"Total Meat Wagon"

On Friday, November 28th, Harvard Nordic epically united in a train of love, singing in unison these five, powerful, team-building words to prove that they could, in fact, make a highly technical and mind-blowing film, shot from the most dangerous angles and capturing the extreme edge, wildness and bravery that defines them.

Title: Love Train

Summary: Eleven athletes streamline on twenty-two skis, hands to asses, demonstrating advanced skills in a serpentine train, obliterating jagged shards of boulder with the mere might of their ferocity--their skis untouched and exuding crazy speed!

Setting: “Telemark” trail @ Trapps in Stowe, VT

Starring:
1) T-Revs: conductor; known for his exacting precision on icy, treacherous turns; “snow plow” isn’t in his vocabulary.
2) Schlutzer: train instigator/initiator; wild ginger, rosy-cheeked from her passion for team-building in the form of the love train.
3) Bad Man/D-Mac: train instigator/initiator; recognized by husky petergravian accent; snow plows so little, the tails of his skis meet.
4) A-Devs: sick but tough- nothing will get in the way of this fierce skier’s way; don’t trust that steady, sweet and innocent smile.
5) Audwee44@gmail.com: the weak link; likes to see where she is going (vision is overrated); is harassed endlessly at dinner and will be made to lead “Love Train: The Sequel” and write the next blog.
6) Mer: brings nasty style and pizzazz to the love train, overcoming a (lovable) lumberjack cough and staph infection; would win the tough cookie award, but Cara ate the last one.
7) Spraguer: damsel rescued from the xc-running team just in time for the love train!; has likely already said “That’s what she said” five times while reading this blog.
8) Coils: blond babe bravely succeeding infamous #5 (see above); bites snow with a graceful somersault and a smile (no more pavement!).
9) Clare: Freshman #1; screaming and smiling all the way down; recommends we try again with poles (last time she stabbed her sister [lovingly])--nevertheless, this promises great future feats of bravery.
10) Mannon: Freshman #2; also screaming and smiling all the way down; known for hill-fright, but demonstrating a quick recovery thanks to tender, supportive words from her captains; annihilates her baby skis.

Casting:
Tofters: Badass cinematographer performing turns facing behind, backwards skiing and advanced 360˚ wild tumbling footage. Mad props.

Featuring:
The “We Can Make a Video” song by Petros
Hysterical Screams of Terror by the Harvard Nordic Freshmen.

Reviews:
Having discovered the magic of Clare’s video camera, Harvard Nordic ski workouts have become a significantly less productive…
BUT there are important strategic values that may, at first be overlooked. These being: team-building and bonding, balance, coordination, trust, overcoming common sense and living on the wild side...walking along the razor's edge, and the like.
Audrey is going to live longer than all of us.

Take 1:


Take 2:


In all seriousness, today was a great training day. We hit it off with a long classic ski and some drills to work on hip drive and power. We learned (as we do every year) that klister is a bitch, but after rollerski season, we only care that we’re finally on snow!

Love,
Freshman #2

DANGER: Nordic Pteradactyls

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you and welcome back to the Crimson Nordic Blog.

Yes, it's true. We haven't written on our trusty blog in many moons, and your efficiency and performance reviews at work have no doubt improved because of it. We sincerely apologize. However, you're in for a real treat, because today is a special day. No, no blog readers really don't care that today happened to be Crimson Nordic's first day on snow for the 2k8/9 season, but it happens to be the birthday of notable Ski Team Alum Andrew Roberts Moore.
For those whose most recent copy of Crimson Tracks seemed to have been lost in the mail along with their GM 3rd quarter dividend payout checks, Anders has since moved to Marquette, MI, and is currently the assistant Nordic coach for the Marquette Ski Club. Learn 'em good up there, Anders! (And if you run out of boring ski drills, calmly read them some Habermas and they'll peel out for an OD ski faster than you can say "American Pragmatism").

So happy birthday to you, Andy. Also, we've made a pact to be better with shout-outs to recent CrimsonNordic alums on the blog, so buckle your seatbelts.


Alright. Oh, yeah! First day on snow! As we speak, the Nordic A-Roster is packed into the cozy "Chateau La Femme", or annex cabin of Stowe's favorite five-star: the Innsbruck Inn. After a tasty dinner of steak and shrimp stir-fry (to the cooking/clean up of which I offered very little), we're all unwinding on the couch watching the episode of "the Office" where Jim dresses up as Dwight. Read, "Which type of bear is best?"

Skiing rocked. Solid cover on the notch between Stowe and Smuggs, we ended up with 1:30 of tasty skate skiing, just enough to get the lats and tris pumpin'. And yeah, we got it on video with our new helmet cam! Dive in below:

So that's our news. Beyond that we're simply busy embodying the lifestyle of "all-in", "all-out", "no excuses", and "live to win... 'til you die".

