (90km), and oldest (1921) ski race in the world, was run in Sweden on Sunday morning. The race is an amazing spectacle and a magnificent athletic event. The Swedes pay attention to it the same way Americans pay attention to the Super Bowl, with the key difference that tens of thousands of Swedes (and others from all over the world) actually get to race in the Vasaloppet itself or in the daily races that lead up to the big event over the previous week.

Being a fan of nordic skiing, I got up very early to watch the webcast of the race on Swedish TV. I wasn’t disappointed, as my liveblog on my other blog shows: Both the men’s and the women’s races were great, with plenty of suspense, great tactics, and excellent finishes, but the men’s race was the culmination of a story of athletic redemption that I find kind of inspiring.

On the men’s side, this year’s race was fairly typical. A big pack of racers traveled together over the first third or so of the race – that is, 30km or about 19 miles. Over the second third, that pack was slowly winnowed down as the weaker racers dropped away and those who were feeling strong pushed the pace. In the last third of the race (the chunk that I liveblogged), the shrinking lead group was finally cracked under the relentless and rather incredible power of the Swedish skier Daniel Tynell, who surged again and again. Only three skiers could follow Tynell, who has won the Vasaloppet three times: the Norwegian racer Jørgen Aukland (who won the race in 2008); Stanislav Rezac, a Czech racer; and Jörgen Brink, a Swedish skier who was numbered among the best in the world about ten years ago, but had only recently turned to the ultra-long distance ski marathons. Over the last 10k, Tynell tried again and again to escape from Aukland, Rezac, and Brink, but he simply couldn’t do it, and finally decided to sit in, conserve his strength, and then win the sprint to the finish line in Mora.

He tried to hardest to execute that plan, but he didn’t count on Brink, who had done very little work over the previous 30 or so kilometers. As the foursome rushed toward the line, cheered on by thousands of spectators, Brink jumped out from behind Tynell and put in a big push. Tynell counterattacked, but Brink went even harder and eked out the victory by the length of a ski boot – less than a second, after racing for 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 59 seconds. (You can see the sprint at about the 50-second mark of this video.)

Winning the most prestigious race outside of the Olympics and World Championships is a momentous act of redemption for Brink, for until now he has been best known – not to say notorious – for one of the worst and strangest events in cross-country skiing, a bizarre mental and physical collapse in the men’s relay at the 2003 World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. He cost Sweden a gold medal in the race, the marquee event at any World Championships or Olympics, and the event more than any other which establishes a country at the best ski country in the world.

Wearing bib number 13, Brink started the last leg of the relay with a sizable 10-second lead over Russia and more than 20 seconds over Norway and Germany. But Norway’s anchor leg skier was the formidable Thomas Alsgaard, who was notorious for his power and speed at the end of races, especially relay races. Going into the 2003 Worlds, Alsgaard had delivered two gold medals at the two previous Olympics, and everyone at Val di Fiemme knew that he would try very hard to close the gap to Brink and win the gold for Norway.

Nobody knew this more than Brink, of course. He skied strongly until about 8km into his 10km leg, at which point – he said afterwards – he was simply overwhelmed by the stress of knowing he was being hunted down by Alsgaard. On the last big climb of the race, with basically just one long downhill to the stadium and the win, Brink slowed nearly to a stop, blacked out, and lost the race. The event happens about a minute into this video. Listen to the disbelief and excitement in the Norwegian announcers’ voices: they’ve literally never seen anything like this before.

To his credit, Brink rallied after Alsgaard and Teichmann sailed past him, saving at least the bronze for Sweden, but it was a monumental “kollaps,” and it basically ruined Brink. The phrase “do a Brink” even became a cruel bit of slang in Norway. After winning another bronze in an individual race the next week, his skiing fortunes declined rapidly and precipitously. He performed poorly enough that he lost his spot on the Swedish national team by 2005, at an age when he should have been nearing the peak of his powers. Though he tried the Vasaloppet in 2007 and finished third, he nonetheless abandoned cross-country skiing in favor of the skiing-and-shooting sport of biathlon, avowedly aiming to make Sweden’s 2010 Olympic team. Hardly a marksman, he found little success, and wasn’t chosen for Vancouver.

