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After hugging and seeing my parents off down the access road to the 10th Mountain Lodge in Fort Kent, I set to packing up the most important bag that I would take to Europe. Dozens of skis stood idle against the fiberboard walls of the wax room. Only ten days earlier, I had methodically arranged them according to a well-thought out system based on base structure and ski flex. First, my over-planning mind had just thought to place stickers on each of the skis, and give each pair a new designation, so that all of them would finally conform to the new system. But as the wheels turned, and I realized that this was yet another detail of Olympic Trials that I could ponder and toil over, my hands started moving the pairs around the room, trying to arrange them in new ways – by which skis I liked best, which I would probably not use, which skis just needed to go into that corner. But by the end, I was tired, and settled on just arranging them along a short length of wall by number. Simple enough. But that was the state of mind I was in. Everything was planned. Down to the minute. Down to every shot and every stride. This was my Olympic Team to make and I had a plan to do just that - and more.
But when I awoke that final morning in Fort Kent, with a long drive and an even longer journey ahead of me, my mind disregarded the details and the order that my parents and I had lived under for the previous eleven days out in Eagle Lake, far away from the distractions of the competition venue and the town of Fort Kent, having a large population of 5,000. No distractions or chaos out there on the Lake, not until of course the snowstorm dumped three feet of hoped for but unanticipated and unplanned for snow. The weather was a constant player in those eleven days, but one that I accepted and expected would bring chaos.
Now, standing idle next to my idle skis in the wax room, parking lot deserted, except for the Suburban of one dedicated volunteer and my Explorer, I was exhausted. There stood the skis on which I skied to third place amidst a blizzard in the Individual race. And to fourth place in one of the Sprint races, those three missed shots in standing not quite forgotten. The waxing iron clicked to tell me it was ready whenever I was. I was scheduled to start driving an hour ago, but I was too busy doing and thinking nothing to get started. The sun outside was blinding, a clear sky devoid of clouds, but one that had vented any warmth that had accumulated the day before.
Over the previous eleven days, I had had no time to reflect on the previous day or any of the competitions. I was a VCR whose rewind button was broken. Now that I had time to reflect, though that was not on the schedule, my mind was blank. The mission was accomplished, though none of the races reached my performance expectations. While I had met the goal of qualifying for the Olympic Team – the goal was actually higher than that… – it had been accomplished with shooting and skiing not meeting what I had expected would be required of me. Yet, I still stood there in wax room 31, a newly christened member of the Olympic Team.
Finally, after realizing that time was running out if I wanted to arrive in Burlington, Vermont – a ten hour drive – at a reasonable hour, I would have to leave immediately, I moved like a cat around the room, snapping the skis from the wall into the wax bench, slapping wax onto them, and putting them in the bag, this time without any sense of order.
Soon I was on the road, headed for the Olympic Games via Burlington, a few weeks each in Germany and Italy, and another long drive that ended in Torino a week ago. I’ll keep recounting what happened during those weeks as time permits during the next two weeks at the Games.
Peace,
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