Don't look back in anger

Yes, the end of year post. Practically obligatory at this point, fifteen years after I wrote my first one on this blog! Although, interestingly enough, that first post was very much not a "so what's this last year been like" one :).

Fifteen years. Feels like a noticeable chunk of life, doesn't it? Less than half my life at this point though, and only going to get smaller from here on :D. All this time later though, one thing remains the same. Life moves forward, but in moving forward with it, I find great comfort in being able to look back. Reminisce, ponder, wonder...

I have to say though, this is a year I wouldn't have seen coming. I can't imagine anyone did! At the turn of the last year I remember thinking, 2020, the big one. A notable line in the sand. If only for the curious roundness of the number. For the whole previous decade, there'd been all those 2020 plans, targets, agendas and what not else. All blown to bits by tiny pieces of protein wrapped DNA spirals... Although who knows, some "2020-targets" may well have been achieved precisely because of Covid.

I suppose it would be very easy to descend into a look at all the things that look so dark right now, vaccine approvals notwithstanding. After all, much has been lost. A collective sense of innocence in a way. (For bad or good, depending I guess very much on the perspective, and in the end it may well turn out to be a mix, much like anything in life I imagine.) But maybe the thing I've learnt over the last months, or at least a learning strongly reinforced, is that the way to look forward is with gratefulness and in hope. And the same may be applied to looking back.

The sense I have is one of space. Not necessarily physical space, although that too, obviously, but mental space. Space to stop a bit, pause and take a look around. Life as usual kinda stopped anyway, and it was good to re-evaluate that usual and see what was actually of value. I can't say I've managed to sort through everything. 

Maybe I could describe that as a bit like sorting out that attic in the summer holidays. It felt like something that you had loads of time for, but after getting through the bits around the entrance, other things ended up feeling more interesting. Or maybe you just lost that momentum. And then the summer was over, and life moved on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is we probably took a good look at a few things. Drew some conclusions. Decided to make some changes. And then never really managed to do the same for everything we maybe should have taken an equally good look at. But I feel that's ok, some things will hopefully be better going forward. I'm not perfect, and that is ok. Life is all about the moment that is, and not just waiting around for the perfect moment.

Which is not to say the perfect moment doesn't come by regardless, from time to time :). We only ended up going on the snow once last winter. A long downhill weekend to Hemsedal. And what an awesome trip that was :). Then there was the "surprise" visit literally the weekend before everything shut down, so that we could see some family about as recently as we could have!

There were also the cycling trips to Grimsdalen and the amazing and still frankly stupefying trip through Hallingdal and Numedal in the summer. I know we did it! And it was amazing! But part of me still thinks that was crazy :). To be fair though, that was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the cycling this summer! For once, all my hopes of getting some proper cycling done were fulfilled :). Yes, I didn't do the most cycling I've ever done in a year (that would still be the first summer after I moved to Norway :D), but it was great!

I guess work will never really be the same again. I'd never have thought about working from home on a regular basis, for a variety or reasons. But now it seems silly not to! But I guess I'm firmly on the part time bin on that one, i.e. I'd love the ability to work from home most days of the week, but would still like to be able to go in a few times a week just to keep the social connections and face to face discussions going. 

In some ways that's something that I have come to appreciate quite a lot in these last nine months or so. It is obviously great that we have the tools to be able to chat with family on three continents at the same time, make remote colleagues feel more a part of the team, catch up with friends we haven't seen together for ages... But meeting face to face is something else entirely!

And it's not even like I'm the most extroverted person there is. In many ways it's been very easy for me, this period of enforced reduction of intermingling. We do love our own little bit of space. Of course, I can imagine it makes a huge difference that it's the two of us. I can't even begin to imagine what this year must have felt like for people living by themselves :(.

I do wonder though, is it going to be harder to pick up on my (in some ways) hard earned social skills, once we do start getting back to some sort of a new normal of mingling? My hope is it'll be a bit like cycling as they say - once you've learnt it, you never forget :).

