Lekaro

And a bit more so than planned.

Today I went to the gym for the first time this year and in my head I figured that doing a 45 minutes cycling class followed by a bit harder 55 minutes class would be a great idea.

I got to start reading what I sign up for. The 45 was good, and the following harder class was great. Except it wasn’t a 55 minutes class. It was 75.

But I got through so perhaps I’ll do it again one day, just not tomorrow

2009 is over and twenty ten is upon us.
2009 was a good year and I bet 2010 will be even better, at least it looks promising. Africa trip coming up and there are talks of going to the October festival in Calella, Spain with Soffa this year.

But all that is in August to October so I guess there will be a lot of fun before that to.

I’ve added a few pictures from New Years eve. Nice and quite afternoon at home and just our on to the veranda for some pictures around midnight.

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Well it wasn’t meant to be quite such an adventure that it ended up being.

On Wednesday I went to North Cape to do a training session for one of our customers. Quite an ordinary deal, just going up on Wednesday and then back on Thursday

Flying up there on Wednesday morning was wonderful, clear sky all the way and nice snow in Honningsvåg. Training went good and I was hoping to be able to take a few good photos of the northern light. But in the afternoon the wind picked up and it started to snow a bit.

Still not to bad.

During the night the weather did a total 365, from cold, calm and clear to warm, windy and raining like crazy. When I got to the airport I had to wait for a while before we got the message that the flight was canceled due to the bad weather.

Which wasn’t to surprising.

We were told to get on a bus that would take us to Alta which has better weather and a larger airport and we would fly from there, something that happens a lot at these small airports.

Then the adventure started.

Our bus had snow chains on two of the wheels, one for traction and one for steering.

Apparently it wasn’t good enough.

After about an hour a strong gush of wind took hold and literary just blew the bus straight off the road. We rushed down a 10 – 15 meter incline and came to a stop about 30 m from the road and less than 10 meters from the sea. I guess the drivers reflexes saved the day.

If he hadn’t manage to turn the buss a little one the way down we would have gone into the sea. And if he had turned it to soon we would have tipped over. In any of those cases we would have had to abandon the bus and someone might have been injured.

Not to mention that I cannot imagine how it would be to be outside in the freezing rain for the hour it took to get help.

But we were lucky and the bus skidded to a halt on dry land and on its wheels. And with the engine still running the wait wasn’t to bad.

After an hour a minibus came to pick us up. Then it got messy, getting up the bank to the road was a real pain. The bank was made of round stones, frozen, with snow on top. One slip and you would just slide all the way back down. Which I did at least 4 times, and then when I finally got to the top and walked over the road the wind kept pushing me back and almost over the edge again.

But we got into the bus and got going. By now we were all wet which isn’t particularly nice. Especially when you know it’s still at least three hours by bus to Alta. And of course we would miss our flight again.

When we got past the worst part we transfered to a bigger bus and thought that we were home free.

But it wasn’t to be.

When we came to Olderfjord where the road starts over the mountain the driver found the road to be to slippery to get the buss over the pass. But a scheduled services bus was due i not to long and that bus was properly configured to get over the pass.

But I guess that this was the day when nothing went right. The weather was so bad that this bus had to stop and mount equip more snow chains.

This meant sitting another hour in the bus, even if the bus is warm it gets a bit chilly when you are wet.

Finally the buss arrived and we managed to get on to Alta without any more delays, except slow driving across the mountain, passing a snowplow who had hit the ditch to.

By now we were way past the last flight from Alta so we were lodged at Rica Hotel Alta for the night, and for me the trip went on back to Oslo on the first flight today.

Which was blissfully uneventful.

Except I ended up in the seat next to a “reindeer mechanic” or as the rest of us would say, a vet

Well at least next next August.

I’ve finally got my stuff arranged at work and booked my trip. I’m going to go to Tanzania and hike Mt. Kilimanjaro. I got a tip from a friend of mine about this particular trip and I figured that it would be great to be able to do it.

The whole trip is arranged by Rosa Bussarna which is a Swedish travel company that specializes in adventure trips around the world. The one I’m going on is a 18 days trip where we’ll visit the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar. You can read more about the trip here. (Swedish only)

I’m really looking forward to this. Except that I’ve got to go get a bunch of vaccinations, I really can’t stand taking shots. But I guess I have to

And if the preliminary dates are kept like today I’m probably going to have a long weekend in Stockholm too prior to leaving.

and first proper crash.

Today I got my first real chopper, the little zippy E-flite Blade mSR. This is a tiny chopper but still nice and stable. I got it to hover hands off, and that got to count for something

But the fun has to end, and in my case it took me 3,5 batteries of flying time, less than 20 minutes before I somehow managed to trash the tail rotor motor.  I had expected to break the thing a few times the next weeks and months. But I was hoping to get it back home first. And I never imagined that I would trash the motor the first day.

So I guess that tomorrow I’ll have go get my first replacement part, and it seems to be one of the bigger parts since the motor and tail boom are one piece.  And then just hope I can keep it running a bit longer this time.

