Spotted: Harvard skiers

Location: Kalispell, MT

Tor O'Brien and Esther Kennedy were spotted on a rare break from their geological pursuits (aka observing rocks), touring through Glacier National Park. They were later seen leaving a Mexican restaurant with another Harvard skier, rumored to live nearby, at which point the three of them strolled the scenic streets of Kalispell, discussed the great outdoors, and spent a considerable amount of time laughing and chatting in the Motel 6 parking lot. According to sources, Tor and Esther will return to the wilderness (and their scintillating rock studies) for two weeks, at which time they will adjourn to a romantic getaway on the tropical beaches of Hawaii. Paradise? Or merely another "working vacation" for the adventurous duo? Tune in next week to find out...

xoxo Gossip Girl

This weekend, at a restaurant in St. Petersburg, I bonded with a Swede over his accent, aka a Minnesota accent. If I am ever in Europe and miss home, I will go Sweden, and all my problems will be solved.

JRR

Hello from Canada, eh!

My darling pterodactyls,

I am consistently amazed by the experiences Harvard deems educational…and thus funds. For example, I am currently languishing in the spectacular Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, ostensibly “researching for my senior thesis.” Seeing as how I am surrounded by majestic peaks rising thousands of feet above me, secluded tree-lined trails and welcoming sunny skies, my “research” has included a lot of “getting to know the area.” I took my brand-spanking-new road bike out for a spin the other day and rode to Canmore, about 15 miles away, where I suffered up the MASSIVE hill to the nordic course and managed to catch the tail end of the Canadian Mountain Bike Championships before rolling back toward Banff (Nordic skiers: I tell ya, they even make you work for your tourist experiences. Gluttons for punishment, all of them). I’ve also taken plenty of time to head out into the hills and wander about, competing with the millions of other tourists to see who can get the best photo of the same stunning vista.

Besides Banff, I’ve also had a little bit of time to bum about Montana, exploring my native Glacier National Park with Anne and making a trip to Yellowstone (where I just so happened to run into Mr. Tanner Wiegand in Bozeman). In America’s first national park, I hung out in a real-life Old West town, saw loads of wildlife, active geysers, amazing scenery, and the ever-elusive “tourist in the wild.”





I hope you’re all having fantastic summers! Keep training, keep blogging, and I’ll see you in the fall!

Peace, love, and rainy summer days,
Clare

Salmon and spaghetti.

Hi all!

Things have been bustling here at FRI (that's the Fisheries Research Institute) since I last posted. While the fishing season was still going on, we had all sorts of bigwigs in the fishing industry come to visit, including Alaska's Director of Commercial Fisheries and some execs of one of Bristol Bay's salmon canneries. Now that the fish have mostly moved inland and the fishing season has drawn to a close, we haven't had as many visitors. But that isn't to say that we haven't been busy.

The lake here is bordered in places by impressive mountains. On an off day, we got the chance to climb one of them. It was one of the steeper hikes I've done:

But the view at the top was pretty incredible.

A Fourth of July tradition here is for all the guys to get haircuts -- mohawks, actually. I figured Tanner had already set a precedent and I wasn't about to be left out of this hallowed tradition, so I gamely bared my head for the razor. As one observer noted, what emerged was less reminiscent of a mohawk than an indie rocker hairdo. (Don't worry, we fixed it later.) I was a little perplexed by my new identity, though.

>

A few days later, I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow skiers James Crimp (Bowdoin) and Neil Liotta (MSU). James's family is from Anchorage but comes to Dillingham every summer to fish commercially. Though it's difficult and exhausting work (they fish with the tides, so they have to be on call around the clock), his whole family is involved in the process, which seems incrediblyrewarding. I very nearly got to rollerski with them, too, but plans changed and that didn't work out.