Anyhow, winding my way down to this last month, it's been a clear case of two opposite halves. The first, one of pretty extreme amounts of stress related to deadlines and deliveries at work (rather unlike the same period last year :P). Although in the end everything went about as well as they could have gone :). And then these last couple of weeks of amazingly relaxed enjoyment of the holidays.

Having not taken much by way of holidays through the year, I had enough to carry over the most number of days allowed into the next year, and still take the last two weeks completely off :D. And we spent it cooking amazing Christmas food, eating said food, spending a fair bit of time chatting to family and friends, and just relaxing at home. Enjoying reading books aloud and watching snow fall.

Yes! There is snow that seems intent on sticking around! And while we've ventured out into it, we have not yet been out cross-country skiing. Something we can hopefully rectify tomorrow as some of the local tracks seem to have had a nice amount of prepping! That is definitely something to look forward to in the new year!

Another, hopefully, would be being able to meet family in person again. I guess in some ways the world has felt a bit bigger and farther apart this year. Regardless, the things I have come to value the most are health and peace of mind, in times when especially the latter may be hard to find, yet well worth looking for :).

So that is what I wish everyone this New Year, health and peace of mind! Happy New Year!

Of old adventures and fleeting snow

It's been a rather dreary November (and early December). Not that that's a wholly unexpected situation, but still. A lot of the days have been dark and wet and of course the days have continued to get shorter. On the upside, that's not going to last for too long! Another few weeks and it'll start going the other way!

There has been a bit of snow. But mainly of the rapidly turns to slush variety. Still, makes for a nice change when it does stick around for a day or two.

The weeks have rather started blending into one another a bit. It's been quite busy with work, somewhat unsurprisingly I suppose. Either way, I am very much looking forward to the couple of weeks off that are coming up. Especially now that I've rather reconciled myself to the fact that it's going to be a staycation over Christmas for the first time since 2013!

With the cold creeping in and the lack of hours of sunshine, we did start making a bit more of an effort to get out whenever there was some sunshine during the day. Aided by a return to full time working from home. And it's amazing how much of a difference even a short 10-15 minute walk in the sunshine can make to one's general wellbeing :).

I guess it's all about making the most of the now. Given that a work Christmas get-together is out of the question, there have been attempts at spreading some festive cheer remotely. There's a gingerbread house "art-piece" contest going on that I'm taking somewhat seriously :D. 

We'll see how entertaining that ends up being eventually, but in the meantime much baking of gingerbread has been ongoing and some sticking of said pieces of bread together with icing. I'm very excited about my little village so far :D.

On the reading front it's been a bit nondescript I suppose. The book club is beginning to wilt a bit in the face of stay at home recommendations and the general gloominess I suppose. In the absence of any clear reading direction, I decided to revisit some old favourites!

There was a period of time, when I was in my early teens, I suppose, when I was a huge Alistair MacLean fan! Fuelled by the availability of a seemingly unending number of his books at the school library, I devoured a lot of those adventures. With their stoic heroes and typically European (and thus completely alien) settings, it was a magical world. I wondered what it would be like to read those books as an adult :).

Not bad, I have to say. However, the passage of years has rather changed my perspective on life and, in many ways, my knowledge of the world. With that, the books feel quite different in some ways. A heavy influence of the Second World War, social norms from the middle of the last century and the occasional excessive touch of the melodramatic are all things I notice now, but was never aware of as a kid :). They're still fun reads though!

Buggre Alle this for a Larke

With the first snow of the season come and gone, I guess you could honestly say that it's now winter. And yet :). The temperatures have ventured into the teens, and while most of the trees have relinquished their leaves for another year, there are some that have held on doggedly. If only we had the sunshine for the flaming reds and oranges to look their best.

With it looking more and more like there'll be no travelling out of country for the rest of the year, we decided the best thing to do would be take a nice long weekend off. And not do too much with it :). So we ended up in the vicinity of the Rondane National Park once more.

