Frozen Dick
5.03.04

Jesus, it's been a month, hasn't it? March already - the time does fly by. As usual I've been busy with work, socializing, sporting activities, and of course my daughter.

Skeleton season ended on the first of February with a no-rules race off the men's luge start, featuring multiple shots of schnapps between runs. That was interesting. Since then I've shown up at the track a few times to help with the tourist sessions, watched what I can on TV, and generally pined for next winter.

Skating is winding down, just a few more weeks' ice time at the Oval. The gravity sports have been a bit of a distraction, but I did race twice last month, both occasions outdoors. A few weeks ago I drove up to Edmonton for a 10 km race on a little man-made lake in a city park. The ice was terrible, soft and chewed to slush in the corners, but I stayed on my skates, gave myself one hell of a workout, and had fun after a fashion. I stopped before and after to see an old friend, an ex-pro cyclist, who lives nearby. I skied at Banff the next day and the combination just about destroyed my legs.

Then last Saturday I raced the 50 km marathon at Sylvan Lake, just west of Red Deer.
That was seriously fun. I enjoy being out on open ice so much more than whipping around in circles on the Oval. I actually won the 50 km event, though it doesn't really mean anything, there wasn't much competition as all the good skaters were doing the 200 km distance (the other male skater in our leading trio crashed on the final lap; the women's winner and I finished together, waving, holding hands and being quite content not to have to sprint against each other). I am definitely doing the long race next year, assuming that the weather cooperates. (This year it was around zero and sunny; last year twenty below and snowing.) An old friend of mine came fourth in the 200. He and I used to race bikes on the track in Seattle, back in the 1980s. I hadn't seen him for six or seven years, and for some reason he got into doing these marathons. If he can do it, so can I.

The biggest problem for me was that I'm not used to skating outside, so I did not think to wear windproof cross-country skiing underwear, and consequently I froze my dick. Jesus Christ did that hurt. I had to tear off my start number and stick it down the front of my suit to break the wind. (It didn't help much.) Freezing was bad enough, but thawing out after the race was pure agony. I spent ten minutes hunched over in the snow, crying and trying not to puke. It would have been bad enough by itself, but I was dying for a pee so the first thing I did after finishing was go; it turns out that firing hot liquid through a thawing member is not the brightest idea, particularly when one forgets not to hold it with the same hand that had been used to smear industrial-strength Tiger Balm all over one's back before the start. So I suffered an excruciating triple-whammy. Fuck me, that hurt. I'm cringing just thinking about it again.

Frozen dicks aside, the rest of the day was glorious. The atmosphere was fantastic, as there were close to a thousand Dutch (emigrants and tourists) whooping it up around the start/finish. I felt like I was back in Europe. I barely heard any English spoken.

In other sports news, we've been skiing maybe twice a month, and I'm still riding the bike to work every day, no matter how foul the weather (which wasn't particularly foul for most of February - not especially cold and no new snow). It's almost time to think about regular riding again but psychologically I'm still in winter sport mode.

Beyond that, various things to report. Annette is mid-semester busy. After an unsettling week in late January the job switched to a consultant basis, billing hourly, which means I make more money and work slightly shorter days. The only downside is the insecurity (which really isn't much of a downside for me) and the fact that I'll have to start socking a percentage away if I don't want to find myself in deep, deep shit come tax time next year. Meanwhile, keeping other irons in the fire, I'm pursuing a few other consultant gigs, but no definite news yet. (Work was quiet this week, so I pissed off yesterday morning for x-country skiing - fun - and today for downhill - even more fun.)

It's still not a done deal, but pretty close to 100 percent that we'll be off to Potsdam for July and August. The house-swap scheme has borne fruit, and no matter what happens to various research grant applications we probably have enough money to cover the travel costs. (We may even go through Iceland and spend a few days with my old Berlin embassy boss, who is now Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Land of Björk.) I don't yet know how this will affect work, but that's why I'm looking for some geographically-indifferent freelance gigs.

In the shorter term we're off for a long weekend skiing in mid-March, and back to Vancouver for Annette's parents' 50th anniversary party. Six German quasi-relatives (long story) are descending on her folks for the event, which none of us are happy about. I've taken to calling this the Anschluss, on the grounds that they were invited, so technically it's not an invasion.

Annette's parents came for a week in February, spending half of it with us. I barely saw them, being preoccupied with work and sporting commitments. They hung out with the kids and performed small tasks. No major house projects have been undertaken lately, for which I am thankful. Hopefully Annette won't get too ambitious in the spring - I'd rather be riding my bike than building decks.

Random Mitteleuropa note:

This could be just about anywhere between the Black Sea and the Baltic:

Sigulda, a town in the Vidzeme Region, is situated in the most picturesque part of the primeval Gauja valley. Reddish devon sandstone forms steep rocks and caves on both banks of the river. Because of this, since time immemorial Sigulda has been called the Switzerland of Vidzeme.

I don't know why I find this so funny, but I do. Perhaps because, technically, there hasn't been a Switzerland since time immemorial. (I discovered this while looking for info on the bobsled track in Latvia. That's what I do when I'm bored at work, memorize the turn sequence for all the tracks I want to slide on one day when I own my own sled and we do a winter sabbatical in Europe.)

Mads is herself and then some. February Firsts: 1. we bought her skates, upon which she is extremely wobbly; 2. we took her to a movie, The Triplets of Belleville, which she enjoyed (I'll be taking her to another matinee first chance I get).

Being winter, she's had a couple of 24-hour bugs, nothing abnormal. Selections from weary emails home:

At one point during the night, after I'd crawled into her bed, she dry-heaved a small amount of liquid into the mixing bowl I was using as a bucket. I put it down on the floor and went back to sleep. An hour (?) later I awoke to the sound of her beginning to retch so reached down, grabbed the bucket and whipped it over to her. A second later I heard a splattering noise as the liquid it had until recently contained hit the wall high above our heads. I decided to worry about it the next day, by which point the long vertical drips had dried so thoroughly I couldn't clean them. Oh well.

She didn't nap yesterday and consequently fell asleep in the car at six. We put her to bed and she basically stayed asleep until five this morning, at which point she got up and began watching cartoons, but would bellow happily at us and laugh whenever a new show came on so sleep didn't really happen after that either. So that's what an early riser is like. I had no idea.

Some days work can be a refuge.

Three weeks later:

Mads had a cold all weekend but it was pretty minor, really. She looked sick as a dog Friday after school, with raspy breathing, fever, the works. She threw up all over her mother (who stupidly moved the bucket at exactly the wrong moment) so we took her to the walk-in clinic, fully expecting strep throat, but literally in the time we were waiting she made a miraculous recovery. Saturday and Sunday she was sniffly but energetic. The only problem has been sleeping - she wakes all the time (even when I've tried to knock her out with cold & cough medication) so climbs into bed with us, where she coughs and sneezes and gurgles and whines and, for the past two nights, makes this extraordinary noise clacking her teeth, which aggravates her mother no end.