Frosty Skiing       By Ed Hamel

The phone call to Ian at 5:40AM woke him up. He's usually up at this time
because we've been getting together early mornings to roller ski. His wife,
Michelle, answered the phone and I knew I was in a bit of trouble right away.
It's not so common I guess to call someone at that hour, but, he hadn't
returned my call from last night and I needed to tell him about the workout
we were going to be doing in a half hour.

I remember reading somewhere how Bill Koch used to go skiing on the frost. I
had already checked out the early morning grass here at Glendale Glide and it
did have a fair amount of frost. I guess I would call it an October frost
even though it is early December.

Ian backed out. He said he wasn't feeling well but I think he might have just
decided to go roller skiing by himself. He knows the neighbors already talk
about me and I don't think he wanted to be included in those conversations.
Out the door I headed before 6:30AM. I grabbed my old classic skis that had
been base waxed last spring and just simply put them on as is and attempted
to ski on the frost.

I started out along a flat and the kick and glide weren't that bad. I
rounded the corner with a little step turn and headed down big dipper in an
actual glide. I slid across the transition and started up the hill where I
needed to go in to a herringbone to get up the hill. This is really cool I
thought. I was actually skiing along in a year that so far has been way too
warm to do anything but rollerski. Around and around Glendale Glide I went.

As I skied I knew Ian would be jealous once I told him how good this frosty
skiing stuff was. I also thought about my wife Mary again thinking to myself
that she was jealous as hell as she watched me out the window (she likely
wasn't)! I knew that this was really good stuff that I was doing. Eat your
heart out all you skiers in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. You folks up
there have too many rocks to be able to do this frosty skiing.

All total I classic skied for one hour and felt new skiing muscles at work.
The sensation was like very slow, hard skiing but there was some glide going
on. Most of the workout was level 2 with the uphills easily reaching into
level 3. Temperature was 24 degrees and I got a good sweat worked up.
Tomorrow I'll try it again and I just might add a little kick wax to see if
it helps get me up the hills easier. I'm going to stay away from any
klisters, I don't think that will mix well with grass! I'm going to go with
extra blue covered with mutligrade violet, my favorite!

Ed