Oslo, Thor Heyerdahl, and Kon-Tiki

Back in Scandinavia (and hence the column actually being on time today).

I surprised Mia on Monday morning, arriving in Stockholm immediately following her green card meeting at the US Embassy. It's one of the few modern-looking buildings in the city, and completely surrounding by fence. Mia waited in the cold for half an hour before they let her in for her 8:30am appointment. Meanwhile, I was sitting in the Oslo airport waiting for my connecting flight and wondering if she'd been let in yet. And eating a bar of chocolate I bought at the news stand.

Friday Column: Ut på tågresa - A train journey to Sölvesborg and back

Clint said this would happen on the boatride back from Åland. I was espousing how much I was looking forward to being back home in Dunderbo for several weeks. Making fires and drinking coffee and not living out of a suitcase or having to move anywhere. He said it. “Mate, in two weeks you’ll be itching to go somewhere new.”

He was right. Something in my nature does not like sitting still for very long. I cannot explain the joy I get from coming back from a trip, eating proper food that I can cook myself in a real kitchen, sleeping in a real bed and waking up to my own environment. But it definitely does not last. Probably because I have been stuck in the pattern of coming and going now for most of the last five years, since I first met Mia (and Clint, for that matter), down in New Zealand.

After New Year’s, Clint was off to Copenhagen to visit a friend for a while, before going back to England for another (maybe) MMA fight. After training for six weeks he was going to go back to Norway, where he has a small apartment and a job as a tree surgeon. I suppose he did not do the fight – I got a message from him yesterday saying he was off to Turkey, and then headed back to Oslo. Don’t know what for, and apparently he was traveling alone. He might have the itch worse than I do.

So it is then that I’m sitting in the train station in Enköping, waiting to ride to Stockholm, where my journey will begin in earnest. I only bought tickets last night around 8:30pm, at the last minute, and only decided for certain that I was going about an hour beforehand. Earlier that afternoon I had been distracted by taking the dogs out sledding again (six of them this time, which is considerably faster than four).

I do have an actual reason for the trip – I’m off to the south of Sweden to buy a camera. A used Nikon F3, originally released in 1983, and fully manual. That’s right. I found it on Blocket.se, a sort of Swedish Craigslist, and negotiated with a very friendly man named Torbjörn to meet me at the train station this afternoon. More on why I did this in a while. It is loosely related to celestial navigation.

I sit and wait in Enköping. My train should arrive in 14 minutes. What follows will be an account of my journey, as it is happening, a running diary of sorts and one of my favorite ways of recording events.

1010: På snabbt tåg. Till Mälmo och Köpenhamn.

On the fast train. To Malmo and Copenhagen (though I will change at Hässleholm, for the last hour of my ride to Sölvesborg). The beginning of this narrative is going to be regularly interrupted, as I have some real work to do on the train today, a major reason I decided to spend over $100 to come on this trip rather than have the camera mailed to me. I work better on the move, without distraction. I’m in my seat now (which is comfortable and spacious. Like and airplane seat, not quite in first class, but definitely better than economy extra. The armrest dividing my seat from the one next to me is wide enough for two elbows).

I have two articles to write today from scratch – one that will go under my dad’s byline, for the new magazine: another for Spinsheet, again about Matt Rutherford now that he’s round Cape Horn and well on his way back north to civilization. I also must finish editing my first editorial for the new magazine, which has been a work in progress. It’s only 600-some words, but it feels important. I’ve been changing it constantly.

We started moving. I’m going backwards in my seat. This train is so smooth I didn’t even notice the motion, and would have thought we were still in the station if not for the city outside going by the window. Interesting how we say that sometimes – “the city going by the window.” The city isn’t going anywhere. Outside my window it is.

I’m off to the café car shortly to start work in earnest. I’ll wait first for the conductor to come by and collect my ticket. I already got shooed out of the café car once – they’re not open yet. I plan to spend the day in there.

1023: The Bistro

I would pay extra for a plane ticket if they had a bistro. I would.

This one is small. They serve mostly cold fare, plus coffee (of course). I got a citrus Ramlösa and a kaffe, mostly so they let me sit here. Strangely, there are no tables, but little stand-like devices around which I suppose one is supposed to sit with friends, with room enough for coffee and beverages on the stand. The stand is in the middle of a squared-off u-shaped dinette, with fake red leather seat covering and a too-low backrest. I’m facing the bistro bartender, who maintains a small laptop at the end of the long counter where food and drinks are served. I can see the world going by outside the window just behind him. There are seven others in the bistro car with me. One is most certainly an immigrant – a dark woman in a white burka who does not speak Swedish. One is likely an immigrant, and looks vaguely Italian. I, of course, am an immigrant as well. People outside of Sweden think I look Swedish. People inside of Sweden mark me as an American from a mile away. I stick out like a sore thumb. The rest appear Swedish. But what do I know.

1211: Back in a seat, not the one I was assigned.

The train is not full today. Not yet. We have stopped several times along the way, never for more than sixty seconds. You’d better be ready to get off when you’re time comes.

Ironically, I ate my lunch in the cabin, and not the bistro. I do believe they frown upon bringing your own food into the cafe car. I drank my coffee and my bubbly water, wrote the article based on my dad’s story (I recorded our Skype conversation last night and transcribed a lot of it for the story today), and came back again for lunch so as not to be rude.

I took a seat opposite my own. It faces forward and is adjacent to a window, so I can watch the scenery go by.

It’s a black and white day outside, the sky blanketed by a low, thick layer of clouds, the sun never high enough to provide any light. The ground is covered in snow, and the trees in the forest have no leaves. The only color comes from the odd countryside house, always painted bright yellow or red (and now I understand why), with a bit of green mixed in from the pine trees, though a faintly duller green to me thanks to my deficiency. It’s slight less black and white here, a bit further south, with a bit less snow on the ground than back in Dunderbo.

The train leans into the turns, like a speedboat. Or a bicycle.

1219: Film photography. -or- Why I took this trip in the first place.

I am a cocked spring, freaking loaded with creative energy.

For the past three days I have been absolutely obsessing over a camera, and not entirely for the wrong reasons. I bought one, an old Nikon F3, on eBay, with a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens – that was Saturday night, and still I wasn’t satisfied. I needed it now. So I spent most of Sunday morning and Sunday evening back online looking at Rollei 35s, Minolta Hi Matics and older Nikkormats, trying to find one within a day’s train ride so I could make a small adventure of it. Last night was my first reasonable night’s sleep in several days.

