A few crashes?

Once again, I'm sitting in my parent's basement, enjoying the Winter Olympics. How about those Canadian girls, eh?  We always knew Canadian girls rock :)  Didn't they use to make a t-shirt that proclaimed that very fact?  I have seen a few crashes, though, both in the alpine skiing and aerials.  Looks like they could have hurt :(

But I didn't do too much crashing this past weekend, even though I was involved in my very own Olympian feats!  There was yet another Adventure Race out in the mountains, which I was involved in as the "motivational" speaker.  I think I almost had more fun this past weekend than I did on the first weekend - partly, perhaps, because I had a little better idea of what to expect.  For a girl who lives in Africa and lives with rather a lot of uncertainty, I realized this past weekend just how much a little bit of knowing-what-to-expect helps me feel a lot more comfortable!  Anyways, the speaking went well, I think, and I had some really interesting conversations with some of the participants, which was cool.

Also, a funny little story... A different linguist had come out this past weekend to do the intro to linguistics.  I've met her once before - because we happened to be assigned seats on the same plane coming home from London!  It was one of those crazy "coincidences".  I always say a little prayer that I'll end up sitting next to someone friendly, but not too friendly, on those long plane rides.  There's nothing worse than being grumpy and jet-lagged and stinky and sitting next to someone who makes you feel even more grumpy.  Anyway, when I got on the plane in London (after 15 hours in the airport, plus a 9 hour flight from Uganda), I found myself sitting next to a friendly looking young woman.  As you do, I struck up a bit of a conversation just to establish where we were going and where we were coming from.  Turns out, she was also en-route from Africa, and had been doing some linguistic work over there!  She works for the same organization that I do, and is from the same city that I'm from... but we'd never met before we were assigned seats next to each other!  How crazy is that?!  Anyways, here she is in the Lodge, teaching some basic linguistics to the racers:

 

The next day dawned bright and clear (and yes, I was up BEFORE the dawn again... sigh...).  It was pretty cold at the start line, but quite quickly warmed up. I didn't think the weather could get better than it was the previous weekend, but it was incredibly warm!  Which was good, because while the teams ran up a mountain, I took the short-cut to the frozen water fall, which was all set up for climbing!

First, the crampons went on:

 

Then Jared let me and Jen across the tiny little path to the base of the water fall.  I think that was the scariest part of the whole ordeal!

 

Are these crampon things actually going to keep us from sliding down to certain death? 

Once we reached the climbing area, we got some good coaching from the experienced climbers.  I was so impressed by how patient and encouraging these guys were!  For those of you who know me... well, you know that I really don't have an athletic bone in my body. For me to even think about attempting to do something like climb a frozen waterfall... well, that's a pretty big achievement right there!  So I was really encouraged by these guys - they're obviously really good climbers, but didn't make me feel like a dork for being a complete klutz up there!  That's a major achievement on their part!

Lucky for me, there were a bunch of experienced climbing tutors waiting around for someone to tutor, so I had two of them literally giving me step by step instructions.

 

Once I was roped up, I felt pretty safe.  I didn't find the actual climbing scary at all - maybe it was because I was just concentrating so hard on getting the pesky little picks into the ice!  I realized that my left-arm triceps are pretty pathetic little muscles!  

I did completely slip out at one point.  Probably that should have been a bit scary, because there was quite a lot of bounce in the rope!  But the only thing I could think about was the fact that I had few inches on my way up the waterfall and had to re-climb a little way.  Man, it was tough!  Once I got the hang of it, it got a bit easier near the top, but the first 5 feet of climbing seemed to take forever and took SO much effort!

 

But I didn't give up!  And I made it to the top of that little climb.  Which, looking at the pictures now, it doesn't look so high.  But man, by the time I got to the top point there, my body felt like I had scaled to the top of the Empire State Building! 

 

The best part was the coming back down!  It was good fun, like sitting in a Laz-y-boy recliner and letting myself be lowered down on the rope!

 

I really felt quite proud of myself for doing something like this - how often am I going to get the chance to do it again?!   The hike out was gorgeous, as well. It was just such a beautiful day!  Once we got down to the meadows, we had a little picnic, enjoying the sun and the amazing clear blue sky.  How lovely it was.

 

After lunch, we drove back to the camp property, where I continued to enjoy the sun and fresh air by taking a walk around the lake... my Starbucks mug filled with Earl Grey tea.  Such a civilized way to enjoy nature, I'd say!

 

The second day of the weekend started out frighteningly cold.  I think my toes almost turned into little ice cubes whilst telling my inspirational story at the start line on Sunday.  But once again, the sun came out and warmed everything up.  By the time I made it out to the village with the villagers in tow, it was sunny and warm once again.

I got to learn a bit of Vietnamese at this village, so I had a great time munching on spring rolls and exclaiming how tasty they were in Vietnamese!  Gotta love words with tones and word initial velar nasals :)