Me...piloting a sled...well I dare say I do

Greetings!

and what merry ones at that! So today in my inbox came a fantastic little email from the Director of BCBSA, or British Columbia Bobsleigh, Skeleton Association. "YOU ARE INVITED TO WHISTLER DRIVING SCHOOL FOR FREE" Now normally you have to pay about $500 for the week of driver training and its with a coach or someone who used to be a pilot, usually in a group of 8-10. My invite was to learn how to drive under Jill Bakken (she won the gold in Salt Lake City, as a pilot) and there were only 5 invites sent out, and I was the only girl invited. Am I excited or what!! I've always wanted to at least feel what it would be like to drive one of those things, I mean I sit in the back enough, now it would be nice to see where I was going! I had wanted to take a driving course but finances weren't really there, and 90% of the driving schools are out in either Calgary, or Lake Placid, ie add in flights, and accomodation etc and the week becomes an expensive one, albeit a very cool experience. But now its in Whistler and I get in for free, and if I do well in this school I will be invited to compete in Canadian Nationals, as a pilot. Pretty freaking cool if you ask me. So I will be scrounging around trying to find a place to stay in Whistler for the week of Jan 4-10th (also my 24th birthday - amazing experience) and I should be pretty good to go! I will keep everyone posted but I am definitely excited. Even if I don't do well, at least I know that I tried it, I sat in the front and couldn't handle it, but if I love it, we will see what happens. I truly believe that when one door closes another opens, scrap the window part.

Merry Christmas!!!!

The Final Farewell

So I am back in Vancouver now, after my 19 days on tour. Calgary started off with a bang, we were unable to train on Monday and Tuesday due to severe weather conditions (-30 on bare skin at 120km/h leads to some unhappy people) so that meant that instead of racing twice, we were only going to have 1 race of 2 heats on Friday. So we slid on Wednesday, and that training session was a gong show, we were supposed to slide from 430-6pm, and well my first run didn't start until 5:25and we were the first nation, and women none the less, we knew it was downhill from there. So 6:30 comes and we go on our second run, by the time we pack up our sleds its nearly 8pm. Ridiculous I say. And sadly my pilot and I are told we are not allowed to put our sled in the heated garage over night, as it would be seen as "unfair" (even though we are racing for canada) so we were a little unimpressed, and bundled poor little Precious (our sled) and kept her outside in her bin. Well the next day comes and its reverse order and reverse slot times, and oh, our steering has frozen, I mean it was down past -30C at night, so all the grease froze - those were interesting runs to say the least, after those horrible runs, the driving coach tells the head coach that we are putting our sled inside, as we cannot race well if the steering were to freeze again. So we have to wait an hour and do all the sled work outside, before we are allowed to put our sled into the garage. Needless to say we don't get home until 10pm and then we have to polish our runners for the race the next day. So my pilot and I polish and polish and polish and it hits 11:45pm and we are finally finished. I head right to bed and sleep for at least 10 hours.

The next morning is RACE DAY so I make sure to eat a lot, rest, stretch, and well start to pack, as I will be flying home that day. My boyfriend was nice enough to fly out to watch me race, and well he did carry on, so he will be carrying some of my stuff home with him haha.

Its a cold day at the track on Friday, but we manage, get two decent hits and a great first run, but then the temperature dropped and our runners decided they didn't like the cold, so they skidded all over the place on our second run, despite our sled weighing a MONSTROUS 196kgs (roughly 450lbs) this is without me and my pilot in it, so its much closer to 330kgs. We finish 5th overall, had the temperature not dropped we could've and would've come 3rd, thats how close the 3rd, 4th and 5th sleds were in times. Sad but nothing we can do about it. Then we are told when we get down to the bottom after our 2nd heat (so the race is done) that we have a Material Check. Randomly the Jury has selected our sled to dismantle and take apart and make sure all the components are of FIBT standing, and nothing is illegal. So instead of being able to take our sled apart and put it away and leave, we have to drag our sled all the way back up to the top, flip it and open it up. Fortunately the Official doing the Material check knows me and my pilot well, and knows that we are both retired and were only going on tour to have more sleds for Canada 1 pilot. So he takes it easy on us and just crawls into the sled with a flash light. We soon find out that our frame is cracked in a few places and rather unstable. Good thing this was after the race was done, because I should would not have gotten back into that sled knowing that!

Finalllllly we are done, so we take Precious back to the finish dock, take her apart and put her away in her outside bin. I am officially retired and very satisfied with my end results.

Then my now frozen boyfriend and I are driven to the airport via my big sis, where we find out that our red flight, has been delayed 2 hours...sigh, all I want to do is go home and sleep! I'm tired after race day. We finally arrive in vancouver at 2am local time and get home around 3am (which is really 4am for me, now that I've been on mountain time for the past 3 weeks) well let me tell you, I slept, and slept and slept and woke up at 2pm the next day!

Now its all said and done, I've sold a bunch of my sliding stuff, a pair of bobspikes, helmet, super suit and speed suit. So I've done a bit of an inhouse clean, but I kept enough stuff that if I wanted to, I could go back.

And here we have arrived at the finale of my bobsleigh career, did I think it was going to be longer - absolutely, but life has its own way of going about things and I really can't do much about it. So I will be returning to UBC this January and graduating in April. I am very excited about that.

Thanks for all of your support :) It meant the world to me

Oh and here is a fun clip from a modelling gig I did http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W-J4-Ru-E

Love,

Danaka

Utah Races, travel to Calgary

So now I'm back in Calgary, it seems a fleeting memory that I was in Utah. Park City is one of the most gorgeous places I've been too. Its got this crystal cold clean air, it fills your lungs with pure oxygen and lights up your body from the inside. The 2002 Olympic Track is a rather nice track to slide on, its fun, fast, with some seriously twisted corners, namely 11, 14 and 15. Our races went well, though I've never raced 2 days in a row let-a-lone 3, but I did it and survived. I pushed my massive beast of a sled fast down my little icy runway. We should've come 3rd on our last day, but it just wasn't in the books, so we finished with a 4th, and two 5th places. Not bad, but not amazing. Hopefully Calgary will be better.

A bunch of us decided to drive home to Calgary a day early, so that we could have all of Sunday off to hang out, do laundry and sleep in. On our drive home, a drive that should've taken 13 hours, we hit two blizzards and were forced to drive at 60km/h on the I-15 the fog was so thick that we couldn't see but 10m in front of us. My trusty pilot who was navigating decided to take a picture of this incredible fog, and of course as soon as she brings out the camera, the fog moves away, so we ended up just hanging the camera from the mirror and away we went, with much better visability - Murphy's Law really works! Our drive ended 16 hours later...so it was a very long day. While I was in the back with one of the little sliders, I ended up tutoring him on my favourite of all favourite Shakespeare works - Macbeth. We had a great time and got him all caught up while the two drivers up front discussed the road conditions and visibility.

Needless to say, it was amazing to have Sunday off and once again I got to sleep in this morning so I am a happy camper.

Today unfortunately its around -33C here in Calgary, and while sliding is cancelled at -25 we only have 3 days of official training so that would leave us with only 2 days, and 4 runs, not much time to memorize the track. But I know my pilot can do it. So heres to hoping the weather warms up and I get to race...