Fun Weekend....

My street on a beautiful day, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

This weekend has been just great. Saturday I went on a long bike ride and met some members of the Fredrikshof bicycle club and got invited on some of their club rides. Then Saturday evening J and I went to see the new Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie called The Bucket List. Excellent movie. We're still talking about it.

Sunday we decided to have breakfast out so we rode our commuter bikes to Slussen and followed the bike path along the shore to the Grand Hotel. There we had an elegant breakfast with great views of the ferry boats. Then we strolled all around the Stureplan area and later we met some folks at the beautiful horticultural gardens and restaurant called Rosendahl to discuss the teachings of Eckhart Tolle. He's an amazing guy with an uncanny ability to integrate the wisdom from all religions, history, science, and psychology and articulate it in a very compelling way. I am sure certain religious figures will malign him but they would be demonstrating some of his points about ego if they did. Anyway, we sat outside in light jackets (it's still a bit chilly) and discussed some of his ideas. "Tolle" groups like these are all over the world. There's a web page to assist you in finding them. No, it is not a cult and it's not a new religion. It's a way of thinking about your spiritual self and Presence with that which is Sacred.

Church, Death, and Bicycling and I'm not Sambo

Salems Kyrka (Church), originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

J and I have had several encounters with the Swedish medical system now. In general, I'd have to say it's a good system (but neither better nor worse than the US system). Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. One thing I definitely beleive is that one should not believe the statistics oft quoted in the media, by politicians, and by other agenda toting individuals.

For example, we often hear that there are "47 million un-insured Americans" which works out to about one out of every eight Americans. If you remove the 12 million illegal immigrants, we're down to 35 million. Remove those that are economically able to buy insurance but opt not to (for some strange reason) and you're down to around 32 million. Consider that 47% of those reporting "no insurance" are only temporarily without insurance (they'll be back on an insurance plan within a quarter), and we're down into the 20's. I suspect that if you consider that many opt to make payments on a big screen TV, a motorcycle, or some other toy rather than pay for insurance and the number take another big cut. I wonder whether the survey question would deem someone wanting breast implants but was not covered to be "un-insured." Remove the prostitues and drug dealers whose employeers typically do not provide insurance, we're donw to the real number of truely poor. Ahh, but I digress....

So here's the real reason for this blog post. Thursday April 13, I started feeling like I was contracting the flu around 3:00 in the afternoon. I told colleagues I needed to go home early, which I did do. Once home, I laid down on the sofa and did not get up till the next morning at 9:00. All through the night I had cold chills and occassional sweats. My joints and muscles ached. I was not nausous and had no cough ot sore throat.

I drank a cup of coffee, while still lying down. Shortly after I felt a sharp and intense chest pain just under the sternum. It lasted 20 minutes or so and really scared me. I had several more episodes. Finally, J convinced me to go to the doctor around 11:00. By then the pains had stopped but while walking to the doctor, I had another. I had visions of dying on a Stockholm street.

When I got to the doctor's office and stated I had chest pains, I expected "emergency" treatment since I'm an over-50 guy. Instead, I took a number just like everyone else and waited...about 30 minutes. Now I've been to the doctor twice before and J's been to the doctor a several times. Not once have they weighed us, taken our blood pressure, pulse, or temperature - all standard practice in Colorado. (This keeps costs down and they don't need to worry about zazillion dollar lawsuits.) This time they did take my blood pressure. The nurse wrote it down on a post-it note (although my file was up on the computer). Later I saw a doctor and he listened to my heart, took some blood (to detect a heart attack and other things), and had me do an EKG. Now my opinion about the lax attention was changing. I was beginning to get very thorough attention.

After all this, he said he could find nothing wrong with my heart and it was probably a viral thing compounded by my heightened exercise (because I'm training for a 180 mile bike ride in June). However, to be cautious, I needed to go to the hospital for observation. "Don't walk." he said. "Take a taxi or ride the bus." I would have been taken by ambulance in the US at a cost of another zazillion dollars. Anyway, once at the hospital, the quality of care takes another step up. I was admitted to the cardiac unit and the competence of the nurses and doctors was much higher. They took blood every 5 hours, more EKGs, an ultra-sound image of my heart, and more listening, thousands of questions, and finally an EKG under physical duress (a stationary bike). Negative. They can say with 99.999% confidence it is not my heart, not a heart attack, not angina, not pericardisis, not any arterial blockages. Whew! They agreed with the first doctor that it was due to a viral thing coupled with exercise.

