Hiking in Trollheimen

These are a few pictures from a 3 day trip in a cabin called Jøldalshytta in the Trollheimen area southeast of Trondheim. It was a beautiful day for hiking on Saturday and we had a total of about 20 employees from Nordic plus 15 or so wives/girlfriends and kids along. There were a couple of mt. hikes that the more adventurous people went on that took between 7 and 9 hours. The people with bad backs and injured knees like me :( stayed on this road in the valley. It was beautiful anyway but I sure would have liked to see the view from one of the peaks. Maybe next year. I went back the next day and rode the mt. bike down this road, that was really fun. The road is very rocky but it was actually easier to ride a bike on it than to walk on it most of the way.
The cabin we stayed at is run by the Trondheim Touring association and has a normal capacity of around 80 people I think, even though we had about 90 there and I heard there were 100 people there the weekend before. The staff at the cabin was great, they made breakfast and dinner for everyone and we made our own matpakke for lunch.
We slept 4 to a room in a giant wooden cabin where you could hear the people on all sides of you snoring away at night. Fortunately we were tired enough that it didn't matter. I would really like to go back and XC ski in that valley next spring if my knee recovers.

Korsbåndsruptur

I am trying my best to learn norwegian vocabulary and making some progress, but one word I could have done without was "korsbåndsruptur". When the doctor reads that to you it means you tore the ACL in your knee :(
My doctor Elisabeth was doing her best to translate all the words from my MRI to english but I sort of stopped listening after I heard the torn ACL and ruptured meniscus parts. So I guess my experiment with playing soccer so far has these results: Spit my face open on a board in the indoor gym, injured my foot which took 4 months to heal, got kicked in the ear (twice) in the same match, Sprained my thumb, possibly broke my little finger although it seems ok now if a bit crooked, torn ACL and ruptured meniscus in right knee. Which means I still have one good foot, one good knee, and a good hand left. Should be good to go by next season!
I will see a specialist soon about the knee, most likely it will need some kind of surgery but I don't know for sure yet. It doesn't really hurt anymore but it doesn't exactly work right either. It sort of feels like it is going to bend backwards sometimes which is not a good feeling really.
I hurt it practicing soccer at the end of July but the Norwegian health system is not that speedy in dealing with non life-threatening problems. It took 3 visits to the doctor before they set up an MRI and then it took 2 weeks for someone to look it at after that. Hopefully it will work out. If not I have my eye on a nice used mobility scooter for getting to work.

The Itunes shuffle

Some time last year I decided to try and see if I could get Itunes on my laptop to play ALL of the unplayed songs just using shuffle play. (These are the kinds of thing engineers think of when they are bored). There are just over 2000 songs in my library, and probably around 500 of them were unplayed at that time. Now the list is down to 10 finalists to see which will be the song that Itunes hates the most:

Road Trippin' - Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? - Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York
Polly - Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York
November Spawned a Monster - Morrissey Bona Drag
Spoon - Dave Matthews Band Before These Crowded Streets
Country Girl - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu
The Spangle Maker - Cocteau Twins The Pink Opaque
Road, River and Rail - Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas
Percy's Song - Bob Dylan Biograph
Selfless, Cold and Composed - Ben Folds Five Whatever and Ever Amen

Of course the problem is that the fewer unplayed ones you have, the longer it takes for the shuffle to play one of them. I figure the last 10 might take 3-5 months before it plays them all. Another interesting thing is that I have some songs that have been played more than 20 times on shuffle mode, while these have never been played once. Not sure about that random play algorithm that Apple is using....
Feel free to vote on any of them that you think will be the last to go.....

I went to the A-Ha concert last night in Lerkendal stadium in Trondheim. I thought it was a great show, they had a huge stage with giant video screens behind it and the background video artwork was really nice. The band played great and it seemed like everyone was having a good time: http://www.adressa.no/kultur/article1525634.ece.
I was curious to see if the lead singer Morten could still hit the high notes from "take on me" and he did it! The lyrics still don't make any sense but the song is great.
It was a bit cold standing in the field for 3 hours (around 40F) but I was smart enough to wear my long underwear. Probably the first time I needed that for a September concert but Trondheim is already into the fall weather. There was an interesting mix of younger and older people there, since A-ha has been around since the early 80's. This was supposedly a "farewell" tour, but we all know that is no guarantee that we won't see the boys again in Norway.
Anyway just in case you haven't seen it lately, the greatest MTV video ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EXxMlIExpo