Kontiolahti

I am currently in Kontiolahti, Finaland preparing for the Individual competition coming up this Tuesday. I covered nearly every form of transportation on my trip here. I drove down to Portland from Fort Kent, flew from Portland to Helsinki, and finally took the train to Joensuu, Finland. I am staying in Joensuu, but the competitions are in Kontiolahti. The trip here was long, and not without a few snags. Due to some miscommunication between different travel groups, we arrived in Helsinki expecting to meet the rest of our team, however they where nobody to be found. We waited until the last possible minute to leave the airport, but our teammates never showed. We assumed the worst (flight cancellation, missed connection, customs trouble) and made it to the train station without too much trouble. Once we figured out which train to take, we began what would prove to be the very complicated process of buying tickets. We could not but tickets from the machine with our credit cards, because they didn’t have a chip identifying them as European, and the line at the ticket counter was 60 people deep. In a last ditch effort to catch the train we recruited a Finnish woman from the ticket line to use her credit card to purchase tickets, in exchange for cash. She was in a hurry, but she politely obliged and in the process saved us from a long wait in the train station. Since my arrival I have been doing my best to adjust to the time change, learn how the course skis and how the range works. Ski conditions are absolutely ideal, while the range has been a bit tricky with some strong, but consistent wind. Today the Junior Men did a short time trial to prep for our upcoming races. All of us skied well, but I struggled on the range a bit, especially in standing. Luckily I have two more days of training to get everything dialed.