Friday night lectures

I love going to popular lectures (I ended up watching a bunch on youtube yesterday and went to bed way to late), and tonight I went to a little series of them given by Paul Rose, Børge Ousland, and Christopher McDougall. (Yeah, I know, the wonders of phone pictures again....)

Now, Paul Rose I had never heard about before, but apparently he's a BBC presenter and polar explorer. He gave a good enough lecture.

Then it was Børge Ousland, a Norwegian polar explorer. He gives absolutely brilliant talks. I been to his lectures two or three times before, so if you ever come across an oppurtunity to hear him speak, go for it. He is a proper inspiration.

 

  

Lastly it was Christopher McDougall, the writer of the book Born to Run. It's been some years since I read it, and his talk was mostly the same story, with a couple of extra bits and bobs, but it was wonderful to hear him tell the story himself. A wonderful speaker I must say.

I ended up talking with him briefly afterwords, just asked him about pain in my shins when running. His answer was simply that I was probably tensioning up and not relaxing enough in my legs when running, and my guess he's right. He recommended the 100-up exercise, which I remember reading about ages ago, but never really committed to trying out.

So there you are, I can now say I have gotten running advice directly from the Christopher McDougall!

Storm's end

The storm "Ivar" has been raging the town this evening. A bit of damages here and there, trees fallen, cars tipped over, garbage bins spread all over the neighbourhood, bits and bobs here and there.

All the busses were stopped at one point, which was particurlarly unfortunate as I had planned to take the bus to the Red Cross house at that exact point. Well, ended up running home and taking the bike instead. I have yet to put on the studded tires on my bike, but I figured it would be fine as most of the ice melted away the last couple of days anyway. Biking was no problem, just a bit too much side wind at one point.

I must say, I love the wind. The way it tears at your body and makes you utterly aware of the powers of nature around you. Makes me feel very much alive. Also, it reminds me of Svalbard. Lots of wind there. Picked out some windy and weathery pictures of a few of the people that were in my geography class on Svalbard. 

127 seconds

Warning: long post ahead. You might have to actually read.

Ok, this is so typically me, posting about events way after they actually took place. I mean, still post post pictures from the Portugal holiday in 2011 and Svalbard semester in 2012. So considering this post is about events that happened in August this year, I'm almost early.

Aaanyway, tagged along to a couple of limestone caves, Ramsåsgrottene, with a friend. Went into the upper Ramsåsgrotte first, which is a wet system, with a stream running through it. Couldn't get all the way through though, there's a little waterfall you have to climb up and I haven't got the skills for that (see video below btw for the waterfall, I'm pointing at where we were trying to go, but it was a dead end). Now, this cave is really tight horisontally, but several meters high in places, and meandering. Moving along therefore ment going up and down and up again, and squeezing and jamming and climbing and crawling. It was strange, how the shape of the cave was just like the englacial conduits (read: ice caves) on Svalbard, the water has worked on the ice and the rock in exactly the same manner, only on different time scales. Nature, eh?

Now, as I've mentioned before, stamina is not my strong side, and I was pretty knackered and quite hungry on the way out. I took a wrong turn past some loose debris and before I knew it a big chunk of rock had fallen down onto my wrist and jammed my arm between the cave wall and the big rock. Stuck, properly stuck. Ow. I could wriggle the rock a little bit, but not move it on my own. What do we do? We panic. Start yelling for my friend and these flashback pictures from 127 Hours keep popping up in my head, and I start crying. See, this is exactly why I would never be any good doing extreme sports.

Friend (also called Ivar by some) goes to other side of rock and manages to lift rock just enough for me to get my hand out. Crawl out last bit of the cave, eat lunch, and all is well again now that my blood sugar is back to normal. We then went into and through lower Ramsåsgrotta, which is quite a lot easier to move through, and not as wet. Still, you can't really be much bigger than me to get through, there are a couple of passages where you have to shuffle along while lying on your back or belly. People have managed to get stuck in lower Ramsåsgrotta too, just look at this.

