Geiranger in April

Thought I better put a few of these up before they get too old. Leif and Joel and I took a flight from Værnes down to Molde and then to Geiranger a few weeks ago. The scenery was incredible as is usually the case with flying in Norway. I put a few of the pictures here, and the rest are on my picassa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/mileslsmith/MoldeGeirangerFlight#

We got a bit lucky with the weather that day, we had almost perfect flying conditions for 3 hours which is not usually the case in Norway. We had some trouble get the flywheel to engage with the starter before we left Værnes, so we decided not to make a full stop in Molde as we weren't certain that we'd be able to take off again. That would have been bad I guess.

I think winter has finally lost it's grip in Trondheim. We were still getting snow flurries at the beginning of last week but the sun came out the last 2 days and I think we may have actually hit 50F today. Whoopee! I ran a few miles with just a t-shirt on and I don't think I have done that since last October.

There is a big week coming up for me I think. I have a 5k race tomorrow night after work, then on Tuesday there is a practice exam for the norwegian level 1 course. My head is completely stuffed full of adjectives and verbs and pronouns but I'm sure I'll forget at least 1/2 of it as soon as I see the exam. This one doesn't count anyway but it is just practice for the real final exam which is in a month.

Tuesday night is also the 2010 outdoor debut of the indomitable Nordic Semiconductor soccer team. Well perhaps that is too strong a word. The fact that I'm on the team should be an indication that we are no threat to the Champions league anytime soon. I think the goal differential last year was something on the order of 150-2, but we remain undaunted. I didn't play last year but I'm going to try and help out this season. I bought some shoes and soccer shorts yesterday and I borrowed some leg guards from Joel so I should be all set. Except for the part about not having a clue how to play soccer :)

On Wednesday I will be having a doctors appointment to see if I have a stress fracture in my right foot. See how I conveniently scheduled that appointment AFTER the 5k race and the soccer game? If you are going down, you might as well go down in flames....Cathie B if you are reading this I can see those eyes rolling!

Påske in the mountains

Easter is a great holiday in Norway. The weather starts to warm up but the snow in the mountains is still great for skiing and everyone here tries to take advantage of the 5 day weekend by heading to the hills. Leif and I decided to go back to Gålå in central Norway to do some skiing. We had been there once before but it was in January and it was snowing like mad so you really couldn't see anything. The weather was great this time, so we got two and a half good days of skiing in. The downhill area there isn't huge but the runs are fun and the snow was really perfect. We did downhill all day on Friday and then switched to cross country on Saturday. I'm not exactly sure how far we skied on Saturday, depends on which map you look at it was somewhere between 16 and 20km, plus the 2 extra km we added when we were momentarily lost :)
The hotel there is really nice - here is a link in case anyone else feels like checking it out - http://www.gala.no/EN/Default.aspx?tabid=568
The price of the room included breakfast and dinner and they gave you little bags to pack a lunch in as well, so the meals for every day are basically covered by the hotel. I'm pretty sure I was the only vegetarian in the dining room every day but they were really nice and made up a good meal for me every day. There were a lot of families there so we had fun watching the little norwegian kids running around in circles and having fun. Didn't take them long to discover the ice cream cooler in the dining area.
On the way back we took a slightly longer way home through the Rondane mts. There is some incredible scenery there as well. It was well worth a little extra time to see it in winter. There are some large plateaus there just at or above the tree line, so in winter you just see an incredible view of pure white mountain peaks across a huge flat area with a few trees and cabins poking up. More pictues here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mileslsmith/20100404#
It felt like driving through Antartica or maybe the moon covered in snow. Would not be a very good place to run out of gas either. Anyway it was back to norskkurs homework today and then back to work tomorrow. Time to get the mountain bike out - I don't think the snow will last much longer in Trondheim.
Ha det!