My editorial for the first issue of All at Sea SOUTHEAST (the new magazine for which I am acting as editor) touches on the intangibility of modern technology – ”writing digital words and getting paid digital dollars, neither or which actually exist.”  Something along those lines.

Back in Lunenburg last summer Mia and I were gung-ho about buying an iPad, so we could use the insanely cheap chart software in lieu of purchasing a new $20 paper chart for each new place we sailed to. The software, which includes digital reproductions of the actual paper charts, and with the same detail, cost about $40 for the entire collection of Canadian Hydrographic Office charts, from the Arctic Ocean south, to all points west and east. Essentially free when you consider the sheer number of charts, from zoomed out small-scale charts to zoomed in harbor charts, some covering only a few hundred square yards.

The owner of the North Sails loft shared them with me on his own iPad when I went in to buy some spare hanks and some nylon webbing that Mia could make sail ties out of. The program begins by showing all of Canada, with a myriad of red squares that outline the various charts held within. Simply zoom in the clever way Apple does it on their mobile devices, running your fingers over the touch-screen, and each chart automatically appears, resolving right down to the creek level with as much detail as the paper versions.

But they are not paper. In the end, the iPad costs $500.00, about twenty-five charts. To me, the value of that paper, which is real, far exceeds the ones and zeros embedded within that iPad that merely represent the paper they’re based on. I’m very excited that we never bought it.

Similarly, I’m back to writing in pencil, and in fact, this very story began as pencil on plain white computer paper.

Hence the 35mm film camera. It’s real. Light enters the camera and leaves it’s imprint, physically, onto the film. The resulting image is real. It’s not zeros and ones, not tiny square pixels, but a real, tangible image, one that can be real and tangibly archived and resurrected any time in the future. I dig that.

The physical capturing of those images. After agonizing over this camera – having already decided I was getting a 35mm, just needed to choose one – I chose the F3 because it’s fully manual and mostly mechanical. The mechanisms that create the images all operate from the power of one small watch battery. There is no LCD screen, not even the small one most SLR’s have on the top, showing basic shooting information – all the data is in the viewfinder, where it belongs, and settings are changed with tangible, mechanical switches and knobs. The resulting image, once the shutter is pressed, will be a surprise days or weeks later when it returns from the photo lab.

The F3 was the premier professional SLR in the 1980s when it came out, and remained in production through 2000. Ironically, it was the first in the pro ’F’ line to use any electronics at all; people genuinely feared this at the time, and the camera was equipped with a backup mechanical shutter that would still fire at 1/60 with no batteries. I bought it precisely because of its simplicity, even if it was considered ’advanced’ in 1983. Two watch batteries that last over a year, and some film – that’s all you need to carry to get the most of it. No cords, no computers, no plugs, just the basic gear. The body is weather sealed and all-metal, and the lens I bought is fixed – no zoom. The camera will take photos in the freezing cold and in the damp and I will not have to worry too much about it.

I’m taking a fork in the road. Hopping off the fence.

I said it was like celestial, and it is. Technology is concerned mostly with the end, not the means. GPS? Tells you where you are, and you don’t have to know how it works for it to do so. It just does. Digital photography? Makes pictures fast and easy. On automatic settings, the camera just works. It thinks for you.

Poeple say that celestial navigation is a good backup in case your GPS fails. This is not true. This is not why it’s worth knowing. Celestial navigation is not about knowing where you are on a chart, it’s about knowing where you are in the universe, physically and philosophically. It’s about practicing art, for the sake of it. It’s about learning history, learning something for the knowledge because knowledge is enlightening. It’s about using tangible references in a tangible world, about being conscious. Not everything has to be about practicality.

Likewise with film photography. I want to pursue it precisely because it is more difficult, more time consuming. It’s real. I keep saying that, I keep thinking that, and I’m finally doing that which I say I believe in. It’s about going out and looking for interesting images to record, and the learning the process by which they are recorded, not simply switching on to automatic and having a go.

There is no logical reason behind learning celestial or how to shoot a manually operated film camera. The logic doesn’t matter. I cannot reasonably defend either pursuit.

I have never made the argument that celestial makes a good backup to GPS. A second GPS makes a good backup to GPS.

1255: Leaving Nässjö station.

Almost 2400 words. Long Friday Column this is going to make. I give myself shoulder problems in my right arm from using the trackpad on my laptop. My whole right side is affected by it, from a crick in the base of my neck, down through a tender spot between my spine and shoulder blade, into a feeling that my right hip is out of its socket and ultimately to a sensation in my foot that I have a stress fracture. It hurts when I twist it a certain way or sleep on my stomach.

The conductor came by just now looking for new travelers. I’ve been aboard now for nearly three hours.

1307: It’s military time in Europe.

The sun just came out, and it’s no longer a black and white day outside. It’s impossible to describe the winter light at 60º north, particularly when there is snow on the ground. The sun never climbs more than it’s circumference above the tree-line, and the shadows are always stretched long. The days are perpetual sunrise/sunset, and it is difficult often to tell the difference. Further south and closer to the equator the sun rises and sets in a near vertical line, the difference in time between sunglasses and a flashlight only minutes.

The air must be cleaner here, or thinner when it’s cold (though that doesn’t make any scientific sense), but something about it makes the daytime light glow. When the sun’s out, one really understands why the houses are colorful, for in the winter on a background of glittering snow, they look like fairytales. The pine-tree green colors lights up in the sunlight as if lit from within, and the moss on the forest floor, the bits that shows through the snow, is nuclear. The browns of bare tree trunks take on a detail impossible to render in broad daylight, visible only in the distorted shadows of sideways sunlight.

It is not often that one gets to enjoy the privilege of a bluebird day in winter – when it happens, it’s always the coldest day of the week, as the clarity brings with it frigid temperatures. But when it arrives, it is foolish to spend the day indoors.

1324: Heartless Bastards, ‘Out at Sea’ is stuck in my head.

1329: Heartless Bastards, ‘Out at Sea’ is now playing on my computer.

