Surf Sligo

Well, in my head it was always going to happen in Hawai, but I've just had my first surfing lesson at Enniscrone beach, here in Sligo.The Atlantic gives you real waves, not the ripples you get in the baltic. It was great fun, and free as part of the Enniscrone Festival (though it was only polite to donate to the instructor's efforts to get to the championships next year in portugal). Good fun, but I stank like dead aquatic life, which would have performed better. My siblings were much better, particularly my lil sis who rocked entirely, until she split her foot landing on something.

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Clarification

Last night, Alex had a plan. It called for getting a train to Tikkurilla, in Vantaa, and pedalling along the scenic route to Kerava (a route that runs away from Helsinki), then returning home via train from Kerava.

As I mentioned the conditions were bizarre (climbing a couple of metres could bring the temperature and humidity up so dramatically that my glasses would fog) and conspired to slow us down, or have us loose our way in the middle of nowhere, so that when we finally reached the train station at Kerava, at midnight, we were 11 minutes late for the last train. Two hours later, with a total trip distance of 80km, we rolled into Helsinki, and about 15 minutes after that I crawled in to bed.

Spooky ride

Myself and Alex are in the middle of nowhere just now, with fog rolling over the plains between the Grimm-like woods, all lit by an eerie pink moon. Saw it written on a sign saying...

Anyway it's beautiful, if you never hear from us again, it was probably the were rabbit of vanta!

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End of the Athletics

To reiterate what the title tells, today is the last day of the 2005 World Athletics Championships. Hopefully this means the weather is going to return to normal - it's been bad enough that the odd events had to be postponed, and on one occassion all the screens and electronics in the arena had to be powered down for two hours during a thuderstorm! Ah the arena, very old, very beautiful, very exposed. Very illustrious too - before the dominance of Kenyans, Ethiopians et al, the Finns were the kings of long distance running, and so successful in the 1920s that they decided to try to host the Olympics. The stadium was inaugurated in 1938, a pesky world war got in the way, and they didn't get the Olympics till 1952. It's still the smallest city ever to host a Summer Games, and has hosted the World Championships twice now, which deserves respect. Imagine Dublin trying to host anything...

I'll be wandering in to see the women's marathon in town in about an hour. The walking and marathon courses are a little funny if you know the city. They're described as 10km loops showing the most beautiful streets of the capital, but 4 kilometres in any direction from the start and you've left the city centre for apartment-suburbia (or if you travel due south, for the middle of the Baltic). The solution has been to have competitors run up, then down the same streets. Repeatedly. They're lovely streets, mind, but if TV coverage is giving you the impression that Helsinki all looks the same, it's really more varied a city than the routes suggest.

Dejà vu

I have exactly €32.43 in my bank account, and it's over two weeks till payday. The noodles have been stock-piled; they fill the gaps between the tuna and tomato tins and the curry-powder. The guitar has also found itself used for songwriting purposes for the first time in far too long, and I sincerely hope this is unrelated - I don't want to have to starve to summon my muse. Apart from the pre-uni shortness of my mop it's Uni all over again.

Thankfully this situation is (probably) temporary. I'm waiting on an overdue money transfer from Ireland. I awake every morning, check my balance, then utter righteous howls along the lines of "Three working days they said! Those complete and total jobsworth bastards!" or just "'SWIFT' me hole!" depending on the amount of caffeine that has made it to the old thinking bean by that stage.

Makes me smile

One of the quirks of the area I work and live in is the freight line that runs from the dock in the south west, to the rail-yard over by where I used to live in Pasila. A few times a day a train leaves, yet until just now, today on my way home, I'd never caught all of it. I was half-way over the tracks when the bells started pealing.

Also, I've just walked across another section of the marathon route, where some determined amateurs are still plodding along, with my full respect - I couldn't run the hundred metres!

Marathon

The World Championship Marathon route runs past my office (yes, bad pun, apologies...)

Happy Anniversary...

I was too busy at the time to post, but Monday was my one year in Helsinki anniversary.  Time flies...

Bloom baby bloom

<nonchalonce>As I was flying over the baltic mid-afternoon on Thursday, I couldn't help but notice that the phytoplankton were blooming. How dreadfully green they make everything. Pass the salt, would you?</nonchalonce>


It's probably a mixed blessing for the aquatic ecosystem (tons of "sea-grass" good, tons of "sea-grass" consuming limited oxygen bad) but it's very captivating from way up high, swirled around by the currents. It's also immense. I'm not sure when I became aware of it (I was reading at the time) but it was definately before Sweden, and it lasted until the coast of Denmark. More here if you're interested.

What brought me to Denmark? Thanks to the continuing mystery of airfare pricing, it was more economical (not to mention a whole lot more fun) for myself and Niamh to rendez-vous in the land of Carlsberg and Christian-Anderson (Hans), before taking a train the following day to Gothenburg (I'm still awed that you can take a train from Denmark to Sweden - an international bridge!), and then return for the homewards journey. It was a beat-the-system kind of plan, and as is always the way when you try to outsmart The System, monkeys trained in throwing turn up at The Works, and find a box of spanners.

It transpired that everyone in Sweden was back at work the following Monday, and all the Swedes holidaying in Denmark had booked all the trains to Gothenburg. We were advised to get a train to Malmö, and then try to get a ticket for the next Copenhagen-Gothenburg train there, it would arrive half an hour later. Amazingly it worked, and even more amazingly we ran into an ex-classmate in Malmö, queueing for the ticket counter. In the end we made it to Gothenburg safe and sound, and rendez-voused with Alex.

Gothenburg, or Göteborg (yot-ay-bor-ay) was, of course, where U2 were playing on Friday night, at the Ullevi Stadium, and boy was it a cracking gig. The crowd was great - really friendly and excited - very warm towards the two warm-up acts who had local connections. There was even a half-hour long spate of cyclical mexican waves around the stadium before the main event. Bono kept his shtick to a minimum, and joy-of-joys, they played some great old classics, including Trash Trampoline and The Party Girl, a favourite of mine.


I'd be lying if I said we saw much of Gothenburg - we left the following day. We didn't see too much of Copenhagen either, but I was very impressed with the cycling culture... there's a city I could live in. We were going to go to Elsinore, until we realised that it's Helsingör, and would require another train (8 hours in two days is enough for anyone), so we went to the Carlsberg factory instead. The elephant on the left made fun of me. I cried. This left it up to Niamh to defend my honour. As you can see, he was cowed, and sulked with his ball until we went away.