Nordic Conversations #1

Why Are European Countries So Funny?

This was Victoria and I. Photo courtesy of this website. 

After realizing how weird the conversations I have with my cross country ski team are, I have decided to start a new series on this blog called Nordic Conversations. So, this is the first in my series nordic conversations. This one happened just the other day and it was the time Victoria and I laughed so hard that our stomachs hurt and we couldn't breath over European countries.

It all started when we were waiting for Victoria's mom to pick us up from training. We have a European countries/capitals test in two weeks, so we decided to try and start studying. We went onto quizlet and found a European countries/capitals flash card set, so we decided to start using those flashcards. I began quizzing Victoria, it started out with me asking her what the capital of ______  is, but then at some point we just started uncontrollably laughing about European capitals.

Thank you Cassie25fh for making this quizlet

After thinking about it, we decided that the laughing fit began with me asking Victoria what the capital of Bulgaria is. She didn't know, so I gave her a hint. The hint was that it was the name of a girl we were talking about earlier. Sofia. So, to give you some back story, there is this girl. Her name is Sofia, if you didn't catch onto that yet. She is also a nordic (cross-country) skier, but she lives in Idaho. I met her last summer when both our teams went to Canada and went on a hike/run together. She told me that she used to be the 6th best alpine skier in the country for her age, but then quit because she had a bad season. I was severely questioning why she quit if she was that good, but let her continue with her story. She told me that last year was her first year ever nordic skiing. I had not payed that much attention to her races last year, but wanted to see how she placed this year. Two weeks ago we had a race in Yellowstone and I was shocked when she passed me by how good her technique looked and how fast she was going. I told this story to Victoria and she remembered that Sofia passed her as well and "made her feel bad about her technique cause she was so good". Sofia placed 7th in that race and we (Victoria and I) are still  questioning how she could have done so well if she only "started" skiing last year. Anyway, for some reason we both found that hint to be funny and we both started laughing. 

The next question I asked her was "What is the capital of Germany?"... She didn't know, so I gave her a hint. I said that the capital had a wall that was named after it. The ______ wall. She still didn't get it, so I said the fall of the _____ wall and she didn't didn't know and then I told her what it was (Berlin) and we started cracking up. I'm not really sure why we found this to be humorous, but for some reason we found it to be really funny.

Then I asked her "What is the capital of Brussels"? I gave her a hint, it's a food. She rapidly blurted out the first word that came to her mind... Hungary... Then we both started laughing again. 

Then I asked her "What is the capital of Switzerland"... She didn't know and when I told her what it was, we lost it laughing again for some reason I don't remember. The next one was when I asked her "What is the capital of Turkey?"... Again she didn't know, but it reminded us of another funny story. Earlier that day in geography I asked if Turkey was considered a part of Europe or Asia, our teacher said Asia. Right after without really thinking about it Victoria asked "What about Istanbul?", he said well that's apart of Turkey, so no. That one was really the breaking point we started laughing and couldn't stop for at least five minutes. We were laughing so hard we couldn't breath, our stomachs hurt and we were both crying from laughter. 

You are probably sitting here thinking that this was the stupidest post you've ever read in your entire life or you are wondering what is wrong with us. If I'm being honest I don't know why everything was so funny to us that day, but it was. If you're telling yourself that you've never had a day where everything was funny to you, you are lying to yourself because it happens to the best of us. Oh and if you're thinking we are really bad at geography as well, this was our first time studying for this test, so don't judge us too harshly. Also there were a lot more inside jokes that added to the cause of the laughing fit, but it would either take too long to explain them or I couldn't write about it because it was about something someone did. 

Claire 

How Geoguesser Ruined My Life

The other day after training I was talking to some of the guys on my ski team. We were talking about geography and they asked me if my teacher had us play a game called "Geoguesser" yet. I said no and asked them what it was. They told me it was a game that dropped you in a random place in the world and then you had to guess where you were on a map. You are able to spin around and see a full 360˚ view of where you are and sometimes it will let you move forward and backwards. You can choose if you want to be dropped anywhere in the world (this option will literally drop you in the middle of nowhere) or only famous places (Rome, London, New York, etc.) or even just the US. It also gives you the ability to challenge other people to see who can get closer to the exact location. I thought it sounded interesting and I said I was going to go home and try it.

