Valley Life : Winthrop

By Ashley Lodato

Just imagine: you’re 19 years old, a Winthrop girl just doin’ your thing, training five hours each day in hopes of making the U.S. Nordic Team for the 2010 Olympics. Sunset magazine calls you and despite the fact that you’re an internationally ranked athlete, you can ski faster than all 99 percent of the people in the valley, and you’ve traveled the world kicking Nordic butt, what they want to know is “Where in the Methow will you go for your first beer when you turn 21?”

You think this is what Sadie Bjornsen lies awake and night thinking about? Her first legal beer two years from now?

Probably not. Even as I write, and even as you read, Sadie is out there somewhere in the valley, running, roller-skiing, sweating it out, focused on her goal of skiing for the U.S. at next year’s Winter Olympics.

Still, admittedly, it is totally cool that Sunset magazine interviewed Sadie. It has a circulation of over one million people! So combine that with the 12 people who read my column every week and that adds up to a lot of people who are about to learn about Sadie Bjornsen.

Being connected to the valley, you, oh reader, already know all about Sadie. But Sunset wanted to profile the Methow Valley through the eyes of a local Olympic hopeful and who better to give them that glimpse than Sadie, despite the fact that she can’t go in the bars they seemed to want to know all about.

Sadie’s spread in Sunset won’t come out until next February, at which point she will know whether or not she is on the U.S. team. Sunset, however, is wagering that she’ll make the team (I’d put my money there, too, if gambling were legal) and writing the article as if she is already on the team. Just a little pressure, eh? Luckily Sadie is quite familiar with pressure, and just as the thought of her first bar visit is not really consuming her thoughts these days, neither is Sunset’s premature forecast. She’s just out there kicking and gliding, double-poling her way into being the best she can be.

Hey, Mister, did you leave your forest green fleece jacket at the Harborside Café in Chemainus, BC, last August after your sailing trip? If so, your waitress has dropped it off at the White Buck in downtown Winthrop; you can claim it there. Whoever you are, I hope you tipped her well.