Tänndalen

Sunday afternoon, we packed up and left for Tänndalen, courtesy of a mini-bus driven by Erik, with some Austrians and a whole bunch of skis. Things went pretty smoothly, except for the point where Cristina and I mooned two separate cars while peeing basically in the shoulder of the road (the snow banks were too deep to climb into). We got to the event center by 4pm, found our rooms, and then some dinner and some other Americans.

Sunday and Monday have been super sunny and nice out, and we've acquainted ourselves with the general layout of Hotel Tänndalen (I just like typing Tänndalen. Umlauts are so cool).
There is a good dynamic in the girls' team, and the guys seem to be behaving as well. We're in two separate suites - the girls have a cozy one (that we actually like better, because there is a nice area for stretching, and a clothes-drying machine thing), and the guys have a slightly larger one with leather couches.

Nikolay, Greg, and Ali, relaxing in the swank (soon to be stank) room.

The Swedish Ski-O Tour company has a Ski-WOC car. So cool. Makes me feel PRO.

Very Swedish-looking place, with thatched roofs.

This is the view through Cristina's night vision goggles. It just looks cool, though blurry.

This is our waxing area. The table is quite wobbly, so Ali is performing the extremely important job of stabilizing the benches.

I like the Spanish team's suits, so I took a picture of one.

One of the Italian women skiing past a control. We're using the touch-free EMIT timing (like we did in December), which is awesome because you can just ski past a control, whack at it with your hand, and keep going. Today was the model event, (map), so we got to practice all sorts of things, like flying past controls, narrowly avoiding trees, and face-planting into snowbanks.
Walking to the opening ceremonies. I feel like there are a lot of photos of me in a red jacket and a hot pink hat.

And if you can't get enough of the media... here's a link to the US Orienteering Team blog, that has a sweet video of our pre-model-event ruminations. I think it's mostly giggles.

Tomorrow is the first race - the sprint! I'm nervous, but I feel good about this. Just go fast and don't mess up, simple.