I think most people would have hung up their skis at this point, but Brink didn’t. Seeing that Sweden’s national cross-country ski team was now full of talent, he chose instead to try his hand at the ultra-long distance events of the “Marathon Cup,” a circuit which includes the Vasaloppet. And here he has found success, taking a hard-fought second place in a big marathon in Estonia and now winning the Vasaloppet in exciting and historic fashion.

The temperature hit about 45° F here on Sunday afternoon, which thus might well have been our last moment for winter fun. We made most of it, building two snowmen with our neighbor friend (who just learned how to do rabbit ears) while a cardinal serenaded us from the tip top of a nearby tree. Not a bad sendoff for winter, if that’s what it was.

1. Crap. I shouldn’t've been Facebooking all this time. I never did fold the laundry.
2. Good lord. That pile is taller than I am. And there’s more in the dryer. Time-management FAIL.
3. At least it’s mostly sheets.
4. Sonofabeech! Two sheets, and now nothing but the girls’ tiny little socks. Omigod. I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome.
5. Cheezis. These goddamn dryer sheets will stick to anything.
6. More sheets! Yes.
7. I just folded the HELL out of that king-size fitted.
8. Oh, no. More kids’ clothes. How can they fit into pants this small? Are these actually doll clothes?
9. Score – another set of sheets. Wait, isn’t that more sheets sets then we have beds? Wha? Are we taking in laundry for extra cash? Oh, wait, no. This is right. One set per bed.
10. Is that the bottom of the laundry basket?! Yes! Almost doooooone.
11. No. Just a white shirt.
12. But there is the bottom! Sweet. Done. Only 22 minutes.
13. And look: all the folded stuff fits in the basket to go back upstairs.
14. Hell if I’m carrying it all upstairs tonight, though. And thank Tide that everyone else is asleep. Can’t put anything away tonight!
15. Was that enough work to merit a drink? Naah.
16. Oh, faack. I didn’t notice all these socks that fell on the floor. *sigh*

Adding to my unintentional but now tripartite (part 1 and part II) chronicle of the spring melt here in Northfield, another compare and contrast.

The girls, our next-door-neighbor, and I built big snowman (probably a good 5′5″) in the backyard on Christmas Day. Below, he appears on the day of his creation and this morning, on what might be his last day as anything but a stub. When we build a big snowman next year, I’ll remember not to put him at the exact bottom of the sledding hill: more than one run this winter ended by crashing into his backside.

The lovely curved benches out from of Laird Hall at Carleton are emerging from the colossal snowbanks which have buried them since Christmas. It’s not much, but it is a sign of spring.

BEFORE THE CHRISTMAS STORM (12/23/09)

AFTER A WEEK ABOVE FREEZING (3/4/10)

This afternoon, after another 40-degree day, I noticed this stark evidence that the sun is still quite southerly right now. The snow on the north side of the sidewalk is melting rapidly; the snow on the south side is mostly untouched. If only this could be harnessed to ensure skiable ski trails in June.

Just before dinner today, our next-door-neighbors knocked on our door. They’re a Japanese family: the father teaches at Carleton while the mother stays home; the daughter, a frequent backyard playmate for Julia and Genevieve, is one year older than Julia. The little girl was dressed in a spectacular red kimono (and orange Crocs!) that was positively incandescent against the white snowbanks out front of our house.

Her mom told us that today was “Girls’ Day” in Japan, and so they had been to a party from which they were now bringing us some sushi. The mom was very careful to assure me that there wasn’t actually any fish in it, just cooked chicken, but she seemed relieved when I told her that I liked sushi. My girls, looking down into the styrofoam bowl (sushi à la mode Minnesota?), asked, “What are those yellow and green things on top?” My neighbor told them that it was seaweed, which raised their eyebrows. (At least they didn’t say, “Ohh. Interesting.”) I thanked them for bringing the sushi over, and set it out to have with dinner – huevos rancheros, as it happened.

