Category: travel

I’m back from my trip to Colorado. I had a great time and I’ve finally gotten to the point I can snowboard greens somewhat competently. I took my camera along and took some pictures. I’m particularly happy about the night sky ones but I think they all turned out ok.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwartedagain/sets/72157641841254804/
http://thwartedagain.com/zenphoto/Beaver-Creek

Learning to snowboard involves a lot of sitting and then a lot of falling. For all of the time I spent on the ground only a few of them actually hurt at all. The worst one was Friday which was also the best day I had on the mountain. It was snowing, starting a little before sunrise and continuing all day. There was fairly deep powder everywhere. I had taken lessons on Sunday and Wednesday with Monday on my own just practicing on the beginner runs. Friday I went back to the long greens at the top of the mountain we visited in my Wednesday lesson. I had so much fun just doing those and learning to run downhill instead of just traversing across the hill. I had lunch and then went back up top and I was most of the way down the longest green and fell coming onto my toe side edge. I’m “goofy footed” meaning I lead with my right foot so I would have been moving to the right looking uphill and fell onto my front. My right elbow caught the snow and I got a minor pull in my right triceps as my top rotated and my bottom tried to continue to the right. It wasn’t awful but I knew I was tired and that continuing would probably just mean an actually bad injury so I continued back to the condo and called it a day. It’s already feeling better two days later. I’m really happy I was able to go up the mountain and board for real on my own. It’s a real sense of accomplishment.

Saturday we got up early in anticipation of an ugly drive back to Denver because of all of the snow. However, the roads were plowed and the traffic was light and we made great time. That meant that we were back in Denver with several hours to kill. We stopped for good coffee and lunch at Crema and then managed to catch the first tour of the day at the Breckenridge Brewery. They have quite the operation there and all of the people were really nice. Then off to the airport and back home. Arriving in Austin was funny because Bergstrom was packed full of visitors for SXSW which started this week. The line for Taxis was comically bad but we were parked so we didn’t have to deal with it.

Today I got up late, had Girl Scout Cookies and hamburger and have spent the rest of the day being useless. Back to work tomorrow, and for a good long while too since I’ve used all but three days of vacation for the year already.

I’ve gone to Beaver Creek with friends again. The last time was five years ago and while I was here then I was working on the application for the job that I have now. Snowboarding is still difficult for me but a day of lessons got me most of the way back to where I was before. Yesterday I went down the beginner greens at the base of the mountain in the morning and a little in the afternoon until it became clear that I was falling too much because I was tired and couldn’t control my board well enough.

I’ve been doing some cooking. I made waffles Sunday morning and Green Chile Mac and Cheese Sunday night. Last night we did spaghetti and roasted acorn squash. Today is a rest day for me so I’m probably going to do some grocery shopping and take a walk and see if I can find a place or two to do some photography. Last night and then early this morning I took some long exposures from the balcony of the fabulous condo. I have my first pictures with visible Milky Way now which is pretty exciting.

A few more animated aurora gifs.

It turns out the aurora came back for a second encore. Apparently after we left the Arctic circle the solar wind strengthened again and there was a good two days of impressive lights but we were too far south to get a good view. We could see it but it was low on the horizon and smallish. However I did get a bunch of short, high ISO exposures and I was able to string them into an animated gif.

We arrived in Bergen in the early afternoon, got on a bus and then on a sequence of airplanes and got back to London. This time we decided to leave Mom’s big suitcase at the airport bag storage since we were only going to be there one day. The next morning Mom got up and went to St. Paul’s and I slept in. Then we went to the Natural History Museum and then to Piccadilly Circus for touristy shopping and gawking.

The next morning was back out to Heathrow and then onto another series of planes including a two hour delay at O’Hare with a gate change, a plane swap, calling in a standby flight attendant and getting airborne only a couple of hours ahead of an incoming snow storm. Lesson learned: Chicago is the airport of last resort and you should not try to connect through it unless you have no other options.

