Now that I've had a little time to recover, I suppose I'll get on with actually detailing some of the high points over the last 10 or so days that may have been somewhat overshadowed by intervening moments of... well, whatever :). I'm back home, by the way. And it's been a nice couple of days. Barring the reception of a neighbour's in-law's someone's someone's wedding the first night (yes I know, I knew absolutely
no one!!), I've been able to sit back, relax and actually enjoy being home :). All that's about to change shortly, but what the hell, right now it's perfect :D.
One of those things that I'd completely forgotten about was that we'd gone ice skating! Yes, I was trying things, and it was too late to go snow-boarding anywhere :P. I must say I did quite well, sort of. Didn't fall even once! And I wasn't holding on to the wall all the time :D. Unfortunately, even though I managed to pretty much perfect the 'walking' on skates bit, didn't really get much skating done :). Not going back in a hurry :)).
Friday night yielded some interesting new acquaintances :). And what followed wasn't entirely a haze, but I'd probably do best to not remind myself of some of it :)). It's always fun meeting new people. Especially when they're all the type that spend half their lives bobbing along at 5 knots or less :P.
Unlike the previous weekend, we'd made somewhat more realistic plans this Saturday morning :). I was of course, hell bent on getting that bag! It turned out one of our company was in Oslo for the weekend expressly with tourism in mind. That provided me the perfect opportunity to go visit all the things I should have, but never actually had seen in and around Oslo! But first, we went in search of the only Crumpler store in the country! Found it quite quickly, and I even found exactly what I wanted! It turned out that two of the other three with me also found something they almost exactly wanted :).
And these were the last few pieces of a massive sale :D. Then it was just a matter of managing to stuff the bags we were already carrying into the new ones, and we were all set!
Seeing how we were already more than halfway to the famous Vigeland Sculpture Park, we decided to head over. It's ironic that had it not been for my hatred of early rising on weekends, I'd have been doing this a full 3 years back :|. But rather late than never, hey? Most of the pond was well frozen over, but some of it wasn't, so the ducks were actually fine ;).
After a very very necessary, and a very very large, hot, cup of coffee soon after and a very brief look at the waterfront, we were off to call it an early night. The next day was going to be the big one, hitting the Kongsberg slopes! That story has been told, I might only add that the following Monday morning was bad. Really bad :|. But by lunch I was already hatching plans of heading out again during the week! :D And then I went and bought myself a pair of ski pants! The absolutely most important feature? They're waterproof >:).
The rest of the week passed by in a bit of a blur and Thursday arrived! We headed off to Tryvann this time, the scene of my first attempt at taming the slopes in November! It went so much better!!! There were five of us, two of whom had never seen a snowboard before :D. One had seen it last about 15 years back. And us last two who had started our journey together in November :P. We were actually doing two runs easy for every one the other 3 were managing :D.
The thing with this is, the better you get, the more intoxicating it becomes!! And soon you're going faster and faster! I remember my fear on previous occasions whenever I'd pick up some speed, I suppose much of that was really a fear of lack of control. I firmly maintain, learn how to stop, and then you can absolutely gun it! :D We just kept going till our legs were about ready to give up. Unfortunately, when that happens, even the easiest turn seems absolutely impossible to make :). Resulting, of course, in crashes very reminiscent of my first attempt :D.
We finally decided to call it a day pretty close to closing time, which is 10pm! I was beyond exhausted, but was half-seriously thinking of going back Friday! Unfortunately, I'd had my left hand run over by another guy on a snow-board, and once out of the freezing conditions, it was swelling fast :(.
Ended up finally packing up the stuff I was going to leave behind, namely my travel companions on most of my adventures over the last couple of years. And paid a rather ill-advised visit to our usual Friday night haunt for dinner. To cut a rather long story short, there wasn't much time left for sleep before my morning flight :|. When I did get to Gardermoen, I swear, I have
never seen it snowing that hard! I knew the guys were heading back for the slopes again, and I was well and truly jealous!
But I suppose it was cool watching as they actually
washed down the planes before take-off, to get rid of the massive amounts of snow accumulated on the wings and the fuselage! What followed was a very long trip back with very little sleep. But yes, I was very very thankful for the absence of the check-in bag :).
Currently: missing the snow (it's 20 degrees here :|)
Listening to: Nick Drake - One of these things first
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