Saturday 19 March 2016

Flin Flon: All day fun



My morning started bright and early at six am by pricilla, a friendly pug, jumping on bed. As my alarm wasn't set to go off until, 7 I used this extra hour to pet pricilla and catch up with some of our other teammates who are off racing in Québec. All of this before carpooling to the ski club with our next door neighbours, also skiers, for breakfast.

Breakfast was a big group meal of pancakes, fruit and ham. Oh, and lots of syrup! Right after breakfast with heavy stomachs full of tasty food we grip waxed our skis and headed out for some technique with our classic equipment. Well, most of us did.
For some reason, maybe I was tired, or just plain stupid, I had a lovely mismatch of skate poles and classic skis. Being the oblivious person that I am never noticed this mistake, and would never had if no one had pointed it out. I must add that my skate poles are white and my classic poles are black and rainbow. Midway through our technique session coach Brett asked me if I had any shorter poles to which I replied something along the lines of 'yes of course I have shorter poles I have my classic poles these are my... skate poles... Wait a minute, these are my skate poles! Luckily we had not strayed too far from the clubhouse and I managed to quickly ski back and switch poles in time for the last set of drills. 

Lunch, consisting of an extravagant spread of hot dogs, buns and cookies was the  only meal not eaten in the clubhouse. We packed it into packs and skied to the far end of the trails where we found a a fire pit and a small warm up shack. For a few of us Winnipeg skiers it was the first time we had roasted a hotdog over a fire, a fact that shocked many of the Flin Flon skiers who reported that hot dog roasting is a common summer activity. Red River's summer diet has been infiltrated by Pauline's love of Quinoa.

After lunch the Flin Flon parents stayed inside and watched the coaches, skiers in tow, head out onto the deck, lay down and sleep. An hour later we limped inside to inform them that our "sleep" had, in fact been very painful rather than relaxing. Chris and Brett had led us through an excruciating and extensive stretch routine.

After a short break we headed out to make use of our recently loosened limbs with a seemingly never ending game of hockey. For anyone whose never played hockey on skis you should be away that the only similarity to real hockey is the sticks. Ski hockey is played with 3-4 teams each with their own net. The number of players on 
the field from each team ranges from 1 to everyone, goalies are inconsistent and often not required. To anyone who knows him, the best way to explain the game is; Chris makes (and changes) the rules. Since I joined this game late as I was delayed 
with a boot malfunction I made up for lost time by playing as dirty as possible, skiing 
full tilt into people trying to take the ball but more often than not just taking us both
down.

The hockey game was followed by some rest time which turned into a snow ball fight and then I believe capture the flag, I'm not entirely sure as I was one a few who choose to join our coaches in must needed rest. If today was to have a theme it would "GO! sleep. GO!" Each activity was followed by another even though everyone seemed to be exhausted. The team shut down coach Unrau's plan to pre ski tomorrow's race because they were too tired but when the pre ski was offered as an option a surprising amount of skiers came along. Torin and Levi peeled themselves off the couch and even a few Flin Flon skiers who the know the trails like the back of their hand agreed to ski the gruelling course with us. Only minutes after our return we began our final, and most important event of the weekend, MAN HUNT!

Understandably, I was tired at this point and briefly tried to talk my way out of man hunt, unfortunately the game had been deemed mandatory. Did I write unfortunately? Because I meant fortunately! For the hundredth time today I found a second burst of energy. Our game was played on skis and the boundaries (which we had skied earlier as yet another small activity) consisted of a wide variety of open terrain, crisscrossing ski trails and at least one large hill and we had very clear rules, set earlier in a heated clubhouse debate. The game started as would another we had 2 people start as 
hunters while the rest of skied for our lives. As the ski grew darker and the hunters 
caught more and more prey the game became more elaborate, group hunting tactics,
 deep bush exploration, deceiving signals and howling at the moon are a few
examples of how complex our game became. I partook in all but one of these, and you can probably guess that it wasn't the howling. Awooooo.... I must add that although a wasn't one of the very last to be caught I avoided capture for a respective amount of time, exercising Torin's hunting skills and eluding close capture many a time. Eventually an overestimation of my hunters strength and an underestimation of his determination led to a light tap, from a lunging Torin using up his last burst of energy.  As night fell Chris's voice boomed over the hills calling us back to the club
house where we ate one last snack, about our tenth of the day, quickly packed up and stumbled to our rides home.

 I am writing this from my bed, way past our supposed bedtime (sorry coach) and will leave you now with a bunch of photos from the last two days (no captions as I'm too tired for that) to dream sweet dreams of puppies and beautiful skiing. 



No this is not sideways



Levi the rebel

Levi tired from his rebellion

Is this hockey?

Ok... This looks a bit more like hockey 

#noodlenet 

In control 


Out of control


Pricilla the pug

Don't you love how these photos are all in order

Glow sticks last night

Mixed emotions towards the photographer 

The gang 


Coaches meeting

If only these were all mine 

4 faces showing 4 different types of fatigue

Lunch

We tired him out

Group meeting with some well rested coaches


Bloggers hard at work 

Hey, who killed Erik





I guess I had more energy than I thought. A big thanks to all the photographers (parents and coaches) who spied on us all day long and took far more pictures than I could ever upload. 

Once again, goodnight.
Mhari






1 comment:

  1. Excellent blogging Emily and Mhari! Without this I would have no idea if Torin was alive or dead as he apparently has an aversion to texting his parents....hope Sunday is a great finish to what sounds like an awesome trip so far!

    Deirdre

    ReplyDelete