Klister is an amazingly awful wonderful substance. It’s a sticky mess you can’t seem to get rid of. For those not skiers, it's a type of grip wax for cross country skiing. It’s use has an odd connotation in skiing because of its nasty effectiveness. Yet, over time, friction and pressure sheds it from the kick zone of your skis and keeping enough of it on the ski ultimately becomes an issue too. And as any ski coach will tell you, if you just stick a klister-filled palm of your hand into your ski glove, you’ll forget about it and it’ll magically disappear over the course of a ski race.
On the last day of March, I went out and skied on a pair of crappy Peltonen’s I picked up from a flea market in November for twenty bucks, for the express purpose to tool around in the woods when good skis might get ruined. The tracks were sunbaked and therefore excessively dirty. That happens when the sun is shining and it’s +8 Celsius for a few days on end. The snow melts, leaving on the surface a reduction of a full winters worth of any air pollution, wind blown debris—including some Sahara desert sand, this winter, apparently—a general hodgepodge of stuff that we might not consider is in our white snow. It doesn’t glide all that well either when this happens.
Yesterday, I telemark-skidded across a dirt road, because at the speed I hit it, that was my only choice. I stayed up right, but got a nice quick stone grind too. Even if traces of the Sahara desert could’ve been caught in my klister, they were certainly overrun by central Finland road dirt and spruce needles. At one point I had to stop and remove a pine cone from my kick zone. Probably not a great specimen for the scientists who wanted to study the Sahara sand.
I could of course be on waxless skis, but as I said, klister is amazing. In this case, it was a semi-thick layer of about 2 parts Rode Multigrade/1 part Start Wide, for you waxers out there. The thickness was pretty draggy starting out but as the klister cooled on the snow, it became awesome. Like-rollerskiing-ratchet good, and pretty fast on the glide—nothing like the sluggish whir of waxless skis. It was so good that I scrapped what was going to be a simple Parkinson’s remedy of 20 minutes around the short loop, to going the full 8.5km of the Kuntolenkki—the fitness loop I’ve expressed my love for on many occasions already on this spot of the web. As dirty as it was, there was still a shallow, rounded-edged track the whole way, and I wrapped it up with a deep sense of satisfaction and sadness that it was all coming to an end.
The spring sun doing it's work
Today, the kids were home for school break. After running out for maple syrup and making them a French toast breakfast, I was hopeful they might want to put in one last hurrah with their dad on skis on April fools day, but alas, no takers. I’d warned the trails were in pretty rough shape, so that might’ve been a bit too honest for my own good. I got dressed and checked my klister from yesterday and decided it would hold.
I got a little sentimental. I thought, despite a heavy base of snow yet, this might be my last ski of this trail. Maybe ever. I took my phone for pictures for memories sake.
Getting on the trail across the street, it looked pretty grim. The trail was a grade deeper into sun-baked than yesterday and really slow starting out. I forged on. I shot into the woods and realized the track had been re-groomed and then pretty heavily skied yesterday after I’d skied. I couldn’t believe it! I was skiing backwards to access the 8.5 Kuntolenkki thinking for sure I would be the only one out on those crappy dirty trails. I ran into no fewer than 6 skiers giving me the stink-eye because is was going the wrong way. Oops. Finland.
No April fools joke. Fresh track, April 1
When I got to the main trail at Laajavuori so I could go the right way, it was FRESHLY GROOMED! I was dumbfounded. The track compared to yesterday was a filthy rug that had been taken outside and thoroughly shaken. And I saw more skiers. In fact, I skied most of the 8.5 km with company—the first time all winter that I wasn’t mostly alone.
-Laavu directional at base of the back of the alpine hill
-Home trail from Kuntolenkki
-The back side of Laajis alpine hill with Matti Nykanen ski jump in the background
-Where "Mimmu's trail"--Vuorenlenkki--and my trail diverge on the far side
-Our favorite laavu
-Catching the Pisten Bully
-Shovelers
-The map. We live at the star.
