I survived the desert - again!

I'm wiped out. This morning, at 5 AM, I got back to civilization after spending a week in the Nevada desert just outside of Vegas, climbing 'til fingers bled and calves gave out. As it turned out, the destination became Red Rocks rather than Indian Creek, and long routes on good holds rather than short and desperate crack climbs. Nonetheless, absolutely fantastic. Summiting a spire in the late afternoon sun, delicate placement of feet on slick rock, cranking down on miniscule black holds to avoid career-ending falls: pretty much climbing at its very best. As soon as my partners upload their photos somewhere I can get at them, I'll be back with improbably tall tales -- meeting friendly Canadians and half-crazed rope-soloists, alpine starts, horrifying run-outs, desert hikes and a whole bunch of pretty pictures. For now, I can offer some nice views:







There's more stuff on my Flickr page, as usual.

(So why the "again"? This is the second time I spend any length of time in a desert climate, which quite frankly scares me a bit. My first run-in with that terrain was driving clear across Australia, which might've colored my perception of deserts in general)

Time-out!

I've been a bit busy lately. Somehow life conspired against me and I ended up working 60+ hour weeks for most of February. While a lot of shit certainly gets done that way, it also grinds me down in the long run. Fortunately, there are some diversions to get me through it all. I call a time-out a few times a week -- not so much for strategy purposes as for staying sane.

First off, I take some time to go climbing. Since the outdoor season is in something of a hiatus (just got five fresh inches of snow last night), I'm patiently pulling plastic, trying to get strong and stay motivated until I can start on real rock again. At this point it's almost more about the good company than training hard. And by a stroke of good fortune, there are plenty of good people to run into down at the Wall:


There's also a competition every month or two, which is a great oppurtunity to climb brand new problems, meet up with all the climbers, engage in some friendly rivalry and maybe win some stuff. I missed the start of the comp this Friday, so I didn't place, but I did win a shiny poster in the raffle and got to climb with cool people. Check out the whole album Dan shot -- note the "pure dumb strength" vs "actual climbing skill" difference in approaches -- and/or these highlights:




I tried out some circus tricks, as well:


Finally, in up-and-coming sports news, I'm going to Disneyland! Or rather the crack climber's equivalent -- Indian Creek. I never made it down there during the Fall, much to my dismay, but I finally found a partner in crime who is just as enthusiastic about it as I am. It's funny how things work out sometimes. I had all but given up on the idea -- none of my regular partners seemed interested in going -- when I ran into Anneka just before the UW Cowboy Chase (see below). After cracking some jokes about needing EMT attention after the race -- sadly prescient, see below again -- I happened to mention that the Creek loomed large in my mind. It took her all of half a second to get really psyched about the idea of going there, and hey presto, new climbing partner and Spring Break trip arranged! As you can see, we're pretty stoked already, just looking at the road map:


If you're somewhere in the West and you're interested in going, shoot me an e-mail or something. More company would be great, and it'd mean lower gas costs and more cams for all. Not to mention more fun around the camp fire!

So, uh, yeah, that ski race. With Joe enthusiastically cheering me on (and as usual painting reality slightly pinker than it really is), I signed up for this year's Cowboy Chase. Having skied classic before, and being a fair skater on other types of foot-mounted forms of transportation, I was thinking "Ah, how bad can it be?". Pretty fucking bad, as it turns out. Although I looked fabulous in the Spandex outfit, that didn't matter much after the first few kilometers. Within 20 minutes or so people started lapping me so often that I spent more times off the tracks than in them, and after completing lap 1 (of 3!) I was seriously contemplating unconciousness as a good solution to my problems. But I sucked it up and inefficiently carried on. Big props go out to everyone in the crowd, who indisciminantly cheered me on despite the fact that I couldn't actually ski. Wouldn't have made it through without you, guys: thanks! When I finally crossed the finish line, the boys and girls in EMT suits were thinking I was due for 220 volts straight to the heart -- but I stood up in time to avoid that. After 15 km (about 1 h 45 min) of clawing my way across the snow on skis that seemed waxed with either teflon or superglue, depending on the slope, I was ready to acknowledge Nordic skiing as the most exhausting sport in the world. It certainly whopped me good.
But being an idiot, I decided to keep on keepin' on and showed up for the classic race the day after. It turned out to be way mellower, though, clocking in at 7.5 km. And besides, classic skiing I can kinda do. I finished third from the bottom (not last, yay me!) but felt pretty good about finishing at all. Full of piss and vinegar I proceeded to the lab for a ten hour work day... and promptly ended up in the sick bed for my efforts. Moral of the story: don't start in sports you don't know jack about by competing in back-to-back races.

