Life away from Finland

Two weeks ago, the rest of the Green Team piled onto a plane for Finland with a bunch of ski bags that weighed exactly 50 pounds.  I waved to them as they drove away from Elinor’s and I felt a little lonely not to be joining them.  I decided to go to biathlon trials races instead, and was  eagerly awaiting my trip to Canmore, Alberta for those races.  However, I had 2 long weeks ahead of me first, and a very empty house.

Little did I realize how much I could cram into those two weeks…

I started off by driving to Lake Placid, where I trained with the national biathlon team.  During the few days I was there, I worked a lot on my V1 technique and I made some big improvements in a few days.  Now I’ve got to transfer that to snow.

The OTC was very busy with a lot of bobsled, skeleton and luge athletes in town.

A night at the OTC: Bobsled athletes snag a bite of pizza and sand their sled runners in preparation for the next day's trials competitions. They were up past 1 in the morning. My roommate when I stay in Lake Placid, Jamie, is on the left.

Rather than linger in Lake Placid for Halloween, I wanted to return to Vermont and take advantage of the NEK’s last weekend of fall turkey season.  I hunted on both Saturday and Sunday morning in the pastures of East Albany.  Watching turkeys awkwardly fly out of their roosting trees at sunrise on a snowy fall morning is a magical experience.  On Halloween, I shot my first turkey and it now awaits Thanksgiving dinner from the back of my freezer.