Frankly, I didn’t have much hope that the girls would like the sushi. They chattered about how they’d never eaten seaweed before, and what would it taste like, and why did she tell us that the sushi didn’t have fish in it, because they like fish. But when I put a spoonful on their plates, both excitedly tried it, and both immediately exclaimed that they liked it. Well, Vivi didn’t like the strongly-flavored rice, but she ate the seaweed and carrots and beans and mushrooms and chicken. Julia ate everything, in big satisfied bites. And both asked for seconds and thirds. Horizons: broadened.

I love that life in Northfield can bring these little unexpected moments of contact with the wider world. I sure wasn’t trying (and liking!) sushi when I was a kindergartner!

Overheard, 6:15 p.m.
Vivi, pointing at the easel. “Julia, what you tryin’ to show me over dere?”
Julia: “I was just showing you the word ‘vowel,’ and that it starts with the letter ‘v’.”
Vivi: “Oh. I a growd-up, so I don’t hear you good. My ears don’t work.”
Me: “Genevieve, most grown-ups’ ears work fine. It’s just me who has bad ears and can’t hear so well.”
Vivi: “No, I don’t hear Julia too well e-fur [either].”

Seen, 6:30 p.m.

“Genevieve, why do you have a Post-It on your face?”
“I dunno, Daddy. Julia put it dere. We thought it was funny.”

In five (or six) units…

1. Articles I Read:

A. Popular
“God Said Multiply, and Did She Ever” (Joseph Berger, New York Times, February 18, 2010)

When Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants. Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average and whose ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among Satmars, the size of Mrs. Schwartz’s family is astonishing. A round-faced woman with a high-voltage smile, she may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust — a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.

B. Geek
“Ski Switching and Waxing in the 30km Classic” (Topher Sabot, Fasterskier.com, February 28th, 2010)
A great, if technical examination of an interesting new twist to cross-country ski racing: allowing athletes to change skis in the middle of certain long races so as to find a faster or otherwise better pair. Ski switching builds in new tactical element, since athletes have to carefully choose when to take the 10 to 20 seconds needed to change, as well as an element of luck, since they (and their technicians) might choose the wrong skis, and thus ruin a good race.

2. Book I finished Started
At a friend’s recommendation, I started Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a novel about Thomas Cromwell, a power behind the throne of Henry VIII. I’m going to dole this book out to myself in very, very small doses, because – as signified by winning the Man Booker prize last year – this is a fantastic work of art. The writing is superb, but even more impressive than the prose style is the intellectual power deployed by Mantel in making someone like Cromwell both comprehensible and admirable. (Here’s a laudatory review of the book, which mentions a sequel.)

3. Photo I Saw
Shot by Al Bello and seen in the “Big Picture” photo series of the Boston Globe. (The first and second “Big Pictures” from the Olympic Games are both incredible.)

Vancouver Ski Jumper (Al Bello/Getty Images)

4. Video I Watched:
“Demong sprints away” | NBC Olympics – the “raw feed” of Billy Demong attacking from the front of the last nordic combined race, dropping Bernhard Gruber of Austria and Johnny Spillane (USA), and surging to America’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in a nordic discipline.

5. Music I Enjoyed
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Shirley Bassey (composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein). Ignore the goofball sentimentalism of the commercial and enjoy the goofball sentimentalism of the song.

The nordic events at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games were colossally exciting to watch. The best single moment for me was Billy Demong’s gold-winning attack in the last nordic combined race, last Thursday. Demong’s medal – part of huge American haul in nordic combined which also included two silvers from Johnny Spillane and a silver in the team competition – was just one great moment, though. Many of the biathlon events and virtually all of the cross-county events were exciting, down-to-the-wire affairs.

