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Stir Crazy
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\r\nIt is now sunset on my seventh day in Muonio. That makes it about 3:30 in this tiny town about 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Today is also my first day off since arriving here. It’s been a bit of a struggle. I went grocery shopping two days ago, so there was no excuse to drive the five miles into “downtown” and check out one of the three grocery stores that seem to make up all commercial activity for many miles around. If there is a movie theatre nearby, no one has heard of it. And I’ve pretty much had my fill of German MTV, the closest thing we get to English language television.
\r\n Today is the first day in a while that I’ve had anything to complain about. It has actually been sunnier here than it was in Park City for the last two weeks I was there—even if the sun never gets above the trees. It has been cold enough for us to hold our snow, but not so cold that it is ever uncomfortable to be outside. And my first race went well.
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Justin Freeman racing in Muonio. Vordenberg photo.
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\r\n That race was last Saturday. It was a fairly hard field for an early season race, with seven or eight Red Group skiers present. I finished the 15 classic km race in 30th place, about 2:30 afloat of the winner, Axel Teichman, the reigning world champion in this exact race. While I hope to do better once the season gets started, this is closer than I got to any Red Groupers all last year. And this was racing jet-lagged on a course that didn’t really suit me.
\r\n So I have been upbeat as I have tried to while away an entire day. I did get some postcards written out, and I washed some laundry in the sink. I went to the front office and was able to explain to some non-English speakers that I needed a light bulb for my reading lamp. Now I am getting some dbo.articles written, including this one for Team Today. And it occurs to me, that as an athlete on the road I have to maintain two opposing sets of skills. Most of the time, I have to be efficient, fitting enough to live for two months into two small duffle bags, and carefully unpacking these into the small amount of space I get in each hotel room. But on days like to today it pays to be massively inefficient, to have the capacity to waste an entire day on tasks that might occupy a more reasonable person for an hour or two. Regardless, I seem to be succeeding on both counts, as I put a week’s worth of laundry onto a miniature drying rack an hour ago, and I don’t have time to write more as I need to get ready for the easy jog I am going to do before dinner.
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The top of Mt.* Olos near where we are staying in Muonio. * Mt. in this case means hill. Vordenberg photo.
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Written By: JFreemanDate Posted: 11/9/2004Number of Views: 274
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