Tag: cross-country skiing

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The Long Road To Getting Back Onto Inline Skates

I always liked inline skating. I had a great pair that I liked, and I rode them till I not only wore down the brake rubber but the screw that holds it in.

Once that screw’s head was worn down, it was impossible to remove it with a screwdriver and thus impossible to replace the brake pad. I took it to Sport Chek a few years ago, but they said the repair was beyond their ability, and that I’d have to drill out the remains of the screw. I knew I didn’t have the tools for that so I gave up for several years.

Until now; After last year’s misadventure on cross-country skis, I finally bought a new set of skate skis that I’ve been dying to try out. I nearly offered to join a Ski 2 Sea team that was short a skier, but it turned out a scheduling conflict would make me unable to go this year. Still, I wanted to start skate skiing soon, and I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t in good condition to pursue that. I figured getting back on my roller-blades was the best option to build up the right muscles and technical skills.

I sprung for a stronger drill bit and found a ‘screw extraction’ kit that could remove a screw that was stubbornly stuck once you bored a starter hole into it. Ultimately, once I had drilled that hole out of the screw, I was able to turn the screw with a set of needle-nose pliers, rather than the screw extraction kit. I ordered a new brake pad from Amazon and I was ready to go.

One of the things I like about inline skating is it can be done without getting too sweaty, so I’ve been keeping my skates and a helmet in my car. I found an opportunity to skate around the parking lot near the gymnastics club where my sons train.

 

I was also able to do some skating on my lunch hour at work.  The area has some multi-use trails, and not getting too sweaty meant I could resume working in the office afterwards.

That wasn’t much, but the Family Day Long Weekend came, and we made an overnight trip to Manning Park Resort. The meals in the Pinewood Restaurant were good, and on Monday morning, we rented skis for the ever-growing boys, and I finally got a chance to try skate skiing on my new skis.

When I first got my skis on and started skating, I got an almost nasty surprise as to how fast they were! In fact, it wasn’t long before they flew out from underneath me when I turned around to look behind me at how my son was progressing. There’s no network coverage in Manning, and we tried the Strawberry Flats trails that we always use. My Trailforks app did track my distance, and I figure I got 8km done. Unfortunately, I forgot to stop it before I started the drive home, so the record is useless.

The new skis were a joy to use, and it vastly improved my mood and salvaged a difficult weekend. I want to continue using my inline skates to keep up my cross-country ski conditioning. There may be roller skis in my future, but we’ll see for now.

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Manning Park, Coast Outdoor Sports, and Guardian Angels

My mother passed away 2 weeks ago. I’m not using this post to eulogize her, or talk about it much at all, except you need to know 2 things to understand this story:

  1. She was a great cross-country skier, and it’s something we did as a family very much when I was growing up.
  2. I had been looking forward to skiing that day, and feeling closer to her in spirit while doing it. I would have been closer to my father in spirit too.

I had recently ordered new Combi (i.e. hybrids that can accommodate both classic and skate ski styles) boots from Salomon, and I was looking forward to breaking them in that day. The plan was: go to church, then onto Manning Park – the kids would downhill ski together, while my wife and I would go cross-country skiing.

I don’t think I had my head screwed on straight that day. First, I missed the exit on the way to church, and taking the next one would have made us very late, so we decided to use the extra time to ski. Honestly, that’s probably how my mother would have wanted it. Upon arriving at the hill, we discovered that the Lightning Kid had forgotten his jacket, but so had I (even though I could swear I remembered throwing it in the trunk). My jacket also had my gloves in it. We managed to rent jackets from Manning – how cool is that? – and I bought mitts, so the kids took off and my wife and I headed back to the nearest cross-country trail head.

That was when I discovered I hadn’t packed my ski poles; if you’re keeping score, that’s jacket, gloves and poles forgotten so far. I thought I was a good enough skier to be able to skate without poles. I was able to get my right boot into the binding, but not the left. I told my wife to ski without me, because the only think worse than dealing with a frustrating situation is to do it with someone watching over your shoulder. I brought everything into the warming hut and it seemed like brute force could make it work, but I should have known something was off.

I went back outside to try and get the skis on, when someone skied up and asked if I had bought the boots and skis together. I explained the skis were from a ski swap, while the boots were brand new. It turned out the man was the manager of Coast Outdoors and that the bindings on the skis were SNS while my boots were the ProLink system. I was kicking myself for not checking on that beforehand, but they do look very similar, and apparently, it’s near impossible to get SNS equipment anymore. Thus since my boots needed to be upgraded, it would be time to upgrade the bindings not only on these skate skis but my classics also.

I was ready to give up on my day of skiing and being with my mother. While the failures of the day were my fault, somehow, I thought maybe the stars could align to make it happen despite them. That’s when Bram (who just happened to be the same height as me) offered to let me take his skis for a quick spin. I’d just do the small loop I knew my wife was on and try to catch up with her – right after falling onto my butt (his skis were very fast due to being waxed and maintained better than any other skis I’d owned). I broke a good sweat hustling my skate stride until I caught up to my wife. The entire time, I thought about my Mom, I thought about my Dad, I even thought about my Uncle Siegi who had passed away while skiing many years ago.

I guess I learned two things that day:

  1. Coast Outdoors is the place to go for your cross-country skiing (and paddling and snowshoeing needs). I’ll be going there for my new bindings and more.
  2. There may be someone watching over you.