10 skate yesterday and 15 mass start classic today. We’re racing at the biathlon venue in Obertilliach, Austria. (more…)

The not-so-soothing voice on our in dash navigation system calls it the “B-One Hundred and Eleven.” (more…)

This morning we took the short drive down the valley to Tarvisio, sight of the upcoming World Junior Championships.  Brayton, Zach, and I were planning on doing intervals and it took us a little bit of trail scoping to find a good spot.  In case anyone racing there in March is reading this–the trails are hard and there are a couple of places where you will not be able to classic stride.  Anyway we had to change our workout plans when we discovered that we would be going backwards through the citizen’s race about to start.

Workout completed, we did a little window shopping in town (Zach found a sweet leather jacket that he bartered down to 110 Euros) and then had lunch at a little pizzeria/ristorante.    I ended up with Orzo soup, thinking that I was getting Orzo with clams while everyone else (Zach, Brayto, Reed Lutter–here with the Devo team, Jessica–Reed’s wife, and their two kids) had excellent and cheap pizza.  I’ll add the photos later today.

As a side note, I’m trying out a new Firefox plugin called “Performancing” that allows me to publish straight from Firefox without actually going into the blog back-end.  Supposedly it allows for drag and drop photos from the desktop which, if true, would make adding photos minutes faster.  Opinions on that later.

powered by performancing firefox

We might have metnioned that there are some ski jumps in the next town up in the valley.  Turns out the worlds longest ski jump (ski flying, technically) was set there in 2005.  Check out the amazing video on youtube:

 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4c4DhVVAwU

Then, on the very next jump, the skier jumps longer almost landing on the flat but can’t stay upright.  Thus, no record.  And apparently he broke his tail bone too.
 http://youtube.com/watch?v=KPFOqctuzK0

Yesterday afternoon, we took a little trip to the ski resort town of Kranjske Gora for a little shopping, exploring, and money changing.

This morning after another gorgeous and sunny ski in which we skied across the Slovenia/Italy border, we raced back to the hotel to watch World Championships live from Sapporo. (more…)

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We made it to Kranjska Gora, Slovenia!

We left Bend around 8am for the airport. We checked in with no difficulties and only one overweight bag (costing $50). The flight from Redmond to Portland is only 40min and went smoothly. We then had a 2hr layover in Portland to get some lunch before our long but direct flight to Frankfort, Germany. The plan was to stay awake for the first few hours of the flight, then take some sleeping pills and hopefully wake up right before landing. I was almost successful. I was able to fall asleep right when I wanted to. But I woke up after only 5hours while we were over Iceland. Marshall and Brayton slept for another hour or so. I spent the next 3 hours of flight reading “The Boune Ultimatum” and hoping we would land soon.

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In the spirit of the photo essay, the words will be few and the pictures more plentiful.

Okay, so I’m getting a bit of cabin fever here in Bend, especially now that the guys have jetted off to Europe for four weeks of racing. Definitely a little jealous but I made the decision not to go mainly because of the racing schedule (heavily weighted toward the classic end of the spectrum) (more…)

The bare basics of contacting us (by voice) in Slovenia. Using Skype you can reach me at brayton.osgood. From a phone you can call (541) 359-1881, it will ring on my computer. There should also be voicemail attached. All of this should be operational around midday tomorrow, or by anytime Wednesday stateside.