…and I am drownin’ in, I’m drowin’ in frustratiiiiiooon

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH

I’m out at sea and a cannot stop the tide

I’m out in the water I cannot stop the tide

I’m out at sea and I’m floatin’ away

I’m out at sea and I’m floatin’ away

I’m back in my real seat now, about to start going backwards when we leave the station we just stopped at. It is zero degrees Celsius, says the ticker.

1414: På tåget mot Kristianstad

On the train now headed towards Kristianstad, my last switch before arriving in Sölvesborg, which should be in about an hour. The sun has fully emerged now and the clouds have cleared to reveal a deep blue sky, the landscape glowing just like I described it above, and yet still more brilliantly. Note the time – I have been on the move now for five hours since boarding the first train in Enköping. I have six hours more on the journey home tonight.

This train feels more like a commuter train and less like a long-distance train. There is no bistro, and the cars are deserted. I can see the conductor through the glass doors separating the cars, about to come by and check my ticket. I am a new passenger on this train.

1423: At the back of the train.

The conductor checked my ticket. He also informed me that I’d have to move to the back of the train – the front bit wouldn’t be going beyond Kristianstad, and Sölvesborg is beyond Kristianstad. Thank you sir.

1441: Backwards

The back half of the train is now the front half of the train. I’m sat just next to the door that leads to the driver’s seat, and watched as a train employee who looked strangely like Seth Green, opened it with a special key and took his place at the helm. Several minutes elapsed sitting in Kristianstad Centrum, and then we were off again, in the direction from which we’d come, going backwards and towards Sölvesborg.

1713: Tillbacka till Dunderbo

Back on the train! And it hardly felt like I ever got off.

I met Torbjörn (Tobi), about quarter after four, outside the train station (Sölvesborg, by the way, is a very neat little seaside town. It’s on the way for us next summer when we bring the boat up to Stockholm, so I told Tobi to hang on to my phone number. After a short stroll around the square, I had a coffee at the aptly named Coffeehouse, and wrote next month’s Spinsheet article about Matt Rutherford. Started it anyway – it’s about ¾ of the way there. The latte was finally hot enough). Tobi came into the small station with me and we took a spot on the bench next to a picture window overlooking the town.

Tobi could not have been much nicer, and matched my brain’s description of him after first hearing his voice on the phone (which rarely happens – have you ever listened to a radio announcer for a long time without ever seeing them? Inevitably you’re disappointed if you ever actually do, because during that time your brain creates an image of that person based on their voice. Just like reading a book and then seeing the movie – imagination is far better than the real thing). He brought the F3, as promised, but also had along a dozen or so rolls of film, and two lenses. I really only wanted one of them, but he gave me a good deal. In the midst of our meeting, he rushed home to retrieve some extra batteries (the little bitty watch batteries, part of the reason I wanted this camera), and brought back with him two photography books, extra lens caps and even more film. So, done and done. Now I have six more hours on the train to learn how to use the thing.

It’s fully dark outside now. We’re back at Kristianstad Centrum.

1833: Losing motivation.

On the train to Stockholm now, having switched at Hässleholm. I had to run up and over the bridge to track #4, wasn’t quite sure where I was going and thought for a few moments that I’d miss the connection, as I had only a couple of minutes to spare. This was compounded initially because I was not quite sure which side of the train to get off. Usually there is no choice. Now there was. I hopped off one side, remained indecisive, climbed through to the other side, and again decided that was wrong, and raced back across to the side I had originally gotten off of before the doors closed. I made it.

1952: Bistro

Back in the bistro car. A group of twenty-somethings occupy the same fake-red-leather seats to my right, really designed for three, but four are sitting there. Drinking drinks and talking Svenska. Two more sit to my left, a couple – they are sitting closer than friends would. I bought a bottle of water and an apple.

About ten minutes ago I realized I have an hour stopover I Stockholm on the way home – my train arrives at ten pm, and doesn’t depart again until after eleven. Not ideal.

2305: Tåget mot Väasterås

But I am not traveling there. I’ll get off one stop sooner, in Enkoping, a full sixteen and a half hours – if we’re on time – after after I got on earlier this morning, at the same station. It will almost be the next day.

I didn’t realize it until looking at my ticket earlier that I had an hour stopover at Stockholm Central. That was a bit of a bummer. I spent the time looking at photography magazines in Pressbyrån.

Sled Dogging Videos

This is way more fun than should be allowed...it's like asking Mom as a little kid to go out with a pair of skis and the dog and have him to you around the yard - she'd definitely say no. But now it's four dogs, bred specifically to do just that, with a sled specifically made to go as fast as possible, barreling through the forest. This day we had four dogs, for practice...the next we had six.

Friday Column: Sled-Dogging

Richard came by on Sunday, only a few minutes after myself, Mia, Börje, Lisa (Fisa) and Claes had returned from our improvised shooting range down at the Blåsbo farm, and in the midst of making lunch (a sort of ‘pyttipanna’ – Swedish for mung – omelet arrangement) he asked if I wanted to come along to train the huskies.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Like, right now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Okay.”

I did manage to gulp down my lunch in three or four hurried bites, clambered into my new-to-me-but-old blue overalls that Mia’s dad gave me for collecting the firewood, attached my scarf and put on my Hestra cross-country skiing gloves, which I would later discover are not in fact dog-sledding gloves, to the detriment of the dexterity in my fingers.

Oddly it is January, and as of Sunday there was no snow on the ground. So we set out more or less on a dog-four-wheeling journey through the forest.

Richard in the hundgård

Hooking up the huskies is not really an easy task. They know what is about to happen and can barely contain their excitement. We secured them to a chain in their outdoor pen – the ‘hundgård’ – lined up one by one and separated by enough space to make it less difficult to put their harnesses on and hook them up to the sled (quad). Once secured, Richard opened the gate and drove the quad inside (it’s a large hundgård), stretching the mainline of the harness between the front of it and a steel post hammered into the ground on the opposite side of the yard near the fence. The main line is a piece of polypropylene, like waterski rope, divided into four sections, with leads coming off the right and left side of each. Each lead is about three-feet long, made of thinner poly, with a brass clasp on the end of it. The dogs wear x-shaped harnesses (some of them very difficult to put on, as the dogs are bouncing-off-the-ground motivated to run), to which this lead is attached at their after end, on their back. They pull the sled (quad). Their snouts are attached to the mainline via a short six-inch lead clipped to a collar around their neck – there is no tension on this line, but rather just keeps the dogs in line and following one another.

