This year will mark the 10 year anniversary of X Ski Films Generation X Ski. For some reason as high school skiers we thought it was a good idea to record xc skiing and document our daily pursuit of fun…. and then sell it on DVD and yes, mostly VHS tapes. Realistically nothing has really changed since then and today my daily routine revolves around the same ridiculous stuff, but it’s still fun to look back.

so here is the first of a several part series entitled “dumb shit we were doing 10 years ago”

For the past week or so I’ve been traveling around Southern California getting some surf in and catching up with some friends and family. Once the ski season is over hanging out in wet, cold VT is fun for a while but every year I get the itch for palm trees, warm weather, and good waves and I’ll pretty much do anything for decent surf. This year my cousin was getting married out in the desert near Palm Springs so flying out to hit up some legendary SoCal surf spots just made a lot of sense.

For the first 4 days we stayed in San Clemente and surfed in the area and around the Trestles breaks and got in some pretty decent surf. Anytime you just pick random days for a surf trip you can definitely get screwed and there could be no waves… but we lucked out with a S SW swell which is the best for that area and managed to score anything from waist to head high waves every day. I was really surprised at how glassy the water stayed most days too. Even in the mid afternoon we headed out to lower Trestles one day and it was sunny, pure glass, and head high sets with maybe 25-30 people in the water. which for that area is basically empty. But with such few people and the waves as good as they were we just cycled through the line up and everyone out there was having a hell of a time.

Tom Wisdom, one of our Stratton buddies, lives in the are and is based out of Camp Pendleton so we were able to hang out with him which was awesome and even take a trip onto the base and check things out. Tom was an xc skier for SMS and Middlebury college and is now a captain in the Marines and helicopter pilot. Tommy also recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan and he was able to show us around the airfield a little bit and even take us into one of the heli simulators. Seeing stuff like that close up is pretty amazing and to realize how complicated some of the aircrafts are. both Gus and I got pretty motion sick in the simulators but it was cool to try taking off, flying around, and shooting a few missiles.

One of the big reasons for the trip was that my older cousin Ryan was getting married so Gus and I drove the 2 hours from the coast into the desert for two nights of hanging and partying with the Kelly family (my moms side of the family). I don’t get to see my cousins and aunts and uncles very often so that was really cool. Neither Gus or I had ever been to that part of California either so it was a new experience to check out the desert. Damn hot thats for sure. just in a matter of 2 hours of driving we went from 75 degree San Clemente to 102 degree Palm Desert. it felt like a non stop sauna. On the day of the wedding I wanted to go out for a run and managed to not get out the door until 11. bad idea, it was rugged. I had to take turns wearing my white training shirt on my back in order to save my skin.. and wrapping it around my head to lower my body temp. I ran on some sweet trails for about an 1:20, ran out of water, and literally don’t think I could have made it 2 hours without passing out. finishing the run at about 12:30 in 104 deg. I thought it was a good way to start a day of partying. But my cuz’s wedding was insane.. top notch fancy with cocktail parties in gated communities. the wedding took place at a private country club and we got a laugh out of how the gate guards would look at us every time we drove it. Maybe they knew Gus was crashing the wedding. But both families were awesome to hang out with and we met a lot of cool people.

After driving back to SoCal, which took a long ass time by the way because Coachella was going on just down the road, we were bale to get one more full day of beach time in before I flew back to VT last night. After everything that has gone down in the past 2 weeks I’m pretty worn out but also looking forward to getting back into training and feeling good. This coming monday is the official start to the training year so get ready for that! of course none of us brought a camera on our trip to the coast but here are a few pics we managed to snap from our phones.

california sunshine is not a bad way to start the spring

coach gus doing some work from the beach

Camp Pendleton

felt a little odd sitting in a machine like this wearing jeans and sandals

SMS and Middlebury xc skier Tom Wisdom… now a Captain in the Marines

flight simulator

Gus pretending to shoot things

Living the high life in Palm Desert … the Vintage club

some of the family (bride and groom in the background) hanging out for pictures and enjoying the desert weather

I’m back in VT after flying home from Europe and driving directly up to Craftsbury for the final races of the year. As someone who doesn’t get to race too often domestically it’s really cool to see everyone and catch up on everything going down in the US ski world. Unfortunately I must have picked up a bad cold flying home and by the time I reached Craftsbury 2 days later I was feeling pretty crappy. So I was bummed I didn’t get to race any skis last week, it’s kind of a lame unexpected way to end the season but sometimes that’s just the way it is.