A picture of their home screen. Photo courtesy of me from the geoguesser website

A picture of the actual game... Leave a comment if you know where this is. Photo courtesy of me from the Geoguesser website

I forgot about it until the next day when my friend (Victoria) came in to Pre-engineering telling me about how addicting it was. So, naturally I had to play it. Now I would just like to state that I am not usually the kind of person who plays games during class or games in general. Anyway I decided to try it. I was instantly addicted. We played it for the first fifteen minutes of class, until the sub came over and chewed us out for playing games during class. We had had two assignments that we were supposed to do, one was a project proposal and the other was to design something in SketchUp. Victoria and I really wanted to get back to playing the game, but we knew we couldn't until we finished all of our work. So, we decided to race to see who could finish the assignments (the best) first. We ended up finishing quickly and went back to the game. The sub came over again and chewed us out for playing the game again, but we told him we finished all our work and he left us alone.  About ten minutes later the sub came back over to watch us play and give "advice". His advice was terrible. I was dropped in stonehenge for one round of the game. I thought it was in Scotland, but the sub kept telling me it was in Southeast Asia. *Side note, Stonehenge is in England. Then, I was dropped in the Vatican. I was like "I think I'm in the Vatican" and the sub told me "Um that's definitely not the Vatican". I didn't really believe him, so I guessed the Vatican anyway. Low and behold I was right, I was in the Vatican. 

Then came next period. We had to take a test on our computers and we could do whatever we wanted after. That's right you guessed it... I played more geoguesser. While I was playing the kids behind me started asking what I was doing. I told them I was playing geoguesser and it was like the most addicting game ever. Then they started playing too. This was when I realized I liked the game so much, I started spreading it. 

I didn't get a chance to play it again until I got home. When I got home I realized that you could challenge people to games, but you had to create an account. I hate creating accounts for things, like if I download an app, but you have to create an account for it. I usually just delete the app. For some reason this was different, I wanted to challenge people, so I created an account. That night, I challenged two of my friends, my dad, my brother and my mom. I ended up spending the whole night competing with my friends and dad. It got super intense my friend and I ended up creating rules like no using google, no getting help and even time limits. The same friend and I even ended up competing to see how close we could get to the exact location. You might be thinking "Isn't that the point of the game". Yes it is, but this was different we were trying to as close as possible down to the nearest meter. I also ended up face timing with one of my other friends and playing with her for over an hour. By this point I was literally putting off homework to play this game. 

My record: 7.5 meters from the location on the map... I'm pretty impressed with myself :) Photo courtesy of moi

The next morning my friend Laisa, texted me asking if I had looked at canvas for our french class yet. I responded no and went to check it. She asked me if I saw "it" yet and even though I didn't see "it" I responded with oh my gosh anyway because I was clearly missing something. She text me back saying "I was sitting there reading it and I was like I wonder if Mrs. Hurner (our teacher) even told Claire". I was sitting there like wait, did she even tell me what? I went back and looked at canvas and it said "Claire is responsible for coordinating this effort". If you were wondering, no she did not tell me this. I got into class and the sub asked me if I was Claire O. I replied and yes and he started going over the lesson with me and I was like hold on what's happening. Apparently I was supposed to help the sub. I honestly tried for the first ten minutes of class, but then I kept getting sassed by these 8th graders, so I gave up. 

That was when I got an email for a geoguesser challenge. So, I accepted. That was a terrible mistake. My teacher tells the sub that I am supposed to help him and I just sat there playing geoguesser all period. It got to a point where there was a big geoguesser challenge going between half the class. This was the point where I officially accepted the fact that geoguesser has ruined my life. 

