The wheels, they keep spinning

Another couple of fairly active weekends have gone by. While I'm getting pretty good at racking up mileage on the bike, it seems I'm getting a bit lazy with blogging. Anyway, so I've always been rather curious about Drammen, that's probably got something to with the fact that we ended up biking there last weekend.

The weather seemed really perfect, and seeing how I'd never seen the local concept of a 'use and throw' barbecue grill in action, we decided to make it a picnic! Worked out quite nicely, I must say. So nicely, that we kinda lost track of time and had to take a train back home :).

Then there was the hike to Gaustatoppen. Seeing how the place is well over a hundred kilometres from Asker, we ended up driving for what seemed like forever :). But the hike itself was quite spectacular.

Unlike some other long hikes, you can quite clearly see your destination from the very start. Of course, one might be inclined to not believe that it's at all possible to cover such distances in a mere couple of hours! And then you see the snow :).

Yep, this is the middle of summer, and we were happily trudging through patches of snow that had braved the sun. The rest of the landscape was equally fantastic. Beyond a point, the whole hillside is covered in boulders, which in turn are covered in a green mossy sort of thing. This apparently is the work of centuries of freezing and thawing that's ruptured entire mountain sides!

You can supposedly see a seventh of all of Norway from the top of Gaustatoppen. I wonder who worked that out exactly, but we must have missed out on a few fractions of the view, seeing how the farthest rows of mountains were rather cloaked in a haze by the time we made it to the top. The store selling fresh waffles kinda made up for that though :).

Since the weather was particularly fine for most of the week, there were a couple of more forays to the beach and such. But this last Friday, we really outdid ourselves! The great thing with Drammensfjord is how the roads that skirt around it on either shore really cling to the coastline! This means that on a good clear day, you are constantly presented with stunning views of the fjord as you make your way around, all 60 kms of it :D.

This afternoon we decided to explore the Oslofjord side, and sure enough, the views were rather few and far between and the terrain a lot more challenging. But there's nothing like ending a long bike ride with a smoothie and an ice-cream, so I guess I can't really complain. Especially since I'm the one who planned the route :P.

Now where should we go next week?

Currently: I should be sleeping :|
Listening to: Sparklehorse - Revenge (ft. Wayne Coyne)

For Ellen, who didn't survive the winter.

Every so often a bit of music comes along. It sort of just fits. Slots right into a little gap somewhere in your soul. For the most part it means nothing. But there's a phrase, or a few bars of sound, that just draw the entire world out in front of your eyes in the colours of your dreams.

Apologies like the birds in the sky

And even they are falling like the tears in my eyes

Time and place, I suppose. Or a book. And sometimes you remember a bit of the feeling later. A shadow, an afterglow. And sometimes there's not even that.

Currently: darkness outside, is summer over then?
Listening to: Poliça - Amongster

Mad "skills"

Most days I'm quite glad I don't have to tell people about me. Someone asked me today what I'm good at. I think I stared blankly for a bit before asking what he was talking about :). When he clarified he meant work, I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

I mean, I'm good at stuff. But 'stuff' clearly wasn't going to hack it here. A bit of this and a bit of that? Nope, people want distinct classifications of ability. Turns out I've been in a job where you take it as it comes and do the best you can long enough that I've forgotten how to 'define and sell my skill-set'.

I don't suppose being able to navigate any airport in the world without batting an eyelid would count. Or the fact that I can survive in a social setting a lot longer around people I don't really know without panicking than I used to.

I can, however, assemble Ikea furniture like nobody's business :D. And at long last the sofa arrived last night! It may not look like it in that photo, but seriously, this is the bad-ass-est of bad-ass sofas! I love it :) clearly, and suddenly my living room, and by extension my apartment, went that much closer to being my home!

Yeah, say what you want about the little things making a difference, sometimes the big things make a bigger difference ;).

Currently: hoping for a bit of sun
Listening to: Boards of Canada - Split your infinities

A midsummer night's dream

It has been something of an intense couple of weeks :). It's not that I haven't had things to post about, quite the contrary. Instead, there barely seemed to be a quiet moment to string together a few thoughts out of the rush of things.