The last cross-country race, the men’s 50-kilometer, lived up to its precursors at the Games, with a mad final sprint culminating two hours of hard racing. Petter Northug, the world’s best male XC skier right now, took the gold by finishing three-tenths of a second ahead of Axel Teichmann, a German who is himself a phenomenal racer but who also has a knack for losing to Northug. The bronze went to Johan Olsson, a hardworking Swede whose efforts animated three of the XC races at Vancouver and who crossed the finish line another seven-tenths after Teichmann. A half second behind Olsson came Tobias Angerer, another German and now the possessor of the dubious “wooden medal” that goes to fourth-placed finishers.

Then – just a tenth of a second later – came one of my favorite racers, the Canadian Devon Kershaw. His fifth place matched the best-ever finish by a male Canadian XC skier (a record set last Saturday), but it also capped a herculean effort in the race from Kershaw, who had raced well but not up to his standard at the Games. A prolific blogger and Twitter-user, Kershaw seems to be a great guy – someone who works hard, who doesn’t take himself too seriously, and who has overcome no small amount of tragedy in his life to become one of the world’s best cross-country racers. If he’d somehow just been a half-meter further up the straightaway, he’d be wearing a medal right now. But the near misses are as much a part of the Olympics as the medals. I hope he gets another chance in four years. I doubt he’ll miss it then.

Kersh in Fifth (Bernard Wieil/Toronto Star)

Along with some friends, the girls and I enjoyed a long walk in the Arb on Saturday afternoon, soaking up the sun and visiting a huge igloo that some Carleton students put up a few months ago. As Julia’s posture shows, these photos are from before the walk and after it.

I know that for really fit and fast skiers, the men and women who win citizens’ races and better, 50 kilometers is a serious but not frighteningly tough distance to ski, either as training or in a race.

On the other hand, this middle-of-the-pack racer found 50 kilometers to be an awfully long way to ski – and simultaneously a fun way to spend the better part of an afternoon. Conditions were fantastic, for starters: the weather was ideal – beautifully sunny, pretty much windless, just about 20°F – and the trails were in very good shape – good classic tracks everywhere (solid and glazing over the course of the afternoon).

More than all that, I had juuust enough fitness to do the full 50 kilometers. I decided to try to double pole the whole thing, and happily the first 30km were pretty easy. I was consciously keeping my speed down and letting the slippery tracks do a lot of the work. The next 10km were substantially tougher, since my core muscles were weakening rapidly. Eating and drinking regularly helped slow down the onset of real fatigue.

The last 10km – even though I downed about 20oz of flat Coke and a caffeinated gel – were positively brutal. Every double pole made my shoulders feel like they were being squeezed in a vise. I climbed the last hill – a steep 200m ramp near the start of the last lap – at the slowest possible speed, just one missed pole-plant away from actually going backwards. But knowing the trails (and seeing the data on my watch) helped me break that last lap up into manageable segments, which steadily ticked by. I was pretty happy to hit 50km, at 3:33 into the ski – and even happier to glide into the “finish” a little bit later.*

In sum, though, my little Oakebeiner experiment was a great way to enjoy a beautiful winter’s day, and – I hope – valuable preparation for an actual marathon ski race. We’re only 352 days away from the 42km Mora Vasaloppet marathon in northern Minnesota!

Right now, though, I’m sitting on the sofa, soaking up the really incredible soreness of pretty much every muscle group above the waist (even my jaw is sore – wha?) and wondering just how I’ll feel tomorrow. I’d better keep the bottle of ibuprofen handy.

the final tallies
time: 3:34:47
distance: 50.21 km (31.1 miles)
pace: 4:17/kilometer (thanks to marginally better fitness and much faster tracks, this is actually almost exactly the same pace at which I skied the 24km City of Lakes Loppet earlier in the month!)
average heart rate: 145 beats per minute
nominal calories burned: 3,703 kcal

In today’s nordic combined event at the Olympics, Americans Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane raced extremely well, working together to take over the race and then, with just one Austrian skier in tow, to launch a vicious attack that brought them to the finish line for a gold and silver. A GOLD AND A SILVER! IN A NORDIC SKI RACE! Amazing.

