End of Ski Season...for now at least...Sleet and Sludd and Suck and Sug

Here then is some Norglish about the demise of snow under 400 m above sea level *MOH}

Today the conditions were easter *paaske* and like slush puppy , blaut-som-pokker.  The weather forecast said a whole morning and most of the p of m without shit coming out the sky, nedboer, and Storm.no promised a touch of sun. Solen viste seg p[ 10 minutter.

So the easter conditions under ski were not accompanied by sun, orange segments and the slightly superior kit-kat bar they have here, the norglishly Kvikk Lunsj. It was foggy and dank and really just putting miles into the legs at about 75% max heart rate for three hours.

I did it on jumble sale *loppemarked* skis which as I say were about 33kr since we got the bin ends of our choice offered free but felt the church roof should have a hundred lapp pasted onto it. They did a great job, bad glide but not a frustratingly bad glide. In these conditions clister *Klister* a thick UHU for sticking to the snow , iis unpredictable in adhesion, adsorption and durability. Put on just a little too tick or long in the *FesteSone* it grabs at the snow when you really want to glide, and carries a clump of wet crystals up hill with you. Far better with a pair of *smoerefrie" butterless, margarine skis no less!

The skis have softer *spenn* meaning less prebent spring which also makes them better for soft conditions for kicking as you get into the slush a bit quicker. Also they are a tad shorter, being maybe 198s over my usual 208s so they are better for skating which i first did to practice step turning, now feeling I am out of ploughing nappies so to speak. It went quicker than in the *spor* those endless tramlines in the white stuff to be found all over Norwegian forrest roads. Not a single tree is felled and sled rode out in winter such that the norwegian idyll is unbroken for the city executiive and the village NAV assistent as they glide and kick their ways through the woords.

Skating on this soggy slush puppy,  showed a thing I just learned about waxing for both skating and classic skis> you can get very technical indeed when it gets wet. In the tracks I was for the only time I can remember, going slower than on the soft, rilled skating plane in the middle *skoytebanen* . This was due to the higher free water content of the tracks which make them suck my skis*det suger*

A skier here who does not race but trains and maybe does some organised runs or time trials or the likes once a year, is a *mosjonist*. However the title is really reserved for someone who more or less lives on skis outside office or workshhop hours. God knows what that makes me with my paltry *fattig*  five to seven hours a week on planks propelled with kicks and sticks.  Even the pensioners here seem to go with rather tasty looking narrow training or outrigh fischer racing skis. I am missing a trick in speed by not having these, while also a handicap of having a british beer supposirty around my middle.

Anyway now you know that *mosjonist* , someone who motions, is a very *belasted* word here and is like a kind of badge of honour. A bit like being a reserve soldier ready to kill the enemy if it ever arose such things/ So an average mosjonist spends a small fortune all in on their annual skis and skiing hols etc and not in the least flourocarbon ski products. These repell water you see, and less suck is good on skis if not in the bedroom.

Actually in mulling around in th foothills of sub motionist, I do indulge to the VR racing waxes for kick zone because they last a lot longer on the ski and they cover a broader temperature range if you compare them closely to their plain hydrocarbon bretherin.  So you wax a lot less in ordinary sub clister conditions and you get a betterr grip to boot if it is at all wet or a run over 10km.

Oh well, one day I may graduate or go though the crystal gates to being a motionist,
*mosjionist* is that how it is spelt?

Anyhows today I enjoyed plugging away in the soft stuff so much that I did my own Ole Einar and went in tracks which were filled with sleet. The days pensioners before me chose to break the law flagrantly on their return journeys from the A and back to A forrest route we are actually rather blessed to have within 10 minutes drive from the coast. Bles-ssed are we too in having mostly 50-75cm left on it, bar some spots which wont last the week. The gods have then shone upon us with their celestial light of soft conditions rather than bone hard tram rails with a dusting of cold new snow on top which renders the best of waxing inoperable often over the preceeding four winters here in South Norway.

Eventually a pensioner on really skinny Fischers caught me up and was undertaking me on the wrong side of the Norwegian road (the scoundrel I hear you say!) when he slowed down to talk and in so doing gave me a little kudos for driving the tracks down for the next comers. I then recognised him as the same pensionerr who drives the bloody pisting maching. He prefers to do that in the evening and the temperature here and snow prefer to fall over night, so my day time ventures out have been marred by new snow or worn, hard tracks the whole season.

That little 3km trudge in virgin sleety snow (minus a bit of centre lane skating to ease the legs and the boredom) which made the whole 18km tour feel like 30km,   was a bit like my whole season then> a bloody struggle to try and get better at basic techniques while being served up the exact opposite of @silkyconditions!