End of the chapter

Return

Well, it’s been a blast, but everything has to end at some point (couldn’t figure out anymore ways to extend my stay and to be serious I had to get back to continue my Master’s thesis). I spent the whole weekend traveling back home. I began by driving 7 hours from Grand Junction to Las Vegas on Saturday morning/afternoon. I got to the Airport quite early and spend the extra time watching Lahti World Cup. From there I had a 10-hour flight to Stockholm. Then after a couple of hour wait a short flight to Tampere. In conclusion I started this travel 8am Saturday morning (Colorado time) and stepped inside my parents’ house at 6pm Sunday evening (Finland time).

Now that I’ve been back a couple of days I feel that the transition hasn’t been too difficult. There are some minor things, like door handles feeling more solid and coffee mugs seeming lighter and smaller (yea, I know these are weird examples). But I’m guessing that after I’ve met my family and all my close friends, my thoughts wander back to Colorado.

Everything packed. That’s pretty much all I had for the past half a year.

 

Final weeks

There was still quite a lot between my last post and my return. First of all I got to see some new places when I was traveling with the ski team to competitions. On the first weekend of February the races were held in Crested Butte, Colorado. Beautiful place more famous for it’s great Alpine skiing than Nordic skiing. On Saturday there was a long-distance freestyle race called Alley Loop loppet, which was also open to recreational athletes and citizens and the main point for them was fun (most of them were wearing costumes). The coolest thing was that part of the track was made on the Main Street. In this race I was helping the team by doing ski testing and giving them feeds. The next day there was a 5k classic race in which I also participated myself. Once again I got to experience that you can’t recover in altitude. Following the biggest uphill on the course there was a long (like 1k) downhill section. The final kilometer to the finish line was brutal when none of the lactic acid produced during the climb was removed during the downhill. But at least this was the first distance race in altitude in which I was able to push myself to the limit.

Our accommodation for the weekend

Ski track going through the Main Street

And the same sight the next day

Everything ready for the feeds

My expression here at the finishing straight tells about the pain (photographer David James)

The next weekend I got to visit Wyoming for the first time. This time it was first 5k classic with team start (meaning each college team started as a group in 1-minute intervals) on Saturday and 21k freestyle mass start on Sunday. As on the previous weekend I only raced the short classic race but this time my job was to pace other team members to get best possible result. And on Sunday I was again in the service crew to do the feeds and split times. 

This van has become quite familiar

   
The next thing isn’t just related to the last weeks. Before I broke my collarbone I got into climbing. So since New Year we have been going climbing every Wednesday evening (since there is Student night meaning half price (6 bucks)). By doing it regularly you can notice progress fairly quickly since it’s about abilities one doesn’t utilize in anything else (quite unique technique and grip strength). So during the first time I was able to do maybe two or three demanding (for my level at that point) climbs before my arms were done. Last Wednesday is was climbing for about four hours and even during the final hour I was able to climb more difficult routes than my “fresh” climbs during the first times. The way the vertical climbing (that’s what the number 5 at the beginning means) rating works is that higher number is more difficult route (5.7 really easy, 5.15 something totally impossible) and the sub ratings increase in demand in alphabetical order (B is more difficult than A, and so on) (climbing ratings explained: http://outdoorswithdave.com/climbing/climbing-ratings). At the beginning I was barely able to do one 5.9 and last Wednesday I did three 5.11s and at two 5.10Ds in addition to some 5.10As, Bs and Cs. 

Quite awesome climbing gym

   
Funny thing was that the closest National Park to Grand Junction was the one I visited the last. I also wanted to do one long bike ride before I leave so little bit over a week ago the weather began to warm up and I rode to Colorado National Monument with my Norwegian friend from the cycling team. The loop was about 60 miles long (or that’s what I did, my friend rode like 20 miles more) and included some 1200 meters of vertical ascent. I was completely exhausted after the ride, which wasn’t that surprising since I hadn’t been doing any riding and I had way too little energy and water with me. Nevertheless besides being a cool workout the landscape was definitely worth the suffering at the end.

The road was pretty awesome!

Just one of the spectacular views!

