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.

Tall Ships in Stockholm

The Tall ships race came to Stockholm this year. I went a little wild with the camera: I managed to pick 70-something photos from over 200. Click here to see them and notice how the weather changed.

The last time the race stopped in Stockholm was in 2000 (and I happened to be in Stockholm at the time). They race in the Baltic every four years.

This year there are 119 ships moored at the Stockholm quays. The Tall Ships races have been going on since 1956. Part of the mission is to engage youth in cultural exchange, teach seamanship and pass on maritime traditions. Half the crew must be between the ages of 15 and 25. The fleet will be moored for four days during which almost a million visitors are expected.

What is a tall ship? Well from what I can tell the signature of a tall ship is tall masts with horizontally secured sails (square-rigged). Wikipedia tells more plus it gives a complete list of all the world's tall ships and pictures and facts about most of them. I was on the Norwegian Statsraad Lehmkuhl, for example. Although these ships can sail into the wind, they cannot do it as well as the newer sailboats with the sails secured vertically. The reason is that most of the propulsion of the sail is from the wing-effect. It's easier to get the wing effect with vertically mounted sails.



One of the brochures at the exhibition indicated seven types of tall ships: the full-rigged ship identified by at least three masts and is square rigged, the barque recognized by three or more masts and square rigging except for the fore-and-aft rigging, the brig which has two square rigged masts, the barquentine which has three or more masts all fore-and-aft rigged except the foremast which is entirely square rigged, the brigantine sporting a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main mast, the topsail schooner having two or more masts with a square rigged foremast, and a schooner which has two or more fore-and-aft rigged masts.

I think Pirates of the Caribbean was a full-rigged or barque.

What's a Cutty Sark? What's a clipper ship? How to they fit in? From what I glean from Wikipedia, the Cutty Sark is a clipper ship. Clipper ships are tall ships mostly made in Britain and the US in the 19'th century. Clipper ships are a category of tall ships.



Sailing boats get even more complicated. There are sloops (like the John B the Beach Boys sing about), cutters, and many more. This web site has a short summary.

Hard Job, missing vowels, colors and a Fokker

Last Thursday J and I went to the Zagreb, Croatia office. I had several business meetings (and is now dreaming up some more for the future). J got a few hours to walk around the center of Zagreb. Later that evening we got to experience a very fine Croatian meal which included some Croatian fig brandy, Croatian fish, Croatian squid salad, Croatian wine, and Croatian desserts. At 5:30 AM the next morning, one of my colleagues allowed us to ride with him on the four hour drive to Split, on the Dalmatian coast. Along the way we paused at a rest stop to look out over the canyon into the blue waters of the KrKa National Park. By the way, some of you haven't been waiting long enough for the images to load with maximum sharpness. These should be really nice images so if it's blurry, you have a slow connection and need to wait.

Later, he dropped us off at a hotel and came back later to pick me up for the meetings. After the meetings, we had a short guided tour of Diocletian's palace: he's the Roman emperor that killed a few Christians. In the beginning of his reign, he tolerated Christians but later decided not to keep them around. Read all about Diocletian on wikipedia.

Diocletian is also the first, if not the last, Roman emperor to voluntarily retire. He is also sometimes cited as the emperor that accelerated the demise of the empire by breaking it into four parts, so that there were four envious, suspicious, power hungry leaders. He was a Croatian and, therefore, thought it fitting to build his retirement home in Split, not far from where he grew up. It was a four star palace until he died and the Christians decided to vent some anger. They demolished all the statues and busts of Diocletian and completely ransacked his sarcophagus. They turned his chapel to the Roman god Jupiter into a baptismal room with Jupiter replaced with John the Baptist. They had other decorating ideas, too, but to avoid boring you too much I'll move on....


Split was just excellent (and cheap). Apparently lots of other tourists discovered that before me. In fact, I think if Croatia didn't have tourists, they'd be in dire straights. Check out my 50 or so Split pictures here.

We took a day trip to the island of Hvar. It's got some history behind it, too, which (don't click away yet), I won't bore you with. My pictures from the ferry ride from Split to Hvar are here. My photos on Hvar itself are here.

One thing you will not find in Croatia is an abundance of vowels. In fact, sometimes they just do without for the whole word. How about the Island of Krk? These folks would have been good programmers back in the long forgotten day when programmers had to use mnemonics of six characters or less. So we'd abbreviate "Next Value" with "NxtVal." Seems like Croatian to me.

Croatian is one of the Slavic languages. English is a Germanic language (and I always thought it was romantic! Uh, I mean a romance language.). Both languages are Indo-European.

Both Split and Hvar are on the Adriatic sea. The water is so clear you wouldn't believe it. Those tourist photos I used to suspect were photographically doctored are probably not.

We came to Croatia on a jet from Stockholm to Vienna and then took a small prop plane, a Fokker, to Zagreb. We left on a Fokker 100 from Split back to Vienna. I thought Fokker was long gone and Airbus and Boeing were the last two contestants. Guess not.

