Final WUG Post

Ribbons of a burning yellow lights almost as far as the eye can see, crisscrossing in every direction; this is my view as I sit next to Sam and Sierra on our last flight from Slovakia. Today has been a long day of travel, my watch is telling me we are in our 25^th hour of traveling. It is really hard for me to imagine I was thousands of miles away in a relatively short period of time.

All that has transpired this past week and a half has been an incredible journey, full of ups and downs. While there were some events that were significantly upsetting, the positive experiences undoubtedly outweighed the negatives. Usually I like to write in high detail to help recreate specific life events for my blog posts, but I think it is best to give some highlights of the trip in a more encompassing manner to wrap up our time abroad, hopefully allowing for you the readers to gain a better awareness of the entire experience.

While Chicago succeeded to be somewhat difficult to get through, as well as Pat not getting his bag (containing his boots, gloves, and other necessary gear) until several days after landing in Slovakia, as a whole, the process of traveling to Slovakia turned out to be a rather seamless experience. Upon our arrival, we were greeted to the area with thick enveloping fog and warm welcomes from the local people. We made quick work of getting to know the town and the area through shot jogs, skiing, and afternoon adventures as we roamed from store to store. There were only a handful of places to go in the town, most of which were sports stores. This most certainly was influenced by the high amount of tourism in the area because of the high amount of alpine skiing and other outdoor activities that are available to people through the mountainous landscape. The region also hosts a variety of lakes and rivers, small towns and villages, all scattered amongst the countryside. Unfortunately we really did not have/make the opportunity to go outside of our small town, with the exception of a few. By the fourth day it seemed as though we were all professionals at navigating and roaming around. By the end of our duration in Strbske Pleso, we all seemed to get set into a rhythm of patterns and daily routines. Eat, ski, shower, eat, homework, down-time, eat, and finally ending with team meetings. This seemed to be the most prevalent routine for our team, other teams staying in our hotel seemed to have similar schedules. Our hotel accommodated the Australian, Slovakian, Chinese, and American Nordic ski teams, as well as the Chinese ski jumping and possibly Nordic Combined teams as well. This crated a great environment for meeting people. Meeting people was also made easier due to the fact that all of our meals were communal. Our meals served three-a-day were buffet style served at specific hours in the morning, mid-day, and evening. The food was awesome! For breakfast they served scrambled eggs, poached eggs, a non-sweetened version of French toast (best smothered with yogurt and topped with honey), an assortment of rolls and fresh baked breads, yogurt, fruit salad, and 3-4 cereals. For lunch and dinner, they would typically offer boiled potatoes sprinkled with cilantro and butter, steamed white rice also served with a pinch of cilantro, and each day brought a new goulash style main dish, sometimes two, most often pork, in addition there was a salad bar serving what I would imagine to be semi-local sausages with several types of sliced cheeses and pickled vegetables. For dessert there would also be an array of items that rotated on a daily basis, mostly chocolate cakes with a thick layer of solid frosting, some were graham cracker-type squares layered with sweet fillings topped with a chocolate drizzle.

When we weren’t stuck in a routine, some afternoons you could hear the beating of basketballs in the rickety old basketball court where you would find members of the men’s team Pat, Sindre, Kyle, Nathan, Sam, Will and myself playing pig or showing off our nonexistent “baller” skills. The court was made several decades ago, or at least I would assume so based off of the condition of the wooden floor as well as the fact that the court had springs under it, making you feel just a little more like Jordan when you took off in the air for a slam dunk. Also, the balls that the hotel provided were never fully inflated, making it an interesting challenge to handle and shoot.

As for the racing, if you have been keeping up on the blog, I am certain you are aware the differences in people’s perceptions on races, they can vary so often from one day to the next or from one person to the next. Unfortunately, my experiences of the races were more not very good in that they were more physically challenging for me than usual. The sprint turned out to be my best race of the week, but that is not to imply it was a good race. Fast turnover became too difficult to obtain with legs that felt like lead. The 7.5k proved also too much of a challenge for my body to handle. Feeling mentally prepared and strong, skiing smart into the start of the race, and having what I thought was a good day, was not enough to overcome whatever problems occurred during the race. Later in the week, the 7.5k relay proved too much, and as a result my body did not handle the physical and psychological stress well. In previous years I have had similar problems in my Nordic racing, something several physiological tests cannot seem to determine the cause. Regardless, these “symptoms” reappeared, causing a less-than-adequate performance to say the least. I had been planning to race the 30k at the end of the week, but with how I was feeling it would not have been a good idea, thus I did not end up racing after the relay.

