Race Story: Wooden Ski Adventure
I had a dreadful night sleep on Monday, February 21st. Just 5 days before the Birkie and I had another significant ski-building set back.Let me back up. My brother, Dave, sister-in-law, Josie and myself were selected to be the mascots for the American Birkebeiner and re-enact the epic adventure of the two Birkebeiner warriors, Torstein(the large bearded Norwegian that would be played by my brother with the massive beard) and Skervald(the clean-shaven warrior I would represent). My sister-in-law was to be Inga(the mother to Prince Haakon). The prince of course was to be my nephew, Karl. We were provided traditional looking clothing and were to ski on wooden skis. Until this winter I had never skied on a true pair of wooden skis. We were all super excited with our "mascot" position but we also wanted to assure that it would be a truly epic adventure. My brother and I realized that in order to make it more realistic and challenging that we would have to design and build our own skis and bindings as well. We also decided that it would be truly momentous if somehow we were also actually able to carry a real child rather than the doll that has been used in the past. We were careful not to reveal our desire to carry Karl the entire distance because we had no idea what the conditions would be like, how Karl would handle being carried for over 6 hours and whether the Birkie board would allow us.
Dave and I had been planning ski design since the middle of December when the three of us were selected. We didn't have any experience building skis and therefore after a little research each came up with our own unique plans. Dave chose to build a steam box and used the heat and moisture to bend the ski to the desired camber. I wanted a little longer ski, with a more aggressive tip than I thought a steam box could achieve, so I started making a laminated ski. I built a form, cut thin strips of black ash and glued each piece together. I first built a couple of trial skis until I felt confident that the laminated ski approach would work. My goal was to have the skis completed a month prior to the Birkie so that I would have plenty of time to practice on them. As can easily be inferred, however, my ski building prowess turned out to be significantly less than I expected.
By the end of January, I had built two laminated skis and had even tried some leather bindings with mukluks with relatively good success. I figured the skis would function fine, but didn't really like the look of all the laminations. During the first week of February, Elaine and I drive down to the Twin Cities and spent a day with Dave and Josie. Dave showed me his beautiful newly bent, nicely cambered skis and I was definitely a little jealous. Since we still had plenty of time, I brought the steam box back up to Duluth along with two nice pieces of white ash wood that our friend Olie had cut using his portable sawmill. I planed the skis down, steamed both skis for an hour and a half in my basement and used the forms from my wax bench to hold the camber. I was quite pleased with the result. I finished sanding the skis and then placed a few layers of polyurethane to seal the top while I waited for the Swix Pine Tar that I had ordered online. At some point, however, I realized that both skis had a significant warp to them caused by some uneven graining in the wood. I knew they would still work, but I wanted to make them a little better. I placed the skis back in the steam box two additional times until at one point, I torqued the skis a little too hard and I heard an awful snap. As you might have guessed, I didn't sleep so good that night, either.
With a few weeks before the Birkie, I realized that my time was running out, so I went back to my laminate skis and placed two new thin laminations which really looked nice. I attached two pieces of 5" leather for the binding and placed 3 layers of polyurethane. On Monday afternoon, before having a chance to place the pine tar and try out the skis, the local TV station called and asked for an interview. I accepted but when they wanted to video the skis, I made it clear that they had never even been skied on yet. The interview went fine and that evening I pine tarred the bases and went out for a quick jaunt onto some snowmobile trails to try out my works of art. I was pretty excited and wondered how fast they would be. I made it about 50 feet until the stiff, somewhat narrow, unbelievable long ski slipped sideways into the powder. My ski was completely on edge, but the leather binding and mukluk were unable to support the ski. I immediately realized that a very stiff 8' long ski needs to be more than 2" wide in order to stay upright. Thus, the dreadful night sleep I got on the Monday before the Birkie.
I remember as a child, my dad would wake up in the morning and be so excited that he had solved some sort of problem that had been bugging him all night. I didn't get much sleep Monday night, but I had a plan on Tuesday morning and got up over an hour before the alarm clock. I decided to proceed with two different ski designs, a new bent steam box ski and a continued customization of the laminated skis. Elaine could sense my stress and started providing much needed assistance to the building process. While I was at work, she made an emergency trip to the local sawmill and picked up some beautiful black ash boards. They were perfectly straight and planed nice and smooth. I had hoped to have the skis over 1" thick in the middle, but I decided that the 7/8" boards would do. On Tuesday night, we cut and planed the boards down and fired up the steam box once more. To customize my previous laminated skis, I added sidewalls to widen the ski and planed down the middle to decrease the stiffness.
I came home from work an hour early on Wednesday. Elaine and I were scheduled to drive down to Cable for the Birkie VIP dinner. Before we left, I removed the new bent skis from the form. They were beautiful, but the flex was unfortunately quite soft. The laminated skis weren't so pretty, but the sidewalls turned out reasonably well and the flex was adequate, too. I contemplated skipping the dinner but was glad that we didn't (the food was amazing and it was great to talk to some super nice people). After another late night and a lot of driving we made it home just before 11:00PM. I considered working on my skis but decided that sleep was more valuable.
During my lunch hour on Thursday, I managed to slip home and Elaine and I fired up the table saw. Elaine had purchased some fast setting wood glue and we quickly added one additional veneer layer to the new soft bent skis. On Thursday evening, Elaine and I added pine tar, bindings and polyurethane to the bent skis. I was pleased with the result and decided that the old laminated ski would be my backup. The stress level was finally down.
On Friday morning, we awoke early and after a quick morning at work, drove down to Cable for the opening ceremonies. I felt like a celebrity as hundreds of people wanted to take pictures of us. After all of the pictures, Dave, Karl, Elaine and I set out for a quick ski and first test run of the new bent skis. Karl was strapped on my back and we took off. His 26lb frame definitely slowed things down, but after a little while I got used to it. As Dave and I skied around the little practice loop, we went down a small hill and turned the corner to a short steep section. We both struggled with the downhill because the leather bindings made edging and turning the skis quite tricky. It was the uphill however that really surprised us. The hill was too steep to kick up so we naturally assumed the herringbone position. Our skis were so long, however, that our tails got caught on themselves and the bindings and boots made it difficult to keep the ski in an edge position. In addition, since our skis were so long, we each took up most of the trail trying to herringbone. As Dave, Karl and I stood in the middle of the hill and contemplated how we were going to make it up, we looked at each other, smiled and realized that this was going to be an epic adventure.
After one of my best night sleeps of the week, Elaine and I got up at 4:30AM on Saturday morning. We ate a hearty breakfast of eggs and oatmeal and headed down to Telemark. Just before arriving in Telemark, I slipped on my black mukluks, tied on the birch leggings and got ready to be dropped off. I stuffed some wax and GUs in my pocket, put on my metal helmet, grabbed my 8' long skis and started hiking to the start.
I met up with Torstein, the lovely Inga and the prince on the way to the start. After some more pictures and a quick interview with Dennis Kruse, the three of us started on our adventure at 7:50AM, ten minutes before the elite classic skiers. As we started out, the prince was strapped onto the back of Inga and the two of them were beaming with excitement. After talking to a few of the Birkie founders we headed up the trail and made it to the power lines by the time the elite wave caught up to us. It was so much fun to cheer on all of our close friends and everyone else who seemed like a close friend. The tracks were perfect, but weren't quite designed for an 8' ski. All the corners were a little tricky. When the tracks remained, the skis would bind as I went around. When the tracks were removed, I often found myself barely staying on the trail as I tried to step turn around the corner. Despite having significantly slower skis than Inga and Torstein, I was feeling great and having a wonderful time. At OO, we stopped for a diaper change, a binding repair(Torstein's heel strap broke) and some refueling. The prince was happy for a quick nursing and an opportunity to stretch his legs as well. After a half hour, we continued our adventure. I chose to carry the prince for the next stage. Initially, my legs felt quite weak over the added weight, but after awhile I didn't notice it much. Fortunately, we slowed the pace and after a few kilometers, I was able to lullabye the prince to sleep. For the next 8 km, I continued with the soft singing and rushed through the food stop to avoid waking him.
We stopped at Mosquito Brook for some more fueling and to transfer the prince to Torstein. Torstein, the prince and Inga seemed to sense that the finish was approaching and picked up the pace. I was still feeling OK, but as each kilometer went by, I could sense my fatigue increasing exponentially. I wasn't used to skiing for over 6 hours and hadn't planned my fuel intake quite right either. With less than 5 kilometers to go, my wife appeared at the top of the hill. I was happy to see her and wanted to hear how her race went, but I struggled to stay with her, Torstein and Inga. As we started skiing across the lake, I knew that my energy reserves were completely depleted. I searched in my pocket and opened up one of my emergency GU packets and kept skiing. I'm sure that I was bonking, but it wasn't the type of hard bonk that I've experienced a number of times in races, most notably last year at the Birkie. Fortunately, unlike last year, when we got to main street, I didn't feel like I had to stop and rest. It was so amazing to be skiing slowly down main street with thousands of people cheering us on. Once we finished, we were immediately surrounded with people who wanted to interview us and take our pictures. Again, I felt like a celebrity. It was a great feeling until my low blood sugar forced me to continue on and stand in a dazed state waiting for everyone else.
So, I'm sure people are wondering if I'm a wooden ski convert or if I'm going back to the race skis. Well, my first project on Sunday was to drill a couple holes in our new fireplace and hang up the wooden skis and poles over the mantle. The funny thing is that Elaine was convinced that she needed a pair of wooden skis to play around with when she takes the dogs for a ski. Therefore, on Sunday night, we fired the steam box up once more and bent another pair of much shorter skis for her. The smell of fresh pine tar once again filled our house. The experience and adventure of being a Birkebeiner warrior was so much better and more than I ever expected. There's something about enduring a little stress and pain which makes the ultimate prize and memory that much greater.