Euro Tour 2012 Begins

I traveled to Muonio, Finland, a small town 2 degrees North of the Arctic Circle last Sunday where our season begun this weekend with some FIS Openers.  These are the races where you blow some cobwebs out before hitting the World Cup next weekend.  It is pretty dark most of the day up here, as you will see from the pictures below, which have actually been lightened a bit on my computer!  Here are a few pictures from the week so far.

We started off the week with a school visit to one of the local middle schools.  The kids were shy at first, but then warmed up to us and began to practice their English, which, needless to say, is MUCH better than any of our Finnish!

Jessie racing hard yesterday in the Classic Sprints

Ida sprinting for the line.  The race started and ended on a very steep climb, so it was a real battle all the way to the line.

Holly with one of the volunteer kids, who are actually the same kids we visited earlier this week!

Simi racing in one of the heats.  He lost all of his bags on the way over and currently only has received 2 out of the 3 he checked!

Ida’s post race smile.

Part of the cheering crew, Sylvan and Noah.

Newell is in the yellow and black suit on the left.

Ida finished the day with a strong 6th place!

Newell finished the day in 4th!

Noah, Holly and I went to visit the owner of the local ski shop who knows Dave Knoop, Executive Director of NNF, one of the major donation sites for supporting up and coming cross country athletes in the USA.  He was fired up to get the “hello” from Dave!