Now I’m back home trying to get healthy, planing out the summer schedules, and hopefully getting outside as much as I can. I hadn’t been on alpine skis at all since last spring and really needed to ski at least once so my buddy and I skinned up Stratton the other day. It involved a lot of sliding around on dirt and and grass but we got the job done. With no snow left here at home I’ll be spending the next week or so catching up with the VT crew, building, dusting off the skateboard, and getting out on the motorcycle. As nice as it is I think I need some waves though so a surf trip is in the works for next week. here are a few pics from the past 2 weeks.

on one of our last days in Europe we got to go ice fishing with Emil

this was actually a big fish for the day. Swedish fish style

Sylvan doing his thing up Jay Peak

Carson Ski touring up Stratton

my batman buddies making sure the Triumph is good to go

Sorry it has been so long since my last update. Since the 50k in Holmenkollen things have been really busy on the World Cup and with the Stockholm sprint and world cup finals it was a crazy busy week. With 5 races in 7 days there wasn’t a whole lot of time for other things. But as always the WC finals started in Stockholm and it was a really awesome sprints despite missing out on the final in a lunge out with Morilov. The conditions on the sprint course this year held up really well which makes for a fun uphill hammer sesh finish which is always pretty exciting.

From Stockholm we jumped on a bus for the 3 hour drive to Falun where we had one training day followed by the remaining 3 races of the mini tour. As a team we did pretty well and I was stoked to get in the distance points twice although I got a little bit tired out by the last 15k skate and lost some positions. Falun is always sweet because everyone is always a lot more relaxed and having fun after the races with bbq’s by the wax cabins and everyone hanging out in the same hotel. After being in Europe racing world cups for 4.5 months it’s really crazy when you wake up on the last day of competition knowing that it’s your last big race of the season.

So after a full week of racing we were all pretty tired… and then after a full night of partying we were REALLY blown out so for the past day Kikkan and I have been relaxing and hanging out with Anna haag and Emil Joensson at Emils parents house here in Sweden. The plan was that we were going to do a fun relay with the kids in the local ski club but it turns out there isn’t any snow left here so we have just been chilling instead. We will travel together to Oslo for a big sprint race taking place in a massive sports arena in downtown. There will be a ton of Norwegians and Swedes there along with top world cup skiers from other countries. should be a good time! can’t believe it’s almost spring time.. here are a few pics from the last few days.

fans line the track up the mordorbakken in Falun

globes with kikkan and matt

                                      Peter J is kikkan and my wax tech…. he deserves a globe too

                               kikkan and Anna….. street games in Sweden outside of Emils house

Emil took us on a run this morning around his home town

Today it clouded over a little bit here in Davos so I’m finally able to get a few things done in the computer. The last few days have been awesome though making it tough to not put in some huge training days on some perfect skiing conditions and just waste the afternoon away hanging out on the deck. It feels amazing to get back to the sun of central europe after a few weeks on the E block tour.

Poland actually wasn’t so bad although.. .but we’ve had some sickness floating around the team and a gnarly stomach bug that keeps taking down team mates left and right. It was funny coming back to Sklarska Poeraba because it was the first international race I ever traveled to as a J1 to compete at worlds almost 10 years ago and I have to admit not a whole lot has changed. One of the things that made such a huge impression on me as a Junior and still holds true now is how insane the fans are for xc skiing in Poland. Every day the stands were packed with people who were definitely stoked for the polish skiers but cheered really loudly for everyone racing. They take womens ski racing very seriously there and even mad the men start first on the distance day, which is something you almost never see on the world cup.

