The Remarkables

So it has been fabulous here in New Zealand with the ICEE. It really is like a family reunion for me. All the usual suspects are here: Igor (my M.Sc. advisor), Nigel, Mike, Mark, Hein, etc. We had the Exec Committee meeting Thursday over lunch and I got stuck with another 2 years of chairing the unruly mob. Not bad though as a gig. I just finished giving the closing speech and banging the gavel to end the conference. We're heading to a pre-season Rugby match between the Otago Highlanders and the Auckland Blues this evening, and then heading up to our big 4 day hike up through Paradise, which ironically was Isengard in the Lord of the Ring series of movies.

 The "Remarkables" mountain range on the left, an amazing view right from Queenstown, located on the shores of Lake Wakatipu. On the right are the Crown Ranges of mountains near Lake Wanaka.

Beach Day

The same day we went to San Marino, we also visited several beaches in the towns of Cattolica and Pesaro. It was certainly preseason for the beaches but the weather was nice enough for the boys to dig in the sand and for us to walk along the beach. You could see that it would be an insanely popular spot as soon as the warmer weather comes.

Our Tuscan Flickr



Olaf was especially keen to visit Cattolica, as it was the destination of his first international travel destination. When he was 10 years old, he came here with his school band. We found the hotel where he stayed and the arcade where he played video games. The hotel was closed for renovations and the locals were clearly entertained by this ban of foreigners taking pictures of an older, slightly rundown hotel. There's Olaf on the left packing very lightly as always: a heavy backpack full of camera gear, spare lenses, you'd think he was expecting to find Dag-Otto Lauritzen again (inside joke from our visit with Olaf to Grimstad last August)!

Befunky Madness!!

We got this website from our aunt or known on our blog as the "Jedi Queen." It is called befunky, and is a website for changing pictures like what you can see on this post. The Jedi queen is giving us picture assignments and we have to get a picture of that and make it funky!!

We sent this picture on the left to some of our friends on St. Patricks day and on the right is one of our writing assignments. The assignment was one where we nedded to make funky feet, you may remember this daddy's feet picture from Norway.

all three of these pictures here are pictures taken and funkied by the Jedi Queen. The top right and the bottom left are pictures of her dogs Yoda and Chewbacka or as a short form for Chewbacka we call him chewie or chewbear.

 The bottom right is a picture from Banff and the top left is a picture from Mexico.
And here is a Ted Talk on Impossible Photography from Sweden who puts different photos together on Photoshop and makes really neat realistic but strange photographs that way. His name is Eric Johansson and he can make very neat photos.

Lake Plastira

Pro-ee-oh-min-no Sa-vah-to (Last Saturday), we took an afternoon drive around Lake Plastira, a big man-made lake about 30 km SW of Trikala. It was built in the late 1950s to control the Tavropos River from flooding, and for irrigation, hydroelectricity, and water for the town of Karditsa nearby. The lake and dam are named after Nicolas Plastira, a general and eventually prime minister, who was the main advocate for the dam.

History aside, it's one of the highest altitude dams in Europe, which of course resulted in quite the windy and twisty drive typical any time you try to get away from Trikala it seems! Heading south from Mouzaki, it's a pretty crazy-steep 20-25 km on the west side. It's always amazing to drive right through some of these villages, with the houses spilling onto the main road and barely wide enough to fit our tiny Fiat Punto through!

The weather was beautiful and it was a great day for a tour. At one town, there were paddle boats and hydro bikes for rent. These folks got a bit too close to shore and ended up providing us with some free entertainment while we were having our snack. The mountain goats were another form of entertainment, scattered up the mountainsides and wandering along the roads.

Despite the beautiful warm weather the past 10 days, the high altitude means that there's still plenty of snow on the trails, so we only managed a short hike. There were also piles of snow and mudslides, not to mention road collapses, along the drive. On the right I'm contemplating sticking my feet into the freezing snowmelt stream. Even the rock I'm standing on is cold like a block of ice, and it felt like someone was hammering on my ankles with a hammer!

