Private Trails

Being home for a while is nice in a lot of ways, but not so good for skiing sometimes. I'm only a half an hour from school, but I'm half an hour north, which is the opposite direction we drive in for good skiing at Sleepy and Trapps. This means that the 45ish minute drive to Trapps for training turns into an hour 15 min. It's do-able, but I like to be able to actually spend time at home during break. Skiing isn't on the back-burner, but the ski, eat, sleep pattern some people get into isn't for me. I prefer the ski, eat, bowling, game night, sleep kind of day that I had yesterday.

Luckily, St. Albans has more to offer than one might expect. Within a 10 or 15 minute drive max I have three different options for training. (I have pictures that I was going to put up, but I forgot the cord for my camera, so they'll have to wait.)

The first is half a mile down the road at a family friend, Mike's house. Mike, my dad, and my brother spent a good portion of their summer cutting trails at his house a couple of years ago. The result was a solid 5k + trail system that winds its way along Mill River. The system is longer in the summer with fun, windy single track through the trees - a little narrow for skiing. While it might be a little short for a real distance ski there's a particular section of trail that I'm really fond of for a 4 - 6 minute interval. It's also fun to ski by the horses and feed them a bit on the way around the loop. (Again, I have great pictures that are stuck on my camera.)

The second hidden gem is only hidden because it's so new. Hard' ack is a rec area in St. Albans that's been open for years. In the winter there's sledding, an outdoor hockey rink, and a tow rope. Just recently my dad spearheaded the process of cutting new trails for running and skiing. This winter is the first time they've been open for skiing. Like Mike's, the trail system isn't extensive, but for something local and free it's pretty awesome. The trails are nice and wide and ski really smoothly. There's a good sized uphill, which makes for a good interval and if you wind around the trails you can get in a good length ski without feeling like you've done everything 25 times.

Downhill skiing/Snowboarding w/ tow rope to the left
Sledding hill to the right
Nordic trails extend into the trees on the right

The third trail system I'm able to use, which, like Mike's, is private property, is my old high school stomping grounds. With Hard' ack now available and closer to my high school, BFA, the team now tends to ski there more often. However, when I was at BFA we went just over St. Albans hill into Fairfield to use Dr. Dickinson's fields adjacent to his farm. (Note how ridiculously Vermont this is...using a local dentist's fields, on his farm, for nordic skiing. He also sugars. Obviously.) I can't count the number of times I've been on each individual trail. The trail system is a little bigger than the other two, extending into the woods from the three separate fields. Being over the hill, most of the time when all other areas lose snow and are looking iffy Dickinson's is able to hold on and St. A is one of the only parts of VT with actual skiing.

Pictures from my first time back home freshman year.

VT scene with Mt. Mansfield visible-ish in the background.

While it's easy to be a little jealous of people in the Burlington area during winter break (aka Adam when I read his blog...) I have to consider myself lucky. I think it's safe to say that not everyone has three (fairly) private ski areas in their backyard.

It's About Time...

Well then. I've been lazy as far as blogging goes. I've been busy busy for a real long time. Since it's been forever I'll make a list.
Things that have kept me busy:

Finals Week - Ok first of all...ew. This semester I took two math classes and two education classes. On Monday of finals week I had my Abstract Algebra exam. This meant a lot of studying, Mountain Dew, and chocolate on Sunday after the first race of the season, which you can read a bit about on the SMC Nordic blog.

After Abstract, which went surprisingly well after my three hour long study sesh in Alliot that morning, I got straight to work on a presentation for my education classes. Our units had been due the previous week for the Curriculum course (getting that done was insane as well. I've never stayed up until 4:30 am doing work before. I'd like to say I'll never do it again...) so the presentations on Tuesday weren't too intense. After Tuesday things settled down a little bit and I focused on skiing until Thursday when I had to study for Probability and Statistics. Nothing worse than a Friday exam when everyone else is having fun.

People thinking it's ok to leave me: One really cool aspect of college for some people is going abroad. With everything I do this will never happen for me. Next semester, however, it will happen for eight of my good friends. Saying goodbye to so many people was not fun. It will be really weird semester with so many people that I love being gone, but a few will be back from their trips abroad last semester and we'll all be together for our senior year. (Yikes. That seems just a little too close now.)