It was actually quite weird to return to Finnish winter. As I mentioned the weather began to warm up a couple of weeks ago. During our bike ride it was between 5 and 10 Celsius, but the past week it was like summer. The temperature hit over 20 Celsius on most of the days and on my last day in Grand Junction I was having a beer on the patio in t-shirt with a friend (obviously you can buy beer at the bar on campus at noon on normal week day). So now I have to get used to winter weather. Again.

The last couple of days I spent trying to meet all my friends and say goodbye to everyone. Even though I can’t say I’m sentimental type it’s quite difficult to bid farewell to close friends that you possibly never see again. Obviously I trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ve been inviting everyone to visit Finland if they ever have a chance. And I certainly hope that I can visit Colorado again in (near) future. It’s an awesome place with awesome people!

Thoughts about the experience

I believe some of the most common reasons for doing a student exchange are to improve language skills, experience new culture and meet new people.

I feel like haven’t actually learned that many new words or improved my grammar and I still make simple errors both in writing as well as speaking. But the biggest improvement has probably been that I’m more comfortable of using English in various different situations. Hopefully I’ll have enough opportunities to use English and that way keep up my skills.

Experiencing a new culture can have so many different dimensions from local foods and people’s personality to campus structure and different environment and landscape. I’m happy about the way I was able to experience this aspect by trying new things, traveling around the country and meeting people with very different background. You can always think that you could have done and seen more, but I feel it’s better to enjoy the memory of the things you were able to do than to regret things you didn’t have a chance to do.

Finally I think it doesn’t matter how many new and awesome places you see or how many different things you get to experience, but ultimately it all comes down to the people you get to see the places and experience the things with. Quite a few people asked during my last couple of weeks that what I’m going to miss most of all. My answer was without hesitation the people. I thank all you who have taken me to experience new stuff, helped me when I needed something or just had a conversation or two with me in the dining hall. It’s been a pleasure to meet you all.

Thanks for everything guys! You are all great!

Thanks for everything guys! You are all great! (photographer David James)

 

On the other hand the past half a year went by really fast but on the other hand it feels that I’ve known all you guys and lived in Grand Junction way longer.

Farewell Colorado! For now…

Enjoying and escaping winter

I'm not homeless anymore

From December 10th, when I left for our winter break trip, till January 15th, when I moved into my new house, I didn't officially have a place to stay. During our trip we were almost every day moving to a new location and staying in motels or camping. When I returned to Grand Junction I had permanent place stay at my friends' house for a couple of weeks but when you are a guest at somebody's house it's not quite the same as having your own place to live. Well I still have three roommates but you know what I mean.

Our new house is quite nice and spacious and despite being built in 1930s everything seems to work. We have a well-organized kitchen, a laundry machine and a dryer, and garage for all our bikes. But most importantly we have a dishwasher and a coffee maker (trust me, after drinking instant coffee nearly every morning for the past month, this feels amazing). And my roommates are cool, funny and appropriately weird (I know they don't mind me using this expression) athletes so we get along great!

Our house

Internship

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts my internship consists of being the assistant coach of the ski team and an assistant in the exercise lab on campus. Since my major is Sport Coaching and Fitness Testing this is an excellent combination. In addition I can learn coaching and testing practices of a foreign country and get familiar with different exercise testing equipment. The only issue that I've come to find out is that everyone seems to be even too flexible regarding my tasks. This just means that I have to be initiative myself. And obviously it also makes it easier for me to plan my recreational activities. Having seven weeks to complete 100 hours of internship means that I don't really have to do normal 8-hour work shifts (and with this attitude I'm probably going to do just this during the last week).

Yet another new outdoor activity

Speaking about the recreational activities, winter, ice, snow and cold weather is not seen as an obstacle but an opportunity for climbing. In Ouray (about two-hour drive South from Grand Junction) they have a canyon where they make artificial frozen waterfalls by spraying water from the top every night. This creates amazing and fairly constant conditions for ice climbing. With some friends from the ski team we decided to go there during Ice Festival a couple of weeks ago. This meant that there were way more climbers at the site but also that we could demo some fancy gear, enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere and participate in several raffles besides climbing.

