Kite across Greenland

I have some crazy friends...

Ingrid, my norwegian friend from NZ that i climbed with and did kitesurfing course with, is going to kite across Greenland! So everybody, check out http://jenterikuling.com/index.html

I am SO totally envious!! When I grow up I want to do something like that to! :)

Brennbu

Some pics from the days at our cabin Brennbu with my family as promised:

My first pair of skies!! Aren't they cute!? Red wooden skies :)

Kolbjørn (Mopap for us grandchildren) and my cousin Kolbjørn

Sigrid and our cousin Kristine testing in a magazine if their boyfriends are trendy. If anyone wondering, neither where :)

My mum and dad in front of our cabin

Me and Sigrid on top of the "mountain" Vardefjell. (well, it was a hard mountain when I was 5 :) With Kvikk Lunsj choclate, orange sun and a lot of snow, this is how easter are supposed to be!

Easterholyday!

First we went to Fontainbleau. This is litterary the mekka of bouldering. I loved Castle hill, but Font is just even better! Its like Castle hill, just bigger and with friction and forest, which makes it really cozy. We set of from Trondheim all six of us on thuesday morning. When arriving in Paris we quite soon found out that the metro system is not really made for people with big backpacks, and espesially not with crash pads! We did get through though, in some miraculous way, and we got too Fontainbleau town, where we got time for a little bit sightsing and shopping before heading to Milly la Foret and the camping. Which was not to easy without a car... Next time we are definatly renting one!

Mattias and Sindre (I think they really like the bags! :) in front of the castle in Fontainbleau. This was the castle of the french kings before Versailes.

Bouldering the bus stop at Fontainbleau railway station desperatly waiting to get to the boulders

Showing the boys how they do it in NZ (1080 of course! see november)

We did get to the boulders at last though, and where basically in heaven! So before going futher in my story, here is a free translation of parts of an article describing different climbers from the last number of Klatring (the norwegian climbing magazin)

Boulderers: The rase lives in a sort of sect where it is changing who to whorship. Characterized by the prayer mat, which is placed on the ground underneath the leader who is in accordance with the regulations wearing a beanie and no shirt while trying to ascend the holy mountain. The disciples are cheering ecstatic and putting their hands up in worship. If the sect leader succed the crowd underneath yells ecstatic words of praise.

Tips to become a beliving boulderer:

• Image: Cool, very very cool
• Outfit: Beanie, no shirt, baggy pants and did I mention no shirt?!?
• Gear: Climbing shoes, prayer mat and a big chalk bag for the oh so holy chalk
• Menatlity: Scared of big heights

Eskil and Sindre are just lacking the beanies

Mattias showing off in "Dunis" (downie) and "Baris" (No shirtie:)

The teori is that you climb better if you get an award (=good french wine ) when you send the problem :)

Me on a really hard roof problem (I will let you all belive that that I climber a lot more moves on this :)

One day the boys went to Paris to go shopping and sightsing while me and Sigrid stayed climbing! (this might sound amazing or even wierd, but when we go more thoroughly into this happening it turns out that what the boys actually did was going to the biggest sport shops in Paris and returing to Font with an fazinating amound of cheap (compared to norway) expenisive gear...) Me and Sigrid on the other hand got an amzing day in the area Bas Couvier (where some of the most famous problems in Font are) together with some cool norwegian guys we meet on the camp.

Me and Sigrid

Font in a nutshell!

Well, this is getting seriously long... I should probably wait till I have forgotten parts of trips before I write about it, would make it easier to limit my self :) So then, more pics less words!

The wonderful dish of bratwurst boild in beer is not only good in NZ! The other ting cooking on the fire is snails boiled in wine... Made by Leaf (bellow)

Dan and Leaf, two crazy british climbing dudes

Crossing the desert by Cul de Chien

The boys hanging out by the tents

Sigrid and Gaute in Orly airport. If you are takeing the plane early in the moring and all the seats are taken, and you have a sleeping mat, of course you use it! Just as if you want to eat breakfast on the crashpads in the train on the way to Paris in you dont have a knife Gaute use a carrot for the butter and aioli instead! I just dont understand why we of all people got so many wierd looks...

After an amazing week in Font we went back to Norway and traditional norwegian easter. Me and Sigrid went to our family cabin Brennbu with the family. Update and pics from this will come!

Oh, and last, I'll try to upload a video to see if it works. This is Sindre on the classic Font climb Eclipse.

Pinky got a little sister!!

And then I'm off to Fontainbleau. Happy eastern everybody!!!