I finally got back home yesterday afternoon and today Bill and I are going to attempt to bottle our beer after five weeks in secondary fermentation (three weeks longer than expected).

I had assumed that, being so far south as we were last night, we would be done with aurora. We had a howling gale for most of the evening and pretty stout waves that were making the boat roll quite a bit. I’d had enough of the uncomfortable wobbling and was going off to bed when one of our tour members walked past saying there were lights in the northern sky. I went up on deck with none of my usual cold weather gear and there it was, low on the horizon. I ran downstairs, suited up, waking Mom in the process and went back out. There was visible green. There was movement. There was also miserable ship movement and salt water spray. I was debating getting my camera and our tour leader John was there and he was having the same debate with himself and then he said “The hell with it” and ran to get his so I followed suit. This time I tried ISO 4000 and 3″ so I could get quick pictures to try to combat the motion of the ship. I think I got enough pictures to maybe string together a little animated gif when I get back home. I also failed to use the intervalometer correctly and ended up with a 24 second exposure that is not very good but has a neat effect. At the same time, the ship was passing a fire on the port side that was apparently 25 acres of burning heather and dried grass. That produces a somewhat different kind of night sky illumination.

So I ended up in bed late again and then this morning Mom and I got up early and went for a walk in Trondheim. We had hoped to browse in a few shops and maybe get a few things but the only things open at 7-8:00am were convenience stores and coffee shops. Too bad. It was still fun to walk around and see things from a more typical tourist’s perspective rather than as part of a group. Today was mostly reading in the early afternoon and then a nap before dinner for me.

Tonight is the great repacking of the suitcases. We have to have those out for the crew before 10:00AM and we likewise have to vacate our room by about then. We have lunch on board and then come into Bergen at around 14:30. From there we take the bus to the airport, a plane to Oslo, a different plane to London and then finally most likely the Tube to Gloucester Station and our hotel for two nights. We have a day in London for sight seeing and then Friday noon our flight leaves for home. I’ve been a little melancholy (perhaps too dramatically so) today. I’ve had a great trip up the coast and back. Norway is incredibly beautiful and the aurora is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Tonight, on the way between Stamsund and Svolvær we went out on the back deck / helipad / night observatory and saw the Nordlys. Unfortunately they were not bright enough to appear green to the unaided eye but they were there and we saw them. The camera is much better at seeing color at night, particularly when you use a longer exposure time.

Last night I was able to get a few pictures of a “quiescent homogeneous arc” with both green and a little red but it was so faint I couldn’t see it with my eyes, just the camera. Tonight was much better on the first outing as I said above. After the stop in Svolvær we went back out and there were some lights again but they were less visible. We also the ship into the Trollsfjord; that being a narrow fjord with an entertaining history about a battle fought between fishing boats over access rights. It is narrow enough that the ship only just fits into it and because it is dark and windy they just positioned us at the opening and used the spotlights to let us see into it. We also walked through a couple of the little towns we’ve visited which was nice. We tried to find the state liquor monopoly store in Bodø but were unable and that’s probably just as well because the tax on alcoholic beverages is 80%.

Today was also the day we crossed into the Arctic Circle. We went up on the top deck at 7:00AM to watch the ship pass the marker and have a glass of breakfast champagne. Then we ate breakfast and I went back to sleep for another four hours, completely missing the visit from Neptunus Rex. Despite my inexcusable absence, mom and I still received certificates proclaiming our legendary adventuring prowess for having crossed into the Arctic. They’re signed by the Captain and everything.

All-in-all, a pretty exciting day.