Bill Demong: Gold Medalist

For nordic skiers in the US and other snowy regions of the world, late winter means ski marathons – long races that focus the fitness built up all fall and winter into some tough competition. The biggest ski marathon of them all, the 90 kilometer (56 mile) Vasaloppet, takes place in a couple weeks in Sweden; the biggest ski marathon in North America, the famed Birkebeiner (50km/31 miles in the freestyle technique or 54km/33.5 miles in the classic), will be run this Sunday in northern Wisconsin.

Though I want to ski both of those races (and others) someday, this ain’t the year.

Instead, I’m going to take advantage of our great snow and good weather and my underused stash of vacation days to ski my own classic-technique “marathon” in Carleton’s Lower Arboretum on Friday. I can get to the magical 50km mark by doing seven laps of my favorite 7.5km loop, which hits a few easy hills and covers lots of flat terrain in three of the Arb’s main ecosystems: tallgrass prairie, upland forest, and oak savanna.

This “Oakebeiner” won’t be a race, much less the Birkie or the Vasaloppet, but by golly it’ll be good enough for this winter – not least because I’ll ski past this beautiful tree fourteen times:

(If any Northfielders want to join me, they will be able to find me in the Lower Arb from about 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. on Friday. I’ll be using the trailhead at the West Gym parking lot as the start/end of each lap.)

Today I was lucky enough to watch the second half of the nordic combined team event at the Vancouver Olympics, a 4×5km relay race in which the teams are seeded according to their ski jumps earlier in the day. The American team came in as one of the favorites, along with the 2006 Olympic champions, Austria, and last year’s World Champions, Japan.

The four Americans – Brett Camerota, Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane, and Bill Demong – didn’t disappoint, generating a spectacular race that ended with a silver medal. The medal was the second American silver of the Games (after Spillane’s silver in an individual event earlier in the Games), the second medal in all of American nordic combined history, and just the third in modern American nordic skiing history.

I won’t recap the actual race here except to say that each leg of the relay was more incredible to watch than the last, and that each American racer buried himself in chasing the gold medal that ultimately rode away down the last downhill on the Austrian anchorman’s faster skis. But goddamn, what a great race! It goes down in my personal list of great sporting events I’ve seen: the final stage of the 1989 Tour de France, the Packers’ win in Super Bowl XXXI, the 50km mass-start marathon at the 2005 Nordic Ski World Championships… With one more nordic combined race to go, I still have reason to hope the NC boys will add another item to the list.

As any book on raising kids will tell you, all kids have imaginary friends. Julia invented a few, or invested actual stuffed animals with fully fleshed-out personalities and histories, though she’s always preferred setting up complicated scenarios based on a book, a story, a TV show, or whatever. (See “Nativity Scenes, the Neverending Power of…,” pp. 1,348-2,682 in her forthcoming memoir, How About You…)

Genevieve, on the other hand, has spent a lot of time, and even more time lately, inventing a whole cast of characters who are both pals and alter egos. While “Big Boy” is now largely a memory of the dim past (that is, October), she still occasionally pretends to be the well-behaved and cheerful cat “George,” and now loves to pretend to be a “big sister” named “Ally,” who is variously aged six, nine, ten or some other positive integer greater than three.

Ally’s a good egg, and likes to take care of her brother/friend Daniel, who’s very shy but often joins us for dinner, though he never eats much. Ally especially likes to go to school, which entais, first determining what grade she’s in and then a very long but cheery search in her bedroom for stuff to put her Dora bookbag backpack: books, pencils, paper, stuffed animals (especially good old Teddy O’Peep), jewelry, toys, and so forth. Once suitably equipped, Ally trudges down the hall to the playroom and mutters, “Hi, teachew. I’m hewe for skoo-ow.” She doesn’t seem excited, but that’s just Ally. She buckles right down and gets to work on, say, a  picture of a rainbow, until she needs to go see about Daniel. He’s usually hungry, probably because he didn’t eat enough at lunch.