I was being told that ice climbing is way easier than rock climbing. So when I went for my first climb I decided I'm just gonna crush it and get to the top in no time. Quickly I noticed that ice climbing is not just smashing your tools and crampons to the ice but some technique could be useful. I ended up falling (obviously there was a rope attached to my harness) two or three times and dropping quite a bit of ice down to the canyon. I also knew that the water spraying system goes on at 4pm, I had started the climb at 3:35 and I didn't know what time it was, so I was slightly worried. Eventually (and before I got water all over me) I got to the top breathing heavily and with my forearms burning from grasping the tools. In the evening we got to enjoy some hot spring pools and have a couple a beers at the local pubs for celebration of my birthday.

The next day before I climbed again I saw this lady instructing a group of beginners about ice climbing technique and decided to watch and listen for a while. As a result my next climb went a lot smoother, I didn't fall once, I wasn't nearly as exhausted and my arms were not burning (the better demo tools and crampons helped too). Yet another cool outdoor sport that would be nice to do more but that would require a lot of time and money.

Ice climbing setup (notice the stylish pink harness)

In the middle of a climb

Another angle

Hot spring pool

Festival atmosphere

Road trip number 2

Ice climbing was the enjoying winter part, so what about the escaping? My father attended an outdoor exhibition in Las Vegas so it only made sense for us to have short vacation together. On Wednesday evening two weeks ago after working the whole day in the lab I picked up my rental car and drove to Vegas (it was almost next door, only 500 miles). From there we drove to La Quinta, California the next day. There we played a round of golf on one day and watched a PGA Tour (golf) competition the next.

According to one of the employees they save 65 000 gallons of water a year when they only water the fairways

My first time as a spectator in a golf event

Then we drove to Phoenix, Arizona and spent the next two days mountain biking in the area. First day's location was McDowell Mountain Regional Park. By happy coincidence local bike shop had a bike demo at the site at the same time. It was nice to test some carbon full-suspension bikes on great trails, especially since my rental bike wasn't that special.

In Arizona you have to be careful with the cacti

 

 For the second day we had planned to do part of Black Canyon Trail. Since we only wanted to do the section one way, we had to leave our car at the "finish line" and try to hitch a ride to the beginning of the trail. Just when we thought that this isn't gonna work a guy with a pick-up truck and a boat on a trailer pulled over (this was at the side of a highway). He was happy to give us a ride, but since his back seats were full of stuff we had to travel on the bed of the truck with our bikes (not something that would happen back home, again remenber it's was on a highway). The trail was awesome with a lot of fast single track and some more technical downhill switchback sections. The only thing was that we had estimated it would take us around 4 hours so we could watch at least most of the Denver Broncos football game after the ride in a pub restaurant located at the "finish line". Well, it took us more like 6 hours so we didn't just miss most of the game but were pretty exhausted after finishing (obviously our water and snack supplies were also calculated based on the 4-hour estimation). But we survived (okay, let's be honest, I wasn't struggling that much) and had a great day!

One of the countless switchbacks

Some sections were little bit more technical

The next couple of days were mostly just driving back to Grand Junction, but on the way we stopped by to see the best preserved meteor crater in the world, visited New Mexico and drove over 3000-meter high mountain pass in excellent weather. In total it was more than 2000 miles of driving within a week.

Meteor crater

View at the top of the mountain pass

And you guessed it: Skiing

What would a blog post be without some story about skiing? Last weekend the conference races for our team began. On Saturday it was classic sprint. Since I haven't tried sprint skiing in high altitude yet (I've already discovered that normal distances in high altitude are not my forte), I decided to participate. Even though the distance was only about 900 meters in that altitude with slow snow it was still around two and a half minutes. In tune with the times I went for double poling on skate skis in all the heats. This ended up being a decent race for me and I eventually finished second. The last time I skied four heats in a sprint event was more than six years ago and the last time I was on a podium in any ski race was even longer ago. On Sunday I was on my right place at the side of the track helping the team with ski testing, spare equipment and cheering!

I was too lazy to take skate boots even though I had both skis (photographer Gerald Smith)

Road trip!!! (and something more)

I know it's been a while since I last updated my post. But I have just been too busy (read lazy).

Well to be honest the first few weeks of December I actually had a lot going on. As I mentioned in my last post I had been planning a winter break road trip with one of my Austrian friends. During the semester it was pretty much impossible to visit places more than a few hours drive away from Grand Junction (the classes were almost ruining a perfectly good vacation, I mean student exchange), but winter break offered an excellent opportunity to do some traveling.

