Easterns 2016 Day 1

Easterns 2016 Day 1

Greetings from Québec! Hope everyone is well. As you know, today the Manitoba HP ski team departed from Winnipeg for Gatineau to compete in the eastern Canadian cross country ski championships. To be perfectly honest, I don't have a whole lot to tell about today’s events. But keep reading for exciting news! Put quite simply it was a nearly seamless travel day. We departed from Winnipeg at 9:45, and touched down at Ottawa international at about 12:50 local time. We then loaded rental vans and made our way to fresh air ski shop, to top up on our klister supply. Today the temperature was a balmy +6 degrees Celsius with light rain, so of course if the temperature drops below freezing our lovely wax techs will have the thorough pleasure of applying said newly purchased ice klister to our classic skis for Sunday’s classic races. Let's just say all of us athletes really  appreciate having someone there to do that for us. After the ski shop, we then headed to a local superstore for some groceries. We divided into teams and bought copious amounts of eggs, milk, bread and of course quinoa. It wouldn't be a Manitoba ski trip without quinoa. I was also informed that without Elora on the team anymore, I am the only remaining vegetarian. I was also informed that I was a loser and was off the team as a result of this. I feel very loved and appreciated to say the least, but I digress. After superstore, we made our way to our accommodations. The place where we are staying is roughly 30 minutes north of Gatineau and is ingeniously named “The Barn”. Yup, you guessed it. It's a barn. A renovated barn of course, that includes several bedrooms and bathrooms, a living space and kitchen. The walls are lined with hundreds, maybe thousands of books. They range from encyclopedias published in the 40s to the latest people's magazine, if you can consider that a book. We may even end up reading some of them, because of the absolutely horrifying realization that we would not have access to wifi for the duration of our stay. I was able to interview Jordan Hamilton, someone who was deeply affected by this tragic news. “It's like living in the Stone Age” he said. “We may even have to revert back to the ancient technology that is text messaging.” Simon however is quite content, because people are finally going to play some board games!  We've all settled into our barn quite nicely, it’s quite peaceful out here. Now our main focus is to prepare for tomorrow's training day at Nakkertok Nordic centre. All of the skate skis were sorted in preparation for Friday's prologue free technique race, which most of us are very very excited for. The smell of burritos has now wafted into the living room from the kitchen, which marks the end of my blog writing for today. Hopefully I'll have more to tell about tomorrow's training day, but for now it's so long from Québec!

-Liam Allan