Happy b-day Andy, wish you were here.

Best-

Crimson Nordic, back from Hibernation

Bam.

Oktober.

For the past seven weeks or so, the Harvard Nordic team has been consumed with academic endeavors so gruesome that all of its members have had no more than precisely 11 seconds per hour to commit to blogging. From reading every footnote of Choper and Fallon's tenth edition Constitutional Law casebook to investment banking interviews and professional etiquette dinners, our google calendars have had so many overlapping obligations that today, my friends, is the first time that any Crimson skier has had time to blog since early September. And it's being sent from my mobile device, which is so perilously small that I've nearly sent it through the wash four times. Luckily I get texts so often that I've always heard it beeping in a pocket before I can actually start my laundry, which really only consists of jeans, because everything else I own needs to get dry-cleaned.

And by all that I mean to say that David McCahill and I have been so busy baking apple crisps (and then eating said apple crisps... and then evading the subsequent waves of horrific and unavoidable flatulence brought on by the digestion of said apple crisps) that we've been too preoccupied to blog. Apologies. But look!

Dave demonstrates his domestic prowess.

Fall training has been going well. The men's team is small but determined and the women's team is both sizeable and committed. Unusually nice fall weather in Cambridge has allowed to get in numerous OD skis out in Littleton and runs on the trails around Walden Pond. Today we worked on skate technique at the closest safe rollerski venue: the Cambridge Cemetery, which is not only plagued by bloodthirsty coyotes, but has recently been fallen victim to a copper theif as well. Needless to say, we're leading suspects.

Audrey, me, Alyssa, and Clare doing some pickups

Joe and Dave getting off the starting line quick-like

Katie and Meri drag-racing

Stay tuned for updates, which will come much more regularly now that apples are getting to be out-of-season.

- Schlutzer

Snow Report: Ushuaia, Argentina

Once again following the policy of better late than never...

About three weeks ago I finally took advantage of the fact that it is winter in Argentina and got in some very ski-specific summer training:

The glacier.

"If you're a beginner, turn here."



The Beagle Channel.



Snowing too hard to see the mountains.

Turns out a Bates skier, Sam Evans-Brown, had been hanging out in Ushuaia training, but left the day before I got there. I did manage to end up on a shuttle with the Canadian men's alpine team though.

¿y vos? ¿de donde sos?

So, I'm not exactly a city person. Put me in Boston for a few months and I'm okay. Put me in New York for more than a few days and, well, yeah. There are about 13 million people in the greater Buenos Aires.

Now, the fact that I spend a good deal of my time during the week in lab (and say what you will, I really like the lab, so since I had to work for the summer one way or the other...) helps a bit. But I needed a little bit of time away from the busy, never ever ever resting craziness that is la Capital Federal. Solution: about three weeks ago (I'm a little behind), I flew out to the Iguazú Falls in the northern part of the country.

Iguazú Falls (las Cataratas) are on the river between Argentina and Brazil, a couple miles from where the borders also meet the border with Paraguay. If anyone has seen the new Indiana Jones movie (I haven't), they're supposedly featured. I've heard that the view of one of the biggest falls, Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) is better from the Brazilian side, but I didn't really feel like spending the time and money to get a Brazilian visa. Apparently at some point in the last few years, the US started requiring Brazilians to have a visa to even set foot in the US, and Brazil responded in kind. Iguazú means "big water" (i- water, guazú- big) in Guaraní, the language of the indigenous people in the border region.

Big water is an accurate description. Amazing, gorgeous, unbelievable also work. Here:




The falls are one of the larger tourist attractions in Argentina. While most of the people there were Argentine or Brazilian, almost everyone was a tourist. And while most of the people there were Argentine or Brazilian, here "most" does not mean nearly all. At dinner on Friday night I spent about an hour talking to two Australian women, one of whom lives in Hong Kong. I spent Saturday morning wandering around the falls with two college students from Scotland and Australia, respectively. I went hiking that afternoon with an Aussie and two Canadians and then had dinner with two Argentines and three British women. Later in the evening I went exploring the town with a group from Holland. Sunday afternoon, along with two of the Dutch guys, I hung out with three Spaniards and two Israelis. My seat on the plane back to Buenos Aires was in the middle of a French family. How did I meet these people? Some of them were at the same hostel. Otherwise, I took to turning around and asking where people were from (hence the title of this post) every time I heard English. Because everyone was a tourist, it was not nearly as creepy and awkward as it would normally be. Or at least so I thought.

Last week I went to Uruguay for a little bit. Really cool colonial city named Colonia (who would have imagined, I know?)

