The Juniors raced fast this weekend. Not just kinda fast…collectively our group brought the HEAT to Lake Placid! But given a split-second to think about it, those
#Vanlife and the best ski race tailgate around!
races themselves weren’t the heart of the weekend: they were just a component of it.
For everything we do, the larger element tying everything together is the hype, the fun, the atmosphere, the mood, the VIBE. If you’re sick of me referencing the vibe yet, year after year, well…I’m not going to stop, especially when it is right there to get absorbed in!
Not everyone would consider it “fun” to spend their weekend waking up at 5:30AM on Saturday, driving and ferrying across a lake to race in two rollerski races, crashing on beds, cots, couches, and air mattresses early enough to wake up at 6:00AM Sunday to ski up a mountain. It takes a certain type of person to put this on their schedule. And it takes a certain group of people to turn it into a fun and hilarious adventure.
The coincidentally-titled “Vybe” which is a high-powered massage device from hell
Whether it was attacking each other with a pulsating cordless-drill-lookin’ recovery massage tool, Google translating savage Swedish put-downs, recording dance moves on pop culture’s definitive teen app of September 2019, or snapping our jaws apart trying to chew on overcooked lasagna noodles…this group was in it 100% this past weekend. There’s something about being tossed in a van and hauled around the ski world that brings out the vibe in a group. By the time 8:00PM rolled around on Saturday we were all all gathered in the living room, brought together not by some forced team activity but by the collective experience of “are you as tired as I am?” Instead of screens in our faces, the team was joking around and laughing, first at various antics and then just the hilarious state of our tiredness.
When the vibe is rolling along like that, there doesn’t need to be some taskmaster or drill sergeant running the show. Instead of feeling like students on a field trip, we all feel like we’re in the moment together: dishes get cleaned and put away, beds get made-up, lunches for the following day get packed, and these things all happen with a shared understanding of a group effort.
This is the same team who within the weekend raced to podiums left-and-right, cut MINUTES off their race times from previous years, and most definitely had the best tailgate going in the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex parking lot. The vibe and the results are tied together like you wouldn’t believe. It’s a reference I’ve made before: but it’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Do strong results fuel the vibe? Or does the strong vibe fuel results? Safe to say a little bit of both, with a snowball effect being the ultimate goal, picking up speed and size and hurtling uncontrollably toward the race season!
Although it probably does not do justice in sharing the true experience, here are some clips from the weekend compiled into a vlog:
Bringing home the BACON..or the soy bacon, in Rose’s case 😉
Warmup time at the Jump Loops
Comments are closed.