¼c Dijon mustard
¼c salad mustard
½c maple syrup
1t dill weed
½c cider vinegar
¾c vegetable oil

Whisk together until thoroughly blended. Drizzle on a bed of fresh greens, and enjoy!

I can’t help but wonder it the gun-toting volunteer position would be more or less sought after by potential race staff?

Towhee is a capable co-pilot

If I were a songbird migrating to my spring/summer home grounds, I’d already be tardy to the party. I’d be late to establish my territory, find a mate and build a nest. Luckily and happily, all I have to do is make it to Lost Nation Road and my territory, friends and nest are all there for me to find again. Yes, it’s time for me to close up my house in northwest Portland, load up Towhee and a few bags of clothes and drive 3500 miles to my home at Craftsbury.

One of the funniest parts of my cross country trips has been entertaining the curiosities of strangers as they try to guess what the thing on top of my car is. The conversations all open: “What is that?”, followed immediately by the guessing game when I ask them what they think it is. Common guesses: a mast, a canoe, a sailboard, a dragon boat (answer:  my Hudson 1x). The only correct answer came from an unlikely looking guesser – an air conditioning guy at a gas station in ND. Turned out he used to row in college.

I’m getting antsy to get on the water, run the trails, yuk it up with Pepa and settle into my Craftsbury way of life. The running camps are beckoning and so is the open road.  See you there soon!

Everything a girl needs to travel cross country

My cozy nest is waiting

The GRP skiers watch the nail-biting finish of the 2012 women's NCAA classic race.

One of the many cool experiences of working at the Center office comes around on race days. Despite our best efforts at remaining purely diligent, sooner or later, someone will find the live results, or better still a live video stream of one of our athlete colleagues charging hard in some corner of the world. It’s a blast to watch as people we know, have had lunch with, worked with on a variety of projects, or even skied or trained with, kill it in some corner of the globe – an experience made all the more exotic if the feed we’re watching is not in English. We wait to hear the foreign pronunciation of our skier or sculler’s name as they zip past the camera.

A really great side effect of the above is how living and working here can open new worlds for officemates who aren’t themselves competitors. While there are quite a few jocks of various stripes filling roles at the Center, more than a few staff members at the Center may not have known freestyle from classical skiing, standing from prone, or a double from a pair until well after they’d worked at Craftsbury for some time.

Andrea, timing at the finish of the Women's 30k at Long Distance Nationals.

A great example of this is our co-worker Andrea Carpentier. Andrea capably fills a number of roles for us at the Center:  Human Resources, making sure we’re all paid – and so are the bills, plus lots more. This winter she also took an increasing role in the timing of our ski races, including the SuperTour.

While Andrea was a lot of things prior to this winter, there was one thing she was not:  a knowledgeable ski racing fan. Not to say that she didn’t like it, or held something against the sport, rather it just didn’t really enter into her consciousness for whatever reason. However, after a winter full of timing races at the Center and in Jericho, of listening to British Eurosport commentators talk of “Eeda Sargent”, hearing “Craftsbury” in a stream of Russian as Susan shoots, of learning the rules of racing and its nuances in person at Eastern Cups, SuperTours, etc – whatever the thing is that makes one a fan of skiing and biathlon, Andrea now has. She hasn’t replaced the pictures of Dale Jr. on her office wall with Kikkan Randall…yet. But she’s on her way, and is ready to weigh in during office banter about the last World Cup, make jokes about Morilov getting punked at the line by Kershaw and his own inattentiveness, or marvel at the latest exploit of Kikkan. The only downside to this story? A winter of watching the athletes on TV seems to have made Andrea a little star struck when it was time to hand out checks to her new heroes/heroines at the SuperTour/Long Distance Nationals.

Very neat. You want to see competitive skiing from the inside out yourself? We’ll have plenty of volunteer opportunities next winter!

Just think of the snow we could move...

However, we’re actually NOT talking about snow farming this time, but the original, four-legged kind of bobcat.

Susan's coincidental bobcat picture.

Susan Dunklee was walking over from Elinor’s to the Center this past Monday, when she writes:  “I stopped to take a picture of the melting ski trail. It’s been over a week since the SuperTour races finished and you can still kind of ski around the loop. After taking my picture, I looked up and saw a bobcat walking across the trail in front of me. I had captured him in the photo without even realizing it. Then I quickly tried to take another, but he was already headed into the woods.”

The cat heads for the brush. Check out the stubby little tail though!

Thanks Susan for sharing these with us. It’s a great reminder to keep your eyes peeled when you’re out and about at the Center – you never know what you’ll see.

1 ½c flour
½c sugar
2t baking powder
¼t salt
1 egg
½c milk
¼c butter
2c blueberries
Pinch of nutmeg

Mix the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, milk, and butter together. Fold them into the flour mixture, stirring only until combined – do not over mix! Fold in the blueberries. Fill your lightly greased muffin tin two-thirds full. Bake for 20 minutes at 400F, or until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean.

The Center was gracing the headline banner of Fasterskier.com earlier this week.

Yup, that’s the Center and our ribbon of snow during the SuperTour Finals/Long Distance Nationals at the end of March! It seems Ian Case, a domestic skier from Hyde Park got the pic from his father’s Cessna during the festivities (read more of the backstory here).

We all knew there wasn’t much snow outside of the manmade loop, but the pictures are especially dramatic. Thanks to Ian for taking the picture, and to Fasterskier for publishing it!

But don’t take my word for it, check out these pictures from MMU skier Annavitte Rand. Annavitte came to ski with us this past Monday the 5th and shared these pictures of her ski and conditions with us. Thanks Annavitte!

Still fresh tracks from our PB100s - photo Annavitte Rand.

A classic Vermont ski day! - photo Annavitte Rand.

People wait all year for conditions as good as these. Come skiing already! - photo Annavitte Rand.

Callie Young and Anica Koontz Miller skinning up Big Jay.

To properly recover for the upcoming BKL Festival, several Craftsbury skiers took their rest day to climb Big Jay and enjoy some skiing of a far less-groomed variety. Way to earn your turns Callie, Jack and Ani! No one tell Pepa…

The intrepid adventurers, refueled and ready to peel 'em & squeal 'em.