Back from the underground

We have been in lockdown due to COVID-19 for almost three months now. I've been working from home, from the basement, as an underground man. Today it's back to the office.

It's been weird times. I've been working in the basement, with my computer connected to the big TV that we normally use to watch Premier League football. I need two screens to get my work done efficiently. With no football games there hasn't been much  competition for the TV.

There hasn't been many places to go. No traveling at work, no weekend trips around Winterland. Just stay at home, work, eat, go for an evening walk in the almost empty streets. Fortunately the spring was late this year. It’s been good skiing conditions around town almost till the end of May. I’ve been up there cross-country skiing frequently.

The lockdown has had it’s advantages too. For an introvert the situation is quite easy to deal with. And just in case, to avoid infection, we had separate bedrooms. That’s what I have always wanted. Would be great to have it as a permanent solution, I think.

New times are starting today. Noting will be exactly like before, in many ways, I think and hope and fear. 

(Two pictures, taken recently, with only a week between)

Eat some snow

The spring-winter is here, the best time of the year. Sunny, slushy spring skiing. I was in the mountains skiing last weekend, as usual.

In the lift line I heard a conversation between a little boy and his father:

"Dad, I’m thirsty."

"Eat some snow."

That’s a great advice. But you don’t hear it very often. My father used to say it when I was a kid. I have said the same to my boys.

With plenty of snow around you won’t get dehydrated. Just eat it slowly, to avoid 'brain freeze', as we used to call it when we were kids.

And remember that  old Zappa song: don’t you eat that yellow snow; watch  out where the huskies go >:)

(Picture taken some time ago in the mountains.)

Writing a blog post with cold fingers

I'm sitting on a rock in the mountains, writing my first blog post outdoor and above timberline. I had to search a little bit to find a spot with cellphone signal.

It's such a nice day, in this bowl where you can just ski everywhere. Mountain men (like me) know of course that this beautiful landscape can turn into an inferno when fog and blizzards come in. But today it's just paradise, with blue sky and white snow. 

Its the white gold.

My hands are getting a little bit cold while typing, cold as heaven. Time to get my gloves and my skis on and get back to the offpiste slopes >:)

(Picture taken 10 minutes ago with my cellphone camera. The pictures get a little bit random because it's hard to see the display in the strong sun. But if I take a  lot of pictures, I always get some good ones.)

Summertime in Winterland

There's something about staying up late. I like that, but it sometimes makes me tired the next day.

Yesterday, I had a great day of skiing. It was nice and sunny. It was the kind of spring-winter when you can feel the sun is warming, even above timber  line in the mountains.

I spent last night reading and writing in the cabin, and then chatting with a good friend on Internet, while enjoying a cold beer.

I didn't stay up very late, just about an hour past midnight.  But this was the night we changed the clocks to summer time, and lost one hour. So today I'm a little bit tired.

Time to finish my coffee and get out on the slopes again. Then I will wake up, for sure.

(Picture taken yesterday. Little boy was skiing with a buddy in the snow park, and I was enjoying the company of my shadow while skiing in the high zone )

A-Z Challenge 26: Zusammenfassung

It's the last day last day of the A-Z Challenge, and time for a summary. I thought I might do it in German. Zusammenfassung is German for summary. I learnt German (our 2nd foreign language) in school. When I was a student, and traveled around Europe every summer as a backpacker, I was a decent German speaker (but I never understood the Swiss). I haven't practiced German for many years, so I should probably stay with English (our 1st foreign language in school).

Slightly off the topic: Once upon a time, I spent 2 hours on the train between Mariazell and Sankt Pölten in Austria together with 3 Catholic nuns. We had an interesting discussion on various philosophical and theological questions, in German. My vocabulary was pretty good, but my grammar was somewhat shaky. I must admit that I found it slightly annoying when the nuns corrected my grammar all the time, repeating every sentence I said in correct and proper German. After all, I'm not the one to blame for the Tower of Babel. I should probably write a blogpost about my trip to Mariazell sometime.

Doing the A-Z challenge has been fun. I have written about topics that I wouldn't have done, if I wasn't forced to twist my brain to come up with an idea for every damn letter of the alphabet. Some posts were fairly good, some were bad, but now it's water under the bridge. Also, I have discovered new blogs, and read some cool posts written by other participants.

During the A-Z Challenge I've been posting a lot more (10 times more?) than I would normally do. Now I will probably take a blog-break for a couple of weeks, and then return to my natural frequency and my usual topics; life in Winterland, travel to various places, memories from the past, criticizing right-wing politics, and mocking the gods. My to-write list was only partly covered in the A-Z Challenge, and I will pick it up later.

Today is the last day of April. Tomorrow is the 1st of May, the International Workers Day, which is a national holiday (we live in a social democracy, which means we're half-communists. In the Soviet Union both 1st and 2nd of May were holidays). On Sunday at 4:30 PM the skiing resort is closing for the season. Tomorrow I'm off to the mountains together with the kids, for the last four days of skiing.