This time though, instead of cycling around, we drove. And stayed at a very nice hotel with a very nice restaurant and indoor swimming pools, looking out onto some fantastically minimalist landscape :). We did go walking around, but that was more to break things up a bit, get in some properly fresh air.

A much needed break, methinks. All this darkness and now the accompanied return to judicious confinement can get to you, no? It's important to have some highs to celebrate and look back on/forward to.

That was a few weeks ago though. Before and since, the weeks seem to be floating by. It's been raining a lot. I heard from someone at work today that we (aka the Oslo region) have beat Bergen in the total rainfall received in October. This is significant because Bergen is the rainy place in Norway. Like, it's famous for it. Yeah, little things do keep me entertained :).

October is also notable because of the amount of reading I seem to have managed! Without particularly noticing it, I have to say. I've spent less than the usual amount of time on trains, seeing how I've been in to the office significantly less, but somehow I've managed to get through:

• Death (Amaaaaaaazing!!)
• The Yacoubian Building (Hmm, interesting, somewhat weird in bits, and also quite confusing. But then it was a book club book and I'm not that familiar with Egypt. In fact this book made me realize how unfamiliar I am with Egypt, despite, you know, all those pyramids I've been reading about for thirty odd years.)
• The Sandman: Book of Dreams (Some cool stuff, some strange stuff, and occasionally, an absolute gem of a short story!)
• Good Omens (More on this later.)
• Toe to Toe (Another book club book, in the main rather entertaining, but very "young writer" feeling. Or maybe just a different target audience? It was very quick to read, had very little by way of anything actually happening, and then it was all over and I was a bit like, whaaaaaa?! *confused face*)

Speaking of the gem in that pile though, Good Omens, what a book :D. I read it about eight years ago for the first time. Absolutely looooooooved it, and then for some reason (potentially related to travelling light, back when I was still into that sort of thing) left my copy with my cousin in Boston. Said copy has since travelled with him to Houston and then more recently back to New York and yet seems no closer to seeing the shores of Norway.

But then, somewhat out of the blue, I noticed a copy in the local library. The book had been on my mind for a while, ever since I'd heard that the new TV series had come out. So I checked it out, meaning to suggest it for book club reading next month, and promptly proceeded to read it very quickly last month...

Anyway, what a book!! There had been a small part of me that had been vaguely worried that I was recalling my previous reading experience with rose-tinted glasses etc. Not at all! The mix of Gaiman and Pratchett makes for particularly potent enjoyment. I was also quite bemused by how relevant some aspects of the narrative are today, climate change, consumerism, obsessing over aliens... Ok, maybe not that last one.

So yeah, I suppose on that front October was pretty cool. Always good to have some highlights to look back on and feel that warm fuzzy feeling that will help get past the otherwise dingy, dark, miserable and wet existence that is November in Norway.

Or maybe there'll be some early snow that'll actually stay all the way through to April and we'll have loads of fun cross-country skiing! Wishful thinking perhaps, but you never know! :)

Of muted colours

Now it most definitely is autumn :). The trees are getting more and more colourful, the days are getting steadily darker and the weather has mostly been miserable. Well, that last one doesn't have to be a thing in the autumn, but more often than not it is... so what can you do.

Luckily it wasn't entirely horrible the whole of the previous month, so we've been out a bit. Only one proper cycling trip mind, but better than nothing :). And of course with the dropping temperatures, there's been the rising Covid numbers, which has had me reconsidering the whole commuting in to work a couple of days a week thing. Yes, the trains are still pretty empty because I avoid the regular rush hour, but still.

In the mean time, I finally, finally, managed to finish The Goldfinch. In case anyone's wondering, the reading didn't get any faster :|. It was a really weird experience, this one! I mean, without a doubt, the writing is absolutely awesome! There is a kind of desperate beauty to the way Tartt paints the scenery around the characters. Not just the scenery, there is a feeling that the characters' moods and thoughts stain and colour their environment, the pages, and eventually the reader's mind.

