Canmore

I arrived here in Canmore Alberta Canada on Saturday after a seriously long trip from Fort Kent.
My Canmore adventure began last Thursday with a late night drive down to Caribou Maine, where I spent the night at the Farmhouse (a MWSC athlete house). My Friday started early with a 5:00am wake up to catch the 6:00am bus south to Portland. On our way down we had two encounters with the long arm of the law (not me personally) In Holton Maine the US Border Patrol asked everyone where they were born and questioned a very nervous Chinese man who was on his way south to get a new passport. Further down the line I had to change buses in Bangor Maine, this is where we encountered some of Maine’s finest. When everyone was settled into their seats a Maine state Trooper boarded the bus and asked for a woman to please step forward, finally, after some mumbled comments of “not me” the Trooper produced a picture and began going row by row. He eventually found the woman, lead her off the bus, handcuffed her, and then quickly drove away. Finally I arrived in Portland and me Connor, a MWSC coach and our host until our flight the following day. After dropping off our stuff at Connor’s apartment, we headed to Bates College with the Southern Maine Biathlon Club for a double pole test on a rowing machine like apparatus. The machine uses air for resistance, and with all the air we were pushing around we breathed in a lot of dust, and when combined with the very dry air had us coughing like smokers for the next 36 hours. After a great meal at the Bates dining hall we headed back to Connor’s apartment, watched a bit of a movie and went to bed. The next morning at 4:00am (!!!) we headed to the airport for what we thought would be a relatively short travel day. We expected one connection in Toronto and then a direct flight to Calgary and an hour drive to Canmore. I was really hoping to get on snow that afternoon. Instead our first flight was late, I got caught up in customs, and we had to get an additional connection through Winnipeg, then finally to Calgary. We didn’t get to Canmore until about 6:00pm local time. On the plus side all our baggage made it intact and the loop here while short, is excellent skiing. Training has been going well, and it’s great to be back on snow. Tomorrow is the kickoff to the North American biathlon season, but I will be sitting out the opener due to my lack of on snow time, and because these races are selection races for the US World Cup team, not something I have to worry about just yet. Hopefully I’ll have some killer pictures of the racing action to come shortly.