The last four days of zunny and zlushy zpring zkiing ... zzz  >:)

(I took the picture above a year ago, when I was watching the kids in the snow park at the 2013 ski season finale. We hope it will be as good this year.)

Strategy

I could have posted something interesting today, but I'm not. I'm saving it for the AZ Challenge that kicks off next week. My line managers call it strategy. I maximize my own benefit, and don't care about yours.

It's a mean world, an I'm no better, sometimes >;)

Whatever. For a moment,  I don't care if the world is bad, when the skiing is good.

(I took the picture  half an hour ago, when I was skiing above the timberline. Another post written on my cell phone. It works quite well, except I can't control the size and position if the pictures)

1st of May

Today is the 1^st of May, the International Worker’s Day. It’s a national holiday in many countries, including ours.

It’s a great day for the Labor Party and the unions. It’s always been an important day for their fight for worker’s rights, which I support. Workers should of course be offered reasonable working conditions and a fair salary.

Remember the days of the cold war. The 1^st of May parades on Red Square.  Brezhnev and the Politburo waiving from the top of the Lenin Mausoleum.  Soldiers, tanks and missiles show the capacity of the Red Army.  I have visited Moscow many times the last couple of years. Every time when I take an evening walk on Red Square, this bizarre show comes to my mind.

For us the 1^st of May is mostly a day off, Also, it’s the last opening day of the season in the skiing resort. Little boy insisted on getting his last day on the slopes. OK with me, off we went. We had a great day of spring skiing, dry cold snow at the higher elevation, and slushy in the lower part.

It’s the end, for this time. We’ll be back on the slopes in October or November.

(I borrowed the picture above from the Internet. Brezhnev (with sun glasses) at the Lenin Mausoleum on 1st of May 1972.)

The extinction of snow

I just came back from our last skiing weekend this season. March and April is the best part of the year. Then light is coming back to the north, but we still have winter snow, in the mountains. Long light days and good skiing.

Spring is arriving late this year. Nights are still cold, which slows down the melting of the snow.

Soon spring will take over. There’s no mercy. Sad but rue. It’s the time for the extinction of snow. 

(Picture taken from the chair lift yesterday; one of my last lift rides this season. The yellow and brown grass from last summer reappears. On the slopes there is still plenty of snow, but along the lift, only patches remain.)

Intrinsic motivation

Another nice weekend with sunny spring-winter. This winter have been very good. I fear we have used up all the good weather before the summer.

Today little boy was doing his first freestyle competition. He did the tricks he had planned to do and was satisfied. (Older boy didn't participate. He's injured and and tries to get fit for the national championship next week).

The boys have had kind of the same skiing development. They started with alpine racing at 6-7 yo. For more than 12 years, I've taken kids to the slopes for practice and races. They've always had about 60-80 days of skiing every winter (and me too of course).

The kids have found that freestyle skiing is what they really wanna do. They love it. It's the meaning of life!

It's OK with me. I decided that they should do alpine racing. It was their own choice to swap to freestyle skiing. Motivation is strongest when it comes from inside (the psychologists call it intrinsic motivation).

Alpine racing becomes very expensive if you're serious about it, with 4 pairs of specialized skis (for Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G and Downhill) and lots of training camps.  Freestyle is much cheaper; only one pair of twin-tip skis needed. That's great.

And I don't miss the Friday and Saturday nights spending hours tuning and waxing racing skis >:)

(Picture taken before the competition today. The bibs were somewhat big for the kids.)

Who the Hell was Stroganoff?

I’m out traveling again. No need to say where. It’s almost become an habit. I survived another trip on the old Antonov 24, and arrived safely on Putin’s side of the border.

The driver took me to the hotel. Then I went to the café to get a dark Piligrim and something to eat. Irina was behind the counter, with a shy smile as usual. She gave me the menu, and I looked through it to find something to eat. Pizza? No, it’s terrible. Some Russian dish? I found beef Stroganoff on the menu. An international dish, but at least a Russian name.

 But who the Hell was Stroganoff? The chef who invented this popular dish? I Googled it and found the answer. Beef Stroganoff goes back to a Russian family of very rich merchants, during the Tsar era. The beer was good and the Stroganoff was eatable. I asked Irina for another beer, but not another Stroganoff.

Today I was working with our Russian collaborators. Not much to say about it, not much I’m allowed to say about it. But the lunch was good. Seafood from arctic waters. Herring and cod and caviar.

Then I started the trip back home, by car, through northern wilderness in early spring. Snow was mostly gone, but lakes still covered by ice, and no signs of green leaves yet.

We stopped at the cafe in Titovka, to get a cup of bad instant coffee and a rest. It’s become a habit.

When we passed through the Army town of Sputnik, I asked the driver if he had been in military service. I told him I had, in the navy, during the cold war (I will write about my merits in battle some time later).

 “You were our enemies,” I said, “the evil empire in the east.”

 Then we got a good laugh, on our way to the border between two countries that have never been at war.