That is the story of how geoguesser ruined my life. I have the game linked in multiple places including here, so you should really give it a try. Or actually maybe not, just warning you it's addicting. 

- Claire 

Going up

My Roller skis

You remember when I said that Agony Hill was the hardest time trial ever. I stand corrected. This skate roller ski time trial was actually the hardest thing ever. EVER.

Last week, my coach told us that we were doing a skate roller ski time trial on Friday. I didn't think much of it when I first heard about it. Then again when I first heard about it, I didn't actually know what it was like. The next day at training I started asking around to see if anyone on the team had done it before. I knew the kids in my grade hadn't done it yet, so I started by asking the tenth graders. They said they hadn't done it either. Then I asked the 11th graders and they hadn't done it either. I then thought that this was probably a new time trial that he just came up with, but just to be sure I asked the seniors. Only two of the seniors on my team remember doing this... three years ago. One of them said that it was all uphill, 5k long and really hard. The other one told me that it was short and easy.

When Friday finally rolled around I had no idea what to expect. I kept getting mixed responses, some people said it was all uphill and really long and others said it was fairly flat and short. I decided to prepare myself for a mostly uphill, medium length time trial. My team met at a park near the place we were starting. Our coach told us where to go during the time trial or what the course was. I'm 98% sure that he said something along the lines of "Ok, so you're going to go up on this road and then take a right, then the road will curve left, but stay straight and then take a left, a right, and another right"... I did not have the mental capacity to memorize that and surprise, surprise I was going first. Oh well, I guess I was just going to have to go with it.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, GO! And I just began the time trial. I started off on a slight uphill section and started going a little too fast. I thought to myself this isn't too bad. That was because that was the flatest (or most flat) section of the entire course. It got very steep, very quickly. I felt like it was never going to end. Ever. It was so steep and so hard that I couldn't feel my arms anymore and I was only six minutes in. Somehow I kept going and hallelujah I saw my coach. He told me before I started that when I saw him that meant I was almost done. I got a sudden burst of energy and skied really fast (actually I was still going pretty slow, but it felt fast), until he shouted "Nice job, you're almost a third of the way done". I slowed back down to my normal pace and thought "what the heck, you said I would be done when I saw you".

Anyway I kept going up. I just sat there thinking about how I didn't even know it was possible for there to be this much uphill. I thought they were exaggerating when they said it was all uphill. The next time I saw my coach I didn't speed up because I just assumed I wasn't anywhere near finishing. At that point I kind of thought it was just going to go on forever. I was right, I was only about halfway through. I kept skiing (in an immense amount of pain) for another ten minutes until I saw my coach again. As I got closer, I realized that two of my teammates were stopped next to him. That meant one of two things, they either died (meaning injured themselves) or that was the finish. It turned out to be the finish! I used all of my remaining energy to speed up to get to the finish. Once we all finished we piled into the van and drove down to the bottom. It was only 3.5 kilometers, but it was still the hardest 3.5 kilometers of my life. And yes this time trial was even harder than agony hill in my opinion and I wasn't the only one who thought so.

As I was trying to come up with a title for this blog post, I remembered what my blog was called and realized that I probably should have seen an all uphill time trial coming.

Pain Is Only Temporary

Your lungs will be burning, you won't be able to move your legs anymore and you will be dying of heat, but remember that pain is only temporary. That is what I will tell anyone before doing agony hill. Let me start off by saying that agony hill is the hardest time trial we do on my cross-country ski team. It is not a long time trial distance-wise, but it feels like forever. It is only one mile long, but it has over 1,000 feet of elevation gain. When I first heard about this time trial three thoughts came to mind: what the **** is that, do we really have to do that and this is going to suck.

The first time we did this time trial was in June. It was over 90 degrees in Salt Lake. I was sweating before we even started. I was starting first and I didn't know where I was going because I had never done it before. One of my teammates told me not to worry about where to go because I would probably get passed and I could just follow that person. She meant for it to be encouraging, but you could take it either way. I asked her where the finish was and she replied that it was just at the top of that hill *points to the top of the first of four hills*. Another one of the senior girls gave me a pep talk before starting the time trial... Although now that I think of it she might have been giving herself a pep talk and I was just standing near her... She told me or herself "pain is only temporary and it will go away once you reach the top, you can do it". I found that really encouraging and thought of it multiple times during the time trial.

