End of hibernation

The sun is back. After a really good disappearing act, it's back. With the snow all but gone, that's actually a trade I'm happy to accept now. Mostly because after five months, I finally decided to get back out on the bike, and it was brilliant! :)

I'd been feeling unusually fidgety all day today. The weather was amazing outside, you could actually stand still outdoors for five minutes in a tee-shirt without turning into a popsicle. And I was hating every minute spent indoors. Finally I couldn't take it and bolted out of work a tad earlier than usual.

The bike seemed to have survived the hibernation fairly well, so I topped off the air, suited up and headed off. By the end of the hour, it was official, cycle season is back! And as a bonus, it seems I'm not too badly out of shape :).

Feeling: better!
Listening to: Mr. Probz - Waves (Robin Schulz Remix)

A farewell to snow

As it turns out, I did get my wish. One last proper snowboarding weekend to call it a season. And what a weekend it turned out to be! For a start, taking Friday off turned out to be a stroke of genius :).

I suppose a spectacular high speed crash on the very first long run wasn't the most auspicious start one could hope for. But since I didn't really need my shoulder and upper back to snowboard, it wasn't too bad :D. As it turned out, the weather was the best I'd seen all season!

On each of the three days, we had loads of sun. There was even a little bit of fresh powder! Every single slope was open for two out of the three days while wind shut down some of the upper slopes on Saturday. Over this one weekend, I managed to cover a distance that probably eclipsed my entire snowboarding experience prior to last year :).

That's the thing with a place like Trysil, you don't really count the slopes. You just keep going from one to another, playing snakes and ladders with an almost inexhaustible supply of combinations of slopes and lifts :). And more or less everywhere you end up, there's always hot chocolate with cream if you need a break!

There in the mountains, surrounded by white hills, pines and slopes, I could almost forgive this winter its brevity and general lack of snow. Blue skies and white slopes are a tough combination to get enough of, but after the last three days I am finally ready to pack up the board.

For now. Hopefully next winter will provide more snow and sunny days to get better, faster and braver :). It might be wise to invest in a helmet by then...

Currently: looking forward to spring!
Listening to: Klingande - Jubel

Shadows under water

Quiet time has been hard to come by, somehow. Even with no unwanted thoughts crowding in my head, problems to solve, worries to sort out and file away for later, there seems to be a weird white noise. Suffocating any thought I actually want to nurture.

So I've taken the other way out, just keep on going, getting outside the discomfort of my mind and drowning the noise, most recently, somewhat literally. I've taken up swimming again. The swimming laps to rack up distance kinda swimming. The kind that leaves you aching happily and stinking of chlorine after. And needing goggles to avoid going temporarily blind. After a gap of twelve odd years.

Yep, time flies. And it'll keep flying. And take away whatever snow there is left with it :(. This has to have been one of the shortest winters here in forever. Will I manage another proper week of snowboarding? That we will have to wait and see.

In the last month or so, since the fantastic Tromsø trip, I made a little trip down to Cyprus. No, not fun, all work. Stayed on a boat for the first time in over a year and realized I've gotten properly comfortable in my life, such as it is. Imagine that. Three quarters of a year, and close to a decade of conditioning all gone straight out the window.

I did manage to do a little bit of reading, most entertaining and fascinating of which, by some distance, was The Colour of Magic! For someone who's into fantasy and insanity as much as I am, it would surprise some to know that I'd never read anything by Terry Pratchett before, save Good Omens. But having started, I intend to carry on.

Time, as always though, is in short supply. And to be honest I'd like nothing better than to sort of just disappear for a bit. Land up somewhere I've never been. Hmm. Go diving maybe, just the thought of floating suspended under a mountain of water seems calming, somehow. But since that's unlikely to happen, for now working up to swimming 2km in a 25m pool will have to do.

Currently: de-chlorinated, but still aching happily
Listening to: Martin Halla - Illuminate the sky

Green skies!

In a way, I don't mind this at all, the crazy weeks when work smothers more or less everything else, punctuated by weekends that are crazier still, but for all the right reasons. And speaking of crazy weekends, the last one surely has to make it to my personal all time great list.

