We finished our week-long training camp in Bend with a great 3 hour OD ski on Friday morning, then a few hours of (successful) rock climbing at Smith. A large Dairy Queen Blizzard, dinner and sleep later, we were on the road from Bend at 7:30am on Saturday morning, making our way up to Bellingham for the Ski To Sea relay race in which we were all skiing a cross country leg for different teams.br /br /Earlier last week Scott had mentioned the brakes on the van were sounding strange. Being unable to remove the rear brake drum to examine them he utilized his innovative mechanical know-how and clamped off the rear brake line with some vice-grips and duct-taped them onto the chassis, essentially cutting off the power to the brakes. This quick-fix worked great until we hit Madras on Saturday morning to get gas and saw smoke POURING out of the rear wheel well. Not being very up on my brake mechanics I attempted to call first Scott, then my dad. Neither answered and we were left wondering where to go to get them fixed, it being Saturday morning of Memorial Day. We finally spied a Les Schwab and got some help. The guys there said we should take the clamps off first to release the pressure. Then he was kind enough to acknowledge that if he did start working on the brakes and found there were metal-on-metal or in any way unsafe, he wouldn’t let us leave until they were fixed, and he had no parts in stock for the VW van. We opted to risk it and drove off. Fortunately no ill came to us and we made it safely to Bellingham!br /div style=”text-align: center;”img src=”file:///Users/dcrosbyhelms/Downloads/rephoto/bend1%20038.jpg” alt=”” /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mg2hQbkHkNs/TAU_bXk0IEI/AAAAAAAAAas/lxWvHZ6vR0I/s1600/bend1+038.jpg”img style=”display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mg2hQbkHkNs/TAU_bXk0IEI/AAAAAAAAAas/lxWvHZ6vR0I/s320/bend1+038.jpg” alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5477854261183520834″ border=”0″ //aspan style=”font-style: italic;”Brake repair in the Les Schwab parking lot…br //span/divbr /The race itself was a great time – lots of people and the weather at Mt. Baker was partly sunny. Brian represented really well, coming in a mere thirty seconds behind Ivan Babikov, Canada’s 5th place Olympian from Vancouver. Erik was right on Brian’s tail, another thirty seconds back. Torin and I struggled a bit with the steep course and soft snow as we were unable to throw down our signature power skiing; Torin held well with the lead group and I came in around a minute later. Definitely a fun race and a great way to get some ski-specific intensity in late May!br /br /Now it’s back to the grindstone with uphill ski striding, paddleboarding and muscular endurance all on the schedule for this week. Train on!div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2910103639238326543-6383914980667303802?l=methowolympicdevelopment.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div
