Reflections on two wheels

It's been a nice July :). For the first time in a while I can look back and say that I've made good use of whatever bits of nice weather we've had. And even when we haven't had nice weather, we've made the most of it :). I think a general sense of peace and quiet has definitely helped!

For one thing, we've definitely managed to go cycling a fair bit. Whenever the weather's been a bit clear. And on occasion hoping that the weather would be clear and then being caught out :D. But it's all been good fun!

I did manage to cycle in to work to Oslo a couple of more times. One of the times it decided to rain on me on the way back, so I caught a train from a very conveniently located station along the way :). The other time it rained, but then decided to clear up for a gloriously sunny evening of leisurely cycling! So yeah, ups and downs, but generally all good :).

While the southern bits of Europe and larger parts of the world seems stuck with excessively hot and dry weather, this part of the world seems to be stuck with rather more wet and cooler weather. And obviously, I'd much rather have it this way. The flowers in the garden are quite happy about the situation too!

Fruit plucking season is also well underway. In fact, it feels like things have come a bit early this year. Usually the strawberries, raspberries, cherries and other such aren't really ripe till schools are back in session which means it's the kids that manage to get everything next to the streets and paths, but this time there's loads to go around while most people are still away on holiday :).

I guess in more ways than one I've rather enjoyed a slower tempo of life. Work's certainly been busy, not least because so many people being away means whatever surprises come around land up on your desk. But I've still been enjoying having way more headspace. Time to really get into things.

I was going to then write "get things done", but I've realized I'm not very good at that. Or maybe it's more a question of what does it really mean to get something done. When is anything really fully done anyway? Maybe it's important to appreciate taking just a few steps forward, however few.

In a world where so many things feel too big, too crazy, too complicated, too wild, too strange or just plain too much for a single person to be able to deal with, let alone "get it all done", it feels best to try and do the best one can. It's heartening to see that this is not a tone that's altogether alien in the world today. There's probably just not enough of it.

Speaking of, came across an article about Charlie Mackesy recently. The name sounded vaguely familiar. The contents of the article felt even more so. And then I realized, P got given the book earlier this year as a birthday present!

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is an excellent reminder of how much good there is in the world. That kindness matters. That caring for oneself doesn't have to come at the cost of caring for another, or vice-versa. It's the sort of book that feels like a refuge in times of self-doubt, struggling to understand the world around, or just plain feeling down. I mean, it doesn't have to feel like the end of the world before we ask for help right? It's also very funny :). The artwork is something I found myself getting lost in. In the best possible way.

I've also never known cake could mean so many things, while still just being cake :).

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Also read some other books this month :). One of which was the rather thought provoking Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. The copy I'd ordered did, finally, arrive, and I managed to read it in a day or so to be able to participate in the the rather engaged book club discussion that followed.

There's a sense in which it also deals with the sense of self I guess? People are so different right? And even with our many languages, spoken and otherwise, communication is at best scratching at the surface of who you are and how that translates to me. With innumerable yous and constantly evolving mes...

It was also a lot of fun to see how people reacted to the occasional almost literal translations of (northern-) Norwegian expressions into English. Those that knew enough of Norwegian mostly found it awesome, while others were left somewhat bewildered :).

Then I got to the end of The Hobbit, not too surprised about how many of the details of the story had been badly mangled by the films. The feel of it, obviously, is very different from the other Tolkien I've read recently, but having the broader arc of the story of Middle Earth fresh in my mind made the reading all the more interesting.

I think I'll get into The Lord of the Rings in not too long. Just not looking forward to my 2002 Hollywood tie-in paperback copy, so decided to wait for whoever's got the copy from the library to return it :D.

Speaking of library books, the Monstress books I'd requested from other libraries arrived, and I read them. Is there a lot more I can say about that? Not sure. I think I'll certainly try and read the rest of the volumes whenever they do get published. I'm still very taken with the visual style, so there's that :).