 I don't really remember most of what happened the first time because I have tried really hard suppress that memory. However, I do remember thinking that I was done at the top of the first hill, which was really only about 1/4 of the way to the actual finish. Also, that I was chanting in my head pain is only temporary for the first two minutes, after that I gave up and was cursing the person who came up with this time trial and my coach for making us do this and the girl who told me where the *top* was and pretty much everything else in existence. I also remember how I felt when I finished... my lungs were burning, I couldn't move my legs and I was dying of heat, but my teammate was right in the fact that pain is only temporary. It might be a long temporary, but it still goes away eventually. 

At the end of September my coach informed us that we were going to be doing Agony Hill again on Halloween. Everyone groaned and complained about doing it on Halloween, but at least it wasn’t the day after Halloween (which apparently it was last year). Flash forward to 7:00 am Halloween morning. Before our coach got to the spot where he was supposed to pick us up, we were sitting there talking about how absolutely terrible it was going to be. Also about how we were not going to be able to walk later that night on Halloween. When our coach arrived with the van, we all piled in and drove down to Salt Lake. On the way down there we listened to some interesting music... It was everything from EDM music to Ed Sheeran to Eminem. When we got down there, I was determined to beat my time from last time (26 minutes). I felt more prepared this time because I got a better warm up and actually knew where the top was. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the actual time trial because my thoughts didn't change that much compared to last time. Other than the fact I skipped chanting pain is only temporary and went straight to cursing everything. Once I finished and got over the fact that my lungs were burning, I couldn't move my legs anymore and I was dying of heat (I way overestimated how cold it would be and wore pants), I realized I beat my time from last time by over a minute!

I was proud of myself for improving by so much. My advice for anyone doing this time trial is remember that your lungs are going to be burning, you won't be able to move your legs and you will be dying of heat, but pain is only temporary and the pain will end when you finish (even if it is 24 hours after you finish).

Trust me it's a lot steeper in real life. Photo courtesy of me

- Claire

Building Cardboard Boats!?! Part 2: The Race

So, I just wrote a post called Building Cardboard Boats!?! Part One. Hopefully you read it, if not I highly suggest you do because this post will make more sense after reading that one. Anyway, the class before the boat race, our boat totally fell apart. The front detached from the rest of the boat, so in a last minute effort to save our boat we used the remaining duct tape and attempted to tape it down. Once, we finished that we had to paint the boat and of course because we were one of the last groups to finish, we got stuck with a big bucket of white paint to share between three groups. I think there were around 8 groups (boats) in our class and the first five groups used up all the colorful spray paint, so our boat had to be white. This was the day before the race and all six of us (three groups = six people) were 100% convinced that we were all going to sink like the Titanic right as we got in the boat.

Flash froward to today, October 22, 2015. The day we all had to get in our boats that were falling apart at the seams to sink in front of an audience. I have this class second period and it is about a five minute walk away and the bus was supposed to leave five minutes after the bell rang. So, I asked my first period teacher if I could leave 5 or so minutes early to put on a bathing suit and get a head start walking over. So, one of the other girls in my class came with me and we ran to the high school. Once, we got there we went into the "Boiler Room" where we had been storing our boats and carried them out to a trailer and then got on the bus. On the bus ride to the pool our teacher informed us that the Ecker students were no longer coming to watch. That was such a relief.

We got to the pool and our audience was quite smaller than excepted, which was the entire middle school. It turned out to be just a few of our parents. We get to the pool and she gives us 10 minutes to make any final adjustments needed. Now we were in full panic mode, before it was just talk about sinking, but now we could actually sink. We made our final adjustments like adding as much duct tape as we could and of course decorating. One of the requirements was that it had to have a theme (ours was tropical), so we added air fresheners that smelled like coconut and fake flowers to make it seem tropical. We also had to have costumes our costumes were bikinis, shell necklaces, sunglasses and flowers in our hair.