Running between one apartment and the other is tedious business. There is more than a little bit of neither here nor there going on. But that all ended yesterday when I finally packed up and moved everything over. So I suppose it's official :).

In between there was much ado over furniture and such other things. And a weekend trip to Sweden over midsummer! Yeah, trust me to plunge headlong into a road trip when I've got a zillion other things to do :). It was a really brilliant break from things though. The weather wasn't exactly on best behaviour. But neither did it completely ruin things. Far from it in fact.

Given midsummer is about the biggest holiday in Sweden, we followed suit and started the weekend at a cabin out on the fjords a bit north west of Gothenburg. The idea was more to relax and enjoy the scenery than anything else. Which worked out, with a bit more of lazing about than scenery hunting :).

The next morning we were off to Gothenburg, but with a couple of detours. First a quick stop at Skärhamn, at the watercolour museum. (Why have one there you ask? Well, why not?) And then a not so quick stop at Marstrand, spent mostly delving into the entertainingly maze-like Carlstens Fästning!

For something we almost skipped for lack of a parking spot, that was an afternoon very well spent :). The best part of the tour, if you ask me, was the haphazardness. More specifically, there's no fixed route you can take in your exploration through the castle. There are actual (formerly) secret passageways! And they take you on a mad spinning trip around through and under the stone walls, bringing you out again through random gateways.

Eventually I think we left mostly as we were satisfied we'd explored the lot. But it might also have had something to do with the fact that by then we were all really starving :). Finally when we did show up at our hotel in the middle of Gothenburg, the clouds that had been threatening to burst decided to do so.

Of course they waited till we were out exploring the city on foot. We countered by hiding for the rest of the evening in one of the cafés along the Avenue, a perfect place for people watching and good food :).

The next day we fared much better with the exploration of the city! Randomly picking fancy looking buildings in the distance and heading in the general direction doesn't often yield rewards, but for us, on this day, it worked like a charm!

One of the things I'd never done, possibly surprisingly, is visit an amusement park. Or ride a roller coaster. Given that Liseberg was barely a couple of miles from the hotel, we couldn't possibly miss it. As it turned out, I'd picked some particularly hardcore company :).

I did my bit, even went on three roller coasters! But after that I was content on taking photos of other people doing crazy things :P. There's a special thrill in managing to catch specific people on a snapshot from several hundred metres away as they plunge in free fall :D.

So that was last weekend. And then this weekend came the move. But it's only now, after having unpacked all the bags and stored them away, after a ton of other minor details have been sorted, that I finally feel like I'm home :). Well, sort of. It'll be nicer when they finally deliver my sofa, I bet!

Currently: moved in

Listening to: Edward Shearmur - 27th July

Of biking trails and modular furniture

In a lot of ways, it's been a pretty big week! With great weather for the most part. I took advantage of the weather the first few days and went on something of a biking expedition around the water bodies strewn around Asker. Even hit 350km since I bought this bike :).

For years I'd been familiar with the few closest lakes, and while they make for some beautiful walks, a bike unlocks significantly wider territories for exploration :). I went far enough to actually end up next to one of the inland fjords in the area, Tyrifjorden. The views, as expected, more than made up for the punishing biking terrain.

That's the trouble with living in Asker. No matter which way you come from, if you've been more than 5 kilometres away, it's an uphill climb back home. Gullhella isn't a whole lot better, but when you're willing those pedals to keep moving, every metre of elevation counts. Reason I bring this up is that that's where my new apartment is!

Finally got the keys this week and it was a novel experience as I explored the apartment I'd previously seen filled with signs of the previous owners' life, empty. Waiting, I felt :). That's a good thing right? But I couldn't shake the feeling that the floor looked relieved to be out in the open after years of hiding under couches or tables or whatever else.

I wasn't really planning on the no-furniture-sleep-on-a-mattress deal, so the last couple of days were spent hiding some of that floor back under some new stuff. At least the shapes of the shadows will be different :).

I really need to get something that matches my red door...

Feeling: proprietorial :P
Listening to: Eels - Fresh feeling