2011 Holiday Summary

I've just realised that I haven't put very much in here for a while. Recording stuff here makes it easier to remember what I've done and when I did it! So here goes with a bit of a catch-up on this summer.

I took four weeks holiday this year from early June. The first day off was spent riding the Västeråscykel2011 - 140 km organised by VCK (Västerås Cykelklubb), followed by a grill fest at friends Kjell and Maggan.

Our friends Jo and Michael arrived from England in their new camper van on the following Monday. We all drove down to Motala to stay in a Stuga from the Thursday until the following Monday for the Tjej- and Halvvättern rides. Edward, Julia and two friends shared the stuga for some of the time while the girls did the Tjejvättern. Margaret, Jo and I did the Halvättern this year, after having had a few training rides. This link will show you some pictures I took with my new camera of Tjejvättern, this one for Halvvättern..

I managed Halvvättern in 5 hours 11 minutes, which is a personal best.

After saying farewell to Jo and Michael who set off back to the UK on the Monday, we drove back to V-ås. I returned to Motala on the Thursday with two more guests from England, Sean and Clive, who had flown with their bikes with Ryan Air to Västerås for the 300km Vätternrundan.

We stayed in a house organised by one of the regular VR cyclist, Markus. This was a house big enough for six at a pinch - we were nine! It actually worked out very well. We arrived first and took the best rooms and beds, claiming seniority! Pictures can be found here.



I broke my record again with a time just under 14 hours. Next year I'm going to ride with VCK, starting at 04:46. I'm not sure if Sean and Clive are coming yet. They'd better make up their minds soon as I suspect that it will be sold out in record time because the booking system is being changed to allow start time selection with booking. This means there won't be any advantage in waiting for the time you want.

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After Vätternrundan the tempo was reduced drastically when we drove down to Germany and France to ride the Moselle/Mosel valley from Metz (F) to Koblenz (D). On this 360km ride we had an average speed of about 18 kph!

Pictures (some with comments) are here.

A very nice four weeks off work!

For those of you unable to be here on Saturday here's a video (please excuse the quality, it wasn't very bright at that time in the evening) of Västerås Male Voice Choir singing one of the many traditional songs sung at this festival.

The last day of April is celebrated here in the usual way (food and too much drink, at least that how I celebrated it). Valborgmässoafton is called Walpurgis Night in English apparently! There seem to be many different explanations about it, but this year it fell on a Saturday, so we didn't get a day off for the first of May, which is a public holiday.

I hope you enjoy the film, it should give an idea of what the evening looks like. Unusually it didn't rain or snow, and wasn't particularly cold this year. If I remember rightly we went to our first Valborg just a couple of weeks after moving to this country and there was still snow on the ground.

After the singing there was the obligatory speech followed by fireworks, which were quite nice. On our first Valborg teenagers ran around throwing bangers about amongst the drunken visitors, that didn't happen this time.

The news on the radio every first of May always starts with 'an unusually rowdy/calm Valborg' but there are always incidents somewhere faithfully reported.

Well I drank too much and as a consequence didn't manage to go cycling with the cycle club as planned on the Sunday morning.

I did however manage to travel to Stockholm on the Monday and see some friends that were over from England. In the afternoon we played some string quintets, and in the evening I listened to their performance of Hindermith at Mazer. They were very good, as were the group that played a Mozart piano quartet after them. Thanks to Kathy, Gary, Phil, John and Solbritt for a very nice day. (Yes you did count five names, so with me that should have been a sextet, but Gary doesn't play. He was with his wife Kathy)

Kitchen finally complete

Yesterday the very last handles for our new kitchen finally arrived. So now it's complete!

We had also ordered some stuff for the insides of draws etc., and some of that's now been installed as well, but the main news is that you can now open all the draws and cupboards using the correct handles!

Spring is on its way, and the cycling season is about to start. On Saturday (while M is working) I'm going to ride with the Västerås cK for the first time this year. I hope that the temperature is a bit higher than forecast, and that all the ice has gone from the route!

Two bus companies

My son is getting married in a couple of weeks time, and about 20 English guests are arriving to partake. This presents a logistical problem. Usually when two or three come over for a visit we pick them up at the airport and drive them about as required.

If we tried to do that with our own cars we'd not do anything else, and I suspect people would get fed up waiting for hours while others got lifts. Public transport is quite good, but rather limited and awkward to and from the airport and pretty well non-existent to and from the Church and restaurant, which are both in the country (on different sides of the town).

We thought it would be a good idea to hire a coach to take us and our guests from the airport to their hotel in the centre of town, and again out to the church, then onto the party and finally home again.

I duly filled in the form on the nearest bus company's web site on 20-feb. We'll call this company B. After a day or so I mailed them in case something had gone wrong with the form (22-feb). I got confirmation that this mail had been read the same day, but still I didn't hear anything from them. At this point I mailed another bus company (company A), based on the other side of town. It took them 40 minutes to mail back with an offer.

Today, 1-march, I got a response from company B. Two things tell me that they don't want my custom. Firstly the price, about twice what company A offered, and of course the fact that they just ignored me for over a week.

Well as you can imagine company A got the order. If you wonder which these two companies are, the labels A & B aren't completely coincidental. The are two main companies here whose first letter just happen to be A & B respectively, so it wasn't difficult to choose pseudonyms.

I think that company B recently got a national order from SJ, the main railway company, for substitute buses for non-running trains. Those of you that live here will guess that that is probably an extremely lucrative contract. SJ is in its second disastrous winter with a very high incidence of train problems, and I don't suppose company B needs my little contract.

I am in principle a supporter of trains, I've still got much of my train set, and intend to play with it when my grandchildren get to an age where they will give me the excuse to get it out! The idea is very good, and I would like to support and use them. However the current reliability of the train service, not to mention the cost, has meant that in recent years I have used other methods of transport when I could have gone by train. If company B's pricing is anything to go by I can see why the trains are so expensive, and am not optimistic about the future of the railway system in this country.

Lots going on at present!

There's a lot going on at present and since I haven't written much here for a while I thought I'd better write a little summary.

• I'm a granddad again. A little girl Ingrid Frances Dorotea was borne on Wednesday, early this time! (He big brother was some weeks late)
  Her name was only announced (on their blog, who needs Churches for christenings when we have blogs?) last night, so now we can stop calling her Nameless or 'lillasyster' (which her big brother will probably continue with.
  We've been babysitting big brother and generally trying to help out (i.e. not just get in the way).
  
• Our kitchen is being rebuilt. We are a week into the work now. We have the same people helping (i.e. doing all the real work) that worked on R & J's house. They seem very good, hard working and conscientious. I'm posting pictures on picasa.
• Our son is getting married in March.
  

Of the much less important things that are happening I can just mention that I'm going to play bass this weekend with the Bergslagens Orchestra. This outfit meets for a weekend and puts on a couple of concerts rather than meet every week as do most orchestras. This means that the crew is different every time. This will be my first time. We're going to play the Planets by Holst, a Carmen Suite (Bizet, arr.?) and the wind are playing something else.

I'm also trying to sort out replacing our telephone system here at work. We have an old analogue exchange with 5 external lines and 12 internal extensions. This is very much overkill since we are now just 5 people working here, and we hardly get or make any calls with it, most calling now being done with mobile phones. We will probably get a more modern IP based setup, which we should be able to scale up or down as required. We are also expecting to move office sometime soon, which is what prompted this change.