Ever since my arrival here, the amount I eat has attracted some attention. It's not just me, though: there's another undergrad here whose extensive appetite had also raised some eyebrows. To settle the matter of appetite once and for all, the grad students here arranged an eating contest: pounds of pasta (with red sauce) in an hour. After my experience finishing a bucket of pasta at Senior Nationals, I couldn't refuse the challenge, and trained extra hard that day to work up my appetite. In the end, I was able to eat 5.26 pounds in the allotted hour. Alas, my opponent was strong and beat me by nearly a pound. Yet we were both dwarfed by the legendary Cookie Jarvis, a competitive eating champion who holds the world pasta eating record of 6.67 pounds of linguini in ten minutes. I suppose I should stick to ski racing, then.

Now that the fish have moved out of the bay and into the inland lakes and streams where they will spawn, the work around here is shifting from run prediction to in-stream monitoring. There is a certain stream that we survey daily, counting live fish and collecting data on carcasses (sex, length, mode of death). Sometimes we would grab live ones too, just for fun:



That's all for now! Keep on bloggin'!

Chris

I saw Lenin's body this weekend. I was going to post a picture, but you can look it up yourself. Creepy, but fascinating.

JRR

Western REG

Hi everyone. I just got back from Western REG a couple weeks ago and thought I should try to give a report on how everything went. Overall it was a great camp in beautiful Park City. The camp was from June 20 to 26 with skiers from all the western regions: PNSA, Far West, Rocky Mountain, Intermountain, and High Plains. It was a great experience and a lot of fun spending 6 days training with many of the top skiers in the west. We got to roller ski with Billy Demong, Simi Hamilton, Rolf Figi, and Miles Havlic, plus play Kickball and Whiffleball with the rookies inluding Tad Elliott, Noah Hoffman, Jessie Diggins, Ida Sargent, and Saddie Bjornsen. On top of working out and having fun with all these great athletes we had great coaches to learn from. with an athlete to coach ration of about 3 to 1, every skier got lots of personal attention and technique advice. This included some one-on-one technique work with Matt Whitcomb and some pointers from Pete Vordenberg and Brian Fish. At camp we did some OD classic rollerski and running workouts and we did some higher intensity work. We had a spenst workout and three competitions for NEG. The NEG competitions consisted of agony hill climb, a roller ski sprint/agility course (I am in the red shorts at the beginning), and the Canadian Metals strength test. Each of these were scored separately with World Cup scoring system (100 points for 1st, 80 for 2nd, 60 for 3rd, and so on) and the 6 highest scoring girls and guys from all 4 REG camps then get to go to NEG. While I was bummed I did not qualify for NEG I still had a great time and learned a lot. Hope everyone's summer is going well!

Akeo

Helloz to all from the Forest...

...Harvard Forest, that is. Harvard Forest is about and hour and a half into Western Mass. from campus, and is a research site focused on forest ecology. I'm learning lots of useful things this summer, like how to drive a cherry picker (otherwise known as a bucket truck), push water through sticks and work with and build small electronics. Here are pictures from the fire tower of Mt. Monadnock, sunset over the Forest, and a typical day up in Bucky, the friendly neighborhood bucket truck. Bucky can lift us up to 80 feet in the canopy.



Besides training and working, I'm doing lots of relaxing things here -- in fact, we've purchased an inflatable kiddie pool for our living room, in which we watch Planet Earth (typical, I know), Game of Thrones or the Tour, read, fall asleep and generally become slug-like post-work day. The pool is also known as the FCRC, or the Food Coma Recovery Center. The food is wonderful here. Much of our supply comes from local farms and businesses. Newest discovery: Ginger ice cream. I just went wild raspberry picking last night while walking the border collie I'm currently dog sitting. Nighttime here is also relaxing, with only fireflies and crickets and tree frogs breaking the starry quiet.

I just got a present from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation -- brand new pavement, a whole mile of it, stretching from here to my favorite rollerski road off of the main drag. Sunday ODs have typically concluded with a few hours of sleeping in the warm sand at Queens Lake, which is a beach just down the road. I've been running a lot, and also using rocks for my strength work. I'm happy to be out here, and though an occasional jaunt into Boston is great, I prefer the pace and atmosphere here. I also discovered Harvard Forest has ski trails (!) so maybe I/we can come back out sometime this winter to check them out (hint, hint...). I'm excited to see you all soon!

-ANT