Next up was this month's book club book! Loki was one of my suggestions. A take on Norse myths, and one I was keen to compare and contrast with Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. To say there was a contrast would be quite the understatement :). 

I think fundamentally the two books set out to be very different things. Gaiman was writing his version of the known and familiar Norse myths of the Edda. In his particular style, but mainly trying to stay close to the known versions. There didn't seem to be (as far as I can remember from reading it five years ago) any particular point of view or social/political commentary he was trying to get across.

Burgess on the other hand seems to be particularly keen on taking the structure of said myths, twisting hard and building his own narrative presented through the highly entertaining if sometimes strained voice of Loki. Not being particularly familiar with all of the myths themselves, it's impossible for me to tell where Burgess completely deviates from any previously known versions of the stories, where he adds new layers to the known or where he merely sheds light on the not so well known.

The last section of the book is particularly transparent, I felt, in projecting the author's views on the state of the world today. Which of course is very much his prerogative, rightly so. The mood definitely changes over the course of the book, from the playful and almost carefree to progressively darker and eventually downright horrific. Which of course is well in keeping with the state we find Loki himself in. What can I say? I'm really looking forward to the discussion on this one :).

Then I decided it would be a good time to re-read something I hadn't read in more than a decade. Turbulence by Samit Basu, a Bengali author who I absolutely loved because of his GameWorld Trilogy. Turns out he's written a sequel, and I ended up being presented a copy of said sequel for Christmas. Seeing how I didn't really remember much of the story from the first book, it seemed sensible to brush up.

Not sure what to think of it. I actually had to look up my post from when I read it the last time :P. Seems like I did really enjoy the generally utterly crazy, headlong plunge into the author's somewhat chaotic imagination :). Don't think I enjoyed it as much this time around. And the ending still felt just as bizarre as it did back then. I've been sort of avoiding thinking about when I should get to the sequel :P.

At which point I decided to delve into the enchanting world of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, to my great joy :). I now find myself not particularly fussed about picking up another book for the time being. There's a sense of interregnum. Isn't that the word? An in-between. A pause. 

A bunch of the books I know I'd like to read are waiting on the books themselves to be returned or in other cases perhaps for librarians to return from holidays :). The summer holidays are over and the buzz of life will get louder. I'm not sure I'm ready for this calm to be over and life to turn the volume back up to eleven...

When it is and it does, I'll try to hold on to the relative tranquillity of the many shapes and colours of summer clouds reflected on lakes and fjords as I cycled by :).

Summer vibes

I'd never have thought I'd be genuinely happy that it's finally started raining in the summer here in Norway! Usually it just rains anyway, and I spend more time wishing for nice sunny days. It's been a very dry spring and early summer though, so when the rain finally came a week or two ago, it was very welcome. Not least so that the danger of forest fires abated a bit. Crazy how things have evolved just in the last few years.

In some ways the rain came at a bit of a bad time, just as I was finally recovering fully from the after effects of the North Sea cycle trip :P. In the meantime we'd been rather enjoying the sunny days with walks whenever we could. Since then though, I've even been running a couple of times! It doesn't sound like a big deal, but sure feels like it. Let's see how long I can keep at it.

Now that we've slowly started cycling again, it feel a bit strange that the coastal trip was only a month and a half ago! Feels like a lifetime away somehow... I suppose there's been a bit of other travel in the meantime. I finally managed to visit Stockholm in nice weather for a change! Even made time to explore a little bit of the city! 

The impression from my previous visits were only further strengthened, that this is by far the biggest of the Nordic capitals, with a very distinct feel from Oslo or Helsinki. (I really should go back to Copenhagen and actually spend some time walking around one of these days.) I was left wondering if I'd have felt the differences as keenly ten years ago before I'd settled into life in Norway.

There was also the whirlwind weekend trip to the UK to see my then less than month old niece!! Very excited about being an uncle! Less excited about how thoroughly upside down a child turns life for the adults in the immediate vicinity :D.