The plan had been on for many months, I just didn't know if I'd be able to make it till a week before, thanks to the aforementioned work insanity. However, it was a fairly large group of us who landed in Tromsø airport a couple of hours before midnight on Friday.

A few of us, carefully scanning the skies as the plane circled in to land, managed to see a little preview of the show we were most anticipating, the Aurora Borealis! The lights shimmered and morphed from one shape to another as we excitedly regretted the fact that there was no way to easily capture this from a flying plane! We worried that we might have missed the bus here and that was as good as it was going to get. After all, we'd all heard stories of people who'd made several trips to the cold dark north, only to come away empty handed.

We needn't have worried :). As soon as we'd thrown off the travel bags, had a quick walk around town and filled up at one of the few local restaurants that stayed open past midnight, we headed for the lake on the hill in the middle of the island of Tromsøya. Ringed by tall trees and frozen solid, with views of the higher mountains all around, it is one of the most easily accessible yet picturesque places to view the atmospheric magic from in Tromsø.

Of course, we only found out the details later. At the time, we just showed up and marvelled at the expanse of snowed over ice while things started happening above us! We'd seen a few strands of ethereal green appear in the sky on the walk up to the lake, but it was the hour spent on the frozen ice that will remain etched in my memory as one of the most spectacular displays of natural beauty I have ever seen!

Auroras were constantly appearing and then disappearing in the sky, fantastic shapes, one form morphing into another, curtains shimmering, waterfalls of light, mesmerising all of us. Of course, after an hour we were all so cold that when the lights in the sky seemed to peter out, we weren't too unhappy to head back to the warmth of indoors.

Our visit had been planned to coincide with the annual Sami week that is held in Tromsø to showcase the traditional lifestyle of the Sami people who are indigenous to the area. So we spent part of the next couple of days exploring that. My favourite was the reindeer ski racing!

We also visited the Arctic Cathedral and the city library. And spent several hours braving the cold to walk along the waterfront and in the town centre. The weather was quite nice for the most part, especially sunny and clear on Saturday which brought us some beautiful views of the fjords and mountains surrounding Tromsø.

The other highlight of the trip was the night dog-sleighing trip! It was a relatively last minute thing as far as plans go, but it turned out to be quite the adventure! We got picked up in town and driven north onto one of the outer islands shrouded in snow and darkness with the occasional light from a house peeking through the trees. We arrived at the dog farm which housed over a hundred dogs, bred for speed over ice and snow!

After a brief introduction to the art of handling a dog-sleigh, we headed off into the night in pairs. Yes, they actually let us run the sleighs by ourselves! And on the terrain we experienced, it was a full time job to keep the dogs from running away with it :). As we sped along the snowy countryside with views of the lights of Tromsø in the distance, I was somewhat thankful that the skies were clouded over. Had there been any visible auroras, we would either have not noticed them, or having noticed them, would have lost control of the sleighs :). 

As it is, the hour and a half or more on the trip disappeared in a flash and we were soon cocooned in a warm tent with hot coffee and chocolate cake being entertained by the youngest puppies on the farm! A lot of people suddenly wanted dogs :).

Well, since then there has been a nice day off celebrating a friend's birthday and three days spent on a boat and/or travelling. But more on that later, hopefully once I get back home very very late tonight.

Feeling: happy
Listening to: Bastille - Of the night

Review review

See, here's why I like my blog! Barely anyone reads it, especially these days, and therefore the judgemental shakes of the head are likely to be at a minimum :D. Yes fb, eat your heart out on your bloody tenth birthday. 

(That has people flooding walls everywhere with unfortunate reminders of how much it has taken over social lives. And when it happens, we will wonder how the world got taken over by random bits of code floating around in the ether.)

Anyway, here I can rave about things like this and declare that first order of business when I get home today will be to watch Stardust for the nth time. It is totally awesome when reviews agree with one's own opinions :).

Feeling: listless
Listening to: The Script - Six degrees of separation