Without having the responsibility of racing, the rest of the week for me was spent soaking up as much of the experience and the culture as I could. Playing pool with the volunteers, going for walks, taking pictures, helping coaches test wax, buying gifts for friends and family members, and making as many friends as possible was my new focus for the rest of my time in Slovakia. I was even fortunate enough to go Alpine skiing with Pat, Kyle, Nathan, and Pat’s older brother (who lives in Rome) Fr. Bob. It was such a great pleasure being able to experience all of these things with so many great people. Each of these experiences was new and exciting. I even had time to take race pictures for the team, something that as Nordic skiers we do not get very often.

During my time “off” I was allowed more free time for thought and contemplation. With thoughts fresh on my mind from our class discussions on global sustainability, my free time proved a good opportunity to look at the culture in Slovakia and the impact their culture has had on their natural resources. Starting to look around me I noticed more and more swathes of clear-cut forest (which I briefly mentioned in my previous post). One day we asked our attaché Tina about why there were so many trees cut down, it turns out that some of the reason there was so much forest clear-cut was because of a type of pine-beetle that had been killing the trees. We actually read about this problem in the book we have been reading has become a greater issue globally. Unfortunately pine-beetles have been having more and more negative impacts on trees in the last few decades, which has lead to larger fires and more damage to homes and obviously natural habitat. Having some extra time to think about these things gave me the opportunity to really ruminate on the impact we are having on our natural resources. As many of you know there is a massive debate around the world that it seems is getting more and more controversial. The debate still goes back and forth about climate change and whether or not there significant changes that are occurring outside the natural patters of the climate. Regardless of which side you stand on, I started realizing that it doesn’t matter whether there are serious changes occurring or not, I think it is really important to realize that sustainability is extremely important. There is no doubt that as a global community we are using massive amounts of energy, which cannot be sustainable in any way. For something to be sustainable I will quite an article that I find pertinent: “Sustainability can be enhanced by reducing cost, improving social and economic benefits, restricting the use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, or reducing negative social and environmental impacts” (Martland, 2012). While flying from country to country, seeing power plants as large as small towns, at night the energy consumption is blindingly easy to see, and the thought alone about each person’s impact on the planet and trying to add up all of those together is at the very least befuddling and incomprehensible. Billions of people around the world using more and more energy as each country becomes more and more dependent on energy and power consumption blows my mind. All of these things seem to wrap up into a gigantic hole it appears we have dug ourselves into. Don’t get me wrong, with energy and technology we have accomplished amazing things, but I also think that by making all that we have done and all that we have accomplished, it is our responsibility to start working towards becoming less and less dependent on our natural resources before they completely run out. I often found myself thinking about these things as I watched a mass of 60-80 skiers tearing past me, all wearing thousands of dollars worth in equipment. Skis, boots, poles, not to mention the textiles used to make racing suits, gloves, and whatever else is needed to prepare the skis for competition such as wax. How much energy does it take for all of these things to be made? Is skiing sustainable? Traveling on such large scales each and every year, is that sustainable? These are the questions I asked myself, these are the questions I would like to find the answers to. I think it is important for us to at the very least be conscious of these things that we take for granted every day, and if we are not careful, we might end up losing them. Much of my time was spent thinking about this.

From our journey to Slovakia to ski racing to all of the people we met and all of the friends we made, this trip has been an amazing experience, and now, all of it has come to an end. With one last passing of the flight attendants offering a variety of beverages, we have begun our final descent into Denver. Waiting for our arrival is Christi’s parents, Dick and Evelyn, with their amazing ability to give, they will pick us up and drive us the last 2 hours of our journey back to Laramie. With classes, papers, presentations, homework, reading, training, and more racing, we all have long semesters ahead of us. With memories still freshly burned into our minds, all of which will remain with us for the rest of our lives, it is time to leave our trip behind and move forward onto the next steps of adventures and experiences. With all that has happened to me in the last few weeks, I can only imagine where we will find ourselves along this long crazy journey we call life.

(The above was written on the last flight home, from Chicago to Denver last Monday, February 2^nd)

Now that we have been back for a week, the memories are starting to get further and further away, not in strength, but from our minds. With a week’s worth of homework to catch up on, lecture after lecture each day, more homework assigned, the week has brought us all back into a harsh reality. Looking back on the trip it was an amazing experience, full of fun and laughter, food and friends, happiness and sadness, the experiences we all received from the trip are unique in every way. It has been and honor representing the United States of America, if I never have the opportunity to do so in an event like this again, I know that I went out with a one heck of a bang. I would also like to thank each of you for your unconditional support, whether it be through monetary contributions or simply reading our blog, each and every dollar supported or “like” on Facebook truly means the world to us. Without you and your support our experiences might not be the same or happen at all for that matter, just know we are unconditionally grateful for all of the support we have received. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog posts, we have enjoyed providing a window into our own personal experiences for you to enjoy. Now it is time to get back to doing more homework with memories of Slovakia fresh on my mind. Cheers and thanks again,

                                                                          Taylor