Utah

The hitching-up process took several minutes, where after Richard drove the quad (and the dogs) out the other end of the hundgård while I stayed behind to keep tabs on Utah, the newest addition to the gang, a three-month-old husky youngster that Richard plans to use for breeding purposes when it gets a little older. Utah created the biggest ruckus and was even more excited than the others to get out and run, but she’s too young yet and wouldn’t keep up. Once Richard and the dogs were clear of the fence, I locked Utah in and joined him on the back of the quad.

--

In Swedish, they call it ‘ut på landet’ – out in the countryside. It has its advantages. ‘Dunderbovägen,’ the name of the road which isn’t really a road but leads up into the village from the main road about a kilometer down the slight hillside and out of the forest, terminates just to the north of the house here, splitting off into the driveways of Richard’s and a few of the other neighbors. The ‘road’ ends, but a path continues into the forest and further afield. Mia and I often run on the myriad paths that bisect the woods out back, and Richard and some of the other neighbors often see moose and deer wandering around not far beyond their houses.

It was back in these woods last summer that Richard, his five-year-old nephew Liam and I wandered off into with the idea of camping out overnight. Richard and I each had rustic old leather packs filled with hammocks and rain tarps, and he carried a newly dead pheasant along for supper. I had three Kostrizters with me I intended on enjoying upon setting up the campsite. A half-hour hike in the woods is long enough for a five-year-old, and must have felt far from home, so we set up camp on a small hillock with lots of nice flat rocks to sit on. Richard and I set up the hammocks between some large pine trees, and he set about teaching me how to make fire without any matches.

The caveman way of rubbing two sticks together works after a while, but is incredibly inefficient. Instead, we made a bow out of a springy tree branch, stripped of its bark, and twisted another piece of wood into the string. Laying this against a flattened board with a gouge notched out of it, you simply held the small piece of wood in place and ‘played’ the bow as if it were a musical instrument, and at a frantic pace. Eventually an ember would fall out of the dent you made in the board, and if you’re careful, you can transfer that ember to the firepit that would have been set up by then. If you’re not careful, the whole mess will burst into flames in your hands, as it did for me. If you’re not careful, the forest will be too dry for such things, and the fire will very quickly spread outside the nice pit you made for it and will be very difficult to put out, threatening to burn down the whole wood.

After two hours of fighting the fire – which I had successfully started without any matches – we decided we’d had enough stress for the day, drank the beer and hiked back home. I took the train back to Stockholm that evening and surprised Mia and her girlfriends at the Södra Theatre bar on Sodermalm.

--

With the dogs hooked up to the front of the quad as if it were a sled, we set off on the trail in the direction of our old campsite (also the same trail where I asked Mia to marry me). Driving the four-wheeler is almost an afterthought – the dogs pull the thing merrily along in neutral on the flat bits, and only require the slightest bit of throttle going up the small hills or around a tight bend. Incredibly, once they’re off and running, the barking and whining and general excitement is translated into forward motion – under way, the dogs are silent.

We took the first right-hand fork in the forest that heads out towards one of the field. The interesting thing about agriculture in the region surrounding the village is the division between forest and field. Things grow around here, but on much smaller plots of land, interrupted often by tracts of pine forest, the floors of which are covered in lime-green moss and granite grey rocks, creating an oddly beautiful contrast of colors, especially with patches of snow interspersed among it. Within the fields themselves are often piles of granite boulders amongst a clump of trees – originally the land around here was incredibly rocky, so to tend a field of any kind required some serious plowing up of the hard bits, which were apparently piled in the middle. The crops grow around these piles.

The dogs followed a path to the right of the field, edging along just outside the forest until we came to another dirt access road used by the neighboring farmers. The road exited the wood and we turned down onto an open plain. It was icy on many bits of the path, and the less-experienced dogs slipped and slided there way along, while Avalanche, the lead dog out front, smartly avoided the shiny spots.

In mushing language “Zjee!” means left and “Hhoaww!” means right, and this is all Richard had to shout to Avalanche, some thirty feet out in front of the quad, in order for her to change direction or follow a particular fork in the road. The rest of the huskies followed in lockstep with one another, and we turned back to the left and back towards the forest.

About halfway through the 12-13 kilometer course we followed, Richard stopped the quad and offered the dogs a rest. They seemed to know this was coming, and like an athlete will when he knows he needs it, the dogs immediately dropped to the ground and lay on the sides in the snow, licking at the ice because they were thirsty, still connected to the mainline. I took a leak.

Varg and her pups in the house

Avalanche, the all-white dog with different colored eyes (like my childhood dog Pepper, who I think now more than ever was part husky), is the lead dog, hooked up at the front of the sled. Her and Kiruna are hitched together at the snout, and their jobs are to follow directions and be the brains. With six dogs behind them, they have less weight to pull, but still put in some effort. They are the smallest of the pack, and the smartest, and they’re both female. At the opposite end of the line, Sarek and one whose name I can never remember do the heavy lifting closest to the sled (quad). They are the biggest, strongest, craziest and last to tire out. In front of them, still participating in the heavy pulling, Fjäll (the friendliest dog) and Oden (the other all-white dog) are paired off. Nanook (Eskimo for ‘polar bear’) was hitched up in front of them, alone this time, as his partner Varg (Swedish for ‘wolf’) was busy in Richard’s house tending to her newborn pups, which by then were about three days old. Richard explained all this to me while the dogs chilled out in the slow-motion dusk that accompanies a winter sunset at 60º north. Then we were off.

I drove the second half of the route, and it was during the end of this, riding through the forest with the quad’s headlights on in the waning daylight, my hands in my Hestra gloves, inside big nylon mittens designed to go around the quad’s handlebars in wintertime, that my fingers went numb. My right hand was in charge of the thumb-operated throttle, and that was the first extremity to go first cold, and then painful. By the time we returned to the house – and the whining and yelping of Utah, who still had not forgiven us for leaving without her – my fingers were downright frozen, and it was difficult to operate the throttle as I could not feel my thumb.

I drove the dogs back into the hundgård after Richard opened the gate, this time unconcerned with the whereabouts of Utah (with the other dogs around there was no way she’d be running off on her own), and we reversed the process of hitching them to the line. While I removed their harnesses (after which several of the huskies immediately laid down and nodded off to sleep), Richard retreated to the kitchen to fetch their meal for the evening. He scored a huge coup for his husky operation after meeting a local butcher and cutting a deal where he’d pick up all of the scraps from the slaughterhouse and feed it to the dogs. With twelve of them now (including Utah and the newborns), food is the single biggest expense, not to mention the benefits of feeding the dogs real meat every night.