As for the rest of the time, I've been reading. Quite a lot again actually! I suppose being back to the more direct narrative of The Silmarillion made a difference. But then I delved into a couple of series that rather sucked me in, for very different reasons.

But first some impressions on Tolkien again. It's been a long time since I read The Silmarillion the last time, but it's probably been even longer since I've last read The Lord of the Rings. So I found it a bit odd that remembered so much less of the details. I'd gathered a fair bit of background on some of the stretches of the "history" from Unfinished Tales, but there was so much depth that I'd just completely forgotten. Or maybe never really fully got into on previous readings.

Is it an age thing? Or just that I'm a different person in many ways I suppose. Or maybe it's just that over time I've just become more interested in the world behind the story than I perhaps was a couple of decades ago :). I've actually started reading The Hobbit recently, and am quite enjoying the very different flavour from the previous two books :).

In between, first there were the first three books of the Thursday Murder Club series! The first one was a unanimous choice for the book club, and what a fun read it was! Probably one of the most outright fun and enjoyable reads I've had in ages! I've of course only really seen Richard Osman on Pointless. Which I've generally found pretty pointless most of the time. But what an awesome sense of humour he hides behind that rather restrained factual exterior :).

I think one of the things I really enjoyed was that the humour was threaded within a beautifully layered narrative. The characters seemed likeable, mostly. They definitely felt real. And it was very different from your run of the mill spy-murder-mystery-thriller-emotionally-mature-comedy. Well, maybe there's no such thing. It probably helped that I'm now more familiar with the British sense of humour that I was some years ago :).

Anyway, naturally, I had to read the next two instalments :). They were generally fun, but didn't feel nearly as fun as the first one, sadly. But I suppose that may well be because the first one had the novelty of being the first one :). Tautological, I know, but I hope you know what I mean...

Then at some point in the last month, on one of the now regular trips to the library, I decided to pick up and read the first volume of Monstress. As with these things, I decided not to go all in at once. But I had been rather struck by the distinctive style of the art and the story-telling. Part gothic horror, part steampunk, very feminist, and I mean that in the most positive way, there was a wild beauty to the whole thing.

So once I was done with the Thursday Murder Club and the latest book club book didn't seem forthcoming from Adlibris, (Yes, sadly had to resort to actually buying a book as not a single public/school/university library in the whole country seems to have a copy of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.) I decided to get the remaining four volumes of Monstress from the library.

I have to admit, between the fourth and fifth volumes I got a bit lost. Maybe it was the rushed reading during commutes, maybe my attention was not fully there. Either way, it was with something of a shock that I realized that there are in fact more than five volumes :|. How did I miss that?!

So now I'm kinda stuck waiting for not only the next two volumes to arrive from other libraries, but for the (currently) latest volume to be published later this year, and then for one of the libraries to acquire it :|. There's also of course the latest volume of the TMC that's supposed to come out later this year, but I'm less impatient about that. Osman is much easier to read with gaps I feel :).

In the meantime it's onwards with The Hobbit and hoping for the Ice Cube to arrive so I can read it before the book club meeting next Tuesday. Yeah, doesn't seem very likely :P.

In the parallel universe outside of novels, graphic and otherwise, the annual summer hibernation is imminent. The world is getting quieter, people are beginning to disappear. Schools are shut, public transport cut and everywhere the signs of hatches being battened down for the great summer vanishing act.

After ten years, I still find it genuinely bizarre :). I mean, I get it. The schools are off, the kids have to be entertained without access to any childcare and it's the best time to head off all together for a nice family holiday. But why leave? It's some of the best weeks of the year to be in Norway. Of course, not everyone leaves Norway altogether, many people just head off to their cabins and such, so there's that.

Anyhow, so then there was the annual work summer party before people disappear, and this year it was a beach barbecue. I'm not entirely sure why, but I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to cycle the thirty odd kilometres to work in the morning (for the first time since I started working in Oslo), to then cycle another twenty k to the beach after work, and finally the last fifteen back home afterwards, including a 140m climb up from sea level :|.