("Where are the pictures?", you ask. I honestly don't know. People were snapping shots every so often -- there should be some Gunde Svan-quality portraits of me -- but I have no idea where they went. I'm as bummed out as you are...)

And finally, I've also done some Honest-To-God Manual Labor. Since my regular job consists mainly of thinking, reading, thinking some more, programming, debugging, cursing loudly, debugging again, feeling relived, printing the graphs and showing them to the PI, I rarely get any sort of physical indication that I've done anything. If my Mac in the lab blew up tomorrow it'd take every shred of my work with it. So to unwind I often go for something that takes a lot of bicep grease and produces very tangible results. Back home I used to make like a lumberjack and chop up a few hundred pounds of firewood every so often. Wyoming doesn't have any trees, so that won't work here. Instead, I fixed up my bike and unclogged a stopped-up drain. Not only did the latter involve a lot of yanking, whacking, pulling and squishing, but it also produced a very noticable benefit: I can pour water down the drain now. Of course, the incredibly nasty contents of the stoppage also presented visual (and olfactory!) confirmation that I'd accomplished something, but I could've done without that. Nevertheless, most satisfying. Maybe I should take up plumbing for shits and giggles? Can't pay much worse than my current gig does...

(P.S: Whoops, seems Kodak Gallery doesn't like me leeching their bandwith through Blogspot. Bummer. Try a link straight to the album, which might still require you to register. The pertinent photos are (in order of appearance) #'s 34, 38, 92 and 94. Too bad it ain't Flickr)

It's the little things that do it

Sometimes, differences between places or people are huge and obvious. One difference between Swedes and Americans, for instance, is that many Americans are both huge and obvious. What separates the spruce woods of Sweden from the jungles of northern Australia isn't that hard to figure out either, especially if your air conditioner breaks down. But sometimes, you have to spot the little incongruencies between places to appreciate just why something feels a bit strange.

For instance, take skiing in Colorado. I went down to Steamboat Springs a few weeks ago with Sage, an undergrad in the lab. Don't let the "undergrad" thing fool you: he has a good five years and two kids on me. As we drove down, I noticed one of those little things. The "farmland" that we passed between two mountain ranges was... dry as bone. Any spot that flat in Sweden has most assuredly been farmed for the last 500 years or so, and is probably located in Skåne anyway. But up above 7000 feet, which is higher than any point in Sweden including the top of Kebnekaise, flatness just guarantees a lot of wind. Sage guessed that they might be able to grow alfalfa there, but he sounded doubtful -- mostly they grow cows.

Aside from agricultural concerns, the Colorado mountains are absolutely beautiful. The dramatic terrain, comfortably familiar pine forests and endless views of snow-capped peaks deliver a whole bunch of "Woah..." moments as you stop during between ski runs. Wyoming can be a bit bleak during winter, because it's mostly flat and brown, and my last post demonstrated what Sweden looks like this time of year, so going up to the mountains was a breather for the soul. After just one visit, I'm seriously considering moving there. I wish I could show you some pictures, but in my haste to get out of the house (at 6 AM!) I forgot to bring the camera. Check out Flickr's Colorado pictures for a glimpse of what it might look like.

Now, the little detail that makes all the difference between Steamboat and a place like Sälen is spelled "P-O-W-D-E-R". Not only do these mountains get obscence amounts of snow -- 22 feet fell between Christmas and Jan 14 -- but by some bizarre twist of fate and meterology it tends to come down as a very fine powder. Even though we came in several days after the last heavy precipitation, we could still frolic in knee-deep "pow" and wipe out (while giggling, I might add) into huge piles of the soft white stuff. If you went off into the forest you could find lots of medium-difficulty tree runs: exciting enough to be interesting, with lots of untouched terrain, but enough space between the trees that you didn't actually crack your skull open every five feet. Even the blue runs were moderately amusing due to the sheer amount of snow. We only stopped when our legs were giving out and the sun was going down. It was easily the best day I've had skiing in the last five years, if not ten, and I'm definitely going back... but not too soon. The cost of a day pass is nothing short of highway robbery, and if you're renting skis your wallet will be bleeding green at an alarming rate. This time, though, it was way worth it.

