Illinoistocht

I just got back from my own personal skating “Tour of Nordics”, or several days of skating in Sweden and Finland.  My trip started with the Vikingarännet north of Stockholm, Sweden.   This event is an 80km (50 mile) fun skating tour over the lakes north of Stockholm.  About 2,700 participants took part.  I was still adjusting to the time change and had very little sleep but had a really enjoyable morning nonetheless as it was quite an adventure to skate a point-to-point course with so many people.  The ice was pretty good, albeit rough for the first portion of the tour so I was happy to skate in my Nordic skates (nearly all the participants skated in Nordic blades and more than half skated with ice poles).  Next up was a session at the 400m oval in Stockholm, which is near the stadium for the 1912 summer Olympic games.  For this I wore my clapskates, or the traditional speedskate boots with a blade where the heel isn’t fixed, and enjoyed some good technical speed skating.  I then journeyed to Kuopio, Finland and skated a 25km preliminary skate, and then finished the week with a 200km skate at the Finland Ice Marathon.  It was a lot of skating considering my only time on the ice this year was a single short track session—my “training” consisted of cycling, a few cross-country ski days, and then in the last couple of months I made sure to have a once-a-week inline skate of increasingly longer distances.  (Check out the photos on the “other photos” tab.)

I’m really glad I got to do this, but I feel a bittersweet satisfaction as barring a major cold snap it looks like I’ll miss the chance to skate the Hennepin and I&M canals this winter.  Oh well, “wait ‘til next year”—but I hope this phrase doesn’t mean the same thing for Illinoistocht as it has for Cubs fans who have been saying that for the last 100 years!.

Universal Sports is televising the ISU World Allround Championships on TV and online beginning Tuesday, Feb. 10 from 11p.m. - 1 a.m. ET from Hamar, Norway.  Coverage of the sport will continue through the completion of the season at the end of March and include short track, single distance, sprint distance, and allround championships.  

COVERAGE ON UNIVERSAL SPORTS AND UNIVERSALSPORTS.COM:  
Feb. 7-8:             ISU World Allround Speed Skating Championships
Feb. 20-22:         ISU World Junior Speed Skating Championships
Mar. 6-15:           ISU World Short Track Speed Skating Championships
Mar. 12-15:         ISU World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships
Besides watching online on your computer at universalsports.com, for the tv broadcasts Universal Sports is carried in Chicago on Comcast 251, RCN 51, and for digital televisions channel 5.3 over-the-air (WMAQ’s sub-channel 3).   If you don't want to pay Comcast whatever fee they charge (probably a lot) for the extended basic cable, then get it free over the air.  Here are some links to how to build a DTV antenna: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQhlmJTMzw
http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/

Note that these designs are for a UHF antenna as nearly all DTV signals are UHF, and indeed, WMAQ's digital broadcast is on RF 29 (your box calls it 5) for DTV and will remain so after the changeover.  However, after the changeover the information I have is that ABC and CBS will be on VHF-hi frequencies in the Chicagoland area.  I am now picking up RF 11 where I live with a modified version of the above designs, using 10” whiskers spread 5 1/2" (20 1/4” coathanger wire) spaced 9 3/4” with the phase line wire spaced 1 3/8” apart.  Believe, me, it works, even with my preliminary reflector (which is too small).  The rabbit ears I had couldn't pick up the signal but the coathanger antenna does.