Ode to Homer Women's Nordic

I went skiing for the first time this year and it felt so normal.  I guess that comfortable feeling compares to flailing around at hockey as opposed to going back to something I've been at since I was three. Because, in reality, strapping boards to your feet and holding sticks in your hands and waddling through the snow is not really "natural" behavior for humans.
But that's what I do, six days a week if I can, with a training team here in Homer. They have become my closest friends and the highlight of my winter. The team is 5 years old and led by an Amazon named Megan who organizes training for the group like we're olympic athletes instead of a group of varying skill levels, ages 24 to 65.
If the hockey team is "cool," the nordic team is tough. (Not that I'm saying the hockey team is not tough. I would not say things like that and still have as many teeth as I do.)  These ski women show up in 15F (-10C) degree weather when it's blowing 30 knots. They circuit train in the rain. Megan tells them to ski interval sprints uphill and they do. None of this behavior is "normal."
If the hockey team are the girls I want to hang out and party with, the nordic team are the women I want to be when I grow up. Who can ski everyday from 11-1? These women own businesses, run fishing operations, direct non-profits, teach, practice medicine, make art, host exchange students, donate kidneys, have great fashion sense, and can probably even check in to a flight online and get an aisle seat in an exit row without paying an extra fee. And, in their free time, they ski. It's an individual sport: their competing only with themselves, and they couldn't ask for tougher competition. This group lives up to the bumper sticker: "Alaskan women become the men they thought they wanted to marry."