Descending down to Stockholm as the sun was low (as it is just about all day long) we saw the amazing number of islands and waterways. The water was granite grey, the island flush with green but dotted with the typical Swedish burnt red, custard yellow or white buildings. The green pastures were littered with the giant hay bails covered in the white plastic. The skies were blue with the white fluffy clouds. Contrast those colors with the colors in Croatia. Deep blue water with some greens mixed in, white rocks, white or grey buildings with the red Mediterranean tile roofs, and blue cloudless skies.

That's when I began to think how people correlate with the colors, or maybe it's the temperature. Hmmm. Guns, Germs, and Steel and Colors? I guess I have to factor in the Swedish winter's too where the colors change. In fact, most summer days have not had blue skies and white clouds: they had grey clouds and not much sun. No wonder Swedes worship the sun.

A few notes on the paint: The red paint so popular in Sweden uses a residue from copper mines, the most famous, which was in operation before the year 1000 is near Dalarna. This paint, although it tends to look old quickly is an excellent protector of wood. The wood can last hundreds of years in harsh weather with a fresh coat every 15 years. The yellow paint is sometimes associated with wealth because long ago the wealthy folks painted their palaces this color, I'm not sure why.

Sik, Abborre, Gädda, and Gös

These are the most prevalent fish in Lake Mäleren. Sik are whitefish, abborre are perch, and gädda are pike. gädda is pictured in the first photo, which was taken from Atomeyes' collection.

The grilled sik (whitefish) are from photographer Olidaone.


One interesting thing about Gädda is that they are slow, often just hanging still in the water. Some fishermen have exploited this characteristic by making a lasso, dropping the lasso in front of the fish, and then startling the fish right into the lasso.

In the ten months that I've been here in the Stockholm area, I've scarely seen a single person in the act of fishing and I'm near water a lot. However, this past weekend, in a beautiful break in the otherwise gray and dim weather, I went on a bike ride from Hornstull to Vårby. In Vårby I saw at least ten people fishing from the Målaren shore. There must be a lot of fisherpersons in the area because there's a very popular fishing supply store just a block from me and the one time I went in there to check the price of a legendary Abu-Garcia reel, made in Sweden. The store was crowded with customers and sales seemed brisk.

Saltsjöbaden

J and I took a small outing today. After several gray rainy days, today was finally sunny so we took the green line to Slussen station. From Slussen we walked along Katarinavägan and Fjällgatan to get some views of Gamla Stan, Skeppholmen and the boats in the harbor. I stored 24 of the photo's here. Upon returning to Slussen we got on the train east to Saltsjöbaden, a place I remembered as picturesque from my visit in 2000. It had changed quite a bit. Half a dozen new apartment buildings we built right next to the train station - it used to look much more quaint.

It's still a beautiful place, though. It's a favorite place for boats because they are closer to the "big water." We had a light lunch, wandered around taking photos and admiring what "big money" can buy. There's 15 or so photo's here.

We also stumbled upon the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. We first saw 5 or 6 small wooden boats on the shore. There were people gathering around them. Every 5 or 10 minutes another car would drive up with one secured to it's roof. After awhile there were probably 10 to 15 of these boats. I asked a woman what all the bustle was about and learned it is a "society" that allows it's members (young people from 11 to 20-something) to build these boats.The organizer and founder of the society has an old Swedish Navy boat that is full of machine tools for steel and wood. The "members" build their boats on the Navy boat. Now when I say build a boat, I mean everything except a few fasteners and the sail fabric. They make the metal parts, build the boat, mast, the sail, everything.....It takes from 1000 to 2500 hours. These young people have been working weekends for at least a year. Now, today, they were taking their finished masterpieces out on a three week archipelago trip. The instructor and some others will escort the armada with cargo carrying boats and some other boats in case of emergencies. Check out my 44 pictures here.

This has to be an amazing experience for the young men and women. I know the parents were beaming with pride. In the US there are a thousand reasons this would never work and all of the thousand reasons boil down to lawyers. If a minor were to get hurt using one of the many tools needed to build a boat, or have a problem on the camping trip, or whatever, the parents, at the urging of a lawyer, would want somebody to pay and insurance companies wouldn't touch this....and so we don't have things like this and it is most unfortunate. Our young people that don't choose sports or heavy academics will be playing video games, since we've essentially outlawed work for minors, too......

Kayaking Brunnsviken

What A beautiful day to Kayak. Last weekend I kayaked for 3 hours (resulting in 3 ibuprofen every four hours for 2 days). I rented from Point 65 North kayaks at the Pampas Marina. The weekend before that both J and I rented from Svima Sports, not far from Point 65 North. Both of those trips were on Lake Mälaren. So today we thought we'd try kayaking in the Baltic. (You really can't tell much difference.)

Last weekend, I saw several topless gals out sunning. Today, I suppose because my wife was present, we saw two completely naked old guys. It reinforces my feeling that nobody over 40 should ever be seen naked.

