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December 19, 2008
Dateline Davos
I was in Davos last weekend, and there was a lot going on. First the cultural piece: according to knowledgeable sources, this house is the family home of the confectioner who opened a resturant in St. Petersburg (Russia) where Tchaikovsky allegedly contracted cholera and subsequently died. Some speculate that this was actually a suicide, but in any case, the family Leiner had nothing (much) to do with his death.
On to sporting news. The FIS World Cup X-C race was held in Davos on December 13 & 14. We watched the 15k classic race on Saturday (we were busy on Sunday - missed that bit). We really had a much better time than expected - it was pretty execiting (well, as exciting as a cross country ski race can get). We were stading in the main viewing area, and they had a really cool jumbotron set up (upper left in the picture) and quite a bit of vidio coverate. The winner was some Swedish guy - Swen Ericson or Eric Swenson or something like that. I saw some people from the US ski team walking around, but didn't get a chance to talk with them. (the whole even was really low-key and easy to talk to competators). Apparently there was a guy from Vermont there (Andy Newell, Shaftsbury, VT) but we didn't bump into him.
I ran across a strange guy with the (southern) Swedish flag as as well as the Swiss flag - not sure what his deal was or is. OK, this is a picture of Tim with his two flags. Note that he's a reasonable distance in front of me. I though a little distance would be good - then it wouldn't appear so obvious we were together.
As usual, I had a great time, but I did miss my best traveling companion. Going out to a nice meal with Tim in a romantic resort in the Swiss alps just doesn't cut it...(no offense Tim, but there's some things you're not that good at :-).
Posted by pgutwin at December 19, 2008 3:27 PM