From NH to CA

Sunday was the NENSA women's xc ski day, one of my favorite days of the year - basically, 20 female instructors teach 200 women how to ski, and we all have a great time. I was teaching the intermediate skate group, morning and afternoon, and my afternoon group conferred with each other for a bit and then announced to me, "We like you!" Who knows what I did to deserve that, but it made me feel good. This is even after I made them do crunches in the snow (I've decided I really like that drill).

Skier fashion show - this is why skiers don't make it to high fashion.




I got back to Boston around 7pm, and began some packing chaos - I had a flight out to Reno for the Sierra Ski-o week at 11am on Monday. I managed to get all the skate skis I was bringing cleaned and waxed with an appropriate temperature of LF (so that I could just scrape them, test them, and race), and everything into a ski bag, with plenty of time to spare for getting to the airport. I had a brief moment of panic when the TSA lady told me that my waxing iron was considered a power tool, and thus couldn't take it on the plane.
TSA: This is considered a power tool. It heats up.
Me: Yes, if you plug it in.
TSA: Right.
Me: There aren't any outlets on the plane.
TSA: You can't fly with this.
It was like two idiots trying to convince each other of something. In the end, she won, because, well, she had the badge. But seriously. A powertool? I could understand if they said it was a blunt object and therefore a weapon, but what am I going to do, brand someone?

Luckily, they let me take it back out and put it in a cardboard box to check. Phew. And, I arrived safely with no delays and with all my baggage. Crazy!

Now I have five races over six days at altitude to deal with. My plan is to take the first day pretty conservatively, so that I don't have a repeat of West Yellowstone where I lost 6 pounds in a week. Taking things easy... not my forte.