The real memory of this little 2 hour jaunt was us coming back through a little channel. Going through the first time we followed several other motor boats. Coming back we waited for it to be clear and we just started paddling through. Then two large boats started approaching - coming at us head on. The channel was narrow and J scraped one of the boats which caused her to veer into the path of the second boat. The second boat, although only going maybe 5 kph, slowed even more and the driver said something rather loudly to us in Swedish. We apologized in English and he said, we were supposed to wait on a green light. "Where's the light?" I said. "Over the sign." he said. Then we saw it: traffic lights, just like at an intersection.



After the kayaking we rested in the sun and people watched. Two young guys rented kayaks and it was obvious they'd never kayaked before. They took their boats to the dock and set them in the water. One of them took a phone call on the dock. The other, apparently remembering his phone upon seeing his buddy with his, got his phone out of the waterproof kayak compartment and put it in his jeans pocket. Then he stepped into his boat. In an instant he was in the water and the bottom of the boat was getting some sun. There was some thrashing around for a few seconds before he was able to pull himself up and get back on the dock.

Once out, he pulls out his cell phone and is trying to sling the water off. We left maybe 45 minutes later and he was still trying to dry it out. My guess is it won't be receiving any calls for a long time.

The rental guy switched the two kayaks for a single wide canoe.

The walk to the kayak club, Brunnsviken Kanotklubb, was about 2 miles (3.3 kilometers). So we decided to take the T-Bana back. To do that we walked to the Stockholm University campus where there was a music festival going on. It was free so we sat in the grass and listened to music for a little while.

A good day. You can see some photos on flickr by clicking here.

Some Boats and Bridges

I want a boat and a house on the water. In fact, I want two boats, a kayak for physical explorations, a sail boat because they are just so elegant and somehow I can use the elements. Of course, I need two kayaks: one for me and one for J. We'd have to learn to sail but that's easy: just spend a little time in the Stockholm archipelago at sailing school. Lyle Lovett wanted a pony and a boat and to put his pony on his boat.

"If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat."

I'd replace the pony with a two bikes! My sail boat would be big enough for my bike and my sea kayak. Oh, and I want to be rich enough to not have to work.
J and I would have coffee in the early morning, kayak a little while, sail in the afternoon, bike around, sail back, watch the news, and read a book. Pardon my little fantasy.

The photos in this post are mostly in and around the island of Stora Essingen, where one of my American colleagues and his family live. They had us over for a nice dinner and tour of the island. The island has four thousand residents and is only a couple of kilometers in circumference. There's a French school there so all the French expatriates prefer to live there.



As the date for us to move from the furnished apartment to an unfurnished one approaches, we need to make many decisions and purchases. We'll have some furnishings shipped from Colorado (We're allowed 20 cubic meters) or about the volume of a regular sized bathroom. So let's see....gotta have the hobby stuff first. More bicycles, J's crafts, more warm clothes, more books (including my collections of Rick Steves and Lonely Planets), a couple of chairs, and a tv. Not much else will fit in the 20 cubic meters. So then it's off to IKEA.



The last photo in this post is of the spectacular Tranebergsbron Bridge. The photo is taken on a perfect day from right outside the light rail station.

Helenelund and Ulriksdal

There are subcultures with every hobby whether it be bicycling, bass fishing, woodworking, orienteering, traveling, chess, wine tasting, or socializing. One of the favorite Swedish hobbies is sailing on the many waterways in the Stockholm archipelago. I visited a small communuty marina in Helenelund (or very nearby in Sollentuna) and saw people making a social event out of sailboating and they were on land! Now that I think about it, sailing combines the exercise and fresh air of a casual bike ride, the joy of woodworking, the intellectual challenge of chess, travel opportunities, and offers a perfect place to sip wine and to socalize. One could even fish. What a sport!

I also discovered something the Swedes call colonies, one shown in the photo here. They are a group of tiny houses with a small garden. Up close they look like quaint one room houses. I'm told they are just little getaways. People, apparently those that don't go sailing and those without a cabin in the archipelago, go to the colony for some summer weekend variety. I saw people, mostly older folks out in their garden and tinkering around there house. It seemed like a peaceful place.


The other thing I discovered just off the bike path between my apartment and work is the Ulriksdal castle. (There are plenty of Flickr folks that have nicer pictres than mine of the castle and grounds. Just do a search.) It's not a giant stone castle like you find in Germany but it is a large well kept estate - now a park. It always surprises me how taking a slightly different path can produce rewards.

You'll see a few of these shots on my flickr.com collection called April 15, Spring Sunday. Remember you can view as a slide show or individually if you want to see the a short description of each shot.

Swedes, especially Stockholmites, Love to Sail

There's water all around Stockholm. There the Baltic with it's archipelago of more than 15,000 islands. There's also Lake Malerin which is huge. Many sailors prefer the vintage wood sailboats, while other prefer newer models.

Marinas are a common site in and around Stockholm. Some of the marinas are non-profit, run by communities of volunteers. Volunteers are expected to help in the Spring putting boats into the water and the Fall taking them out. They are sometimes expected to stay up all night long a day or two out of the year as a security guard.