Hey everyone. The following is from a post I did over on redneck-racing.com. If you have already read it then disregard this post, but if not then here is what I am up to!
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Tucker checking in here from Geilo, Norway. It was a pretty last minute trip so here is a little back story on how I got here.
The following is an actual conversation I had with Robby discussing our potential trip. It was great to get him on the phone because he usually doesn’t return my calls. He was excited to have found a one way nonstop ticket to Oslo for $213 which was leaving 4 days from then. He had emailed one team about training who had not yet gotten back to us and that was the extent of our planning. So in Robby’s mind we were all set, maybe even a little too organized.
“I am really tempted to just buy this ticket right now before the price goes up and if they don’t get back to us we just go with the flow and figure something out when we are over there. There are a few glaciers in Norway too and worst come to absolute worst we buy a $100 ticket to Munich and train somewhere down there.”
So four days later Robby, Cam (the current Redneck intern), and I checked into our flight heading to Oslo with something of a plan to head to Geilo which is a hill that trucks in snow for early season training. But for the most part we were just “going with the flow” which tends to have a crazy way of working out for us.
From Oslo we got a rental car and drove 3 hours north (would have been 2 if I was driving) calling friends for training and lodging ideas along the way. I’m basically fluent in Norwegian but most of these people didn’t understand the Pittsfield accent, so it was a little tough. The first hotel we tried we found on the internet costing $60 USD a night. It seemed like the best deal so we went to go check it out. It ended up being a complete hole in the ground. Meaning it was a literal hole in the ground as in the place and its foundation didn’t exist anymore and there was a 30ft hole where it used to be. If there had been some sort of roof over the hole we could have managed. Bummer.
I admit sitting in that parking lot with no place to stay and no training as of yet I was a little skeptical of the go with the flow plan. But alas, Google provided and found us a tiny little cabin for $16 a night each with no running water but a very clean (when we got there) communal bathroom and kitchen area. And even better than a place to sleep that night, we finally heard back from a team that was willing to let us train with them the next day. Score!
Since then our plan has been pretty day to day. There are not a lot of teams out here offering full gate training but luckily the local ski club lent us their gates for the duration of our stay so the past two days we have just been setting our own courses. Robby says if you do not get more than 10 runs in the course it is technically a day off so we’ve been getting in our milage. The snow here is also incredibly firm so even after 20 runs each the surface isn’t marred in the slightest.
We are here until Sunday and that is when we are met with our next challenge. Due to the lackluster number of teams training at this venue the mountain plans on closing during the week days so we have been sending out emails, texts, and calls looking for a place to put gates in the ground. As of now it looks like we will be moving 4 hours (2 hours if I’m driving) north and west to a place known as Juvass where we will find a glacier and hopefully plenty of teams to train with and maybe I’ll even find a girlfriend, I don’t know, I’m getting ahead of myself.
We do not have a return ticket just yet but we are tentatively planning on flying back to the States on the 29th because (yes, you guessed it) that is the cheapest day to fly back and Cam needs to be back in time to figure out his Halloween costume. The tickets are only $158 so if Robby keeps on bargain hunting at the grocery store he might even make money on this trip.
That’s it for now. Julia is shredding over in Austria currently and you will hear from her soon. Keep hammering!
-Rednecks
Life.Love.Skiing. 