That’s where I spent my Saturday

This years airshow was blessed with nice weather and I returned home tired, a bit sunburned and with 1600 images to look through on my camera. And this time around quite a few of them was actually quite good.

I’ve uploaded a few to a new gallery and will probably add some more after doing another look through all of them

This years show was not as good as the one two years ago I’m afraid. The speakers wasn’t always on the action and I lost at least a few good shots because when listening to the speakers the show by that crew apparently was over when there still where a few passes left. They also seemed to have problems with the speaker system which was annoying.

But even so we got to se some spectacular flying. And I have to say that even if the big teams like the Patrouille Suisse and Aerostars YAK Aerobatic Team was impressive I’ve sort of seen it before

I was more impressed with the Norwegian Air Force tactical F-16 and chopper display. And there was some nice formation flying with De Havilland Vampire and two F-16. Showing the first jet fighter in the Norwegian Air Force and the current active fighters.
I’m hoping for a similar show in a few years where we’ll have the Vampire, F-16’s and the new F-35

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Time for a little update from back home.

Since Monday I’ve been at my parents place where I grew up, doing as little as possible

Which means that the first ting I had to to was to mowe the lawn

On Tuesday we had a little break in the rain and I managed to do a hike up to Leinehornet, the highest point on the island where I grew up (363 m.s.l.) it is quite a nice walk except that the part from my house to the main trails has not been used to much in the recent years and have almost disappeared. Which led to me being soaking wet before I was half way to the top.

When you come a bit higher the vegetation gets lover and it gets a bit easier. I was relay pleased that people seems to have started to use the old trails that I used to walk when I was a kid. The last time I went up it was almost gone to, but this time around there seems to have been quite a bit more traffic there. Which is good, that route is much nicer than the one going almost straight up the mountain.

I did the round trip in about two hours, but I like to stop and have a look around

The rest of the week has been slow, which I enjoy for now. Today started out with pouring rain, but then around 6 pm it suddenly broke up and we had sun for a few hours. I used the break in the weather to go out and get a few pictures og the sun and the rain at the same time. That’s the western Norwegian summer for ya.

I’ve added a new image category today to, I’m trying to get some nice HDR images and these are some of my first tries. I’ve not focused to much on the post processing part of HDR images since I’m currently figuring out how to take good photos as a base for a good HDR image.

Have a look at the gallery here.

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Finally a few weeks of work and an opportunity to get out of Oslo for a while.

Today I’ve traveled south to Kristiansand to visit my sister and her husband. I’ll be here the rest of this week and I’m just praying for a bit of good weather. A bit of sun wouldn’t hurt

Today I flew in early, finally get some days off and I choose to start the day at 0500, go figure.  We went back to my sisters house for a while and then went exploring a bit. Ended up at Kristiansand Cannon Museum, an old fortress from WWII where the second largest land based gun is situated. The largest is in Harstad if you wonder, and you can see that they were constructed by the same army. Both have a similar basic layout and specifications.

Or at least that was tonight’s plan.

I bought a new lens for my camera today, a Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC Macro, nice piece of kit So i thought I’d go out and take some pictures. A few weeks ago i found there is a path down along Ljanselva and I decided to walk it down to Fiskevollbukta, a nice 2.5 km walk along the river in the woods.

When i got there i got the bright idea that a walk into Oslo wouldn’t be to bad so I set out. So my little stroll ended up at about 12 km when I caught the buss from the National theater.

I just wish that I solved some world problems along the way, but thinking back i guess my brain was blank for the most part. Zombie walking, living in my own little world watching time fly by.

Guess that’s the story of my life

And i got a few photos. Thought I’d post my first attempt on a HDR image, so here goes.

Guess I’ll have to use some more time on post processing, and selecting a nice motive for such an image seems to take some practice to.

So what has happened ? A lot

After Muskeldundermarsjen to Verdalen I had a great time  with all my friends from Sørkedalen. The week after my trip to Verdalen I went to Tallin for a few days. Working. But still got some time to have a look around and find some GeoCaches. Yes I just got my self a new hobby. I guess Geocaching is the nerds way to get fresh air, or perhaps not.

Geocaching is a way to find places and read stories that you might have missed if you were just passing by. All over the world people hide geocaches, containers which at least contain a logbook that you can sign when you find it. You then get the GPS coordinates of the hiding place and post it in the Geocaching website other people can the locate the cache, and learn a bit of local history. Bigger caches can contain track able items that you can pick up and drop in another cache somewhere else, leaving a trail across the world on the Internet.

I guess it might fit just as well as a family hobby as a nerds hobby

The week after I came back from Tallinn I went to London for a few days to do some Blackberry training, and since the training was set for Thursday and Friday I got the weekend in London. Doing some more caching while seeing the sites and did a bit of photography. I’ll see if I can upload some more photos soon to. I’ve been experimenting with HDR images.

And the finally last weekend I went to Gothenburg with Lilleaker Janitsjar which was fun to. I guess that was the last of my concerts before summer

I guess that’s it for tonight, I better start writing a bit more often.