It's Saturday morning … time to pay bills. In the mail are letters from both Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television. Both organizations want me to renew. Hmmm … thought I renewed recently. Searched their letters in depth trying to find my renewal date. None to be found. I'm still getting both magazines; thus I'm obviously an active member.

Annoyance!

I've been a member of both organizations for well over 25 years at the "standard" family level. Don't you find it annoying that you now receive so many solicitations from public radio and TV? I know everyone needs money; so do I! I do not regard either network as "non commercial" broadcasting anymore. I now tend to "trash" all their solicitations for more money as a new letter seems to arrive every month. The net result is I may end up being late some year with my actual renewal. Show me my renewal date!

Vacation ends tonight. Over the past two weeks I've  …

• been a professional cross-country skier (234 kilometers / 145 miles)
  and 
• learned Android including creating my first app

Back to work! (click to maximize either image)

Although my friends know that I'm a serious cross-country ski racer, it's important to enjoy a ski through the wilderness where speed and competition is not the end goal. In life, one must kick back and take a slower pace on occasion. On Christmas Eve, after a good workout I decided it was time to follow my own advice. Thus, I continued my ski by doing a Lake Superior North Shore river ski! This activity involves skiing at a slow pace up (and then back down) a local creek or waterway. In my case, I started up the Amity Creek riverbed, and soon could hear the rushing water of rapids beneath the ice. My ski also included both skiing up and down a small waterfall! I posted four photographs of my ski. (click upon any image to view at full size).

Here are a few other great events which don't stress competition, but concentrate on enjoying the northern wilderness:

• Book Across the Bay (ski at night across frozen Lake Superior)
• Volks Ski 400 (enjoy a week long Winter family festival "up north")
• Wabos Loppet (take a wilderness train ride … ski back to the start)

Molly and I are already signed up for Book Across the Bay. We're considering the other events given our schedule!

As many of you know, last Winter I wore a GoPro wide angle digital camera when I competed in several of the regions cross-country ski loppets, including the Mora Varaloppet, the City of the Lakes Loppet and the American Birkebeiner. It was a great experience becoming SkiCam Man, and like a bad dream … he's back!

Yesterday I had a great 17km classic ski at SnowFlake Nordic in Duluth, Minnesota. In addition to enjoying some great early season snow conditions, I wanted to test some new firmware which I had downloaded to my camera. The update from GoPro claimed it would help with resolution in Winter (i.e. snow) conditions, and also allow me to take automatic pictures every 30 or 60 seconds (had been able to take automatic timed photos up to a 5 second interval). The new timings worked great, but I didn't notice much change of photo results. I've found that the camera does well in Winter sunny conditions, but not as good when it's cloudy. Yesterday I experienced both clouds and sun during my workout. You be the judge; I've embedded a sampling of yesterday's photos in the slide show given below. You can also link to my Picasa Web Albums and download any photo w/o charge (see SnowFlake Test folder).

After my ski, I had a great time talking with George Hovlund, owner of SnowFlake and former Olympian. He was intrigued with my camera! I explained to George that this year I was trying a reversed chest mount for my camera (i.e. worn on my back … taking photos of where I've just skied … I like this approach as I now take pictures of skiers faces, and you don't tend to see my arms and poles in the photos).

Finally, just to show the true ski nerd I am … not only do I wear a camera, but I measure my workouts via Garmin and SportTracks. Click to maximize the image shown below.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Northstar Nerd. I hope you enjoy these three photos showing the frozen Northland!

The waterfall on Amity Creek (the Deeps) is right across the street from our home. The first photo was taken back on September 26th; the second photo was taken the day before Thanksgiving (November 24th), and just before our big Winter storm. The final photo was taken post storm on Thanksgiving morning (November 25th).

I hope you and yours have a blessed Thanksgiving. We have a lot for which to be thankful.

Click any image for a full sized view.