What's a Hog Loppet?

“This will be our ‘swan song’,” I said to Leo as he completed the entry form downloaded from the internet. What a more fitting way of saying good bye to the Pacific Northwest, I thought, than to join 500 other cross-country skiers and traverse the trails in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Although we had learned cross-country skiing years ago in Chicago, we had taken the Mountaineers Nordic ski course in 2003 when we first moved to Seattle. We were now labeled intermediate skiers, but little did I know that “swan song” might have been a prophetic choice of words.
We were returning to Chicago, to be closer to the family, especially the new generation that had come onto the scene in the previous two years. We were excited about our new adventure but there was a sadness about leaving. Besides those close and precious friendships that had grown and developed in the past four years, I was going to miss the mountains. It was comforting living in a beautiful city like Seattle with mountain ranges to the east and west and Mount Ranier and Mount Baker to the south and north respectively. I figured, what better why to say goodbye than to take our acquired skills and spend the day skiing in the mountains?
As usual I hadn’t fully read the details of the day’s events until sending in our check registering us for the big event that was sponsored by the Leavenworth Winter Activities Club. I was much more interested in figuring out the meaning of the name, Hog Loppet.
“We saw the word ‘loppet’ when we were skiing in Lake Louise,” said Alice, my good friend who had invited us to join her and her husband, Chuck, a certifiable mountaineer leader, on the full day ski trip. They had been wanting to do this event for many years. “I think it just means a long cross-country ski experience.”
Long is right; the brochure informed us that the route was 30 kilometers long. “But remember, a lot of that is downhill,” said Chuck after I began to question the soundness of signing up for the trip. In total denial, I started picturing myself on skis gracefully gliding down to the finish line. But what about the “hog” part (with two dots over the ‘o’)?
“There’ll probably a pig roast at the top,” Leo offered, who, besides always thinking of food, also seemed to be in denial about the skill level required to accomplish this feat. Well, at least the brochure said there would be “aid stations” with snacks and water. Alice was hoping for chocolate, I was hoping for hot chili while wondering if “aid” referred to first aid.
About a week before we traveled to Leavenworth I re-read the brochure (okay, I admit it, I don’t read carefully) about taking a chairlift to the beginning of the course. Chairlift? Not being a downhill skier, I couldn’t quite picture why we would need to do that.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have no trouble,” said Carol, a woman we met while practicing our skills at Cabin Creek, our favorite spot with lots of ups and downs about an hour and a half from home. “There’s a couple of steep parts at the beginning, but mainly you’re on a road with a gentle down. I did it last year and had a ball.” She was about my age and had just skied around the loop we’d finished in about an hour. “Let’s see, that’s about four miles, so it should take me about five hours to complete…,” she said to us, talking about the length of the course. I’m into endurance, and I began feeling confident I could complete the route…maybe not in five hours though.
Three days later, on a practice trip with Alice and Chuck, I lost the little bit of confidence I had. I’d had full control of my skis at Cabin Creek, but coming down the forest road we had just skied up for four miles my skis had minds of their own, and I kept falling. And falling isn’t the worst part, it’s the getting up that zaps your energy. I wondered if I would have enough energy left to complete a 20 mile course if I was going to be falling all the time.
The next day I asked my next door neighbor, a young athletic woman, for some advice.
“Molly, I know you’ve skied all over these mountains, and I know you’re good. Can you tell me the secret of how not to fall when you’re whizzing down?”
“Do you have good skis?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got metal-edged, which I know will help, but I’m still worried…” I began.
“Look, Sue, trust your skis; let them do the work. Oh, and when I’m going down the hill I just giggle to stay relaxed. If you tense up, it doesn’t work.”
Sounded like sage advice, so I made a mental note of it and went inside the house and began packing.
At 6 a.m. that Saturday my confidence was still at an all time low as we drove with Alice and Chuck to the Convention Center to catch the bus. “Trust your skis, trust your skis” ran through my head as we stowed our skis and poles in the luggage area and climbed aboard the bus. Fifteen minutes later we were climbing a mountain in a heavy snow. “Isn’t this beautiful,” I said to Leo as the bus continued to climb, smiling and trying to act calm. I had just heard the guy behind me describe the course. “So after you take the second chair lift…” Second chair lift? “you have a really steep down. Last year I tried my skate skis and it was miserable…then you’re in two deep bowls and you can really get your speed up…” What had we gotten ourselves into?
But after the bus arrived at the lodge there was no time at all to think. We had to register, pick up our numbers which we pinned to our packs, put on our skis, and somehow hop on the first of two chair lifts. It was during the ride on that second chair lift that I realized we were really headed to the top. The wind began to blow, the snow was falling sideways, I wished I had ski goggles like Alice and Chuck, and I dropped my plastic pad that we used to sit in the snow when we stopped for lunch.
“Oh well,” I said, spying the pad far below in the snow, “at least I didn’t drop my poles!”
We somehow made it off the chair lift by holding our packs in one hand and our poles in another. Trust your skis, trust you skis, trust…oh my god look at that down hill! I stopped, tried to keep my mind totally blank, put on my pack, put a pole in each hand and headed down. Whew! I trusted those skis, and they did the job. I started giggling hysterically. Funny, it was really cold, but fear and a rapidly beating heart were keeping me warm.
Leo, on the other hand, had fallen. But I wasn’t going to worry about him. I knew he was strong and focused and a good skier. Trusting Leo and his ability was a lot easier than trusting the skis strapped to my feet. I continued skiing down following Chuck’s lead. Volunteers were placed along the course to show us the way. I fell a few times, but soon realized that my skis were the right ones for the course and the new snow, all 9 inches of it, was slowing me down. Two and a half hours after we began skiing we came to the aid station. Water, oranges, red licorice and cookies replenished the body and a fire pit warmed the hands.
We had five and a half more hours of skiing. We did it just like we do everything. One ski in front of another on the ups, then letting the skis do the work on the downs. At the second aid station we got hot chocolate and some hot noodles. We had already eaten our PB and Js. We were tired but when we heard we had eight miles to go, we could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t believe it when we skied the final few feet. I was 441st out of 480 skiers. The biggest surprise came after I took off my skis and walked to the bus. On the other side of the road I saw a sign that read, “Blewett Pass 4100 feet.” We had skied DOWN to the TOP of a pass!
“So did you have fun?” the volunteer at the finish line had asked.
“It was great,” I’d replied. But I’ve heard this question before. We don’t really have fun when we take on these adventures. We accomplish something. It’s satisfying only when it’s over, and when you’re having a beer. “We did it,” we said, clinking our beer bottles at the Mexican food restaurant that night.
Leo’s been questioning the wisdom of getting involved in something that challenging. And then we got an email from a good friend of ours from Australia. He teaches for Notre Dame in their graduate outdoor education program. Malcolm sent a quote, “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming woo hoo, what a ride!” (hunter thompson)

