Adam in Estonia

February 16th, 2012 2:23pm - Posted By: Adam St. Pierre

First Update from Estonia!

Travel from Denver to Estonia went smoothly... almost. My flights were fine, got lots of sleep, read the first Hunger Games book, made my flight from Frankfurt to Talinn despite sleeping at the wrong gait and waking up as my flight was boarding... oops! I met up with the New Englanders and our other coach, Scott Jerome from Fairbanks, Alaska. Once in Talinn we met up with our Alaskans and Steamboater. Unfortunately our Midwesterners’ 15 minute flight from Helsinki to Talinn was cancelled and they had to wait a few hours for the next flight. While we waited for them, the coaches squared away a rental car situation and tried to figure out how to pay to get out of the parking lot (it was way harder than it looks). 

We got 3 vans, little blue, medium red, and big white. Big white is our cargo van is exactly what I hoped to be driving around Europe. Deisel, 6 speed manual transmission, and crappy tires! I volunteered to wait for the 2 stragglers while Scott and Kate took Little Blue and Medium Red and the rest of the kids to our hotel in Otepaa (about a 3 hour drive... in a snowstorm). While they drove I waited. First I waited in a huge mall (until they closed and kicked me out), then in a casino (until they kicked me out for not drinking or gambling, then I just drove around. There were a bunch of Estonians doing laps around the mall parking lot drifting all the corners. I considered joining them in my rental van... but did not. Eventually I picked up the Midwesterners at 12:30am and we started our drive towards Otepaa.

The drive went smoothly despite snowing and high winds for much of the drive, we arrived at our accommodations at the Tehvandi Ski stadium around 4am.

This morning we had a late breakfast, set up our wax cabin, walked into town, then went for an awesome ski. The trails here are hard, lots of steep climbs and fast descents. 

We are staying at the Tehvandi Ski Stadium. We can walk to our wax cabin, walk to the ski trails, walk to town. There’s a gym, sauna, and massage tables on site.

This weekend is the Tartu Ski Marathon, a huge race that starts here in Otepaa, and ends 63km away in another town. The kids are kind of pressuring me to do it... we’ll see if I sign up. Might be fun...

So far the food’s been good, interesting but good. We are supposed to be eating dinner right now but there is no electricity... Hopefully that comes back soon because we are getting hungry...

Oh ya, and I signed up to race the 5000 person Tartu Marathon on Sunday. It starts right here in Otepaa, and ends a few towns over... Not sure if that was a good idea or not, but it’ll be fun!

Posted in: Coaching

View / Add Comment | 1 Comment(s) | Rating: 5 of 5 | Share: Twitter, Facebook, Google +