It’s about 1:30 PM here and we’re about an hour and a half gone from Trondheim, the ancient capital once called Nidaros, founded by Olav Tryggvason. The sun, since it crawled up at about 9:00AM has been hovering about a hand’s span above the horizon. We got up early this morning and took a bus ride through town which took us to a vantage to see the city from above. Because of the geography most of the places we visit have something like that but the view from this one was particularly spectacular. We also went through the university here which is fairly large. There are something like 20,000 students out of 180,000 total population in the city. We saw a fortress on a hill and then went into the city center to the Nidaros Cathedral which is built on a bend in the river in town. It is a beautiful building with a large rose window in the front and three rows of statues of saints and other religious figures in alcoves along the outside around the window and entrance. Inside, under the window, is an enormous pipe organ that is currently being renovated for the coming 200th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution. The organ has something like 9000 pipes according to our tour guide.

We walked back through town and got a little taste of daily Norwegian life. There was a mall with a McDonalds and a bunch of clothing stores including one called “Bik Bok” which I think is a great name but is probably just “stuff and things” in Norwegian. I’m still trying to keep up with the picture uploads but the quanity of neat stuff and the intermittent internet are conspiring against me. I did make some progress this afternoon though so I’m through yesterday evening at least.

The ol’ shipboard internet is a little more finicky than I had hoped. It pretty much only lets me rsync when I’m using the work VPN and the flickr uploads usually fail pretty badly.

Tonight we had our first Aurora lecture and it was actually pretty informative. Dinner was good and we sat with a retired couple from Queensland, Australia and talked about Obamacare. :|

After dinner we went up on the top deck and our astronomer pointed out most of the features of the night sky that would be relevant to us and I learned that taking a long exposure picture from the top deck of a boat is difficult unless you like modern art. I got one good star picture out of nine and that was only 5″ / f2.8 / ISO3200.

I also learned that I need more layers and that the wind makes the cold much worse. A fifth top layer, third bottom layer, wool neck gaiter and glove liners helped but we’re in port for an hour now so that’s not really an apples to apples comparison.

Tomorrow is an early day. Up at 6:00, breakfast at 7:00 and then our tour of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim at 8:00. But after that we get free time in Trondheim and lunch and then I can probably catch a nap after our 2:00pm lecture.

So far, so fun.

Mom and I are sitting in Terminal 3 at Heathrow waiting for our flight to Norway. We got up pretty early this morning and ended up just taking the Piccadilly line to the airport rather than dealing with the Express again. The Express itself is great but the fact that there are no escalators at Paddington to get to the Circle line is difficult. We each have a carry-on and a 45 pound checked bag and that makes stairs a trial. As it turns out, there’s no one on the tube outbound at 7:00am and that means we had a quick and uneventful journey back out here.

The departure board is unwilling to tell us what the gate will be so we’re sitting at the far end of the gigantic duty free mall using our 45min of free WiFi to catch up with the world and upload pictures. We probably need to eat though so I’ll make this the end and hopefully post more when we get settled on the boat.

Mom and I are off to foreign parts. We flew from San Antonio on Wednesday afternoon and arrived in London just before noon Thursday. After dragging our cold weather laden luggage up and down a bunch of tube station staircases and a few blocks through South Kensington we checked into our hotel and then set out into the city. We stopped and looked at Buckingham Palace and then walked through St. James park and over to Westminster. We managed to get into the abbey about 10 minutes before they closed the tour entrance for the day so we had about an hour to walk around inside. Unfortunately they don’t allow pictures inside but it’s very pretty inside. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is moving in a quiet way.

After leaving there we walked along the south bank of the Thames, up to St. Paul’s and then stopped for dinner before heading home. I’ve uploaded a few of the pictures that turned out ok both at my usual place and on my new flickr account if anyone wants to have a look.

Tomorrow the plan is to get breakfast early-ish, spend the morning and early afternoon at the British Museum and then go see Cirque du Soleil at Albert Hall in the evening. Then we get up bright and early on Saturday morning, go back out to the airport and get on the plane for Norway. We do immigration in Oslo and the connect to Bergen where we get on our Northern Lights cruise. It’s 11 days from Bergen to Kirkenes and back. Hopefully the sky cooperates enough to get some decent pictures of that.

http://thwartedagain.com/zenphoto/albums/norway
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwartedagain/