biking with vikings

sportacus

Like many boys, Malcolm is enamored with super heroes.  But these days he is especially  fixated on the children's show Lazy Town and the "slightly above average super-hero", Sportacus

As you can see he has his festelavn costume ready, replete with painted on moustache by his mum :).

The actor Magnus Scheving is a neat guy and former European aerobics champion who urges kids to play outside, eat healthy and have a positive outlook on life.  Of course we want Malcolm to internalize this message so we encourage the show and watch it with him (in spite of the fact that he sometimes identifies with Pixel, the sedenary computer kid/puppet on the show, because he "creates things".  Can't argue with that.)

Watching the kids' show is made more interesting for us parents by the flamboyant 'villain' of the show, Robbie Rotten, who injects camp and sly humor into each episode.  To whit:

"Who says computers make life easier?"

"My name is Rob U. Blind, the traveling salesman"

"(hearing the kids playing) Don't they understand the value of sitting in a chair all day?"

the iceman cometh, eventually

So after our non-winter of blooming cherries and balmy temperatures, real, actual winter arrived this week with the first snow of the season.

The temperature has hovered around freezing so the roads are very icy and there have been many car accidents, but if this is the worst we get for winter weather this year we'll be doing all right.

I love the way the snow makes things stand out in relief, you can really see the fractual beauty of trees this time of year:

mindstorm robots

Susan and Malcolm (OK, mostly Susan) have been busy with the Lego Mindstorms robots they got for Christmas.  These things are the greatest toys ever: You have to build quite sophisticated mechanisms using lego pieces and provided sensors, then program them using the included software (or you can use the freely-available Microsoft Robotics Studio and program them using .NET although we haven't tried that yet).

Here's some examples of the first ones she's built:

 

 

 

the winter that wasn't

So far, it has been an extremely mild winter in Denmark this year.  Right now it is 8 deg. C (~ 46 deg. fahrenheit) outside and there are cherries blossoming in my area - unheard of for January.  This is 3-4 months learly for DK.

 

 

There was a significant snowfall in Reykjavik after we left, and Seattle has just had more snow in the past few days - it is -6 degrees C there now.  The only weather we've had here to speak of is very high winds the past few days.

 

So perhaps winter (wind-ter?) is just late this year?

Snakes Win

My 'Old Boys' hockey team has had a less-than-auspicious season this year.  I could chalk this up to the fact that we've lost a few key players from last year (including the league leading scorer) and the fact that we've got a 72 year-old guy ('Denmark's Oldest Ice Hockey Player'!) on our team who's about as useful as a pylon whenever he's on the ice, but the fact is there is a huge talent range within our league and my team is on the short end of this range.  For example - some guys who used to play for the Danish National Team play in my league, but not on my team.

As a result, we were 0-6-1 (or something, I've stopped counting) until we actually won a close-fought game 3-2 last Thursday.  I didn't score although I hit the post on a breakaway and had an all-around good game.

I was still on a high Friday morning when I told Susan about the win.  "You guys won?" she said.  "How embarrassing for the other team."

Oh, she's a comedienne, my wife.

[update: we tied tonight, so we have a 'non-losing streak' of two games]

Iceland

 

back from a great New Year's trip to Iceland.  We only went for four days, and the weather was mostly crap (as it often is, I am told) but we still managed to have a great time - largely thanks to our friends who showed us around and looped us in on New Year's Eve fun - Cheers! 

 

I am just posting now because we stayed up all night partying on New Year's and as a result my energy level has been rather low for a few days :P.

Although it seems a bit ironic to travel to a place that is colder and darker than Denmark in winter for a 'break', there are a few things there that make life in winter bearable, even pleasureable.  For example, most municipal pools have outdoor hot baths for soaking which like everything are heated by their extensive geothermal district heating.  Ah, the advantages of living on a volcanic hotspot on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge!

So as a result we went swimming every day while there, and (much to Malcolm's delight) some of the pools had outdoor jacuzzis and big water slides.  I only got stuck Homer Simpson-style once in the water slide, until my friend Erlingur explained the technique to me - then it was great fun!

Reykjavik is very consious of its 'hip' status nowadays (thanks to Bjork, Sigur Ros and the like) with lots of trendy shops, galleries and clubs along Laugavegurinn, the main shopping street that runs downtown. 

There are elements of other places in Reykjavik -- the laid-back vibe, natural beauty and fresh maritime air make it feel like Vancouver or Seattle, while the tidy buildings are like others in Scandinavia -- yet it is oddly compelling and unique, mostly because of the incredible landscape which I'll get to in a minute.

  Food and drink in Reykjavik are bloody expensive but high-quality and we had great seafood virtually every day while there.  In general food and things like cafes seem higher quality here than in Copenhagen, but that's not a high bar to beat ;). 

Here's Malcolm in our favorite cafe near the hotel, where we invented and played the game 'trade the coins':  Three of my 1 IKR 'Cod' coins for your 10 IKR 'Flounder' :)

There is of course a good deal of interesting history and mythology regarding Iceland.  One of the coolest things we saw in in the city was the Reykjavik 871 (+/- 2) exhibition, a recently-unearthed viking longhouse from the original settlement.  It provides great insight into the lives of the first settlers, and it is probably the best interactive historical display I've ever visited, with beautiful restoration of the remaining structure, motion-sensing 'holographic' films that animate the surroundings as you pass, and even an interactive 3D table that illustrates the lives of the settlers there.  We all loved it, including Malcolm, and we picked up a great history on the settlement of Iceland, The Sagas of Icelanders, Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales and some nice kids' books on viking history and weaponry for Malcolm who, alas, is fascinated by any and all weapons.

It is not until you see the countryside, though, that you understand what might have motivated these people to invent such elaborate mythologies...

I greatly overused the adjective 'dramatic' while touring the countryside in Iceland, because wherever you looked were brooding landscapes with mountains in the distance, or waterfalls, or geysers, or a volcano caldera, or just a great lava plain stretching off into the distance, but almost never any sign of human habitation.  You feel this great urge to load up a backpack and just start walking for as far as you can go until reaching the sea.  We would definitely like to come back in summer weather and try some long treks here.

On the final full day we ventured out to The Blue Lagoon, a lake of warm, geothermal seawater that has been turned into a spa

it was eerie and beautiful to float around in warm, slightly-astringent brackish water and gaze up at the cold, clear sky. 

But I must admit my favorite part of that trip was the landscape and the way to and from Blue Lagoon:  It was the only clear day of our trip, and the mountains stood out in perfect detail from the roadway.

So naturally after all that beauty and nature we needed a good dose of old-fashioned human partying, and as Erlingur's family graciously invited us along we joined them for some drinks, a traditional New Year's dinner (smoked lamb - quite nice), lots more drinks, singing of songs and playing music (his dad is quite a decent keyboardist, while I banged along on guitar) and a few more drinks.

Although I have no photographic evidence, I should point out that Icelanders love fireworks.  Nay, they *love* fireworks, to the tune of millions of dollars worth of the things, or put another way, an entire year's worth of air pollution in Reykjavik from automobiles in one night.  I have never seen so many fireworks.  It started around 10pm and lasted until around 12:30.  By the time the New Year actually occurred, the air was so thick with smoke that you couldn't see the exploding rockets a short distance away.  Icelanders are a little nuts :).

So all this fun took us right up to the early bus we had to catch to the airport and the morning flight home on January 1st 2007.  An auspicious beginning of 2007 for us!

The full set of snaps is here.