In the light cast by the spotlight setup in the hundgård we fed the huskies, Utah scrambling about trying her best to make an impression on the bigger dogs while not getting growled at. I went inside the house and said hello to Varg and her pups, all three of which are pure white. I went home next door and took off my blue overalls, and my fingers eventually regained their feeling.

Dunderbo

(Note: I did not attach a name to this story - ala my 'Friday Column' - but I may end up doing just that if this Tuesday thing becomes a regular occurrence. For now, think of it as a bonus.)

Ahhhhhhhhhh...

What a pleasant afternoon in an (oddly) quiet house. The fire I have been tending for the past two hours is raging, brighter now that it's getting darker outside, reflected in the television that is currently turned off. Mysan the cat just jumped up into my lap, and I felt kind of bad for shoving her away. She is purring, sitting on the armrest of the couch.

This is the winter that I have been pondering over. Though it's not as cold, nor is there as much snow outside as there was in the picture in my head, this just about fulfills my lofty expectations. A house in the countryside, sitting by the fire. And writing.

I've been in charge of bringing in the wood from outside that we use to heat the house with (and holy moly, it takes a lot of freaking wood! About twelve rather large cardboard boxes full of split wood, every three or four days to be precise). Adjacent to the cellar downstairs, where all the fruits and veg and leftover food is kept in the chilly confines of a small stone room, is a large wood-burning furnace that creates the hot water and heats the house (my dad, upon seeing it last summer, with it's multitude of dials and electronic readouts said it looked like operating a submarine). The furnace is not that complicated, and most of those dials don't do anything anyway. It burns wood and makes heat.

When I was here last, after our sailing trip, Mia's dad Börje and I went down to the farm at Blåsbo and loaded up two large, old wagons with wood split by the neighbor, that had originated as trees in his small bit of forest (Richard, the neighbor with the huskies, and I chopped down about twenty of those trees and made teepees out of them that are currently drying in Richard's front lawn). I got to drive the big tractor. The first of those two wagons is parked halfway inside the carport, the other half covered by a rubber grey tarp. The wood is incredibly dry, and burns remarkably well - I have already gone through half a load since getting home from school today in the small wood stove they have in the living room (I have taken over the living room today as my office - the house is empty, rare in Dunderbo, and I'm taking advantage of it).

On Sunday Mia's dad took us shooting. He used to be competitive at the sport (having shown us a globe that he won once in the seventies), and brought out his old .22 caliber rifle. Mia and I, plus her little sister Lisa (Fisa) and her boyfriend Claes drove again to Blåsbo and set up a small range against a derelict house in one of the fields. Mia's dad laid out a small competition target, next to which we arranged several beer cans from Mia's parents 'road-kill' supper a few nights earlier (a deer had been hit on the property a while back, and several of the neighbors helped clean the edible bits while it was still fresh. Mia's mom Annika got loads of the fresh meat and froze it. The sloppier cuts of meat she ground up, and she saved the best bits to roast later. 'Later' was a few nights ago. Mia and I were designated drivers for the evening, and Annika pulled out all the stops to create a remarkable dinner for eight people that lasted well into the next morning. Mia, myself, Lisa (Fisa) and Claes were relegated to the kids table in the kitchen while the adults ate in the dining room. I am now enjoying the leftovers). 

Our shooting range was perhaps 50 meters long, and appeared fantastically longer through the sight of the gun. Börje arranged some quilted blankets in the dirt, using one of the frozen mounds created from plowing the field as a sort of hillside to lay behind and prop the gun (which, with a stock from an 1899 German rifle, is incredibly heavy, weighing about 4-5 kilograms) onto. Our first few shots (the first time I have actually fired an actual gun) were way off the mark, but eventually we started hitting the cans. Everyone took aim at the competition target, and only Mia hit one of the small black bulls-eyes (not the one she was aiming at), but at least we were all on the paper (which was still only about five inches square). Lisa (Fisa) was probably the best shot, having actually done some practice before with air guns. 

Standing to shoot. That was something altogether different. It's all about your stance - hold the trigger in your right hand, with the butt of the gun pressed into your shoulder. Stand with your left leg slightly forward of your right, your knees flexed and your weight on your back foot. Prop our elbow into your left side, setting the gun barrel on your fingertips, and aim down the sight. Just finding the small tin can in the (non-magnified) sight is a task, then releasing the safety and squeezing the trigger without shaking the thing to bits is nigh on impossible. Watching someone else do it is nerve-wracking. I quickly learned to enjoy the laying down method infinitely more, and also wondered how many freaking bullets the military must go through out there running around and trying to hit things (other people).

Then there are the biathletes. Most Americans don't give a damn about the sport anyway, but it's on television often over here, and after Sunday, I have a newfound respect for them. Those targets are so small. The idea of ramping up your heart rate for thirty minutes and then shooting five small targets (and getting punished with extra laps on the skiing course for missing one), is lunacy. It was enough trying not to breathe while laying down, and to think I'd be able to hit the broad side of a barn while standing after having just skied ten kilometers...well, it just wouldn't happen.

I rented Blade Runner from the library today.

Friday Column: 'Svenska för Idioter,' - OR - 'Where is Palestine?'

So, back to the old days of sitting in a foreign café and writing about it.

I’m in Wickman’s. In Enköping. It is January in Sweden and yet it’s raining today (this was written on Thursday), and about 3º plus (above zero). Skitväder. The café is on the corner of a small ‘roundy’ as Mia is apt to call them, and on the opposite corner is an appropriately named bicycle shop called Cykel Hörnan (Cycle Corner). It is half past three in the afternoon and nearly dark outside. Of the dozen or so tables in the café, only three of them are occupied, one by myself and my computer. They’re black (the tables), and the walls of the place are white (as are the chairs). With the candles spread throughout the room (Swedes love candles in the wintertime), the light is warm and cozy, and yet the large glass storefront succeeds a bit too much in wintertime at bringing the outside in. It’s not my favorite café, but the closest one to my school, so I’m here. As usual, my café latte was not hot enough even though I asked for it very hot. They still cannot make a hot enough coffee for me in this country.