Since then I learned that a friend came down with the flu the day I was admitted to the hospital. She was in such discomfort, she too, was admitted to the hospital. However, the thing most notable about her condition was that she was also having some intense chest pain. Only she's around 30 and so they didn't go the "possible heart attack" route.

The odd thing is that in Sweden and in the US there will be no way of correlating her condition with mine unless we saw the same doctor or unless there was an epidemic. We have the technology, I wish we'd use it. Maintaining privacy would be relatively easy to do.

One thing I made official at the hospital: I am not a sambo. I had to answer the question "Are you single, married, or sambo?" Sambo mean co-habitating with someone esle, presumably of the opposite sex. I think "sambo" os a contraction of some Swedish words, but don't recall what they were. Sambos are frequent in Sweden. However, this is not indactive of loose morale values. Indeed, I think the Swedes are very moral and compassionate and truely caring for others. They are not hypocritical (at least that I've seen). So sambo's are not causing the decline of morales or anything dire.....

I was told there's also "mambo" which means "still living with mom."

The photo above is from my bike ride last weekend, a true test of my heart. Riding past, I thought that the week before I might have been in a grave like one of those in the photo. Ahh, but I escaped. Oh, death also reminds me of a movie J and I just saw. The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Five stars in my book....

Excursion to Ireland

, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

J and I took a little excursion to Ireland last week. We drove a car down to Cashel in County Tipperary and stayed at one of the best bed and breakfast, The Hill House, we've even been in. It was built in 1710 and has quite a colorful history. The photo above, of the Rock of Cashel, is taken right out the front of the B&B.

We then drove down to County Cork and stayed at Clonakilty. From there we took short sightseeing tours along the rocky colorful coast, often on one lane roads where somebody had to find a wide place in the road when there was oncoming traffic - the occasional car or tractor.


The funny thing about driving in Ireland is that the passenger does the driving. To adjust for this little idiosyncracy, they all drive on the other side of the road, too.

Ireland is rich in scenic beauty. In fact the scenic beauty is so plentiful that sometimes they squander it away with litter and such...but not often. I have stored some pictures on flickr but the pictures, many of them, are hazy because it was hazy. We were lucky to not get rain. However, we did get howling winds, which the photos don't really show.

Never too old to soak the sun

Never too old to soak the sun, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

The Swedes are an outdoorsy people but when the sun comes out, they tend to enjoy it. This photo is of two elder Swedes enjoying the brief break in the rainy weather to sit on a bench. I somehow think it ironic that these two elders choose a church graveyard to soak up the sun.....

Longskating -- Långfärdskridskoåkning

One of my colleagues, Eje, shown in the lead position in the photo, is an avid long skater. The photo was taken by Gregor L. and is available in the original size here. Long skating is known as långfärdskridskoåkning in Swedish. I asked Eje about his hobby and here's some info he provided:

The poles are "ice probes", which are used to check the thickness of the ice, but also used as support when stepping over wider cracks in the ice, and as normal ski poles on bad ice in a tough headwind.

Drafting, like bicycle racers or race cars do, is very common in head wind, but as you see on the flag I am carrying the picture is taken in downwind, hence people spread out and don't draft.

In all normal cases the safest spot is the same track. That is, every skater follows the leader, skating over the same ice. Ice that is so weak that it might break has a "critical radius" of half a meter, hence it doesn't really matter. However, a group of skaters in high speed on thin ice pulls a big wave, to avoid that you would normally skate with some meters distance, but the same track.

Weak "black ice" sometimes experiences a wear effect, hence it could be advantageous
to skate your own track some meters away.

We carry maps, GPS, compass, the lot. Navigation is very similiar to what you do in a boat doing 10-15 knots, but like in orienteering it all becomes more difficult while doing physical exercise.

The speed and distance varies a lot depending on the skill of the skater and the ice of the day. Stronger skaters do day tours well over 100 km every year, when conditions are really favorable.

Groups I lead ofte do distance between 40 and 80 km in a day, the shorter in December/January due to thinner ice and shorter daylight. Speeds in excess of 30 kmph are common among the strongest skaters, I normally try to offer
my groups a very constant pace in the region of 17 (headwind) thru 23 (tailwind) kmph, which is normally very appreciated, rather than short sprints.

A lot of valuable skating time can easily be wasted probing thin ice, passing difficult cracks or walking on land between lakes. Hence I rather skate around all problems, again often very appreciated in groups I lead.

Ice is a very special material (the only having material lower density in solid form than as a liquid?), and I could talk forever about it...

You can see a 7 minute video of Longskating by clicking here. I got this video by searching YouTube - it is not of Eje.