 (Some pictures I took today, from top to bottom: Murmansk seen from the other side of the fjord. The cafe in Titovka, made from 3-4 old yellow railroad cars tied together. Not much of a cafe, but you can get a cup of coffee or a coke, and use the restroom for 15 Rubles. Nikel seen from the road ()my driver don't want to stop there). It was a sunny day, but the town was obscured by the smoke from the Nickel factory.)

Closing time

Winter is coming to an end. The sun is warming, and the first flowers have appeared down in the valley. Shortly, the trees will start to acquire green leaves.

Today was a sad day for little boy. It was the last opening day in the ski resort. The warming sun is destroying his winter paradise, at least for a while. In six months, the snow is coming back.

We have spent four days in the mountains skiing, just little boy and I in the cabin. The last four days of the skiing season. We took Monday off from school and work, respectively. Tuesday was 1st of May, the International Workers' Day, and a holiday in many countries, including ours.

Skiing was still good at higher elevations, still plenty of dry and fresh snow. For the last week of the season, they have built a big terrain park in the high zone. Jumps all over the place. Green and red lines for the freestyle rookies (like little boy), and black line with big jumps for the teens.

It was an amusement park made of snow. Great fun for those who have the skills and the guts to use it. And for the parents it was pleasant to take a cup of coffee in the sun while watching >:)

(I took the picture while relaxing in the sun, drinking coffee, eating chocolate, and watching the kids.)

Grand finale

It was our last weekend on snow this season, the grand finale. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm down in the valley, still good skiing conditions on the mountains.

Older boy was skiing the big jumps in the terrain park, as usual. He brought a bunch of his friends as usual. There was a new jump line in the high zone.

Little boy and I participated the worlds biggest downhill race, with more than 2000 skiers. The race course is very modest and easy, maximum speeds hardly above 45 km/h (30 mph). Everyone can take part in it; kids, parents and grand parents.

The race was great fun. Little boy was very happy with the waxing of his skis that I did the night before. However, this time, I won the family battle. I benefited from being heavier in the flat parts of the course, and beat him with one second.

After the race there was a big after-ski party on town square, with live music and lottery on bib numbers. The 1st price was an Audi A1. We didn’t win but we were very close. Next year we’re gonna get that damn car.

When we got back to our cabin, I cooked Tex-Mex dinner for 6 hungry boys and myself.

(I took the picture above while waiting for our turn to start in the race. It’s little boy with bib 2356 studying a piste machine outside of the start paddock. Big machines are interesting stuff for the kids.)

Coltsfoot

You know that the skiing season is coming to an end when the coltsfoot flourish right by the lift.

We have been in the mountains skiing for a week now, without Internet connection. That’s why stuff has piled up on my lap top. I’m posting all of it today.

Daylight saving time

This weekend we swapped to daylight saving time, or summer time, as we call it. I assumed my new cell phone automatically adjusted the clock, like my old phone did.

I'm using my cell phone as alarm clock, and Monday morning we got up when the alarm went off at 7am. We had breakfast and I sent little boy off to school, before driving to work at 8:15, I thought.

Little boy thought so too. He rang the door bell of the house next door, where one of his friends lives. They walk to school together every morning. He got an early warning when his friend's mom opened the door and said that his friend left an hour ago. He was embarrassed when he came to school and had to tell the teacher that we had messed up the time.

Little boy was annoyed when he called me after school. Sorry about that. My fault.

I told him that it will be less embarrassing in the fall, when we switch the clocks back. Then he will be one hour too early >:D

(I found this picture on the internet. When I was young, I had several Swatch'es, in all kinds of weird patterns and colors. Now it's more than 10 years since I carried a watch. Maybe I should get one?)

Here we go again

Here we go again, at least I hope so. The ash cloads from Eyjafjallajökull have taken a break; Six Flags Airlines is apparently flying again.

I'm on the way to the north of Winterland, as usual. I went straight from the slopes to the airport this evening. My old lady was grumpy because I didn't postpone it till tomorrow morning. But I really hate getting up at 5 am to catch an early plane.

The very first sign of spring has shown up in our garden; the kids trampoline is up and in use. There are no signs of green leaves on the trees yes, but in one or two weeks, it will be.

Today we had our last day of skiing, for a while. There is still dry cold snow at high elevations, but really slushy and wet down at the base lift stations. It's spring, the winter is over for this time. Sad but true. Another year, another snow; then we're back on the slopes.

And we have the glacier skiing in the summer of course; the first week of kids' summer vacation. The kids are already looking forward to it. They have started planning already. Just for fun, here is a little video made by the boys, from the glacier skiing last summer:

http://www.vimeo.com/5376061

Whatever, it’s still another 40 minutes till my flight. I'm just writing this crap while I'm waiting. Maybe I can find some interesting blogs to read … >:)

Spring-winter

Days are getting longer. The day lasts longer than the night now, finally. Down in the valley, by the railroad, the first flowers have sprung. Close to town the snow is slushy and rotten. But at higher elevations, above timberline, there is still dry, cold, white snow, and good skiing. The sky is blue, the sun is warming. People are digging out a bench in the snow, to sit down and take a rest, drinking coffee from the thermos and eating a chocolate bar. It's spring-winter, the very best part of the winter.