Summer solstice

Last week we had a fire in our backyard celebrating the summer solstice, which roughly corresponds to the swedish holiday of midsommarafton. We sat around and drunk some applejack and mead, and enjoyed the evening. The occasion was made even nicer by a surprise visit by a local boy that came in from the next door park and played a few oldtime songs on his banjo. While definitely one of the most sober solstices I have experienced (I drank the equivalent one beer and went to bed before 11), it was one of the nicer ones.

SPDs: I hate you

Yesterdays lesson: Never use SPD pedals for track racing, especially if they are somewhat worn. When warming up for a race in the Alpenrose six day series, I sprinted away and tore my foot out of the pedal while standing up and pulling as hard as I could. The result: I flew over the handlebar straight into the concrete at high speed, and slid on my knee, sholder, and back. I also tore my favourite jersey. So definitely no race today, and maybe not for quite some time until the knee and sholder works well again.

Here a swollen knee. My head, knee and sholder took the whole force of impact on the concrete and I must have been going well over 25mph. (40 km/h). Clearly nothing is broken but I am worried I tore some muscles or ligaments in my sholder.

A cooked some special breakfast for cheering up purposes. However, I was still a little bit morose---I am without transportation until I can bike again. Damn those SPDs.

Alpenrose revisited

This weeks feature: More racing. This was my first omnium with three diffrent events, and it went well with the exception that I thought the sprint for the win was at the first lap rather than the fifth in the win and out. (In this race everyone circles five times, then the winner is the person that wins the first lap after that, the second placer is the person that wins the next lap and so on). As a consequence I had to hunt down the pack when they were a third of a lap ahead of me going full blast. Oh well. I guess I learnt something.

Me winning a sprint in front of my arch nemesis, sneaky Charles.

There was a kiddie race too. As it was the first, there was only one person that entered. Here she is seen drafting behind her dad entering corner 3.

Bobby graduated!

A's dad Bobby (right) had his MSc graduation this week, and he is now an official conflict resolver. So now you know who to turn to if you want to strangle someone but suspect you shouldn't.

American grill

After all the swedish grilling, we had to do some at home too, so we got a cheapie charcoal grill the other day and barbequed up some tofu bratwursts. Yum. Unfortunately the weather has not been very conducive to grilling here, due to extreme unpredicability.

Track win

I did my first organized race ever this thursday, and I was so nervous. And it didn't get better when I realized that the race I had signed up for was a pretty brutal race for a first timer---a points race of 45 laps with sprints every 5 laps. But I guess all that bike riding paid off, because I ended up winning the cat. 4 and 5 race. It was a lot of fun, and I am sure that I will try some more racing again soon.

We opened a bookstore!

So we just opened a bookstore next to our house. Here C. is peeking out behind the computer for one of the first shifts ever. Very exciting.

Sweden trip

We just got back from three weeks in my old haunting grounds in Gothenburg. You may wonder what we did there. Well, we frumped. And we spent a lot of time with these people, in this room, eating food they would not stop cooking us.

We also read a ton of comics, loaned to us from S+J.

One thing Amelia absolutely would not miss this time was the stuffed whale at the museum of natural history. There used to be a cafe inside it. However, she ended up being a mite disappointed by its size, it is actually only a calf.

The museum is a very odd place. They still have a display of biological oddities, which seems a little outdated to say the least.

In Copenhagen we visited the Palm house in the botanical gardens. It is totally rad, and free to boot. A great place to sit and read.

No visit to Sweden would be complete without a trip to the grandmother with some gardening thrown in. Here potatoes gets to go into the ground.

One of our favorite stores in Gothenburg is Veloform, where all kinds of special bikes can be found, such as this giraffe bike called a Pedersen bike. It is an interesting store, full of people that come to hang out and drink coffee among vintage components.

This is how we spent our afternoons---grilling outside whether the weather was good or not. Vi kallar det grill.

One of the last things we did before we left was to set Johan up with my first real roadbike so that he can become a cycle nut just like us. Our first trip together went out to the sea where we had coffee in an old school cafe.

When we booked the tickets to Sweden we screwed up, so that we missed almost all of the North American Courier Championships. Too bad as I would have wanted to race. However, we managed to catch the polo on the day we came back to the US. Surprisingly, the winning two teams ended up being from Seattle rather than Portland. As for the results in the main race, Jacob placed 10 I believe, which is totally supercool. Props.