Our itinerary was following: Grand Junction, Colorado - Moab, Utah - Grand Canyon, Arizona - Flagstaff, Arizona - Las Vegas, Nevada - Yosemite, California - Santa Cruz, California - San Francisco, California. That was as far as I planned my way (I knew that my friend was going to continue to Los Angeles after San Francisco). We wanted to save some money so we decided to camp whenever possible, even though it was winter. We only booked motels in Las Vegas and San Francisco in advance.

We spend two nights (one camping, one in a motel) in Moab. While there we visited Arches National Park (third time for me, but we still found some new arches), Dead Horse point and Canyonlands National Park.

Some new arches

And that's how one gets around the law in Utah (apologies for the picture quality)

Dead Horse point

Next day we spent mostly driving to Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at the Horseshoe point (just before sunset). We arrived at Grand Canyon when it was already dark and the camping that night was pretty cold, I have to admit. During the night the temperature dropped down to -10 C (after all the rim is at 2200m elevation). But it was worth it, because it enabled us to start early the next morning and hike from the rim to the bottom of the Canyon (which was the first time below 1000m elevation in four months) and back up (26k, 1500m elevation difference, 7,5h total time).

Horseshoe point

Yeah right! Let's do it!

You can't actually see the river from the rim

After that hike we needed a warm place to stay for the night and found a cheap (39.99 + tax) decent motel in Flagstaff (nice little town by the way). After the night we needed to drive through Arizona and found a nice camping site at much lower altitude near the Nevada border. We were less than two hours away from Vegas so the next day we had time to hike to some hot springs and visit Hoover Damn before arriving to Vegas. The evening we spend exploring the Strip and realized that you would need to be willing to spend quite a lot of money to pass more than one evening there (gambling, the shows, clubs... everything is pretty expensive). But it is a unique place and definitely worth seeing, at least once.

Our camping setup

There were three different pools: 40, 35 and 30 degrees (or something)

Hoover Damn

Bellagio

Then it was a driving day again. On the way from Vegas to Yosemite there wasn't really anything worth mentioning. Except the fact that once you get into California everything becomes more expensive (cheap motels were now 59.99 instead of 39.99). Yosemite is sort of weird place. There isn't anything that special about it, but somehow it's mesmerizing. That's why we spend one day there hiking and one day skiing. We would have liked spend even more time there but a big snowstorm was hitting the area so we just decided to have one relaxing day and then headed to the West Coast.

Yosemite Valley: top of El Capitan on the left and Half Dome far back

Skiing (40k) in beautiful conditions

Why is there a speed limit on a skiing trail? Cause the track is groomed on a road that's closed for winter

The days between Yosemite and San Francisco included one night at a campsite, some running on the beach in rain, biking along the shoreline and some huge trees.

Shoreline in Santa Cruz

Big Redwood trees in Big Basin State Park

In San Francisco we wanted to visit Alcatraz. But since we hadn't bought the tickets in advance we knew we had to get to the ticket booth early in the morning to have a chance to be one of those 40-50 people who get tickets. So we woke up around 6am and got to the ticket booth around 7am. There were already a lot people in line and as you might guess we were the first ones not to get tickets. So instead we rented a couple of bikes and rode around San Francisco almost the whole day. Not a bad way to spend a sunny day. But we still didn't give up with Alcatraz. So the next morning we woke up an hour earlier and got to the booth little bit after 6am. It was Christmas Eve and slightly rainy so there were only a few people in line. We got tickets and spent the next few hours on the Island. Later in the day we went to a church for a Christmas carol event and had "Christmas dinner" in a great Italian restaurant.

Sea lions at Pier 39

Silver Door Bridge (no, that's not right...)

Christmas Eve in prison

Fortunately they let us out

I had been thinking about going to visit a couple of my friends in Bend, Oregon after San Francisco, but eventually I realized it would have involved too much driving (1000miles) and been quite expensive. Flying there would have also been expensive and also inconvenient since Bend isn't a huge city. So I decided to just head back to Grand Junction. This meant early morning wake up again since my friend was driving all the way to LA that day. That's one way to spend your Christmas Day, waiting at airports and sitting in airplanes.