Roomie pic again. Cants 102!
Abby (England), Lauren L., Sam V., Erin, Carly (China),
me, Lauren S. (Ireland)

My loves in Cants 305. Plus ugly sweaters. HA.
Coligs, Jordan, Liane (Chile), Maria,
Erika (Italy), Cara (S. Africa), Mom/Chelsea (S. Africa),
Brookie (Italy)

Skiing - Things were going relatively well for skiing the past few weeks. We had a few good interval sessions and it was nice to be on snow again. As mentioned, we had our first race the Sunday before finals, which was the Bolton Opener. I wouldn't say it actually went well, but it's always good to get in some starts to try to get the bad races out of the way early. Hopefully.

This past weekend was the Eastern Cup Opener for NENSA. Saturday were sprints, which I didn't do and then Sunday was a 10k four lap (2.5k each) mass start classic in Jericho. I've never been one for mass starts, not that they should be used as an excuse. I was in the very back at the start and feel like I did a fair job moving up in the first chunk of the race. Since I worked so hard to move up I was skiing kind of frantically and was anything but smooth. This put me in not so good a place for the second lap. By the third lap I had pulled myself together and once I was skiing more smoothly passed a couple of people to move up a few spots. My results aren't at all impressive to look at, but I feel good about the way I got things together. Part of me wishes it had been an interval start so that I could have seen what I could do on that course without the crazy start and the bad first two laps.

As of now I've taken a few days off after developing a stupid chest cold/annoying illness on Monday. It's really frustrating considering the amount of motivation I gained from Sunday's race, but I rather get better and have solid workouts after a few days off than be sick for weeks because I don't back off.

Christmas Shopping - That's self explanatory, but as of today I'm done done done!

Our lovely tree

So going through those three things it doesn't seem like I was that busy. Looking back on the past few weeks I'd definitely say otherwise. I think it's just everything I do on top of having practice every day. Now that we're on snow it takes 35+ minutes to drive to snow, which makes for some long afternoons even if they are completely worth it. It's nice to have a few weeks off, but I am definitely looking forward to our team's winter camp.

VOTE FOR CAROLINE!

I may have mentioned that one of my oldest friends in the whole wide world, Caroline Bright, is Miss Vermont.

Caroline and I grew up together, went to college together, transferred colleges together, and now go to SMC together.

This year for the Miss America pageant you can vote for a finalist via YouTube.

Support an SMC student and native Vermonter by taking the link to YouTube and simply liking the video!

Ahhh I can't wait to see Caroline in VEGAS!!

Creepy Santa War

As seen in my previous post, the suite is ready for the holidays. One of the decorations is what I like to call "Creepy Santa." Erin brought this moving Santa from home, mostly because he's one of the creepiest things she'd ever seen. His head and one of his arms move. He doesn't make any noise. Sometimes you have to stare at him to see if he's actually moving because when he does it's sooooo slooooooow...it's really yucky and it weirds me out.

The other night before bed I placed him in front of Erin's door so he could greet her when she came home. I woke up in the morning and opened my door to have him facing me. And waving. Very slowly. Ew ew ew.

As payback last night I tucked him into Erin's bed with his happy little head on her pillow. It took her a few hours to notice and when she did it scared the crap out of her, which was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. I was in tears I was laughing so hard.

I got this text from her this morning:

"He will haunt you. FOREVER."

Yuck. So obviously I've already retaliated with a video on her Facebook wall:

We'll see where this goes. All I know is I'm locking my door for the rest of the semester. I am not waking up to that thing in my bed.

As far as the rest of life goes, exam week is just around the corner, which is not something anyone is looking forward to. On the plus side, it snowed all last night and all this morning, so I'm hoping for some actual skiing soon. We skied on the Notch Road yesterday, which was better on the Smuggs side, but that kind of skiing isn't going to get us by forever.

Also, the team blog has only been up and running for a little while and we've already seen a lot of action. My teammates Colin and Larissa have both posted as well as another from our coach. It's nice to see other people getting involved. Definitely check it out. There are some good pictures from our roller ski up the Bolton access road on Saturday!

An addition at 4:00 PM...Winter Storm Warning until 1:00 TOMORROW. Things are looking good in the snow department. "8.4 inches on the way" in Stowe.

Stowe. YESSSS

UPDATE

SNOOOW!!!!!

❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄

Snow?? ❄

Well, last blog post was hopeful for some snow. Not so much today. It's December 1st and the forecast is "56 degrees, windy and mild with downpours." Huh. Remember that picture of Stowe? Here's the current one:

Yikes.

But even if it's rainy and so windy that it almost blew me off of the sidewalk outside, (seriously, I almost fell over...how embarassing) the suite still looks like Christmas (and winter for that matter) might actually be on its way. The roomies, festive as ever, started decorating before Thanksgiving break with the excuse that we only had a little over two weeks to celebrate Christmas and that simply wouldn't be enough.