Despite all that though, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of foreboding. One that ultimately, despite all the clearly horrible things that do happen to (or are done by) the protagonist, was never really fulfilled! In some ways I'm left wondering, if I hadn't understood enough Dutch to read "unsolved murder" in the first chapter, how the whole reading experience might have turned out. I do feel though, that much of the oppressive sense of impending doom I had to jostle with came from the story itself.

And then there was that last chapter! What was that?! Well, to be fair, I was just happy it was over. And since then I've been detoxing with Death :).

So far this year we haven't headed out of the country even once. Highly irregular situation, that, but hardly surprising. What's sad though, is that by the looks of things, this is unlikely to change for the rest of the year. Which kinda sucks in some ways, not getting to visit family, a potentially strange Christmas. But I suppose it also means we should try and plan some more holidays in-country :). Better to try and make the best of the situation I suppose.

Thoughts on the approaching autumn

It definitely feels like summer is over for this year. Bittersweet, in that life's moving on, bright colours are starting to tinge the trees that were hitherto many shades of green, but of course, it's getting cold. Then it's only a matter of time before most of the leaves disappear altogether, taking with them much of the colour from the world.

It's been a great summer though, I think. All things considered. For a change, did loads of cycling :). Although hopefully that's not over yet. Enjoyed a lot of the sunshine. Some swimming in lakes even! Although I feel that's not been as big an attraction this time around as it has in past years. And books!

I feel in the last couple of months my urge to read has definitely slowed down a bit. But that's cool. I mean, it's good for things to evolve in life. Habits, hobbies, schedules... Otherwise there's the inevitable descent into monotony. Which is funny coming from me, because in many ways I am quite the creature of habit :). I suppose I don't like having the same habits all the time :D.

Speaking of books though, I had quite a lot of fun reading one of the more recent book club offerings: Turn Right at Machu Picchu. Non-fiction, travel related, based on one of those places that I've wanted to visit ever since I'd heard of it, it was actually a bit different from what I'd have expected :). In a very good way.

I was, perhaps inevitably (experienced travel author/editor, with zero real travel experience, undertakes massive undertaking), comparing this to A Walk in the Woods before I'd started reading. But the experience was very different. Don't get me wrong, I loved A Walk in the Woods, but this was a very different sort of book. For one thing, they actually did manage to do what they'd set out to, and then some :).

I very much enjoyed the layers to the narrative, the history of the Incas, Bingham and his expeditions, and finally the Adams - Leivers expedition as he calls it, sometimes neatly, sometimes a bit more messily intertwined with one another. I also loved the mix of very personal experiences in the backdrop of majestic landscape steeped in history. I think I particularly liked Adams' descriptions of Leivers and how the relationship between the two men seemed to develop.

And of course, I was mesmerised by the descriptions of the Peruvian landscapes! Thinking back on it now it seems really surprising that when we discussed the book earlier this week at the book club meet, we never really talked about it!! But at least from reading the book, it felt utterly breathtaking! But at the same time, reading the book, I'm no longer certain the best thing to do is just do the vanilla trip along with whatever million others every year. I mean, obviously not this year.... anyway.

Since then I've been reading The Goldfinch. Another book club suggestion. And so far I have deeply mixed feelings. It's a pretty big book. And the reading has been sporadic in a way - some bits taking me ages to get through while others go by in a flash. I guess it's a mark of great writing that the world Theo inhabits evolves and I get caught up in the emotions of it. But am I enjoying the journey? Hmm. 

I am at least approaching the halfway mark and there's most of the month left to read this in. Which goes some way in explaining why my enthusiasm for inhaling books has cooled somewhat I suppose :). No matter, it's nice noticing the landscape flitting by on the train rides to and from work (the days when I actually do travel in to work) for a change, watching the colours change. And the leaves slowly fall.

A different kind of road trip!