Our Decorations

Then the first group went off... Only one boat made it across without sinking. We were now officially terrified. Our teacher told us that only one of us had to go in the boat, but we both decided to go in it anyway. In the words of my partner Megan "Yolo". Then, came the time for our race. The gun (just kidding it was actually a whistle) went off and we went. We start to push the boat in and Megan got fell into the boat before we finished pushing it in. So, then she had to get out and we had to push it all the way in and then she got in again. It was floating with her in it, but now came the real test, would it float when I got in too? To everyone's (including myself and my parents) surprise it floated. We were so shocked that we didn't sink that we didn't start paddling for a few seconds and just sat there yelling WE'RE FLOATING!!!!!!!!!! We then made it about 3/4 of the way there when Megan informed me that the front detached again. We started paddling really fast and made it to the end, before the whole thing filled with water!

Really surprising right?!? I was honestly shocked that we floated, in fact I think we all were. So, that's the very long story of building a boat out of cardboard.

The Race (Photo Courtesy of Eric Oberg)
Teams from left to right: Toby & Ben, Victoria & Sanne and Megan & I

Building cardboard boats!?! Part One

My school offers a course called "Pre-Engineering" as an elective in 9th. So, I signed up to take it. This class is only offered at the high school building, so I have to walk to the high school every other day for that class. After wandering around searching for it for a very long time, I found it. Guess where it was... "The CTE Dungeon", basically the basement at the high school. When I get into the classroom I realized that there are only THREE other girls. I knew that there wouldn't be that many girls taking the class, but I assumed there would be more than 4 of us.

On the first day of school our teacher assigned us groups, gave us a chunk of clay and told us to make a boat. My group consisted of a boy in my grade, myself and a boy in the grade above us. As we were building the boat the kid in the grade above me asked who I had for geography. I responded with my teacher and he said "Oh he is so hard, he always caught me cheating on his tests. That's going to be the hardest part about his class". I was so baffled by what he said that I just laughed and said "That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem".  I'm not sure what motivated me to say that, but let's just say he doesn't talk to me anymore. Once we finished building the clay boats, we put them in a bucket full of water and tested how many pennies our boat could hold. Our boat held about 30 pennies.

The next day in class our teacher informed us we were going to be building cardboard boats. At first I thought she meant little cardboard boats to hold pennies again. Then, she started talking about racing them and how it had to hold two people. Let's just say I was very confused. She then clarified that we had to build boats out of cardboard to hold you and a partner. The next day we got assigned partners and started working. My partner for this project is Megan.

Calculations for finding the waterline (Page 1 of 4)

Before we could begin making the actual boats we had to make prototypes that were to scale. Once we made the prototype, we had to calculate the "waterline" of the boat or in other words how far the boat would sink down. After, the most confusing lesson ever (I'm serious... I don't think I've ever been more confused in my life) on how to find the waterline, we had to go home and figure out all the calculations. After, four and a half hours of stress and confusion I figured it out (possibly... we'll see how accurate it is). According to my calculations our actual boat is supposed to sink down 3.5 inches.

After two weeks, two rolls of duct tape, a bottle of glue and a whole lot of cardboard, we finished our boat! We are still not entirely convinced it will float, but we'll see how it goes. Our boat race is this Thursday, I'll let you know what happens in part 2. Oh and did I mention my teacher invited all of the Ecker Hill students and faculty to come and watch the race. That will be interesting... Oh and the Park Record (our local newspaper).

Our "Lovely" Cardboard Boat

Au revoir  - Claire

Going Down

For dry land training for cross-country skiing in the summer we usually run, roller-ski (A video of a professional xc skier roller skiing) or do a strength workout. One day, we went on a roller ski. Roller skiing is supposed to be like cross-country skiing without snow, except there is one huge difference, you can't stop on roller skis (people on The Amazing Race attempting to stop). People always ask my teammates and I  "How do you stop?", our response is always "You don't". There are no brakes and no way (that I'm aware of) to slow yourself down once you start going fast on a downhill other than bailing out.

