First month in Craftsbury….
Hey everyone!
After graduating from UVM and moving to Craftsbury I have almost been her for a month! The first couple weeks up in the North East Kingdom were a little slow as I got all settled in, but now weeks have been flying by and I feel like before I know it summer will be coming to a close and fall will be rolling in. The hardest part of the last week was dodging all of the thunder storms and rain. Despite the constant rain and thunder storms we were still able to finish up a successful testing week that included a 2 km test on the ski erg, a distance skate time trial, and a sprint simulation/timed double pole intervals.
Gordon put together some of the footage from the skate time trail which can be found here: http://youtu.be/OVaoR6IBdFk
Here is a report and some photos from the time trial: http://www.craftsbury.com/blog/?p=2557
Last friday, despite the wet weather all week and the morning down-pour I decided to make the trip over to the Kingdom trails to get some mountain biking in. It was definitely a wet and wild ride with no lack of mud….
Post ride mud…
The Center also has a decent network of mountain bike trails that I have ridden a few times. The trails are a little rough so and I have been spending a lot of my work hours raking the leaves and polishing these trails up so they are more rideable. For the most part all the existing trails are now raked and ready to ride! The next big step that we are working on is organizing and labeling the trails so they can be navigated easier and with less interruption. We have also been scouting out some new trails to expand our system and are planning on building more bridges and berms to try and up the flow of the trails.
One of our trails all raked and ready to go!
Here are some pictures of a couple of other projects going on at the center:
Pepa helping Alex, Ethan and I to build some trusses for the new wood shed
Panorama of pigs and chickens
Moving the pigs to a fresh pen
Hot water storage room
The photo above is a picture of a hot water storage tank. The water in this tank will be heated mostly by the heat captured from the exhaust of the generator that runs the snow guns. The tank is basically a heavily insulated concrete room with a rubber liner. In order to get the liner in the right position we all climbed in it, dropped a tube blowing air in, and closed up the entrance. Once it blew up enough we were able to move the corners and edges into the correct place.
So whats the best part of being a part of the GRP so far? It’s a toss up between the amazing food and the timber frame outhouse with a view…
Timber frame outhouse
Outhouse View
-Pete Hegman