Moon Views

Isn't it amazing that when I looked at the moon last month from the southern hemisphere and it was shaped like a football, you saw the same shape from your Midwest backyard? It was comforting. And now you're on a train chugging (I know, trains don't chug anymore) its way across Oklahoma, while I'm out here on my Seattle deck spying a smiley-faced moon. Are you looking at it too, now? It'll be late in Oklahoma but you'll be awake, I know. And as I stare into these familiar features, the rounded shadowed cheeks and semi-smile I feel closer to you. When I tried it in New Zealand, I knew you were still in yesterday's afternoon. I was hours, almost a day even, away from you. That time separated us more than miles.
But I like thinking about time and the relativity of it, even though I can't take in Einstein's perspective. People, some very smart ones, have tried to explain it to me. It always starts like this, "You're on a fast moving train. You throw a ball to your friend. A person outside the train sees the ball move..." Then I get lost. But I think it has something to do with being in different places at the same time. I wish I could do that. Then I could be in new lands in New Zealand while visiting you in the Midwest. At the same time. But that sounds selfish, and I'd hate to have anyone think that of me.

Paradise

What's your picture of paradise? Yeah, an isolated island with palm trees, white sand, clear ocean water and blue skies. Well, we found it. It's about an hour's boat ride and a fifteen minute bus ride from Nadi City, Fiji. That's where we spent our last two nights before returning home.
We're in paradise but we're not totally comfortable with it. For one thing, we're just not used to being waited on. We've gone from over twenty-five days of sleeping in a tent or a camper van to a hotel in Fiji with lots of staff, a free shuttle from the airport and a modern room with a balcony. We feel self-conscious. For one thing there's not a lot of tourists at the Hotel Mercure, and we worry about how much to tip. "Tipping isn't expected in Fiji but if the service is particularly good, it's appreciated," according to the Lonely Planet guidebook. And we think it's appreciated because business is slow. Whenever we step out of the hotel three people ask us if we need a cab.
"No, Vinanka, [one of two words we've learned in Fijian], we're just taking a walk." And we go down the street to a small dark store and buy instant noodles for breakfast. The hotel has a breakfast buffet every morning but it cost $30 each! They fix all this food, and I only see a few people down in the dining room every morning.
Business is slow because just last month there was a military coup. "Don't worry, there are coups in Fiji every few years and they're always bloodless," an American on the airplane from L.A. told me. He'd married a Fijian woman, and he shared his point of view of the conflict. A few hours later another American who volunteers on an organic farm near Aukland three months every year gave me another perspective.
In Fiji, you see two cultures: the people who are descended from Polynesians and Melasians who settled there centuries ago and the Indo-Fijians descended from East Indian contract laborers brought in to work the sugarcane fields by the British who had colonized the islands. Now the Indo-Fijians own most restaurants, stores and services, and there seems to be a disagreement about who's not getting a fair shake.
Because our hotel is four km. from the beach we decide to sign up for a day boat ride. A bus picks us up at 8:45 am and the 18 tourists and ten crew from the boat spend most of the time on an uninhabited island boat singing, snorkeling, kayaking and eating barbeque. That's the paradise part I was talking about. We even join in on a traditional Fiji Kava ceremony. Kava is made from a root and is mixed with water. You clap your hands once, shout "Bula" and drink from a coconut shell. It has the same significance of passing the peace pipe only instead of smoking a communal pipe you're drinking diluted wallpaper paste from a communal coconut cup.
Ah, paradise! But I keep thinking, "What'd I do to deserve this?" It feels surreal. Hmmm, it must be that Midwest upbringing. I come from Kansas farmers whose creed was work hard, don't spend too much, be thankful for little pleasures, and work hard. Somehow island life doesn't fit this belief system. The island mantra is "take it easy, enjoy life, no hurry."
But actually that's only on the surface because many people here work six days a week, long days. Natani not only picked us up at our hotel, but he was the tour director on the boat, played the ukelele, posed for pictures, made sure we knew where the life jackets were, took us out for a snorkeling experience, helped cook the lunch and made sure we got on back to our hotels by six pm. A long day.
We also just completed a long day. We went to the airport on Thursday, February 1st at four pm. We boarded the plane at 10:20 pm. Somewhere over the Pacific we set our clocks back 19 hours as we took the ten hour plane ride to Los Angeles. Then after a three hour layover, we boarded another plane for home. Two and a half hours later we land in Seattle. It was February 1st, 6:30 pm. So that means we landed yesterday earlier than when we boarded. BULA!