Hey everyone,
Made it to Austria! Had quite the day of traveling, around 24 hours point to point. Traveling internationally is always exhausting, but is especially interesting during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, you are required to wear a face mask during nearly every second of this journey, including attempting to sleep on the airplane. You are now completely exhausted, but must continue to remember to keep social distance, have your mask on essentially 24/7, and be more diligent than usual keeping up with good hygiene. My hands are sore from constantly washing them and putting on hand sanitizer!
Austria is currently in another lockdown, so we needed a lot of documentation to even be allowed in the country. A negative COVID test, paperwork from Austrian officials explaining our reasoning for entering the country, and even separate forms for any other countries you travel through, which for us was the Netherlands.
Thankfully we had lots of help from the US Ski and Snowboard Team who has worked their butts off to get all our documentation, safety protocols, etc. all lined up for us this trip. FIS, the organizer of the event, have also struggled with lining up specifics and us athletes appreciate their hard work and dedication to keeping us safe and allowing us to do our "business" here in Austria.
We finally got some sleep last night, and are feeling much more alive today. On today's schedule, we have another COVID test to do in Innsbruck. As mentioned, everything is locked down here, but we may mask up and walk around Innsbruck for a while.
That's all for now! Updates to come! Here's a photo from outside our hotel room. Austria, you sure are beautiful. Lucky to be here.
