The Medal

In team van number 8 there is a tiny plastic medal strapped around the back of the passenger seat. Though it's not real gold, not from an Olympic games and not heavy around your neck, it's still valuable. Every time I get in that van and see that medal, I ask myself if I've earned it. The medal has seen SLUSKI at it's best and worst. It's followed us on OD skis at River Road. It's gotten stopped at the border to another country. It's waited for Lanky to get his boots, and for AAA to break in and retrieve locked keys. No matter how I did, and no matter how we performed as a team, that tiny medal dangles from that seat. After some days I feel like could be a noose, but more often than not I'm happy to imagine it hanging from my neck instead; a validation, I guess. It's a medal that doesn't have to be earned just by winning a race. My roommate lived in Norway in 1995 while his father taught classes for a year abroad. It was the year after the Lillehammer Olympics, and when Professor Pekins let the class off for the day without homework, they would chant “Daeh-lie, Daeh-lie, Daeh-lie”. The power of Olympic gold had transformed one Norwegian into a modern day diety. A god who commanded not hammers or thunder, but a pair of yellow skis, and lungs that could suck in twice as much air as any mortal. A skiety, whose speed on snow made him inhuman. Everyone would like to go that fast, but that kind of speed isn't all the medal in van 8 is about. It's about persistance, exertion and mentality, too. We're two carnivals down in a season that's seen a lot of success. The medal has been there both weekends. It's going to be there for the rest of the season, too, and we've got to keep earning it.

Some shots from UNH