Cross Country Skiing

So with the recent cold snap (has been below zero day and night for 6 days) and a little snow in the mountains near Michaela's parents place we decided to head for my first x country skiing experience. We went with one of Michaela's school friends partners and i was borrowing some of his gear.
They had to explain to me that there are 2 types of skiing. Traditional style and skating style, and we were doing the skating style as the skis are set up differently for each type. I figured I can ski and I can skate therefore i should be able to skate on x country skis ..................... WRONG.

What an interesting sport and damn hard to get used to. After the first 50m i had been on my face or arse about 4 times and was starting to get really annoyed. So i took it slowly and started to gradually get used to it. It think my biggest issue was the different in ankle support. My ice skates have heaps of support (very stiff boot) where as these x country skis have almost none (comparitively speaking) and the ski has no metal edge which took me some getting used to.
Anyway after a hour and a bit we had done our 6km and was time for a soup. I had been sweating profusely, had taken my beanie and gloves off and was now sporting a frozen mo hawk as the -10 degree temperature had frozen my sweaty hair almost instantly. Classic.
Anyway, i wasn't great the first time but i was getting the hang of it by the end so perhaps i will give it another go.


Later this week i might be trying my first ever pond ice skating as the ice is really thickening up and some of the guys at work want to play hockey in our lunch break. Here is my xmas present from Michaela, a thermometer unit for indoor and outdoors. So in this image it is 17 indoors and -7 outdoors (has a sensor outside which transmits the temperature reading into the unit).


until next time
Gatesy