This morning was my first real day of Swedish classes. ‘SFI’, ‘Swedish for Immigrants’ (or ‘Idiots,’ depending on who you ask). Tuesday was really the first day, but it was filled with information and not much was accomplished. Today we learned.

I expected the class to be easy – I have been exposed to the language now for five years, and am getting better at speaking it each time I come back to Sweden – but what I did not expect was the cultural experience I’d get in the classroom, something I think many Americans would be downright shocked at. I am the only one from the continent of 'Nordamerika' in the classroom, a fact made strikingly obvious when I had to pull down a separate map to explain where I had come from (the map the teacher used was one of Europe and 'Nordafrika', where most everyone else originated). The two guys in front of me were from 'Grekland' and 'Italien'. Two girls behind me, 'Indonesien' and Thailand. Behind them was a young guy from 'Irak' and another from 'Palestina'. (Yes, Palestine). He had trouble locating it on a map, because it is not in fact on the map, as most of the world does not recognize it’s existence as a country. The proximity to global politics in this small classroom alone was staggering.

On the opposite side of the room sat another young man from 'Irak', and in front of him a woman from 'Iranien' (the teacher, in Swedish, questioned whether their countries were friends. Everyone laughed). In front of them was a woman from somewhere in Siberia I think, and two in front of her from 'Lettland' (Latvia) and 'Ryskland' (Russia), and another from 'Syrien'. Our teacher is from Finland, and I sat next to a middle-aged man from 'Libanon' (in the city of Beirut). He moved to Sweden and bought a pizza shop.

What shocked me was that a good one-third of the students in that classroom are refugees. Refugees. In 'Amerika' that word brings with it so much baggage. We hear it on the news daily, but does anyone quite understand what it means? Has anyone actually met a refugee? Befriended one? The word’s meaning was abruptly understood in class today when the teacher questioned all of us as to whether we were refugees or immigrants – ‘did you flee your country or did you come of your own free will?’

Flee your country. ‘Did you flee your country?’ It was such a simple question (oversimplified actually, as it was asked in the simplest Swedish so everyone would understand exactly what the question was). More than one innocently and completely un-self-consciously answered ‘yes,’ and my mind instantly wanted to know why.

When the question of immigration arises in US politics, I am not so sure that the American public quite understands the implications of such a question. I am not about to attempt to debate the topic. But it’s interesting. The idea that someone might have to flee their own country has to be utterly foreign to 99% of Americans.

It’s very interesting here in Sweden how the socialist system works in certain ways. They offer SFI for free to all legal immigrants (including refugees who came here legally and with good reason - again, refugee, someone fleeing their country because they fear for their life). Some of them get a piece of paper stamped each day that they then take to the local government and get money for, in lieu of working (the class is five days per week, almost all day – the idea is to learn the language as quickly as possible in order to enter the workforce already fluent in Swedish. The government is apparently happy to encourage this). And it makes sense in a way. People bitch and complain at home about Spanish, and yet how is a Spanish immigrant (a legal one) supposed to learn the language? Has anyone ever considered the enormity of the task of moving to a foreign country, with a foreign language (a foreign alphabet for most of the Arabic people in my class) and trying to get a job? The Lebanese guy who sat next to me this morning used to work in a rather high-tech field, traveling in South Africa and Dubai for his work, and now he sells pizza and can just about read the ingredients on his recipes. Does anyone ever consider this when they are debating immigration laws back home? Or putting signs up on their hotdogs stands that people must be able to speak English before ordering (next to an American flag)?

I am 100% in favor of Americans speaking English, immigrant or otherwise. I do not think we need a second language back home, and I think that people who want to live there should learn to speak like the natives. The fact that so many Swedes speak English is not to placate the foreigners like me that come here, but precisely because English is what the rest of the world speaks and they are smart enough to figure out that they need to learn it or be left behind. In the USA, immigrants should speak English, but how should they accomplish that? It’s a question I do not have an answer for, and it certainly wouldn’t go over well to model it after the socialist system here and offer it for free (because everyone knows where that suggestion would end up going). But for a successful immigration policy, doesn’t that have to be part of the discussion?

(This brings up an interesting aside. Mia and I are in the process of applying for her green card. Suddenly I’m almost an immigrant in my own country. Incredibly, US Customs & Immigration – USCIS – is amazingly helpful. You can call them up on their helpline, and – though the automated service is clunky and frustrating – you can eventually speak to a real person who offers real help, and in a friendly tone. We applied to have Mia's forms expedited so we can get home to help my mom and dad, and to our surprise they were sympathetic. We received a reply within a week that the form will go through expedited, but that they need two documents we submitted in Swedish – our wedding certificate and our state-registered status as being married – translated into English. Mia thought this kind of silly – as the Swedish government can handle forms in both English and Swedish – but I disagreed with her and took the side of the USCIS. We want to immigrate into the USA – well Mia anyway – so the burden should be on us to provide the forms in the native language. Going through this process really makes it apparent that people who haven’t seen it firsthand should really not be allowed an opinion on the matter. The chasm between the ideological and the practical in the case of immigration is vast).

As for the Palestinian in my class today, how incredible is it that in 2012, someone can enter a class and not even be able to point out his country on a map because the rest of the world does not recognize that country’s right to exist? I find this amazing. And enlightening. 

grandpa's sthlm

I have not paid for a café latte in ages, and yet here I am. I was told this is the hippest place in Stockholm, and I think I’ve made it decidedly less-so coming in here with my puffy coat on. I look a fool.

I passed a girl on the sidewalk just outside who was wearing a black long-sleeve shirt. It was loose fitting with a wide collar, and I could see a grey v-neck undershirt sitting close to her shoulders. She had black hair and white skin, was entirely too thin and had the worn-down, washed-out look of someone sauntering home after a night spent too late at the bar. Except it was 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. It was too cold to be outside without a jacket. I tried to get a good view of her without actually looking. She intimidated me. She was smoking a cigarette.

The two girls behind me right now talking Swedish also intimidate me. One is moving furniture around in the little upstairs alcove where I’m sitting (on an old leather sofa). The other is on the steps, and I cannot see her. This place intimidates me. I don’t belong here, the bastion of hipster fashion in the middle of the city (and literally downstairs from our new apartment in this posh part of town). It’s called “grandpa’s” with a lowercase “g.” They sell new clothing and accessories that are supposed to look vintage (as well as a USB-enabled turntable, to play your vinyl through the computer…?). Hence the name. I thought it was clever.