Dragging one self through tight caves does not fare well for whatever you're wearing. Both my jacket and and trousers were nicely shredded at the end of the day. And then I fell into the mud on the way back to the car, because that's what I do...

Might also add that all in all, I thought it well fun and would recommend it to anyone who hasn't got claustrophobia. And now I have myself little story to tell.

And yeah, I know, all the pictures are blurry, but it's all there is.

tight fit..

Movie time

Finally watching Touching the Void after it's been sitting on my harddrive for over a year now. Interesting stuff, extreme sports and the minds of the people who do it. Also watched Into the Mind earlier this fall. Visually beautiful movie, bit long though.

Personally I'm not there. I just haven't got the mental nor the physical strength for it, sometimes wish I did however. I would have loved that immense adrenaline rush. Now, at this point some might say go for it and you're capable of some much more than what you think you are. Actually, if something went wrong, and I was already tired and hungry, I would panic. I know this because I did panic, in a cave late this summer, my very own 127 Hours experience. Or rather, 127 seconds in my case. Oh yeah, totally comparable... But let's save that for the next post. It's adding up to be enough text for one post here.

Finishing off with som pics from one of my favourite places on earth, a trip to one of the ice caves inside glaciers on Svalbard. More pictures here. The girl is Katja.

it's night again

Half past four in the morning and another Saturday night has come to its end. I took out all the hairpins and my hair was all curly. Half a beer is still standing on my desk from before I left earlier this evening. I am tired and I am cold, and I'll go to bed in a second. But know this, know this: put a good bunch of half naked climbers in a room, and I am in heaven.

Sigur Rós is playing on the stereo. Good night.

Lille London

Tagged along with some folks and played pool last weekend. Fun stuff. And excuse the crappy phone photos. I actually won four out of the six matches I played, who'd have thought, eh? To be honest three out those four matches were won because my opponent made a mistake. Patience, and someone always makes a mistake.

There was a knuckle shaped hole in the wall of one of the corners.

Good mornin'

It's three in the morning, it's raining like hell, my umbrella broke, and I'm wearing glowsticks. How was your Tuesday?

In front

Every now and then I'm asked to help out students at Norsk Fotofagskole, and sometimes I say yes. A couple of weeks ago it was student Henrik Fjørtoft behind the camera, and here's a couple of the photos he took of me.

Wine and games

Missing Svalbard and the five wonderful people I shared a kitchen with. We were the Wine and Boardgames kitchen. It could be three in the morning, couldn't sleep, and I'd go sit in the kitchen. A moment later other non-sleepers would have heard my footsteps and pop their head in the kitchen door, I'd say "game?", and then we'd play Carcassonne or Cribbage.

Other times we'd sit and knit and crochet.

Bli-kjent-tur

Trip last weekend: Original plan was to bring my DSLR, and then I forgot it plugged to the charger... Hence phone pics again. This time from the Sylane area along with 44 other outdoor loving students. Saturday evening I found particularly wonderful, with a bonfire, gin and tonic, shooting stars, conversations, and finishing off sleeping under the open sky.

 

 

Water

Canoeing in Femundsmarka last weekend was absolutely suberb, even if it was pissing, pouring down all of Saturday. As I said, I can't find my waterproof camera, but I managed to snap a couple of phone pics without the battery dying completely. Maybe I should just buy a new camera, that should make the old one pop up I bet.

 

Weekend

I'm off canooing for the weekend in a couple of hours, but I doubt there will be any pictures from that either, since I still can't find my waterproof camera. Crap.

Now, off to something complete different. I kinda like being in front of the camera as well as behind. It's fun, you can put on a different persona, dress up, dress down, make faces. The following are originally taken by Janina Lamøy, girl behind Janice Absolutley Photography.

Friday

Hey y'all, follow me on instagram @myrull. I've added a new instagram widget on the sidebar here.

Btw, I'm fucking bored. Nobody's available for shite tonight.

As always, let's add pictures.