As a team we raced pretty well in Poland. the sprint course was exactly the same as it was when we ere Juniors which was fun because it’s a kinda fast and exciting course. It’s definitely one of those sprints where skis and tactics played a little bit of a role in the outcome…. which sucked because I didn’t do a very good job at either of those.  But it was still sweet. So although I didn’t have a great finish on sprint day it wasn’t without it’s small victories. I won a bet with Jessie, and although it was VERY close, I still won which forced Diggs to go knock on the Norwegian wax trailer and ask the head wax tech if she could put a Justin Bieber sticked on their wax bus. I thought it was a pretty good punishment.

After 3 races in Poland I we were pretty tired and not looking forward to a 9+ hour drive back to Switzerland but on Monday we had to move on. The morning didn’t start out too sweet either since Kikkan and I got the pukes right before we were scheduled to start the road trip. The stomach bug struck again. For me it wasn’t too bad and within a few hours I felt ok but it was still a rough way to start a trip. we had 2 vans and a cargo so Liz was nice enough to risk the sick van and drive with kikkan and I so we took turns behind the wheel and made it to Davos in about 10 hours.

So with the weekend off from World Cups we are going to be training here for the next 6 days and enjoying some down time before the last period of racing. Once racing kicks up again next weekend in Lahti things more very quickly through the end of the season with a lot of back to back racing. So it’s a good time to re charge the batteries here in the Davos sun.

to say there is a lot of snow here would be an understatement….. big snow banks outside our Hotel Kulm

training with Idaphone… she’s probably just letting out a big yell cause she’s so stoked with the skiing. striding toward Davos

Just a quick update from the road here on the World Cup. In the past week we have traveled from Russia back to Ramsau Austria for a little bit of training and on to Nove Mesto Czech Republic for the next set of races. I have to say traveling to Moscow for the sprint was pretty insane and although the really cold temps kept most of the fans at home it was still cool. When racing in a place like Russia and especially in a big city, things that are usually easy tend to take a long time and are always an issue. Getting to the race for instance could sometimes take anywhere from 10 minutes to 50 minutes so it was hard to know what to expect and literally nobody speaks English. So for the most part we kept on bundling up for the -20 air temps and trekking to the venue for course inspection.

The hotel that we, and a bunch of other teams, were staying at was a huge scene too. It was basically like nothing I’ve ever seen before with shops and restaurants in the lobby, a bowling ally, casino,  along with a 24h strip club where girls would stand out in front of with lingerie on around the clock. On the World Cup the races are almost always in the afternoon for TV reasons so when we travel to a place like this for just 3 days nobody ever adjusts to the time zone. So all the different athletes were rolling out of bed at the crack of 10am to go eat a buffet breakfast in a bar surrounded by people chain smoking and looking real haggard from the night before. kind of a funny situation. But the races were sweet and although I felt ok I   just didn’t ski a smart heat… but to be there for Jessie’s ‘hello world’ performance was cool. Everyone likes to see new skiers come out of nowhere and kick ass on the world cup and when it’s an American the media gets stoked and so do we.

After the Russian races the team re-grouped for a few days in Ramsau, which has been our home away from home this year. We have spent something like almost 4 weeks there throughout the winter which is pretty impressive considering how much we travel. So to have trails and hotels that you are really familiar with makes for a fun break and the weather there is always pretty epic. here are a few pics from skiing yesterday, and the grooming is like that literally every day. This morning we packed up the three vans and huge crew of skiers and drove the 6 hour road trip to Nove Mesto. Now Nothing against Czech or Eastern Europe but the E block can get a little dreary sometimes. As we drive out of the nice blue skies and snowy mountains of Austria things just get bit darker, foggier, and greyer. But honestly although it sometimes it smells slightly like burning diapers I really like racing in the E Block because the trails are always pretty old school and fun and people get fired up about skiing over here. This weekend we are racing a 30k mass start classic and a relay. This will be my first 30k of the season so I’m not sure what to expect but anytime it’s a mass start classic race I have a pretty good time. Next weekend we’ll roll on to Poland for another weekend on the glory tour! basically the sketchier it is the more I like it.