Oh! Also, something really cool happened here the other day. I was wandering around about three blocks from where I live here when...wait...squint...yup...that sweatshirt looks familiar! In the middle of Buenos Aires, I managed to find someone wearing a 2006 Eastern Nordic Championships sweatshirt. A girl from western Mass. Someone here who has raced at Weston!

And on the topic of skiing, I'm going to get in some very ski specific summer training. I'm not going to the famous Bariloche, which while beautiful, is almost entirely alpine. Instead, I'm heading to Ushuaia for a few days, which is apparently the best place on this continent to go nordic skiing. The city is in Tierra del Fuego and is supposed to be the southernmost city in the world. Yes, I'm going skiing in August. On Wednesday. Hah!

More to come (don't worry, I'll rub in the I'M GOING SKIING part plenty more).
-KEC

The Cobra

Dear Blog Readers:

I know what you're thinking. Right off the bat. Why is this post titled, "The Cobra"? Easy. You're naturally thinking it could be for one of two possible reasons. Possibly it's a vague allusion to "The Python", a highly sophisticated retail technique used by Bill Schneider of Placid Planet Bicycles. If you're thinking this, I commend you for your out-of-the-box effort, but you're just plain wrong. Ollie has surely guessed it by now, and it's true. "The Cobra" is the name of the new local road ride with a near cult-like following.

If you're really confused at this point, relax. "The Cobra" is simply the nickname of cycling phenom/ savage doper Ricardo Ricco. Here's a nice photo of Ricardo himself being led away by the police. Smile, Ricardo!

It's time to kick the mid/late-summer training blues and turn things up a notch, just like Matthew McConaughey would. In honor of Billy Demong's assault on the Tour of Utah, here are some rants about local cycling routes, in particular super hilly ones where you won't be in constant danger of being t-boned by aerobars or being reduced to nausea by copious, poorly inked M-Dot tattoos.


Anyhow, last year, the hot local road ride which was simply saturated with vicious climbs became affectionately known as "The Michael Rasmussen Route". However, Ollie and I have found it imperative to include the recently paved Schaeffer road into the mix, as it's... well... recently paved. Duh. So now, the once glorious Michael Rasmussen Route has faded into obscurity faster than last year's Hoops Prize winners, and it's been replaced by the two-fanged and incredibly dangerous Cobra Route. Just swing by your local bike shop, pop your head in the door, and loudly shout, "Hey! I'm off to do the Cobra! See you poor saps in 3 hours!" When all you receive are awkward glances or hushed whispers to quietly leave the store, just shout even louder, "I'm off to ride the snake! I'm gonna live forever!" If at this point you're not in handcuffs, just like Ricardo Ricco is now, go out and enjoy the ride. Bring lots of food and water.



Be sure and click "show elevation", that's important.

Lastly, The Cobra has a european counterpart which can also be viewed on mapmyride.com:



Enough ranting. Go and do something fun. Preferably outdoors.

-DMac

Updates from North Elba

Greetings fellow Blog readers from the quiet hills of the Adirondacks.

Much is happening in the world these days. Michael Phelps is swimming like a fish, John Edwards is lying like a rug, and several members of Harvard Nordic's elite are training like... emm... wild dogs. Yes, wild dogs.

It's been a great summer so far, despite being stuck in the nagging clutches of Tropical Strom Lake Placid. That hasn't stopped us from logging the hours, ticking away at the threshold sessions, bagging serious peaks, endlessly double-poling Bear Cub, and eating cookies that Anna and Audrey bake at a frantic pace.

Time in the weight room from our girls is already paying off, and I managed to squeeze off this photo of Meri Burruss' calves during the last of her stellar performances in the local Mini Triathlon. She and Audrey have been using the races as some bonus cross-training intensity to nicely pad the training log.

This past Saturday, Harvard Skiing Fan #1 Matt Delaney and myself travelled to Jericho VT, via Burlington Regional Airport*, to partake in the annual Jericho Range Roll. After being denied access to the much touted evenly matched NENSA v2 Rollerskis, probably because of the color of our skin, Matt and I simply took two pairs of his own V2 boards. We set 'em up on a waxing bench, donned our respirators, and greased the bearings with EPO, then attached rocket boosters to both pairs. This alerted race officials, who disqualified us from the "offical" podium after Matt placed a strong 2nd behind Bill Bowler and I rounded off the podium. I knew it was a stupid idea, Matt! Damn. That prize money could have paid my gas bill, my houseboat bill, and probably three months of child support.

Link to story and results: http://www.nensa.net/news/news_more.php?id=2776

So thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates, but take solace in the fact that Harvard Nordic is busily gearing up for it's fastest season yet.

See you out there--


Dave

*Denotes a funny detour/story.