Birkely argues that the Sami people have practiced skiing for more than 6000 years, evidenced by the very old Sami word čuoigat for skiing. Early historical evidence includes Procopius's (around CE 550) description of Sami people as skrithiphinoi translated as "ski running samis". It may have been practised as early as 600 BCE in Daxing'anling, in what is now China. Skiing started as a technique for traveling cross-country over snow on skis, starting almost five millennia ago with beginnings in Scandinavia. The word ski comes from the Old Norse word skíð which means stick of wood. Sami hunter using skis of unequal length-short for traction, long for gliding-and a single pole. Ski orienteering is a form of cross-country skiing, which includes map navigation along snow trails and tracks. Cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship are the two components of biathlon. Competitive cross-country skiing is one of the Nordic skiing sports. It is practised in regions with snow-covered landscapes, including Europe, Canada, Russia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Skiers propel themselves either by striding forward (classic style) or side-to-side in a skating motion (skate skiing), aided by arms pushing on ski poles against the snow. Modern cross-country skiing is similar to the original form of skiing, from which all skiing disciplines evolved, including alpine skiing, ski jumping and Telemark skiing. Variants of cross-country skiing are adapted to a range of terrain which spans unimproved, sometimes mountainous terrain to groomed courses that are specifically designed for the sport. Cross-country skiing is widely practiced as a sport and recreational activity however, some still use it as a means of transportation. Just watch out for those hitchhikers.Cross-country skiing is a form of skiing where skiers rely on their own locomotion to move across snow-covered terrain, rather than using ski lifts or other forms of assistance. If you want to get a glimpse of what it was like going to a Canada public school in the 1990s, you can play Crosscountry Canada on the Internet Archive for free. Crosscountry Canada seemed dated to me even when I first played it in the early 90s, but in a sense, it was ahead of its time. Today, games like American Truck Simulator command huge fanbases, and the simulation genre includes detailed recreations of farming, public transit, and other routine aspects of modern life. But replaying it now, it’s fascinating how Crosscountry Canada seemed to anticipate the trucking simulation titles of the last decade. And the subject matter, driving a truck across the country, never really appealed to me - it just seemed so mundane. It was never my go-to game in the computer labs at school, not when more visually striking titles like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago? were available. I don’t know that I ever actually finished a game of Crosscountry Canada. I mean, I did check to see how the game would react to different words, but after that I was on my way across Canada, checking my map, stopping for breakfast in Toronto, and taking ill-advised naps on the highway in the middle of the night. As an adult, I am now beyond such things. They’re text adventure titles where the player has to manually enter commands, like “turn on truck,” “sleep,” and “eat food.” Of course, as kids we messed around with all kinds of cusses in games like this. I imagine they sold Crosscountry USA to schools in neighboring Washington state, but I certainly never heard anyone mention it when I lived there.Īll of these games follow more or less the same basic structure. This is especially odd considering the games were developed by Vancouver, British Columbia-based Didatech Software (later Ingenuity Works) in the 80s and 90s. Surprisingly, Crosscountry Canada was the second in a series of titles, most of which - including the first release - take place in the US. (How a hitchhiker steals a trucker’s cargo on foot in the middle of nowhere is a question that Crosscountry Canada left to our imagination.) Geography, I guess? The only lasting lesson I remember gleaning was about picking up hitchhikers, which was universally a bad idea in the game - they’d always end up robbing you. I don’t remember much about the experience of playing it, or what it was supposed to teach you. Nonetheless, it was a real game that cast the player as a trucker making their way back and forth across the country, picking up and delivering goods. The closest thing we had was a game called Crosscountry Canada, which admittedly sounds like something made up to make fun of Canadians on 30 Rock. I had no idea what it was, because in Canada - or in Ontario, at least - nobody I knew had played it. When I first moved to the US in the late 2000s, I’d occasionally hear people talking about an old game they played in school called Oregon Trail.
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