hotel in Moscow

Diggs taking the world by storm

Skiing some freshies in Ramsau yesterday

Down time in Ramsau…. Sylvan pretending he’s Mother Teresa

Our group keeps on getting bigger and bigger here in Europe and I think as of right now we have the largest US world cup team we’ve ever traveled with. So as an athletes that’s pretty exciting and it makes for some good times on the race tracks and also just hanging out on the hotels. Last weekend in Otepaa was sweet because we had a few people scoring their first points of the year! and it was fun for me as well to be back in the top 10 and fighting for the finals. The Otepaa weekend was pretty sweet except for some dude jacking my running shoes out of the hallway so for the following two days I had to run around in my leather boots…. who does something like that?

Since the busy weekend in Otepaa we have traveled back to Ramsau where the group has been training for the past 6 days, enjoying some beautiful skiing conditions and living some sweet apartment life in a cool new trailside hotel. Maybe it’s because our crew is so big now but it definitely feels like we take over an entire hotel and sometimes you have to almost feel bad for the other guests who have to put up with the non stop blasting of music and yelling of 16 American athletes or the late night lobby guitar sessions with Chandra and Matt. but it’s all good times. One of the biggest Alpine world cups of the year was just down the road in Schladming so since we were just a few minutes away we had to hit it up… and it was definitely worth it. The Schaldming night slalom was an intense scene with thousands of people standing trail side on these snow steps that they had carved out of the steep hill. Although they were super slippery and most people around were super drunk so it made for a lot of carnage and an all around hilarious time.

Since this weekend was off from World Cup races a lot of us were just getting some good training days in but there was also an opportunity to race in the Austrian National races yesterday so a group of us had an early morning road trip to the next valley in order to start a distance classic race. It was kind of fun to do a race like that.. one were you just had one pair or race skis, no testing, no spectators, no pressure just a day trip to a race. When you’re racing on the world cup we don’t get to do that very often. but it was cool, and it was a good chance for me to get in another distance race and just basically go really hard.

Tomorrow things are going to get rolling again as some of us take off to back to Munich for a flight to Moscow on Tuesday. Although Russia isn’t that far away traveling there is always a bit of a procedure with customs, visas, and all kinds of crap to deal with so it can turn into some long travel days. It’s totally going to be worth it though because a city sprint in downtown Moscow is going to be insane!

double pole action in Otepaa

lots of snow here in Ramsau Austria

Chandra climbing the ‘sketch steps’ at the night slalom

this was the road we had to drive to get to the Austrian Nats.. middle of nowhere. makes Rumford look like a city

and here’s a picture of a cat eating a pancake…

After the excitement of the Milan city sprint the team and I have been keeping things on the move the past week. In fact some of us have stayed in 5 different hotels in the past week between training in Italy and traveling to Munich on our way to Estonia. It was pretty awesome to make it back to the beautiful mountains of Seiser Alm although it was just for one day before having to roll out to the next world cups.

Since the races in Otepaa are followed by a weekend off we decided to leave the cargo van in Munich which meant traveling up here for the weekend with all of our skis and wax. All I have to say is that it’s a good thing we only had to bring classic skis because it was a serious haul. Somehow we managed to sweet talk the counter girls in to not charging us which was a small miracle… but the funniest part was that Liz was the only person out of the entire group to get charged for bags and she’s by far the most friendly. luck of the draw I guess.

But after a long snowy bus ride we made it to Otepaa and have been training on some cold, snowy, and windy conditions the past two days. Racing will get underway here tomorrow with the classic sprint and 10/15k classic races Sunday on some of the hardest distance courses I’ve ever seen. It’s time to get your stride on in a big way.

Tonight was also one of the funniest nights we have here on the WC because hundreds of fans and athletes pack the stadium for the annual wax tech relay. Basically it’s a 3 person relay each country sending out their best techs or at least the ones who want to suffer the most. But it’s really funny… at night under the lights, crowds, TV camera’s, and a lot of techs who take it way too seriously. It was good to see Matt, Eric, and Oleg hold their own out there.

when your small town has a ski stadium that looks like this….. people are into xc skiing

My parents and Peter J hanging out at the wax tech relays

matt still has it