Cross-country Skiing

Hi, there! Gosh, it’s been an incredibly busy week. I think for me it was the busiest week of my freelance design career. I built a custom blog design (and let me tell you, I’m glad to get that time-black-hole off my plate!) and I’m working on 2 web-app UI’s and a custom handbag site design. whew.

Well, it’s been a week now but last weekend BN and I went on the annual Math Department snow trip. We went to Odell Lake, which is only about a 2 hour drive to the south-west. It was very thickly iced over, and in the boat-mooring area we stepped down into the frozen shallows. Wow. BN was hunting around for a heavy object to throw and try to crack the ice, but the log he found only bounced with a deep dull ringing sound.

The Odell Lake Resort features cabins of various sizes. We were in “the big cabin” with about 10 or 12 others, and more Math Dept people were lodged in other cabins. It seems that BN isn’t the only mathematician who likes to play board games and card games. It was a Settlers of Catan marathon weekend; and for once I came out on top for many consecutive rounds of the “caste system” card game known as “dirt slave,” “presidents and a___’s,” etc.

The resort rents cross-country skis and there are many trails all around the area. We had originally planned on downhill skiing at the nearest venue for that, but the snow was not at all fresh, with quite an icy crust. I had fearful memories of my most recent downhill experience, snowboarding in march of 03, when I broke my wrist!

So, we tried cross-country. It was so much fun. Yes, it was a good workout – but I liked the mellow pace better than the downhill experience of pressure-filled moments: gotta get off the lift without falling; gotta get down the hill, wait in line and on the lift, do it again. With X-C, you’re at your leisure. I’ve never been very athletic, either, but I’m in better shape now than any of my previous snow-sport experiences. So I’m sure that helped, and I wasn’t dying of soreness the next day, either. The trails we were on were very level, no extreme uphills or downhills, with frequent change of up, down, or flat. It was good.