I ordered my latte extra hot, and felt better about myself after getting a good look at the customer in line in front of me…he had on an even more hideous puffy coat with floppy jeans and old running shoes. I was definitely above him on the hipster hierarchy. But the latte wasn’t extra hot, and never is here in Sweden for some reason. What with the freaking cold weather you’d think they’d like their coffee hot, but apparently not as hot as me.

Today is my day off, my sick day. I was up half the night coughing up pieces of my lung, and was convinced as I fell asleep that I had pneumonia and would wind up in the hospital today. I don’t often get sick, real sick, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to feel. I think I have a fever and I think my cough is bronchitis because it feels like it’s emanating from my freaking soul, and my snot is green and crusty in the morning so I am probably fine. But what if it is pneumonia? Or meningitis or something? How the heck would I know? What do normal folk feel like when they’re sick? Is it really this lame? Am I just a big sissy for laying on the couch all day? Or should I go to the hospital? I won’t go to the hospital. I am probably fine.

Something Borrowed

(I stole this idea from Dave Eggers.)

Let’s try and write a story. Fiction. Or maybe some non-fiction elements thrown in, but let’s not let the reader know what is what. So it will sound like fiction then.

800 words…no, make it 1,000. It’s easier to write more and cut it down later anyway. About a guy and his dog. But we’ve got to come up with a cool name for the dog, something tough. He’s a skinny dog, but he’s a survivor. He’s fiercely independent of his owner, but loyal to a fault (like all good fictional dogs). He’ll often wander off on adventures, sometimes for weeks – no, that’s too unbelievable – let’s make it days. But he always returns. Sometimes with a new scar or a tuft of fur gone missing, but intact nonetheless. We’ll call him Andor. Andor, ‘the shark hunter.’ No, the ‘bear hunter.’ He’s an Akita. A badass.

But where should they live….obviously near the forest, what with a name like that…’the bear hunter.’ Okay, so they live on an island. But not a tropical one, that’s too cliché (and there’s no bears there). An island in the high latitudes maybe. Somewhere like the Falklands. They’re almost fictional sounding and nobody knows for sure where they’re at, so that should do just fine. But I don’t think there are any bears there. How about Spitsbergen. Yes, perfect. Another fictional sounding name nobody can locate on a map. And Andor can hunt polar bears. Yeah. Andor looks more like a sled-dog, like a husky. But a svelte, tough sled dog, not the pampered, groomed overweight types you see on those dog shows on TV. His coat isn’t quite as shiny, the white bits not so white. Andor definitely doesn’t prance around on his toes.

Andor’s owner is a quiet man, the type that doesn’t speak unless spoken to. But when he does speak, his words are smart. People enjoy listening to him, and he can be genuinely engaging if the subject is one he feels strongly about. He has blond hair. No, that’s too clichéd too. Dark hair, but not quite black. With flecks of gray around the ears, making him look older than he really is. And a perpetual three-day-old beard (it seems that way anyway, because he only shaves every third day or so, and his face is much less memorable without any whiskers). He’s weathered from working outdoors his whole life. On ships. No, that’s too obvious. As a postman. He loves riding the mail around on his bicycle during the warm months, and cherishes the brisk saunters in the wintertime. The locals invite him in for coffee when it’s particularly cold outside (his record in one day was 27 cups). He’s never in a hurry on his mail runs, so he enjoys these visits. The town is small enough that he can easily manage his route in half a day when he has too, but he’d much prefer to make it a full eight-hour work day and really enjoy it. His bosses trust him so much that he works his own hours and makes his own schedule – the mail is always on time, the townspeople forever happy for it. He never runs to catch a train.

Sometimes Andor joins his owner on his daily route. He’s never asked, of course, for his owner knows it must be on Andor’s terms. He might be off on a three-day adventure and suddenly turn up at, say, the local fire department, and continue along the mail route as if he’d been there from the start. The locals like his presence, and only a few of them are fearful of inviting him into their houses, particularly that one prickly middle-aged woman at the end of the street who doesn’t seem to like any sort of wildlife (so why is she living on Spitsbergen?). They skip her house on the mail route on days when Andor tags along. Serves her right, she can wait until the next day to get her mail if she wants to act like that.

His owner isn’t so sure how Andor got his nickname as ‘the bear hunter,’ but he likes it that way. It adds a sort of mysticism to his dog, and in turn to him, the respectful mailman with a mysterious bear-hunting husky dog. At home they sit in front of the fireplace and Andor’s owner drinks red wine at night while thinking about how satisfying is his job as the local postman where he can be friends and drink coffee with the entire town and yet leave their hospitality on his terms and with no hard feelings, because, after all, it’s his job to deliver the mail and everybody loves him for it.

An Interview with a German Named Jens

(Originally written February 17, 2011).

I expected him to be Swedish (what with a name like Jens) and by 10:05 I expected him not to show at all. He did, and he wasn't Swedish. Which was a good thing, because I was getting cold standing outside.

We sat in the library in a "talkative" area inside the main entrance where Jens informed me he'd met friends before while someone was giving a presentation to a group who had nothing to do with them. No such presentation took place today. Instead, I removed my hat to expose a blonde head of hair flush with static electricity. Jens also had blond hair, significantly less kempt than mine. And he was goofy looking, but that didn't affect his eye contact.

We talked about Stockholm Jogging Tours, he and his also-not-Swedish but Spanish friend Jose. Jose and Jens, building a business in Sweden. They would also run Stockholm Cycling Tours, but neither of them were runners or cyclists. Instead they are students here in the city, and I didn't recall what they are studying, but it's not running or cycling or business.

I informed Jens that I wanted to work on a freelance basis, and could help them with web content and development as well as the actual cycling and running, since I enjoy both apparently more than they do. They have a network of others like me (oddly and merely coincidentally also German), so they hope to get the business going in earnest once the snow melts, which Jens mistakenly thought was happening a week ago before the city received another foot of the stuff.

Then I went up to the top of the library. It's square from the outside, but laid out in a circular fashion inside, like the points of the compass. N, E and W have wings filled with books and tables with lights on them for viewing these books, and some tables with plugs for laptops and other lights more suited to an office-style desk. I spend a lot of time at this makeshift office, surrounded by the smell of books and other Swedes, if they are sitting across from me. The S side is a staircase.

