DAY 11

(May 4)
Episode 2

Today I drew Ingwaz, a very personal rune for me; Freyr, the brother of Freya. I have a strong connection with the Vanic powers. We found out we will definitely be skiing, more on that a bit later.

Yesterday we saw the most beautiful country; we left Lom and went up to the mountains, to Jotunheim, to Isa.

Our first challenge was to pack for a hyytetur.  We had to select certain items that were on a table as well as all our luggage and us, and get it all in a car.  The fastest team would win.  It was going pretty well, I had a little conflict with Barbara as I was packing the car though.  We both had our own ideas of how it should be done, it was a good lesson for us both on communication.  As I slammed the back hatch down we thought we were done, and then Henriette shouted that it didn’t latch.  What!!  A strap must have been in the way or something.  I ran back and slammed it again, very hard, leaving dents in the car where my hands had been.   We lost the challenge, the other team would now have an advantage of 1 minute, 23 seconds in the next competition.

We found out that we will be doing a biathlon!  Pretty cool, a lot better than just skiing for 5 miles or something.  It is very popular in Norway, it includes skiing and shooting.  We were instructed by Halvar Handevold, an Olympic medalist in the biathlon with 22 medals.  A national celebrity and a super nice guy.

The challenge was awesome; we had to ski around a circular track and then up a little hill to the shooting area in a relay type race.  At the shooting area were 5 targets downrange, half of us would shoot prone, and the other three would shoot standing.  I volunteered to shoot standing because there were people on our team less familiar with guns and it is much easier to shoot prone.

The contest went pretty well I guess.  The weather suddenly turned horrible though and it was almost blizzard like conditions when we were going.  On my run, I didn’t fall, which was my goal, I had only been skiing once before in my life.  When I was making the approach up the hill to the shooting area I was really digging in with my poles, then my left pole stuck in the snow and came out of my hand.  By the time I realized it I was already several feet past it, in between the shooting area and my pole.  I made a decision to keep going the remaining distance with one pole.  That’s when I fell.  One pole doesn’t work very well; I had both hands on it trying to push between my legs…it looked absolutely ridiculous I’m sure. 

Eventually, somehow, I made it to the gun.  By this time, after going around the track and then falling and getting up I was completely out of breath.  As I was sighting the target the gun was moving up and down uncontrollably as I was trying to breath, I couldn’t hold it still.  I decided to time the rise and fall of the gun barrel and pull the trigger when it was on the target.  Surprisingly I hit three out of five targets this way.  Then I careened back down the hill to my team mates with my one pole so the next person could go.  I seriously expect to look like an epileptic monkey that is being electrocuted while trying to ski when I see this on tv…pretty embarrassing.

My team was confident, we thought for sure we had won.  But, the advantage was too great for the other team and we lost…again.  Luckily I have immunity with the troll, but I feel very badly for the rest of my team mates.  Tomorrow we are just filming “reality” shots around the hyyte (cabin) where we are staying, then the next day, Sunday, the rest of my team mates must face each other in the first elimination challenge.  A very sobering thought, one of them will be leaving Alt for Norge.