Since getting back to Grand Junction I've been living at my friends house and spent most of time with the ski team. Last weekend me and two other skiers from the team went to Soldier Hollow in Utah for higher division ski races (which were also FIS-races). My shape was far from even my average ski performance. Apparently you can't build your fitness in two weeks after 3 months of lacking training, and when you try things go even worse (I was barely able to reach 170 bpm max heart rate in the races). But it was memorable experience to compete on 2002 Winter Olympic racecourse in excellent conditions.

Soldier Hollow stadium

What's next?

My last post concentrated mostly on skiing so it's natural to continue with this "interesting" topic. For past couple of weeks they have been able groom the tracks with big snow cats and conditions have been great! Seriously it's almost unbelievable to be able to ski on wide firm tracks in bright sunshine with 3 feet of snow everywhere during late November. I have to admit that some days when it's been windy and/or snowing the tracks are softer, snow piles to make the trails a bit bumpy and it's much colder. On the last Saturday of November our team had a first practice race. Even though I was trying to start easy the altitude hit me already at the first hill. I can't even describe how much worse it feels to workout at high-intensity at 3300 meters compared like 1800 meters (the highest altitude I've been doing high-intensity before this). It didn't help that the conditions were like those that I described above. Last Sunday (on the 25th anniversary of Grand Mesa Nordic Council) there was a community race which included 5k classic race at 11am and 5k freestyle race 1.5 hours later. Now the conditions were pretty much perfect and my classic race was decent, considering that I hadn't trained that much during past two months. For me at least it was impossible to recover at that altitude and the freestyle race was pretty much just skiing to the finish line.

Can't really ask for better conditions

Start line of 5k classic race. You can recognize me on the right side of the picture from the Haka outfit. (Photographer Lori Stone)

After those races I was thinking that it would be interesting to see how the injury and the whole exchange period have affected my body composition. The exercise lab on campus has a BodPod machine (all you studying exercise sciences know what I'm talking about). Basically it measures your body volume and based on that and your weight calculates fat and fat-free masses. I had done the measurement a few weeks after the beginning of the semester and then my body weight was 72kg and fat percentage 6.2. After that I hadn't even been on a scale once. I was expecting that I would have lost some muscle mass and gained some fat mass due to lower training volume and no upper body strength training during my injury period. Well it was quite a lot worse than that: bodyweight 76kg and fat percentage 13.4. I've never been even close to this heavy or fatty.

At this point I was still smiling

How is it even possible to make that kind of change in three months?

Mostly likely this change is not only caused by less training, but also nutrition has a part to play. The dining hall here (and as far as I've understood in most universities) is a buffet style (eat whatever and as much as you like). This is (evidently) dangerous in long term. Being in United States there is always pizzas, burgers and sodas available. Fortunately you can also choose healthier meal options and there is a quite diverse salad table, which is pretty much the same every day, though. Apparently the healthier meals seem to be quite energy dense too, because I've never had a burger in the dining hall and pizza only a few times. Some of the weight gain has to also be attributed to higher beer consumption. There are just too nice local breweries here.

A few weeks ago I saw somebody with a pair of Järvinen skis on the parking lot next to the ski trails and after a short conversation it turned out that she was originally from Finland. It was surprisingly difficult to switch language in the middle of a conversation by the way. Anyway, she invited me to have a Thanksgiving meal with her family, which was nice experience since we obviously don't have this holiday in Europe. This also reflects the hospitality that people here demonstrate. Just to give an overview how big holiday Thanksgiving is here, the Thanksgiving break lasted the whole week while Fall break was only one day.

Thanksgiving dinner

Last week my parents visited me for a few days while traveling in United States. In Grand Junction I took them to hike on Mt. Garfield and ski on Grand Mesa and we also visited Arches National Park again. Finally we traveled to Salt Lake City where we paid a visit to some of the locations of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. I also had some time to walk around the city the next day.

Finally some bad news for those who have expected me to come back to Finland soon (if there is any). I'm going to stay a couple of months longer to do my internship by working as the assistant coach of the ski team and as an assistant in the exercise lab on campus. But that's going to begin in January. For now I'm concentrating on the winter break when I'm doing a road trip to California with a friend of mine and visit some famous national parks on the way. Stay tuned for the report from that trip.

To return to my poor ski performance and horrible body composition I've decided that I have to start acting like an athlete again.