5:45 am meet at field house to pick up skiis. Offfda that's early, especially with an hour time change. Good thing it stopped raining.
Much swearing and messing with combination lock. Manual dexterity of skiers must not be great in the wee hours of the morning.
Field house is toasty. Thinking this is a good deal and significantly better than waxing in a 40 degree garage with the smell of propane. But a little bit creepy so I voiced concern about the potential for dead bodies being stashed in the back. I was promptly told I am a wimp and read too many Sue Grafton murder mysteries for my own good.
Note to self: notice team uses Rode wax, a lot of coaches in the midwest switching to Rode claiming it is not as finnicky as Swix, need to check this out.
6:00 am packed, ready to go, one skier missing. Drive to skiers apartment and throw snowballs at window to wake him up. (alarm clock failure)
6:15 am skier exits apartment eating a bowl of nasty looking stuff - I thought the food was supposed to be really good here.
6:30 on the road heading to New Hampshire - road potholes are more numerous and bigger than Minnesota, did not think this was possible.
Somewhere in New Hampshire where hwy 25 merges with hwy 16 do a bunch of U turns before getting on track.
Somewhere further in New Hampshire do some more U turns. Admit to being totally type A and pass map quest directions (printed off at home in Minnesota) to lead vehicle. I had thought some of the skiers had done the race last year and some others where from New Hamsphire so I figured they knew where they were going.
Contemplate while driving what the back up plan might have been if lost with no directions or map.
8:30 reach destination, gorgeous day, have to take a picture of the mountains.
Totally amazed that anyone would let 19 year old pyromaniacs ( especially the one I know) use blow torches to wax skiis.
10:00 race starts, older ladies first. Interesting race setup where slowest skiers are given a time handicap by age and gender. Didn't seem exactly practical for a 3 lap race on a single track course with no skate lane that was really ice from all the rain the night before. Passing is going to be interesting and there will be a lot of it.
10:15 last wave of skiier starts - the 20 year old guys.
Realize I missed some of the skiers because they are incognito and not wearing the team uniform. Wondering where you actually get fuchsia spandex that zips up the back like a wet suit with a zippered hip pocket no less. Very impressed.
11:00 Many tales of carnage, mass pile ups on down hill turns and the strategic trees located at the apex of each curve on the S turn. But the brownies are good.
11:30 awards ceremony. Master skiers win. This seems highly suspect since said master skiiers also created the handicap spreadsheet. However, awards go down to 60th place and are generally in the food category. Everybody is happy.
12:30 wait 20 minutes for Darmouth bus to unparallel park and turn around on a single track road.
Head for Maine with no mishaps or U turns on the return trip.
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