I had to drop my car off at the shop today, and I figured it would be a good idea to run home.

Friday our cycling team (five of us including two coaches) had a nine mile time trial in the rain. Saturday I went for a longish ski in 70 degrees and bright sun. So it seems only natural that I would finish the weekend with the first running race of the year.

I skied today at Holderness School. It was a little weird to unload the car and hook up to the Chariot with a Lacrosse game going on about 20 yards away, but in the woods the snow was actually really good.

Last year I skied on April 1st on decent snow and thought it was a real treat. This year I skied yesterday at Waterville Valley; the entire center was groomed and open with near-midwinter conditions (just warmer).

To understand the title we need to start Saturday morning at six AM. I woke up early to get in a run before school started; I went for about an hour on my favorite trail, which meant running on top of about three feet of ice. I only sunk in a few inches into the snow on top, but it was still work. I didn’t have time to shower before meeting my group of students for community service.

Break is over. I had my first day back at work today, and right now I am supervising the dorm and trying to prepare for classes tomorrow. I had a day of some of the best skiing ever yesterday, almost three hours at Waterville Valley on perfectly groomed hard snow. And Waterville groomed into April last year, so I might get on snow again this year, even though I have to work both days this weekend and won’t be able to ski for at least two weeks. And I can’t ski three weeks from now because that is my first running race.

Somehow being on break has given me less time to write. Mostly this break I have been trying to unwind and catch my breath before going back to work and working at least six days a week from now till graduation…I have done some skiing on the great late season snow and one day of lift served tele skiing. I have also been working on a problem Paul King gave me at the Ski to the Clouds race; you can check out the problem and my sketch of a solution on the problems section of this page.

I also wanted to share a picture of my daughter who at least once a day goes and finds my Birke bib and the racing hat she associates with it (though I have tried to explain to her that it is usually cold at the Birke and she should wear a warmer hat). I take this as proof she wants to start racing soon.

I really didn’t put this on her, she put both bib and hat on herself!

Sorry if I haven’t written in a while - New Hampton just had finals week, so my life has been a hectic series of review sessions, exams, grading, and comment writing. And for those curious about the resolution of my last post, I did indeed get a paper which rambled on for two pages of Star Wars rehash with about two lines of relevant math, and let’s just say he didn’t exactly get an A for his effort.

With school over for a couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to race in the reincarnation of a wonderful ski race, the Ski to the Clouds. I believe this was started sometime in the 1990s when someone decided that if they run and bike up Mount Washington (often braving dangerous weather in the middle of summer) why not have a ski race up it. So, for a few years, they did. And then they didn’t for a while, as organizational efforts were shifted to the Great Glen to Bretton Woods Adventure. When the latter event (an epic, but wonderful race) folded due to the headaches involved in putting it on, the Ski to the Clouds was reborn.

So anyway, I was in math class today, and one of my students asked me if I liked Star Wars. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked if I would rather be Darth Vader or the Emperor. I thought a bit and then replied “Darth Vader.” “Well, then I’d better rewrite part of my paper,” was his reply. The paper is supposed to be a description of an algorithm for graphing an arbitrary rational function. It will be interesting (or possibly just pathetic) to see how this connects with interstellar war. If it is interesting enough I will let my readers know…