Anyway back to the roller ski, it was supposed to be a long, slow, distance roller ski. I was skiing with a group of girls on my ski team and it was really windy that day. Our coach to told us to ski along this road until we got to the hospital and once we got there we were supposed to turn around. On the way out to the hospital we had a head wind, which was not fun especially because it was all uphill, but it meant that would get a tail wind on the way back. We skied out to the turn around point and met our coach, who gave us some technique tips and told us to head back to where we started.

As I mentioned before the way out was all uphill, so the way back was all downhill. Again, roller skis DO NOT have brakes, so it is more than a little scary going down hills. We are going down this one hill and if you start out "snow plowing" for lack of a better term and continue snow plowing down the whole hill, you can somewhat control your speed (or you can just go for it, but I'm terrified of hills, so I'll just stick with the first option). About 3/4 of the way down the hill I decided to just go for it because the hill was about to level out. I stop snow plowing and just let my skis go down the hill. It's going fine until I remember that there is a big, yellow post right in the middle of the trail. I lost balance, but somehow manage to make it around the post. After I got around the post I thought I was in the clear, little did I know how wrong I was. After I passed the post, I hit a rock and according to my teammates flew about 5 feet in the air and 6 feet forward. I was fine... other than the internal injuries I was convinced I had but really I was fine other than being mental scarred for life.

Me Getting Ready to Roller Ski (Photo Courtesy of Ericha Oberg) 

Introduction

Hi my name is Claire. I am writing this blog as an assignment for my English class. This blog is going to be about my life including school, tv shows and cross-country skiing. If you are curious about what cross-country skiing is check out this website How to Cross-Country Ski

I got the idea for the name of this blog "Real Skiers Ski Uphill" from a bumper sticker on the back of a girl on my cross-country ski team's car. I always thought that it was funny and true for cross-country skiers (no offense to all you downhill skiers out there). Some of the posts on this blog are going to be about cross-country skiing, but before you start to think it will be boring just because you don't cross-country ski, I am going try to make it relatable to everyone. These posts will be about the funny and interesting events that happen during my cross-country ski team's training and during races. ***** I changed the name of this blog recently because I didn't want it to be just about cross-country skiing. I wanted it to be more general*****

I have been cross-country skiing for about three years now. Three years ago my parents forced me to start cross-country skiing. They would have to drag me out of the car to get me to go to practice. I hated it, but then one day I made a friend. She would make training so much more enjoyable and I would be excited to go, even though I wasn't really learning how to ski. Later in the year she moved I was sad, but it was ok because I actually started to like skiing now. Once she moved, I actually started to learn how to cross-country ski. I was learning how to ski more like a cross-country skier and less like a tourist.  The next year, I moved up to "Devo +" which was the ski team for 6th - 8th graders. I liked being on that team. The year after that (this year) I moved up to the comp team, which is the high school division for our cross-country ski team. The comp team is more of a challenge this year. I went from training 2-3 days a week for an hour a day to training for 6 days a week for 2 hours a day. The training is at a higher intensity level as well. When I was on Devo + and we would go on a run it would be a short 5k run at an easy pace. Now that I am on the comp team, if we go on a run it could be anywhere from a fast 5k to a slow 21k run.

Lastly, even though I was just rambling on about cross-country skiing, this blog won't be entirely about cross-country skiing. I'm not sure if I could write just about cross-country skiing everyday, even though I train almost everyday. So, don't be shocked if you see a random post about school or some TV show that I'm watching. Even though I ski for 2 hours a day 6 days a week, that is not all I do. School is very important to me and in my free time I am always watching TV. So again, even though some of the posts will be about cross-country skiing, don't be surprised if you see a blog post about something else.

A picture of my cross-country ski team before going to Canmore, Canada for a roller ski camp (Photo Courtesy of Ericha Oberg)