So, now that I’ve been in Park City for a week, some pretty sweet stuff has gone down. First, I don’t feel like I’m breathing through a straw every time I walk up a flight of stairs since my body is starting to acclimate to the altitude. Second, the rock climbing here is really fun. Third, after falling off the rollerski treadmill twice, I only got a slight rugburn on my knee. That’s a pretty clean record for me. Also, I am still crazy about jumping on the huge trampolines into the foam pit at the Center of Excellence, and spending time there always makes my day. But maybe the craziest part of the week is that I know slightly more about the Civil War than I used to.
These guys were pretty skilled on horseback
Last weekend Cork, Monique and I went to Soldier’s Hollow after an interval session to see this Civil War reenactment that was going down. I mean, why not go?
Monique and I wondering how best to shoot a wooden gun...
In my head, I imagined the reenactment as a sort of crazy guerilla warfare being waged with at least a hundred actors all over the ski trails. Smoking guns, cannons, horseback fighting, the works. No such luck. But it was still worth going to.
While we DID get to see a little fighting on horseback, there were maybe 50 people there all told and they were more about telling the facts, showing the equipment, and demonstrating drills than actual mock warfare. As someone not technically in school at the moment, I couldn’t complain one bit and tried to learn a few things.
Basically for me, the take away points were that they had to load one bullet at a time and couldn’t accurately shoot or use swords from the horses, so while they were a great mode of transportation they weren’t actually that useful in battle. Also, when the soldiers got off the horses, about 1/4 of their numbers couldn’t fight because they had to tie the horses together in a chain and one person had to stay behind and control them. Also, their issued uniforms were wool and therefore REALLY hot and itchy. Sorry, guys.
Shooting the music video with some spectators
There was a video being shot on site – since we arrived during filming all I could find out was that it was for some music video, and that one of the actors was clearly worried about going deaf after walking between two lines of firing soldiers (those suckers were loud).
There were people in tents that would tell civil war facts whenever you asked
The Canadian National teams are here training as well, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend lots of time with the Canadian ladies. We went to one of those “paint-your-own-pottery” places and had a good time getting our creative juices going!
Helping Emily rubber stamp a beautiful bowl (photo from Chandra)
Over the next few days the rest of the team will be trickling in and then on the 10th the USST camp officially starts!