It's frustrating in public places here because the public restrooms are spotless and delightful. And this means one must pay for them. There is a slot for a ten kronor coin, and a slot for a five kronor coin and I can't figure out why someone would put a ten kronor coin in the slot when five kronor opens the door just as well. It's written right on there in Swedish, but I hasn't yet deciphered it.

I did some web work, checked my email about one hundred and fourteen times and tried to start writing about Panama, which is much harder than I anticipated (part of the reason I’m not writing about Panama right now, but instead listening to The Streets on the couch while it gets gradually darker outside). The subway was crowded on the way home but I sat down anyway and read my book until I got off at T-Centralen to buy my train ticket to Uppsala for tomorrow. I leaves at 9:30 tomorrow morning, but that's not until tomorrow.

Earlier I chatted with Nate this morning on Gmail who gave me his dad's phone number, who I then promptly called to talk about marriage. With Mia. Nate's dad, Pastor Jim, will marry us in the USA this summer one hour before all the guests arrive for the big party, and probably right around the same time that my mom starts freaking out. I have not told her this yet. Mia and Daniela are sitting in the kitchen writing about tourism and I am going to go take a shower.

Vasaloppet - Öppet Spår 2011...Story to Follow

Like the new look? Should make it easier to update photos and journal entries on here for the future, I hope. Check out the "Recent Journal Posts" for my latest musings.

Father & Son Sailing is the humble little business that I got going a few years ago when I realized that Andy Schell Sailing would spell "ASS" on my business cards. And we can't have that. Indeed, as the name implies, it's sailing related, and primarily involves me and my dad. Andy & Dennis. But it also involves (more often than not) my beautiful girlfriend Mia, and my inspiring mom, Gail (appropriate name, eh?). Offshore yacht delivery is our specialty (my dad and I are both licensed captains, and Mia and Mom have thousands of offshore miles as crew), but we do other things too - Celestial Nav. workshops, sail training, and my writing.

We have lots of friends, which you'll find around the site. I enjoy making relationships with people, and I take things very personally. I strive to do things the Right way, with a capital "R," and we hope that comes across when you work with us. Check out the site, have a look at my credentials and experience, read some of my articles and decide if you want to work with us. We'd like to work with you (if you're nice).

giving the 'shaka' in australia...

Today there will be no distractions

Written 18 February 2011

Today, there will be no distractions

10:27 AM: Café Linne

The café has no internet, but I’m glad I chose it over the one on the corner down by the river. This place is cozy in a way that only familiar things are. I walked into the place on the corner down by the river, and it too was cozy, but not in a soul-inviting way. They probably did have internet because they had a small sign on the counter encouraging students to stay and study while eating their sandwiches. My chair is very comfortable, the kind you’d find in a grandmother’s apartment that’s been moved around her various living spaces for years. It’s not overly large like a new watch, and it does not recline, but seems to have been designed for a generation that did not desire large things, like wrist watches, but instead things that were the right size and made you sit up straight, but in a comfortable way. It’s not the kind of chair you’d have trouble getting out of, but one that instead encourages you to remain seated because it was made for that.

I do no remember the last time I was here, but it’s been at least a year and a half, probably over two years at this point and perhaps not since Mia and I last lived here. I will stay her for the morning, having purchased by bottomless cup of coffee which was ten kronor cheaper than a latter, and bottomless. I will get very high on coffee today, but because I plan (desire) to do so, I will not notice my fingers getting jittery, and if I do, I will not mind. I will sleep wonderfully tonight.

This chair is too low for the table. I feel like a six year old trying to sit in the dining room with the adults and feel normal, but am obviously out of place because I can’t rest my elbows on the table in a natural way, and this is probably apparent to the adults I try to mingle with. The computer is slightly above me, almost out of reach, and I have to prop it up on a book so that the keyboard is tilted in such a way as to allow me to see the keyboard. I will not wear my headphones today. I want to go get another cup of coffee, but I will have to push the table away from me to get out of this chair, and not because the chair is the type that is difficult to get out of, but because the table is slightly too high for this type of chair, requiring me to pull it closer so I can sit here and type. Charming, but right now, frustrating. 

I am already high on this coffee. I will drink a lot of it today because it is not hot enough.

10:50 AM:

Two long-haired weiner dogs just walked by the window I am sitting at. It reminds me of the card I got Kate for her birthday, in anticipation. On the front there is a picture of two weiner dogs playing Wii, - it says “Wii-ner Dogs!” I find it hilarious.

11:12 AM:

Coffee cup number three. They are small.

11:16 AM:

I am laughing, out loud in this café, at a photo of Nate sitting before his dessert at the German place in Pompano. His expression is pure Nate.

12:07 PM:

Time to eat lunch. With my coffee spoon, which is very little. Small bites…small bites.

12:33 PM:

Interrupted…by the proprietor of the café, or more likely, one of his employees. He told me, in Swedish, that I couldn’t eat my packed lunch in that café, presumably because they had their own food for sale and I was somehow robbing him of a potential meal sold, despite the fact that I wouldn’t have bought anything had I not even had food. I accepted this, and left. Now I’m in the library and cannot get on the Internet. I stole one of the café’s coffee spoons and finished my lunch with it.

1:26 PM:

I could survive here, in the wintertime, with a bicycle. It would be better than riding the subway in Stockholm. Stockholm is too big, but it’s perfect here in Uppsala. This is my kind of town. Vibrant, buzzing, but small enough to feel like home.

Another café now, and another coffee (a latte this time). Though I was very tempted to get a beer, and might do so before the afternoon is out. I have a seat by the window, on a stool, my computer resting on a bar of sorts, and I’m watching the people go buy on foot and on bikes and with strollers. There are more walkers than cars, another reason why I like this town, and I can see the river flowing underneath a bridge nearby, it’s edges frozen and covered in snow with ducks sleeping on the ice. 

4:04 PM:

Still at Café Magnusson. The upstairs Stork place didn’t have internet, though it was mighty cozy and offered a delightful view of the square through the upstairs windows. I was tempted to get a beer at Café Magnusson, but got a café latte instead. I’ve peed about sixteen times today. The food smells awesome.

4:25 PM:

Lemon Jelly. Oh yeah.