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whistler sliding centre

Like I said before, my long weekend was AWESOME. Originally I was only planning on sliding on Saturday, but (1) I couldn’t find a ride home and (2) a guy in the club (that Rosemarie is already friends with) said we could stay at his cabin at Whistler for free, so I ended up staying for the Sunday session as well. That meant I had to do MEGA HOMEWORK all day Friday. Worth it.

super excited

SKELETON WAS SUPER AWESOME.

In the truck going up for our first run!

We all met up with our coach (he is from Latvia) and he picked out sleds for us and we got helmets. We changed into our tightest clothes and then eagerly awaited instructions. None came. We all get in the truck and get a ride to the Maple Leaf start (at curve 11 out of 16) and eagerly await instruction. Still nothing. Time for the first run. He tells us “Just go! Do nothing! It steers itself!” Okeedoke.

Our coach + launching board thing + Rob going around the first corner

Sam goes down first and thirty seconds later we hear his speed. NINETY ONE KM/H!!! Whoa that was way faster than I expected. Anyway quick quick quick we get lined up as soon as the person before leaves and next thing I know I’m lying on my stomach about to get pushed down the ice slide.

EEEEE IT WAS FUN! So fast! G FORCES! AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!

We got to do 5 runs each the first day, and my top speed was 95.4 km/h. I was the speediest in our group hehe (not counting the club girl who has been doing it for a year now).

The way to succeed seems to be just being relaxed, focused, with your shoulders down and your face as close to the ice as you can (my chin guard scraped the ice a few times). The bottom straightaway was the hardest part, because once you start going crooked you kind of ricochet off the sides worse and worse each time. A little painful.

bounce

Fun fun fun. I’ve got more pictures but it’s time for relaxation time before trying to sleep. This is a tough week. Part II to come soon.

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Today was much better than yesterday. Yesterday we got back our microbiology midterms. The whole class did pretty poorly. I passed, but not by much. Pass is 60% in our program. Today I wrote another anatomy and physiology midterm. She was nice to us!! It was filled with “choose 1 of these 2 questions to answer”, or “choose 4 of these 6”. Sweeeet. I studied a lot for it, and I think I did well.

Last night was very quiet around the Jorna household. Scott was working on his math and I was studying. He’s writing his math test right now.

I went to Metrotown after school today to look for track shoes. I need shoes with metal spikes on them for skeleton this weekend. No one had any! After a bunch of telephoning I think I tracked some down (pun intended). They cost more than I thought though. :( I guess track & field equipment isn’t huge in the winter.

from euronuclear.org

I am really liking nuclear medicine more and more. Sometimes I think it’s totally inefficient and stupid to have to study nuclear medicine before studying MRI, but really I love the whole diagnostic imaging field. And nuclear medicine is pretty awesome. I mean, using specific radioactive drugs to label active areas of the body is pretty neat. In the end it will probably be useful to have two specialties anyway because I think all the technologies are converging into one piece of equipment. Ideally I would get nuc med + MRI + CT + PET.

By the way that kid is growing. All those dark black bits are bone cells dividing in the growth plates.

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I water marbled my nails last weekend during a break from schoolwork. I did rainbow colours this time and am quite pleased with how they turned out. I kinda need a brighter green though, I think.

I won’t be buying any though because I officially signed up for skeleton club. Scott and I discussed it a lot and decided that this is a pretty neat opportunity that may not come up again and in the long run what difference is a few hundred dollars going to make. In ten years I would regret not doing it more than regret spending the money, I think. Anyway so now I am on ultra-budget.

Of possible interest: My water marbling tutorial.

The first skeleton trip is next next weekend. :D I am iksidid.

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from zimbio.com

If you had the opportunity to throw yourself head first down an ice slide would you do it?

Because I have it, and I want to. REALLY REALLY BAD.

Rosemarie’s university is starting a bobsleigh and skeleton sliding club. She forwarded me the info knowing I would be interested in it (that is the understatement of the year) and I went up to SFU on Tuesday night to go to the information meeting with her. Officially I can’t join the team because I am not a SFU student, but they will still help me and I can still go with them. They’ll teach us what to do and everything.

The only problem is the cost, not surprisingly.

Surprisingly though is that it’s not actually THAT expensive.

The problem is that I thought it would be so I already decided to spend money on going home at Christmas instead. Doh. Now I need to see if I can scrounge up a few hundred more dollars so I can zoom up to 140 km/h head first too.

Ever since the meeting I’ve been thinking of ways to save some cash. No new clothes, no Christmas presents, no snacks, eat only Mr. Noodles, etc etc.

We’ll see we’ll see. I need to go over the ol’ budget again this weekend.

ONLY 7 YEARS UNTIL 2018 OLYMPICS. MUST START TRAINING NOW.