The boys react to their bout with cryotherapy (cryo comes from Greek for cold - "Kree-oh"). As usual, Debbie's the toughest of us all! 

Beautiful mountain and Lake Plastira view on the left, and there's the Plastira Dam on the right. Quite the beautiful day tour overall!

Bowling FINN-ale!

Hard to believe that we've just marked SIX MONTHS since we moved out of Fonthill! It's also 10+ weeks since our arrival in Helsinki and it's almost time for goodbye here! After giving a talk about what I hopefully learned during my stay, Heikki treated us and the lab to a celebratory night out. First up was some bowling, adding to the list of activities (outdoor rock climbing, frisbee golf, running, floorball, handstands!) I haven't done ever or in eons!

A FINN-e Bowling Album!

Group picture of my Finnish friends. Juha Peltonen's on the far left, Heikki Tikkanen's is on the right next to me, and poor Harriet Haglund (far right) had to put up with my 80s music fetish in our shared office.

It's been a while since the last "Daddy's Feet" picture, but at least I got one in from Finland! And no, that shot was planned and not from me falling on my butt sliding down the bowling lane! Zachary is either practicing his All Blacks "Haka" or else doing some advanced yogic body english to get the ball to curl! Debbie just missed cracking 100, but at least we all kept our balls in our own lanes and didn't drop the balls on our toes.

Next up was a fancy meal at "Motti" restaurant. Here's my artsy picture of Jacob.

As farewell presents, the lab also dressed us up as proper Finns. The hats should keep us warm in Belgium!

The meal was terrific if a tad slow (as in about 3h delivery for 6 courses!), but it gave all of us lots of time for conversation. The meal was very fancy and haute cuisine. Some notable dishes included grilled river lamprey, which was certainly a first for us and which led to me getting a lot of extra lamprey - not bad at all really! There was also cabbage rolls with duck meat in a cherry compote, which was awesome. And up above, Santa has one less reindeer for his sleigh this Christmas, but it was delicious with vanilla cabbage on top.

Big cabin bash!

Two fishermen

August 3 Wednesday 2011

Today we moved to the Atlantic Ocean near Grimstad on the south coast of Norway. We checked out the cabin which is in two parts 1 half has all the beds and the other has the kitchen and the living room and everything else. There is no bathroom but luckily there was a pre-made hole with a little shed around it for an outhouse so we didn’t have to dig one. After we checked out the house we went to the Ocean and took a plunge, which was pretty warm though not as warm as Crete.


More Pictures from Olaf's Cabin!

August 4 Thursday 2011

Today we missed the before breakfast plunge but we made up for that in the afternoon. We took the upgrade from canoe to motorboat and went to a lake and tried some water-skiing. that almost worked the first time for me but just got steadily worse. Jacob tried it as well but his feet were a bit too small for the skis. Then we all went to land and had about a half an hour nap. Then we packed up and headed for home because it was raining. But on our way home we caught some mussels to catch crabs with tomorrow, with me holding my breath and swimming underwater to grab the mussels. Then we finished going back home and Olaf made fish balls for supper. Another night we had home-made pizza for supper.

I am having ice cream with my new
t-shirt

August 7 Sunday 2011

Yesterday we were going to use Olaf’s telescope and look at stars and other things in the sky. We were having a nap but Olaf and dad didn’t wake us up because it became cloudy Olaf and dad still saw some stuff but when we were looking at the pictures we noticed there were some really amazing things there was even a satellite go by. The Chico song (Daddy and Olaf were members of the infamous Congo Band in Barcelona in 1994) even came out and they recorded it to listen to on the way back. The stars looked like little lines because the earth is spinning so the telescope moved with the earth, even in the space of 10 seconds. Today started out really rainy but ended out with a lot of action. 


