Fun Stuff | Steve Tilford

It’s way too early for me. I don’t very often get up before my body tells me to get up, well, sometimes my mind does, but I don’t like it much when I have to “force” myself to get out of bed. This is one of those few mornings. One thing good, it isn’t close to cold. It is already 25 degrees, with a high of 30. That is almost too hot.

One bad thing is I woke up pretty tweaked. I shovelled Dennis’ roof in the morning and skied for a couple hours in the afternoon. I think the roof thing was the main cause. Dennis doesn’t have enough insulation up there and he gets ice dams. So, we I shoveled down to the ice, then I’m trying to stay on the roof, with limited friction because of the ice. It makes legs wobbly. The skiing just adding the icing. My shoulder is not horrible. It is sore, but that is to be expected. We’ll see after skiing 7 hours today.

The group today is probably going to be pretty big. The early snow here has allowed a ton of people to get a lot of hours on their skis, plus the weather is good, but is going to get ugly tomorrow, so they probably would like to get a bunch of exercise before the deep freeze.

Okay, I have to cut this short. I have only 30 minutes to do an hours worth of stuff. I should probably wax my skis. They were waxed 4 years ago.

The snow is pretty deep on the roof.

I left the snow on the eve so I didn’t slip off when using the rake on the steeper parts.

Dennis gave Catherine a waxing lesson last night.

Yesterday was the famous Double Birkie Ski. Tom Schuler started doing this 27 years ago. I started doing it, maybe, the 3rd year, with Greg Lemond and a bunch of other elite cyclists. Lemond went and won the Tour de France that year. I had skied, maybe, 200 kms in my life, so I was pretty worried before hand. But, the last 15-20 kms, all my compatriots fell apart and I ended up dropping them. I was too uncoordinated skiing to be able to get tired. I went on to finish 198th in the Birkie that year, starting from the 3rd wave. I made it into the Elite wave by less than 10 seconds.

Anyway, yesterday went pretty okay for me. The worst I felt was the first 20 kms. And the group was skiing really slow. My shoulder held up pretty good. It is pretty stiff this morning, but no horrible.

There were close to 50 skiers at the start and lots more met us a various points along the trail. I’d bet over 100-150 people participated total.

I ski like a hack. One year, maybe 5 years ago, I skied a fair amount and got a lot better. But, that didn’t really show yesterday. I have no issue getting winded or tired. I have issues with synchronizing my arms and legs. Actually, it’s much more complicated than that.

Anyway, I met up with all my Kansas guys, Stacie and Karl from Louisville, plus Dennis near the turn around. So, I skied with them for a few k’s. Then we had lunch, which was great, a sandwich and hot soup from the Brick House Cafe.

Starting back, I just decided to ski and not stop. I left my guys early and skied straight to OO. I walked across the road and at the warming hut, Tommy Matush was there, ready to go. Tommy told me he was toast and I needed to take it easy. He wasn’t that toast, but he was teetering a few times. About 1/2 way back he said he had to stop for a Coke. He pulled a micro Coke out of his pocket and shared it with me. It was one gulp each. I hadn’t had a Coke for quite a while, it tasted pretty good. Another guy hooked up with us at OO, his name was Tristin. He was skiing pretty well. He said he was a cyclist from Chippewa Falls. It turns out he won the Fire House 50 this year. Tommy stopped a Mosquito Brook, so Tristin and I skied back to Fish Hatchery together. It was nice having someone to finish up with.

I can’t complain too much about yesterday. My back is a little sore, but that is from shoveling the roof. My biggest complaint is a blister on my right foot. Cyclists don’t get blisters. I haven’t had a blister in a decade at least. I was internally whining like a baby the last 10 kms. Plus, when I got back, one of my toe nails had turned blue/black. That isn’t a common occurrence either.

Today the temperature has dropped considerably. It is close to 0 right now. I’m going to go over to OO and do a ski clinic with Yuri Gusev from CXC. I’ve never really had a ski lesson, so I’m sure he’s going to rip my “form” apart. I’m a little worried about standing around too long in the cold. I hate standing around in the cold. That is one of the worst parts of this sport.

Tonight it is supposed to get close to -20. That is pretty cold. It is supposed to stay cold for the next few days. High below 0. Might have to snow shoe a little more and ski a little less.