Posts Tagged ‘Norway’
Midnight Sun
After picking up Cyndie and Elysa at the airport yesterday, the stories flowed in rapid succession without pause. Tales about crossing into the Arctic Circle. Descriptions of a weekend at the island cabin of Norwegian relatives. Descriptions of the beauty of the fjords, the unique cruise ship, the uncharacteristic heat wave, the relief to be home after a loooong day of travel, and the ensuing jet lag.
Cyndie stayed awake as long as she could before conking out around 8:00 p.m., equal to 3:00 a.m. in the time zone they just returned from. That is on top of only getting a few hours of sleep the night before. I plan to offer her plenty of compassion and tolerance for any demonstrations of fogginess in the next few days.
Of course, at our age, it’s not clear that our mental acuity ever fully returns to previous levels after we tax ourselves to dramatic degrees.
Before Cyndie dozed into a restless early-evening slumber, she granted my wish for a few photos from her large collection documenting their adventures celebrating Elysa’s birthday, with a healthy dose of midnight sunshine.
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Mole Caught
Yesterday, Cyndie reported that they had crossed the Arctic Circle. It looks like they are having a fabulous time. Life at home is much less spectacular, but I’ve no complaint with that.
Asher appears to understand that I am being much stricter about keeping him in my line of sight. This has reduced the amount of work I can accomplish in a day, but it has given me more time to catch World Cup matches. They have reached the third and final game in each group, so now the four teams in each group play their two games at the same time. That splits my attention across two screens at once.
It beats working hard out in the hot sun.
For having had three vaccination shots all at once on Tuesday, the horses showed no signs of discomfort yesterday. Our log guy, Matthew, brought his young son to work, so I had fun showing off things I thought would entertain him. He was particularly fascinated with the labyrinth. After walking it with him, he was determined to have his dad come walk it, too. Matthew was power washing the siding of the shop/garage, so he couldn’t do it at the time.
His son asked if he could walk Asher down to the labyrinth to wait. That was fine with me, but then I decided to tag along at a distance in case Asher looked like he was going to run off. By the time I arrived, Asher had pounced on one of those many critter tunnels and come up with a mole in his mouth. Matthew’s son and I then ran to keep up with Asher as he sought the perfect spot to bury his catch.
At least he didn’t do any digging in the compost staging area this time. He ended up picking a location beside the driveway, very near the shop/garage. It’s a trick to monitor this because it seems like he gets hesitant if we get too close, so we tried to hang back as much as possible without letting him get too far away from us.
Thank goodness there will be one less mole making a mess of the labyrinth. Good dog, Asher!
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Elysa’s Birthday
Today is Elysa’s birthday, and Cyndie and Elysa are celebrating on a Norwegian cruise boat that will take them up into the Arctic Circle to experience the midnight sun.
After their cruise, they will make their way to Oslo and spend a few days visiting with Friswold relations.
Asher and I have survived our first weekend on our own, with one week to go until I drive to the airport to pick up our Norwegian adventurers. So far, so good. He’s only disappeared on me 3 or 4 times and got himself on the wrong side of the fence of the neighboring property once.
Ella, who stopped by to feed the animals when I was in Cambridge on Saturday, told me that she walks him on a leash to avoid the risk of losing him. I can fully understand why she would choose to do that.
After I retrieved him from one of his unauthorized jaunts yesterday, I convinced him to help me process the latest compost pile that finished cooking.
I was wheeling loads down to the staging space by the labyrinth, and Asher would muster the effort to get up and follow me. The second time we were making the trek, a rabbit hopped into view, and Asher came to life with a sprint that took him out of sight into the woods one more time.
Having now grown accustomed to losing him, I didn’t fret over it. When I got back to the compost area with the emptied wheelbarrow, Asher was already there, waiting for me to return.
Over by the strawberry patch, there was a clue waiting for me to see that I’m not staying ahead of the squirrels, birds, and probably rabbits that think the juicy red fruit is growing there just for them.
The stump of a tree had quite a few of the discarded green leafy crowns of the berries scattered all over it, in addition to two bright red pieces of fruit. I guess the critters are not trying to hide evidence of their activities. Seeing that emphasized to me that I need to be picking berries before they get to them.
Unfortunately, I found very few worth keeping. If the squirrels weren’t taking them, some slug-looking insect was burrowing into many of the rest. I find mowing grass to be a much more dependable endeavor than trying to grow fruits and vegetables.
I’m thinking about celebrating Elysa’s birthday today by treating myself to some ice cream in the middle of the afternoon. Since they are 7 hours ahead in Norway, it will be like I’m joining them for an after-dinner dessert.
I won’t be putting any fresh strawberries on top.
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Winter Olympics
Among the too-many-to-count moments of my life thus far when I have found myself in the midst of something that my wildest dreams never imagined possible, attending the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, was off the charts.
That Fred & Marie were able to consider this a viable option for a family vacation, and then pull it off with such incredible results, is enough to leave me at a loss for words to adequately describe.
I love sports. Olympic competitions are some of the best. Winter is my favorite. A trip to Lillehammer, Norway? A bonus on top of a bonus and a bonus, and another bonus.
This trip was spectacular! To be able to do this with family was wonderful (although we left our young children at home with a nanny). The other family (Friswold friends) traveling with us were precious. The authentic accommodations were priceless. Obviously, the Winter Games were world-class. And Norway did a fantastic job as host country.
We were able to stay in the home of a farm family. The boys gave up their rooms and slept somewhere else, but they still had to come home to do chores, so we saw them at breakfast.
Through the Friswold connections, we ended up attending a black-tie dinner event heavily themed with Norwegian culture. We had an opportunity to do some nordic skiing in a gorgeous mountain forested landscape blanketed with deep snow. We attended a hockey game, a downhill skiing event, saw the luge up close –nothing like it with the roar of speeding blades grinding against ice as sleds rocketed past our heads– and watched moguls freestyle skiing.
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This trip was so much fun that the experience lingered for a long, long time as one of the best things I had ever done.
Other than the week Cyndie and I spent learning winter survival skills from Will Steger at his homestead property in Ely, Minnesota, and the lodge-to-lodge dogsledding adventure vacation we took our kids on with Sue and Paul Schurke, the trip to Norway for the Winter Olympic Games fulfilled my snow-season passions better than I thought possible.
The success of this family trip went a long way toward showing me how much fun was possible, traveling with this clan.
Even if the next excursions weren’t likely to be headed to a cold weather climate zone, it was pretty easy to talk me into going along with whatever wild idea the family was plotting next.
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Relative Something 