And it begins!

The winter season has begun!  Two days ago I travelled with the rest of my Craftsbury Green Racing Project teammates from Vermont to Muonio, Finland.  The travel was easy and I quickly felt myself adjusted to the time change and the European lifestyle.  We flew to Roveniemi, Finland which is situated on the Arctic Circle and drove an additional 3 hours north to the town of Muonio so we are very far north right now.  Having been here last year I was bracing myself for cold but was surprised to see the sun and not feel chilled to the bone.  I should probably savor the daylight though as we are losing at least nine minutes of it a day.  Apparently it has also been an unseasonably warm fall so there isn't any natural snow yet.  Luckily the local ski area, Olos, saves huge piles of snow under sawdust all summer and rolls it out in the middle of October.  There is a 3km ribbon of snow looping through the woods and we are SKIING!  The loop is busy with lots of skiers from across Scandinavia and Russia but conditions are actually great.  Hopefully it will cool off soon so that it either snows or they can blow more snow and expand the loop.  But at the moment I'm just so excited to be skiing again, that the short loop is a million times less boring than any of our normal rollerski roads!  I'll post more stories here and there will be additional updates of our travels from my teammates found at www.greenracingproject.com.