Turned out quite fun actually! Except maybe the final climb, that wasn't much fun. The cycle into work in the relatively early morning cool breeze was particularly awesome! It was kinda cool to see the sheer numbers of people cycling into Oslo to work. Even though I imagine this is significantly lower traffic than it would be outside of holiday period. I might even do that a few more times before the summer holidays are over and the throngs return :P.

I am quite looking forward to a somewhat quieter month at work. Well, at least I'm hoping for one.

The North Sea cycling adventure!

May has certainly been an eventful month :). For one thing, the snow finally decided to say goodbye. And we started cycling in earnest! I suppose there's more that has happened, but it's very hard to look past our amazing and frankly somewhat wild cycling trip along the North Sea cycle route!

So, last month we'd planned and booked this trip, starting on the west coast of Norway at Stavanger, and making our way over the next four days to roughly the bottom of the south coast of Norway at Mandal. A distance of a mere 300 odd kilometres :D. Add in over four vertical kilometres of elevation to gain (and then lose again) and you get the picture.

Given that up until the end of April we'd done almost no cycling since last summer, we decided to at least try and get our legs in some sort of shape :P. Which was quite a lot of fun, given the lovely weather (and good ice-cream :D). Yet, having only accumulated about 150 km over two weekends, I wasn't feeling overly confident ;).

It was thus with some mild trepidation that we packed our panniers with clothes, equipment and food and headed off to catch the overnight train to Stavanger! We arrived early the next morning to find a bit of rain and many signs of the city (just like the whole country really) preparing for the annual Norwegian National Day celebrations! We'd done our bit, bikes decorated with some appropriate ribbons and a flag :).

As we headed off from Stavanger central station to find the famed Cycle Route 1 (aka the North Sea cycle route), the rain was light and brief and soon the sun was making an appearance through rapidly scudding clouds, blown along by a relentless sea breeze. Fortunately for us, while the wind was strong, it was almost entirely a tailwind!

We stopped a few times to enjoy the celebrations at various places on the way, including a long and boisterous tractor parade! We also enjoyed looking at the various pristine fine sandy beaches with foamy surf. The water looked ridiculously cold even had we the time or inclination to actually go for a swim :D.

Stopping often to take in the view (or find our way) we finally found ourselves on the home stretch to Egersund along the old gravel track snaking its way along the old Jæren train track. The trouble with tracks though, as we experienced repeatedly over the next few days, is that the angle of incline tends to vary rather dramatically.

Still, overall the first day with 100 km was tackled with relative ease I would say :). We even made it to our hotel well in time to enjoy the local parade from our windows :). In the middle of the older part of what looked like a pretty vibrant town, our room in the Grand Hotel was quite a fun spot to observe the festivities from! We even explored the immediate vicinity in a short walk and found dinner conveniently at a waterfront restaurant but shielded from the wind :).

The next morning, after a good breakfast we embarked upon what would prove to be a shorter, but far more taxing day of cycling. That Norway is hilly is apparent to anyone who arrives pretty much anywhere in the country. That a trip along the coast requires one to negotiate inlets, fjords, rivers and promontories of rock is probably a natural extension :). Still, doesn't make it any easier!

Once we got going though, the stunning landscape did make it easier to take the mind off of the hard work somewhat :). The coastal landscape changed dramatically from the previous day's sandy beaches to the more prevalent rocks and boulders with little hamlets and villages scattered about.

One of the absolute highlights of the day was the cycle tunnel above Jøssingfjord! Sitting alongside the larger newer tunnel for motorised vehicles, this older road was complete with cavernous openings providing views down into the valley below. The sense of awe for me is somewhat indescribable I have to say. The combination of the unexpectedness of the stone tables and chairs set out in this steeply angled old tunnel with the panoramic views from the vast openings in the side was quite mesmerising!