The other day, Laura Valaas, an e-friend who happens to be one of the best cross-country skiers in North America, emailed me to ask if I would be willing to try out a new product she’d developed: the “BootBuddy,” a little plastic doodad that snaps into the front of your ski boot to protect the metal bar there, to keep snow from building up under the toe of your boot (a huge annoyance, especially when the snow’s wet or when you’re in a hurry), and to give you a bit of traction while walking in your ski boots.

Not only am I not the kind of person to turn down free stuff*, but I’m also a guy who hates to see the wear and tear on the bottom on expensive ski boots caused by walking on pavement from the car to the trail. As a teenaged skier in Upper Michigan, I walked from my house to the trailhead when I wanted to go skiing**, and the 1.2 mile round trip was hell on my boots.

In short, I wish I’d had BootBuddies back then, because – here’s the takeaway – these things are awesome. Like any stroke of genius, they’re deceptively simple: a little wedge of plastic with a notch in the middle and a few grooves for traction on the bottom. You simply press the notch against the bar on the bottom of your boot, and theBootBuddy snaps in, staying put quite well even as it protrudes an inch or so from the front of the boot. See?

I really appreciate the traction created by the underside grooves and that bit off the front, especially on the sheets of ice that are pretty much standard in any ski trail parking lot. And the way the BootBuddy keeps snow from compacting in your boot is pretty sweet, too – especially in “spring skiing” conditions like we’re having in Northfield, with wet, grainy snow that just loves to get mashed into and frozen onto things like boots, sunglasses, skis.

According to SkiTraxx’s website, the BootBuddies are available for most of the major binding systems: SNS Pilot, Salomon, Atomic, and NNN (mine). They’re $15 for the pair, which is enough of a deal that I’m going to order (and pay for) a second pair so that I can keep BootBuddy both pairs of my boots.

Looking around Laura’s website, I see some other cool stuff, too, like a boot carrier and a wall rack for skis and poles. This means that Laura is a hellaciously fast skier and awfully clever, too. One hopes she can add “rich” to the list of adjectives.

* A partial list of free ski stuff I’ve won or received: a pair of sweet Rudy Project ski glasses (by winning a ski trivia contest), a cool racing hat from a Norwegian racing team (by writing and asking if I could buy one; it turns out I couldn’t buy one but that they’d send me on for nothin’), and a great racing suit from a now-defunct pro racing team (by winning an XC skiing fantasy contest).

** True story! And it was (partly) uphill both ways! Needless to say, in the snow!

Julia’s facility with words has always been strong; she was talking as well at two or three as many five-year-olds (including some of her current classmates). Since starting kindergarten, she has, as we expected, rapidly acquired and improved her writing and reading skills. She’s always loved to draw pictures, so being able to label some part of the picture, or to write out all-text stories, is new and wonderful. She’s also quickly complemented her writing abilities with very good, and constantly improving, reading skills. Just this morning, for instance, she read aloud three pages in a kids’ magazine that she’d never seen before.

I’m a bit surprised by how satisfying I find all of this. Undoubtedly because I’m a guy who likes words and who values verbal skills (and who makes his living by writing end editing), I find it immensely pleasing that Julia enjoys writing, reading, learning new words, wordplay, and the like so much. It just feels right that she does.

And that’s only the half of it. Mostly because she wants to do everything and anything that Julia does, Genevieve, too, has quickly and impressively mastered the alphabet (with the curious omission of K, which she refuses to write) and delights in writing, both for particular purposes – birthday cards, thank-you notes, “menus” for playing kitchen – and for pure fun, like this morning when she carefully used big block letters to write “BackYeLLoWaBaBYHappy.” As she told me solemnly after finishing this little bit of preschooler Dada, “It’s a good fing that I dint wite ‘pencilbaby’ again!”