Missing Colorado...

My friend Art sent me a photo he took on one of his Colorado bike rides this spring. This photo captures what I miss about Colorado - the stunning beauty and the great bicycling roads (and tolerant drivers). My Sweden rides aren't bad though (when the weather is nice). The Colorado rides can be at or above timberline as Art's was. Mine are at sea level. I ride along water decorated with white sails, Art is riding among 14,000 foot peaks decorated with white snow. Plus, there are hills in Colorado so the climbing muscles get a workout. I do miss those hills (and the descents!).


As you can see from this blog and my Flickr account, I often take my camera with me in Sweden. I haven't yet hooked up with a bicycling group so my rides are a little more casual - I can stop for a photo anytime. One of my standard rides includes a short ferry ride between two islands. That's where I see the sailboats most. The photo here shows a bunch of sailboats preparing for a race.


The photo to the right is farmland near Drottningholm . Farmland is also a familiar site on my rides: forest, farmland, and lakes. Also beautiful but I prefer the Rockies.

The last photo is taken on a bridge in the small town of Ekerö. I've taken many photos from this bridge of boats going underneath. It's a good way to glimpse "boat life" in Sweden. It is unbelievable how many people boat in Sweden! There's also a huge variety of boats. Check out my boats until you're sick of 'em collection in Flickr.

Third try - more blue, more silver

Third try - more blue, more silver, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

I often check the photos on the Flickr account to see how many times they have been viewed. Many show zero or once viewed. It helps to have good keywords so people doing searches can find them. I find that photos of dogs, cats, and girls in bathing suits can get a lot of hits, especially if the keywords are judiciously selected. Sometimes, I find myself a little too obsessed with seeing how many times photos are viewed.....I happen to like the original of the photo here a lot but it got very few hits. So I tried to make it more eye-catching by enhancing the colors - more blue in the sky and more silver in the water. It's still not as spectacular as the real life shot, which had the added advantage of the feel of the wind and the slight acrophobia of being a few hundred feet above the cold Mälaren water.

Kayaking on Enhanced Water

Kayaking on Enhanced Water, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

This is another colleague, Paul,from my home office who has also taken a two year assignment in Stockholm. Mother's Day weekend, my wife, Paul, and I went kayaking. In this photo I took some liberties with color enhancement - the water is not really that blue. We stayed near the shore just in case we capsized - hypothermia can render you helpless in 20 minutes or so.

From my photos you can tell that I've taken to kayaking. It's perfect blend of exercise and exploration. My old back sometimes needs a magic dose of ibuprofen afterwards, though....

Fountain in a roundabout

Fountain in a roundabout, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

What you do not see in this photo are the hordes of people taking in sun on the many benches between the fountains and the large building in the background. This area is what I consider the center of Stockholm, where the city hustle and bustle is maximum. You should also note that the red bus is run on ethanol to minimize polution. Swedes are very serious about being good environmentalists - I admire that about them.

Cold and wet...

Cold and wet..., originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

There are blooms all over Stockholm now. The plazas and shopping areas have giant cement pots/planters that are full of annuals and brought in on trucks and forklfts. Plus there are numerous flower gardens maintained by the city government. The cool wet spring and summers are perfect for some kinds of flowers. I suppose the long days don't hurt either. One thing I can confirm, the flowers are yet another reason to celebrate summer here because it was so so so dreary in the winter.

field of color

field of color, originally uploaded by dukematthew2000.

This photo, taken by one of my contacts in Flickr and posted here with his permission, shows how pretty some of the Swedish countryside is. This one is from Skåna in southern Sweden but it could easily have been on one of my bike rides out into the countryside around Stockholm. I think the yellow is dandelions but, hey, they are prettty when they are yellow and so many.

Dukematthew2000 has other good Sweden photos. Check out his Flickr collection sometime.

Weekend from Heaven

This weekend, Mother's Day weekend, was absolutely beautiful. When the sun comes out and the air is warm, the Swedes and everyone else come out to relax in the sun. Every open meadow, pier, or flat rock has somebody on it enjoying the rays from 93 million miles away.

The weekend was unusually busy, too. Most weekends in the winter were pretty quiet. This one has been busy from the time I left work Friday. First, we met a colleague at a restaurant. He'd brought us some things from the US and J had gotten he and his wife some things they missed from when they lived in Stockholm last year. We had Thai food at a great little Thai place on Kungsholmen called Mamadou's.

I took a 70 kilometer ride with a colleague, Mark, on Saturday morning. Mark showed me a new route, a place where he trained for a very long ski race called the Vassaloppet last winter. He'd train on roller skis on the bike paths in the dark wearing a headlamp.

I did not carry a camera on the bike ride and I really regret it. The cherry blossoms were maxed out and the fields were abloom with flowers (mostly dandelions but still pretty). I did have a small problem: a spoke broke on the rear wheel so even after I tried to true the wheel, it still rubbed the brake all the way back. I took it into a bike shop and we found several more spokes on the verge of breaking. It's all because my chain got wedged between the spokes and the rear cassette. Of course, the bike shop did not have the "competition" spokes I use and naturally they can't get to it for another two weeks. So this week I'll try to find another bike shop to do it quicker.

Bike ride done, I met another colleague, Paul, who's moved to Stockholm from Boulder and is still awaiting his family. J, Paul, and I went kayaking for two hours. We had smooth water, no wind, and Spring bursting everywhere.

J had been invited by one of the members of the American Women's Club had invited us on a 2.5 hour dinner cruise - an old diesel ferry that left the City Hall on lake Mälaren to Drottningholm palace, where the King and Queen of Sweden live, and back. The boat is the Prince Carl Philip. By an amazing coincidence, we had one of J's old High School acquaintances on board. It was very nice to discuss the old times and places. After the boat ride we went to the apartment of one of the members of the American Women's club. It was hospitable for them to invite us into their home; it was fun!



Sunday, Mother's Day, arrives and J and I take a nice little stroll to Långholmen, a small island just a quarter mile from the apartment. I took lots of pictures of the boats in the narrow channel between Södermalm and Långholmen: I call it "Boat Street." Then we went to Östermalm to shop for shoes. Okay, maybe not the whole weekend was fun, but most of it was. After that fatiguing experience, we came home and I decided to write this blog.

The bottom photo here is of the fountain in the center of the roundabout at Sergel Torg. In the winter it's a dry and dirty. In the nice months it's white water everywhere, as shown. Plus the city puts out flowers everywhere. They bring in the giant pots by truck (and forklift) which are full of flowers and they have folks come around weekly to water them. Then, in the fall, the trucks return to take them away.


As usual, there are more photos on my Flickr pages. Please leave comments! You can also click on the links in the text to get more.