We also met a young Frenchman on his bicycle (complete with his personal tent). He'd spent the previous few weeks cycling along the coast all the way from Oslo and was planning on spending the next few months cycling up the coast of Norway, hoping to eventually make it to Nordkapp! I cannot even imagine the mental fortitude needed to achieve that feat all by oneself!

After many miles of hills and fjords, when we did make it to the outskirts of Flekkefjord, our stop for the night, it was a huge relief :). The day had been largely overcast, which probably was for the best, helping us make good time without overheating :). A hot shower, a lovely dinner at the hotel and sleep was very much appreciated!

Leaving Flekkefjord the next morning was a bit of a struggle. A couple of long days of cycling in the legs does make things feel heavier. This was not aided by another stretch of uneven tracks with a fickle attitude towards gaining and losing elevation with little warning :|. Once we cleared that stretch though, the going got much easier :).

This was a day of avoiding the tunnels the main road was going through. Going up and over and taking wide detours into the surrounding countryside was the name of the game. Given a significantly brighter day and nice tarmac roads though, we were hitting a good stride.

A nice lunch stop at Kvinesdal was a highlight, as were the views from either side of the valley as we came down one side and left up the other :). Given that the elevation gains required were less than the previous day's, we repeatedly found ourselves hurtling down the other side before fully realizing we had crested a given climb!

The last stretch into Farsund was particularly picturesque and enjoyable as we stopped often to enjoy the view as we climbed down the spectacular Bøensbakkene overlooking Framvaren. Cycling along the fjords into the town resplendent in bright sunshine eased a lot of the tiredness from the legs! And once we'd checked into the old shipping company offices converted into a lovely a spacious hotel, we even managed a good look around the vicinity on foot!

By this point we were well past the midway point of the trip with nearly 250 km clocked. Only the shortest of the full days of cycling remaining to get us to Mandal. And the day was probably the brightest and nicest we had all trip! The first leg of the trip flew by and we'd even negotiated the longest climb of the day by the time we decided to take a short detour into Gitlevåg for a picnic lunch by the water.

Having not found any of the decommissioned seismic ships moored at Farsund, (to be fair, we didn't look all that hard), we found some on the fourth morning, moored outside Lyngdal! Reminders of a past life :).

The final afternoon took us on mostly relaxed tours along the coast line through amusingly named places like Spangereid and Lonestrand. There was a much appreciated stop for ice-cream at Vigeland and then the final stretch of grit and unpredictable steep climbs along the old postal road into Mandal :).

We made the most of the beautiful weather and explored a bit of the picturesque waterfront of the town. We were staying at Mandal Hotel which bills itself as the southernmost hotel in Norway! And regardless of the truth of that matter, I have to say the dinner was superb :).

On Sunday morning all that remained was really to make our way up along the Marna/Mandal river (different maps seem to disagree on the actual name) to the closest station to catch our train back. The route was more or less flat and the river kept us entertained with its rapids and bends.

We made it in plenty of time, and despite a rather flustered train conductor, who seemed to be rather taken aback by our need to load our bicycles onto the train before we could depart, settled into a very picturesque if somewhat long five hour journey.

The week since has been filled with memories of those rather crazy days :). I guess you know a holiday was particularly awesome and extra-ordinary when the mind just refuses to re-enter the present and more ordinary :D.

I did finally finish reading Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth. I'd wisely decided not to take it with us on the holiday. Not only because my library sourced copy is quite the heavy tome, but also because I rightly gauged that there would be no time nor energy to actually read :). But in general I also really enjoyed meandering through the tales at a pretty slow pace. Giving time to reflect on my memories of the other stories being referenced.

It was great fun finding out some new details about the history of Middle-earth, and of course much further background on the more known events and characters. It definitely is unique as a creation, with the depth of thought and the personal history of JRR's creative process that Christopher so brilliantly brings to light. I couldn't not continue reading The Silmarillion after :).