First Day of Competition -- 2008 JOs

Greetings from Anchorage. I'm finally adjusting, I think, to the local time and I've, at least, started to overcome the additional confusion of daylight savings (which has always been a rant of mine -- don't get me started).

Today was sprint day at the JOs -- the first day of competition. Among our locals, Christina Mishica came closest to moving to the next round. She placed 27th in qualifying among the OJs and 24 moved on to the quarterfinals. I did a story for Cross Country Skier with a newsy recap if you are interested (www.crosscountryskier.com).

Anchorage continues to suffer from weather. It was 44 degrees yesterday, 36 degrees this morning at 7 a.m and 40 this afternoon. Tough day for ski racers and ski race organizers.

Kincaid has this very large stadium area, complete with a nice two-story timing/announce building plus a permanent scoreboard. It must help to have a lot of oil money and Senator Stevens, who knows how to bring home the bacon. The stadium looks to have suffered the most from the recent rain and warm temperatures. It sits in a bowl and is basically a sheet of ice with no hope of being groomed.

This is a look at the stadium area at Kincaid Park today.

Organizers had to change the sprint course plus abandon the stadium area altogether and move both the start and finish. The course and tracks held up well this morning. It is windy at the venue which seems to be helping keep the snow colder.

The start line was only accessible to skiers and coaches and was not visible from any spectator area. The finish line was at the very edge of the stadium, with very limited viewing. We could watch the skiers come down a hill, make a 90-degree turn and head up the last 50 meters to the line.

The temperatures are supposed to stay in the mid- to upper-30s the next couple of days, but lows are supposed to dip to around 27 tonight and tomorrow. The media center person told me they hope to get out their new Pisten Bully and crunch up the ice tonight and/or tomorrow. But I'm writing this at 8:15 p.m. and it is still 37.

Tomorrow is a training day for the skiers. I'm going to take a trip to Girdwood, south of Anchorage, and gander at a glacier and do some other sightseeing.

I looked around downtown Anchorage this afternoon, which has a lot of t-shirt shops but also a five-story mall, complete with Nordstroms, in the middle of town. We wandered into the Alaska Troopers museum, which was interesting -- some old police equipment like breathalyzers and lie detectors, and some interesting stories about life for troopers stationed in places inaccessible to the rest of the state (except by air).

They also have a sort of visitors center in the federal building for all of the wild lands and national parks in the state. I watched a documentary about the earthquake of 1964 that registered 9.5 on the Richter scale, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America.

So there's your race recap, your weather report and your attraction reaction all in one spot.

Moose on the Loose in Anchorage

Today was opening ceremony day at the JOs (2008 Junior Olympics in Anchorage, where I'm spending the week, along with my wife, Jan, and Teresa Shoup).

We started the day with a ski and the consensus is that this will be the last ski for us this week. The temperature, as I write this at 4:30 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time, is 42 degrees. We went out at 9 a.m., in honor of those of you starting the Great Bear Chase. Even then, the temperature was 36. The trails have snow, but are icy and rutted, since it hasn't been below freezing in at least three days.

I made a couple of nifty slide turns at the bottom of hills that, while looking quite classy on any highlight reel, effectively removed my klister. So I basically skated a few loops on my striding skis.

I interviewed the chair of the JO organizing committee before the opening festivities (in my media capacity with Cross Country Skier magazine -- see today's report at www.crosscountryskier.com). They had a shoveling party yesterday and are plotting trail re-routes today.

Kincaid Park is huge -- something like 1400 acres. Some of the trails go along the ocean or sound or whatever they call this body of water that connects to the Pacific. Those deteriorate first in marginal weather, so they'll be moving Wednesday's classic race inland. They have a boatload of trails at Kincaid (60 km).

Tomorrow is sprint day and the biggest problem has been the stadium. There is water in part of it, but most of it is still snow. So they've reconfigured that and still have a decent 1.3 km loop. Temps will stay above freezing tonight and are predicted to approach 42 again Monday. I recommend the Rex yellow klister that I had (briefly) on my skis today.

And, finally, two things about Alaska.

They think big. I reserved a compact car for $99 for the week. Here in Alaska, that means a 2008 four-door Chevy Silverado. More power, baby.

(Actually, the cars they had didn't have back seats that fold down and we have this at no additional cost. That beast will hold a lot of groceries.)

The second thing -- the stories about city moose are true. We sat as one crossed the road in front of us about three doors down from our apartment. And this apartment is in a city neighborhood, with houses close together like in west Houghton only closer.