We are returning from the south of Norway where Olaf’s cabin is to Oslo. At the cabin we swam, fished, hunted crabs, tried to water-ski, played games, and went to the town which was called Grimstad where I bought a tee- shirt that was made of a jersey kind of material for Only129 Kroners (or around 28 dollars cad) with money Olaf gave me. Jacob and I also bought a game called Ubongo Extreme (Olaf has Ubongo) which is like Ubongo but scoring and shapes are different it is a really good game. Today we also ran to the highway and back it was 3.9KM altogether it took 26:08 minutes and it took Olaf about19.30 minutes. After that we decided to go for a dip to cool off we decided that all five of us should jump off the pier at the same time Olaf forgot his video camera so we had to take pictures instead. We were waiting and Olaf said if it didn’t start clicking in 10 seconds he would check the settings and just when he got there it started clicking and 1 second before we jumped it stopped so we had to do it again and instead of a nice cool down we almost froze. The next time we got these really cool pictures but the water felt even colder!

August 4 we went for a walk in the nearby town of Grimstad. We had a snack at the pharmacy where Henrik Ibsen worked at the start of his career. Grimstad is home to 2 really famous cyclists Dag Otto Lauritzen (who was one of the stars when daddy started following cycling) and Thor Hushovd who is now the current world champion. in the picture there is a display for these two great cyclists it even has their bikes! Daddy actually met Dag Otto Lauritzen on a roadside coffee shop all alone drinking coffee so he got a picture and talked a bit.

Before we went fishing we had to bail out the boat because it had rained the night before this is Olaf's motorboat that we fished, hunted crabs, and water-skied in you can see the grey bucket that is the bucket we kept the mussels in. The engine is 25 horsepower.

Here are pictures of 2 great fishermen! On the right is captain Olaf steering the boat and on the left is Jacob in the boat. There is an Island that looks like a Submarine Olaf says that they call it Submarine Island.      

Here is daddy's feet along with the bonus of Olaf's feet. 

On the right is Olaf playing the Chico song (in the official version you are supposed to sing it for 2 and a half hours of until the police tell you to knock it off but dad and Olaf only did it for 10 minutes) and on the left he is setting up the telescope.

How many PHD's?

Yesterday we stayed at the apartment till lunch time. Then we got out the canoe parts and put it together. It was put together a little bit wrong but we fixed that in a few minutes. We built the canoe while mommy was cooking pizza so ended eating the pizza after the canoe was built. Then we hauled the canoe up to the lake and canoed around the lake. We took a little detour to go around an island. But after we went around the island we went back to the middle of the lake when we got near the end of the lake there is a Tarzan rope that we sat and watched for a minute or two. Then we went on to the end of the lake and stopped there to eat and swim (but only me Jacob and Olaf swam). We had 2 years old (from daddy's and Olaf's big canoe adventure) beef and potato casserole. We also set up Olaf's hammock that he got in Australia.we could still see the CRAZY people jumping (the Tarzan place was higher than the place where we jumped). When we got back we noticed that lots of kids were playing down on the street and Olaf told us that in the summer time kids are allowed to stay up very late.

Canoe Pictures

 Perhaps I look quizzical about haw to build this canoe on the left so what I really don't know haw to build this thing dad and Olaf are the masters. well here on the right is where they figure out that they did something wrong and really hoe many PHD's does it take to build a canoe.

 we had to haul the canoe to the lake (and after we had to haul it back to the apartment) so here on the right is a picture of daddy and Olaf hauling the canoe on one of Olaf's high quality gravel roads. on the left you may see that something is wrong with the canoe well the trailer that held the canoe fell in a hole on another of Olaf's high quality gravel roads.

Here is another video by Jacob.

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 On the right is a picture of me with lake Noklevann behind me and on the left is a picture with the canoe.

here is Olaf with out beef and potato casserole 

here another of daddy's feet but this time they seem quite cozy in Olaf's australian hammock  

Here are some more amazing hammock pictures on the right is me reading on our kindle. on the left is a really cool picture of Jacob in the hammock with it dark behind except for light some light rays.