Category: XCFeeds

I left the BKL Festival early last weekend so I could get back to do the Stowe Derby. I’d never done it before so I decided to do the Meister (both to enable a better starting position and because it’s more hard-core). Luckily I had a wonderful mentor in Linda who explained all the considerably confusing logistics of trying to do the Derby Meister. I would have been completely lost without her!

Here’s the basic run down of the day:

Get up early, drive to Stowe and park at the Church (finish line). Leave bag of dry clothes hanging from a tree. Get a ride to the high school from Troy and Kimberly. Stand in line to sign the waiver (don’t look at the small print), pick up bibs and cool orange t-shirts. Ran into a friend from Gould! Chauffer Kimberly drives us up to the mountain. Take the lift up to the start. Luckily it was a beautiful, warm day so the ride was very pleasant. I was very spoiled for my first Stowe Derby experience. Start the skate race and commence “power plow!”

I'm amazed that I wasn't snow plowing this turn.

The scariest part of the course wasn’t the Toll Road as I expected, instead it was under the power lines by the Touring Center and then later at the end of the woods section there was a really icy shoot.

The flat/uphill portion of this course just keeps going and going…

There was no time to waste after the skate finish. It was back in the car for another drive up to the mountain to do it all over again. There was a lot of discussion between Meisters about what to do for classic skis. In the end there was a little bit of everything; some were on klister, others crowns, some hairies or zeros and at least one guy went on skate skis and just double-poled or herringboned the whole thing. I went with zeros, which were fast but didn’t kick well in the woods (the only place on the course where you actually could use some kick).

See that guy behind me? He had a spectatular wipeout moments after passing me a little after this photo was taken. I witnessed a lot more carnage in the classic race.

You definitely should go to here to see some awesome carnage. I wanted to put a few of the choice ones in this post but decided that wouldn’t be very nice, so you’ll have to go look for yourself.

The classic race was my favorite part. I was a little more comfortable because now it was my second time on the course and the conditions were softer. After the classic finish we were able to take our time, change and head over to the Rusty Nail for awards and carnage videos. It was a great day and I’m definitely looking forward to doing it again next year!

Changing subjects a bit, after some convincing by John Maddigan I headed over to Jericho yesterday for the last of the Thursday night biathlon races. The crew over there is super friendly and they put on a great, fun event. Even though I’ve been doing some shooting, I hadn’t done any after skiing hard so the shooting stages were interesting. I dirtied the prone (missed all five) and almost did the same for standing but I calmed myself down, determined to hit at least one. Success! I hit the last target on standing. I had a blast even with my poor shooting and now I’m just psyched to get better at it!

Really, I can feel myself getting geekier by the post.  If I’m writing too many, please someone try to stop me, or check me in to blog rehab or something!  But I figure that I should write blogs now when I have a bit more to write about, and then I’ll cut back down on them when I get home.

But at any rate, yesterday we had a relay race so I thought I’d give a quick update on that.  I’ve given up on posting photos until I get back.

The relay was fun!  I skied the third of four legs, but I started off right with a group of girls  and was able to ski with them, and even passed one or two! Then I cleaned the first shooting, and it was sweet!  The feeling of coming into the range with a group and then leaving ahead of them is pretty exhilarating!  After that I got a bit more tired, and the standing shooting didn’t go as well.  I had to use all three of my extra bullets, and then still had to do one penalty.  I should explain here that in a biathlon relay, you get to shoot one regular clip, and then if you miss any you have 3 extra bullets that you hand-load to try to knock down all of the targets.  If you still have targets standing, you do penalty laps.  So you really want to not have to do any penalty laps.  The winning teams had no penalty laps and only used a few spare rounds. In the end, we ended up 9th out of 11, but we had been ranked 10th, so at least we moved up a spot!

Most of all though, it was just cool to feel like I was really competing with the girls from the other countries, even if it didn’t last that long.  It was fun!

Anyone who knows me knows two things.  One, I have blond or dirty blond hair.  Two, I’m not the hairiest kid you’ll find out there.  Really, at my age, the amount of hair I have can be a little shocking.  I have at most 6 hairs on my chest, none on my back, and very little on my face.  It’s always seemed especially strange given that my college roommate basically looked like a gorilla, but with a hairy chest too.  So it’s a bit of a sore subjucet for me.

This year I’ve been really trying to grow some more facial hair but it turns out that its really hard, not matter how hard you push, how much you water your upper lip, and how much Chia paste you rub on your cheeks.  It just doesn’t help.  And when people tell you the more you shave the thicker it gets, they’re lying.  That doesn’t even make sense.

So a couple weeks ago I decided it was time to rev the engines and really see where I was.  Now I think I could grow a pretty nasty neckbeard, and I might be able to pull of a soulpatch, but the only thing I really wanted was a mustache.  Unfortuantely for me, the hair on my lip is the lightest part.  That didn’t stop me though, and for the past few weeks I’ve been letting it grow.  And I think I speak for everyone when I say, I’m looking pretty good.

Before I really get into the details of what I’m lookin at here, I want to make it clear what I was going for.  There’s a lot of different types of mustaches.  I can think of 6:

1: The Fu-Manchu.  This is a bunch of wispy strands, growing on the upper lip that are so long they hang around the mouth down to the chin.  Popular asian style.

2: The American Fu-Manchu aka the Hulk Hogan.  This is a full dense mustache on the upper lip and down to the chin, but hair actually grows down to the chin, it isn’t hanging.

3: The Adolf.  Not popular.

4: The Pushbroom.  Full dense ’stache on the upper lip only.  Commonly trimmed at the bottom.  Popular in the 80s and perfected by Tom Selleck in “Three Men and a Baby.”

5: The English Colonial.  Thick sideburns down to the jaw and into a mustache.  Basically all facial hair except the beard is shaved off.

6: The Pedro.  From Napoleon Dynamite.  This is a thin, wispy, failed attempt at a mustache.  Popularized by overgrown 8th graders everywhere.

So with this in mind, I was aiming for English Colonial.  But I knew it wasn’t in the cards for me.  One day I’ll nail it, but for now, I had to work with the ingredients I have.  And I don’t have sideburns.  So I settled for the pushbroom.  It’s pretty classic and I thought I might be able to pull it off.  With our big trip to the midwest coming up, I started not shaving for a week (which is normal) and then the night before we left, I shaved everything but the stache.  I was pleasantly surpised.  I could see it, in the right light, standing 2 feet from the mirror.  So that’s like 4 feet in real life, in the right light.  I’m still pushing hard and trying to keep it going, but here’s what I’ve found.  A good stache seems to have two main components: density and length.  I’ve got length, I think.  I don’t have the density though, and that part is hard to change.  I think I’ll keep trying though.  Eventually I’ll get the few hairs I have long enough to fold them over and make it look like more hairs.  Then I’ll be really all set.  Or maybe I’ll just set myself up with rogaine or something.  I heard that stuff can do wonders.

I’ll try to get a picture up soon, if my camera can capture it, in the right light.  or maybe if you see me you’ll be able to see it yourself.  If you’re within 6 feet.  In the right light.