On not very much

Today I was driving through town, and guess what kind of car is passing me, a cabriolet! Well, initialy it's nothing wrong with a cabriolet, exept that I think they are completly unpractical and irrational. The point is that it is winter, and it is Trondheim! Meaning around zero degrees and a weather that are never able to deside wether it's sunny, windy, snowy or rainy and normally end up with all at once. I hope for the sake of the people driving that they where not going very far..

And while I'm at it (it meaning writing about nothing), after being passed by the cabriolet, I drove to the police station, which kind of was the point of driving to town, I wasen't just driving there to try to find funny cars. By the police station I parked illegally, since that's probaly the last place the parking guards bother to check :) Well there I finally got my new passport (which was why I was going there, in case anyone thought something else) And now my question is, what is up with these as always annoying americans?!? It is bad enough that I have to buy a new passport to go there, since they are the only country in the world not accepting my old one, but NO smiling on the pictures???! Whats that all about?? Only good thing about all this is that at least I now officialy know my hair color. I always wondered what to call it :)

And come to think of it, one more thing about the cabriolet. It actually had a snowboard quite creativly tied on to it on the top... Don't really strike my as a car for going to the mountains! I think I'm not going to buy a car like that any time soon, I rather stay faithfully by me and sises VW Golf!

Owen and Inga - Tour de Norway!

Mo i Rana

One of the pictures above is of Owen in the cave Sætergrotta dressed in my dads cave suit from the seventies, the other is of a laban (a jelly man), now, guess which is which! :)

What the ...??? It's cheese in the cave!!!
I don't think I ever really appriciated how beutifull it is in Mo i Rana when I lived with my parets. This is on the top of the mountain Tortenviktind. It is an hour drive from home, and has a view to the fiords, mountanis, islands and to the glacier that is as beutifull as can be. And in addition to this it was completly awsome untoched powder snow for telemark and ski mountaineering!

Teaching Owen downhill skiing in Hemavan (just over the border to sweden). He is actually really good! As his personal ski instructur I take the honor :) After his weeks in Norway Owen have learned down hill and cross country (back country and racing) skiing, and tried telemark. He seriously impressed me! Next time he'll be up for skating cross country skiing and snowboarding!

Tromsø

The view from the cabin Nonsbu. To get to this trip we just took the city bus! In that way Tromsø is an amazing city, even though it is the largest city in Northern Norway (with 62 000 inhabitants :) it have some really cool mountains and wilderness just in its backyard!

Me and Anne Katrine discussing the map.

Sunset over Tromsø. The city is there, you just don't see it :)

Teaching a kiwi to ski

My good friend Owen from NZ is now in Norway visiting, and of course he has to learn to ski! Therefor me and Kristin took him to the little cabin Rindalsløa to show him typical norway nature and tradition, and teach him a bit cross country skiing. It went very well uphill with skins, so well actually that me and Kristin descided to take him to the mountain Trollhøtta, which is quite far... What we didn't really think of is that downhill is a bit harder... So poor Owen had to try downhill cross country skiing for the first time high up in the mountain, in trerrible wind, icey snow and no groomed tracks. Impressingly enough he got down in one pice and still smiling! Rest of the weekend he got to experience real norwegian meatballs, brown cheese and the worst february winter weather in Trondheim for quite a while... (meaning only rain and ice!) Rest of his time here he is going to get the pleasure of visiting norhtern Norway! Mo i Rana and Tromsø, where it luckily is supposed to be a bit more snow.

Owen eating typical norwegian rice porrige (standard friday lunch at uni)

Of other things happening here is that I have gotten my summer kind of planed, a summer job at SINTEF and tickets to the States! And a last thing, my second assignment in product design was to redesign an existing product, and I thought I should do something funny and choose to design a pink girly ice axe :)

Finding a summer job

I am currently quite stressed out about trying to find a good summer job, preferable where I can do my project and master thesis to. The last days it has been IAESTEs job fair. This means a lot of representatives for companies, that desperatly are trying to get the students to choose their company. I have been to a couple of presentations, and talked to some people in the companies I am interested in. I must say the people are generally really nice, but the presentations are all the same. Some guy in a suit showing fancy power point presentations or videos made by some "cool" commercial agency. First of all, I can't imagine working in the oil industry or something similar to be THAT fancy, and I must admit, the suit scares me! Does it mean I have to wear a suit when I start working? I can't really pictrure me going to work in skirt and high heels... No, give me someone in Bula pants and Haddox headband on a company presentations performing a poem like this! Then I would apply strait away! :)

(The poem is actually from one of the job adds for the jobs I am applying for, and it sums up quite a lot of what would be said on job a presentation for this job :)