We caught the Pisten Bully about 2/3 around the loop. Somebody had clearly shoveled the spot across the road where I heroically telemark slid yesterday. A nice, wide patch of white was perfectly groomed across the road crossing. After I passed the groomer, I ran into two piles of shoveled snow on the most sun exposed uphill on the loop. There was no race event coming up, mind you. Just extended skiing around the loop for Easter. Finland.
I started to slip on the shaded climb back to our house. The abrasion from shaded icy sections had thinned out the universal/wide combo. As I gingerly placed my wax pocket on the final kilometer, I smiled at how nearly-perfectly I’d timed the two-day wax job.
I popped off my skis for "the commute” to our place and noticed Mummo’s (Mimmu’s mom) Yaris parked on the street. I was greeted with her typical expressive joy, fresh voi pulla and coffee. The pulla was so fresh, it was still warm. If you've never had a fresh voi pulla, I'm sorry. Finland. I then checked the klister and I had about 1/4 of what I’d put on yesterday. Going to need a fresh kick job for tomorrow. You’d better believe I’m skiing again!
-"The Commute" Our place is under the street light.
-Voi pulla
-Klister damage
Because I’m going to miss this when all is said and done.
I took down and moved out of my broadcast space this week. It was an act of some sadness mixed with a reminder of the good it brought. It feels like yesterday when we found the space at Crazy Town, secured it, then waited anxiously for the equipment to arrive from NBC. Then waited for the races to happen, then for the show schedule to come together. It happened in fits and spurts. But the possibilities of the kit seemed immense as I unpacked it, set it up, then marveled at how simple and quick it all was to use with guidance from Eric and NBC. We had a technical difficulty or two this winter. I ended up finishing nearly an entire show when we lost sound on Bill completely, then started a show without him for the same reason then welcomed him back once they fixed the issue in Stamford. But the implications of the setup were new and immense despite the few difficulties and potential bigger problems. Putting it all away and getting ready to ship it to the United Kingdom for cycling season was a sort of sad solemn act, made only a bit more whimsical when I saw who it was going to. We’ve never met, but we have lots of mutual friends. Passing my remote announcers kit to him made the sad act a little more hopeful and fun. I snuck into one of the crates a small notecard greeting and a carefully-plastic-wrapped Finnish treat from an admirer/colleague.
The studio is gone. On its way to the UK.
These last two days of skiing, while glorious, have also touched off some reflective sadness. They are fleeting affairs, being taken by now much longer, post-equinox days and their spring sun—the kinds of days longed for in the depth of December darkness, that come with a price. They steal a part of my life I love.
It’s only normal living in a place for 3/4 of a year that it starts to feel like home. Experiences here now start to feel more like things I’m losing as their finality sets in. It’s the same finality that spring follows winter, and though winter will come again—and even for all its problems—THIS winter will not. My space and remote announcing kit gone with the season we were so scared might never happen and are so thankful to have had in some form, was just a precursor to the snow moving on. These wonderful ski trails deep with snow, across the street from where we live, slowly changing back to the snowless ones they were and have largely been the last many winters. Who knows if and when they’ll return? We could live here a decade longer and maybe not get what we got THIS winter. And it's all set against a looming return across the Atlantic we have to navigate too.
Which has me examining my klister at the end of my ski. In there is Sahara sand, road dirt, spruce needles, pieces of pine cone; the song played over the loud speakers downtown as night falls in the summer; the mökki; our downtown apartment; Klas Ohlson; The Steiner School and new friends; Taavi and Iita speaking Finnish like natives; Iita's Jyp hockey; Taavi's Happee Salibandy; bike rides to Satama for ice cream; Crazy Town; Thai Street Food with a Tupla chaser before going on air; Hesburger; dinners at Mummo’s; visits to Pappa’s; Finnish classes; lock downs and masks; socially-distanced trips to the arctic circle; our Haukkala apartment; our blue Toyota; how Finland makes us feel safe; and all the time spent skiing in the woods over a glorious snowy winter.
It’s all stuff stuck in the klister at the end of a good spring ski, that you know is leaving with the change of season. You hope you might get those conditions again somewhere down the line, but nothing is certain...
Klister can be an ugly messy thing, but even with all the debris it grabs along the way, it also makes spring skiing wonderful when you get it right. Thank goodness for it.