More or less each summer since I've moved to Norway, we've been on at least one road trip. Most often it has been a trip somewhere in the country, sometimes elsewhere in Europe. The first summer though, I didn't yet have a car. But we did go on a weekend cycling trip along the famous Rallarvegen.

This year of course, we'd already done the weekend cycle trip to Grimsdalen last month, but for the proper summer trip we came up with something rather special! Six days of cycling, starting at Nesbyen, a couple of hours' train ride away, on to Geilo up along the Hallingdal valley and then over the top and down the Numedal valley to Kongsberg!

Well, that was the plan for the first five days. Then we were going to see how we felt on day 6 and decide if a local train back was a preferred option to cycling the last 75 odd kilometres back :D. I'm happy to say, we managed to cycle all the way back home!

Unlike most of the weeks in July, the weather turned out to be perfect! Sunshine, temperatures ranging from mid teens to mid twenties and enough clouds to prevent overheating :). Except that is, on the day we were heading up the steepest section from Geilo. That day was somewhat more miserable with nearly single digit temperatures and a more or less constant drizzle. In retrospect though, over 800 vertical metres in bright sunshine and 20+ degrees may have been a bit much :).

For much of the first couple of days we were close to a river and the Oslo - Bergen railway track. The twists and turns of the cycle route meant that we continuously played hide and seek with some spectacular views up and/or down the valley! And the sunshine meant leisurely breaks for lunch and a lot of stops to take photos :).

Our last trip to Geilo was back in the winter of 2016, celebrating Christmas with family (at the time to-be :D) and skiing/snowboarding. As with everywhere else in Norway (and I imagine the world), snow-covered winter appears very different compared to sunny late summer! So much so that it was almost hard to recognize some parts. But then some differences were just caused by the intervening years.

Cycling from Geilo to Rødberg was definitely the hardest and longest day of the trip, but the gradually increasingly uphill climbs of the previous two days helped us I think, as did the weather. In between keeping our heads down and pedalling away up-hill or hanging on for dear life on steep downhill sections, the views were spectacular!

We climbed up and down three hills within the first 30km or so and the landscape slowly changed from lush green with loads of trees to scrub forests and more and more bare rock and then back to forests of green and valleys covered with almost white lichens. That was also the day without any train tracks. But as with cycle routes in Norway in general, there was always some form of water flowing alongside :).

Arriving at Rødberg Hotel was an amazing feeling :). We'd booked ourselves a hotel or hostel room for each night. Didn't really fancy going all in with lugging around camping equipment and everything. And nothing feels better than a nice warm shower after a very long day of cycling :). Except maybe a nice dinner after said shower. And then a nice bed after said dinner :D.

The next couple of days were a relative breeze :). Shorter distances, almost always downhill and with proper asphalt roads more or less the whole way. Once again we had train tracks alongside, but this time it was largely unused tracks, some of which get used in the summer by tourists on Draisine bikes. And of course there were some lovely stretches of lakes or rivers!

For the four middle days of the trip we had also planned on visiting some stave churches. The first couple, at Torpo and Uvdal were quite a cool experience. The first time (as far as I can remember) I've been inside a stave church. The other two, at Nore and Rollag unfortunately seemed shut, so we had to satisfy ourselves with a look around the outside. Good for a pitstop though :).

After a quiet evening and a slow morning exploring the old part of Kongsberg, we found ourselves winding our way back towards Asker along largely flat and very picturesque routes. The local train that runs from Kongsberg and through Asker stops seven times in between, and we practically cycled past or through every one of those stations :D. But at no point did we feel the need to hop on a train for the rest of the way back. That, I think, was one of the most satisfying things on that last day. As was the ginormous ice cream we had at the service station just before the last climb back home :).

It's not that I didn't feel parts of my body complaining for a couple of days afterwards, but in general I think we'd (inadvertently) planned the trip very well to be left with only minor aches after 340 kilometres of cycling! The inevitable thought now of course is, what next?!!