JO's

I'm BACK!!!  I'm back and happy to say that Junior Olympics was a blast!  To keep this simple I'm going to tell this story in chronological order.

Wednesday.
We drove to the airport around 7pm.  Everything went smoothly until we found out that the plane was over it's allowed weight by 400lbs.  So, either we throw one 400 pound dude off, or we throw two 200 pounds dudes off, or we burn off 400 pounds of fuel.  I think that the extra ski bags had something to do with this.  Roughly 250 pairs of skis weigh alot.  We waited about 30 minutes for the fuel to burn away.  Then we took off (which took forever, we must have used alot of runway).  Also during take-off we skidded sideways as we left the ground (added excitement!) The flight was 6 hours long and extremely boring.  It was also bumpy so total sleep equaled =30minutes= Not enough!
Thursday
We landed, rode the train, walked half a mile to our hotel(which was high class).  We then crashed for five hours.  Then we had lunch, went for a 30 minute run, explored, ate dinner, and crashed again.  (I didn't know this but Minneapolis' buildings are almost all connected by skyway, hence, we could go for miles without actually going outside). 
Friday 
We got up at 8am, had breakfast(tasty), and rode the school bus to the venue.  We skied for an hour and a half, and checked out all the race courses.  I was told it was going to be flat.  LIES!  It was hilly and hard.  The climbs were long and hard.  The downhills were really weird.  They were long and straight, unlike Anchorage hills which are long and twisty.  The downhills reminded me of a ski jump without the jump.
Saturday
We skied again Saturday practicing some more technical stuff, like where to start skating and where to tuck,etc.  That evening I went to church which was nice.  
Sunday
We skied yet again for a very short time however, 40 minutes.  Then we explored some more and got ready for opening ceremonies.
 
Random Alaskans walking in


More random people
Photos from Bert Boyer

Opening ceremonies were cool.  They had all kinds of speeches, from many different people (one from a member of the NFL Hall of Fame)!  Then the drum band performed. The dancers danced.  And the Games begun.

Monday
The first JO race was fast and furious.  It started at noonish.  I was towards the back of the start order.  My race was over in a little more than 2 minutes.

Me looking super tired.

I finished 39th.  The top 30 move on.  Therefore, I'm done for the day.  I left with fellow J2 boys David and Troy on the bus we nicknamed "The Bus of Shame," because it was the early bus for the people who did not move on.  When we got back we went in the sauna after getting permission from our coaches.  We had been in it before,but that was at 175.  We got in and after 10 minutes (which is not that long at 175), we gave up.  We then found out that the people before us had dumped a ton of water on the rocks and the sauna was at 220(Trivia: What temperature does water boil at in Fahrenheit?).  David, Troy,and I agreed that it was to warm and that we would not sauna above 180.  It was pretty funny, when we found out why we couldn't stand it.  We thought we were being wimpy.  After the sauna adventure, we ate dinner, and took a bus ride back to the venue to cheer on our team.  We stood in a really cool spot where we could see they start and finish for about an hour when this guy with an officials bib walks us and says "Hey dudes, you can't stand there."  We pointed out that we had been there for an hour already, but the guy insisted we move.  We were pretty bummed about moving. After watching the rest of the heat, we went to the hotel to catch some zzz's

The rest of the week will be posted later.  Sorry for all the typos.
Boo out