Sticking with the theme of skiing, Joe (of transvestite Halloween fame) lured me out into the cross country tracks this weekend. I'd planned on climbing, but since the wall was only open during The Big Game (Superbowl XLII) that wasn't happening. Going up to Happy Jack and logging a few miles would at least get me out into nature, so I jumped on the chance. In the last few years I've only stood on skinny cross country skis twice, so I was somewhat hesitant to strap them on. But again, the little things come into play. My normal mode of cross country skiing involves bamboo poles, four feet of fresh snow and a pair of skis that are effectively very long snow shoes. The Swedish Army came up with an excellent design sometime in the early 1900's, but I'm not sure that Vita Blixten (lit. "White Lightning") really lives up to its name. For one, I've never actually been able to glide while wearing them, and the fact that you lubricate them using tar and a blowtorch gives you an idea of how well they perform. In comparison, Joe's skis really were "little things". However, my initial skepticism quickly melted when I discovered that you can go reasonably fast without risking a heart attack if your skis weigh less than 2 kgs a piece. In fact, I had a really good time up there, and somehow Joe talked me into actually doing a race next weekend. Fortunately, I have access to a secret weapon -- spandex! I'll no doubt be absolutely invincible:



Finally, a series of little events recently alerted me to the fact that the brainwashing is taking hold. "Brainwashed?", you ask. "Certainly", I reply. If you're in a math-heavy part of the sciences (like engineering), a brutal regime of calculus, algebra and statistics will ensure that you never look at any value statement without going "Where are the numbers to back that up, and are they significant?". For those of you not in the know, I have a Masters in Bioengineering -- in other words the decay began long ago. Grad school, then, is designed to further enhance the indoctrination to the point where you not only ask for statistically significant results, but also start to question the motives, methods and general sanity of whoever did the experiments. They call this "critical thinking", and it is one of the key ideas behind the curriculum in much upper-level education in the US (and probably elsewhere as well). Working on lab stuff 12 hours a day doesn't exactly help your attachment to The Real World either, and before you know it you'll be busting your gut laughing at stuff like ballads about thermocyclers. And even as I cracked the joke in lab meeting about the Kitlg gene causing pleiotropic effects like increased pants length, I knew I was going overboard. If you even know what a "thermocycler" or a "pleiotropic effect" is, you might be in danger yourself. But as luck would have it, some things still keep my mind from floating off into space -- cooking and good friends, for instance. Below you can see an attempt at the former, and two of the latter. Joe certainly does look better with his clothes on, and I'm sure Johnny wouldn't be caught dead without them:

Life in shades of grey

There are many things that you tend to forget when you've been away from a place long enough -- particularly those that you took for granted while you were there. They're not always good things, and this can make for a tricky homecoming.

For instance, I'd repressed the memory of winter in Sweden being an almost entirely monochromatic affair. The snow on the ground is a brilliant white, the sky is always grey and overcast, and the almost infinite expanse of spruce forest fades from dark green into black. It's a peculiar kind of beauty, and one that often seems more depressing than not:

The other thing that strikes you like a bowling ball to the back of the skull is the darkness. I'm currently up in Umeå, which is on the same latitude as Nome, Alaska -- not that very far from the Arctic Circle. At best, days are about five hours long this time of year, and the semi-permanent cloud cover ensures that you won't see the sun in any case. I remember spending weeks waiting for the damn thing to pop out for a few hours when I was living up here. But this wasn't a serious problem: as darkness gradually enveloped the land through the Fall, you kind of got used to it. This time, though, it hit me right in the face. I can honestly say that a day hasn't gone by in Laramie when I haven't seen the sun at least for a brief moment, and a typical day offers up to ten hours of blinding glare. The net effect of the transition is best likened to a descent into Hades, and I have a sneaking feeling that Seasonal Affective Disorder is in the woodwork (the acronym is quite appropriate). Suddenly, I recall some of the reasons why I left Sweden in the first place.

But all is not doom and gloom. I had very Merry and relaxing Christmas, a pleasant New Year's Eve and right now I'm visting with family up north. I've spent my days gorging on filmjölk, lingonberry jam, left-overs from the huge and traditional Christmas Eve dinner (many, many parts of pig) and all the other Swedish goodies that cannot be bought for money, love or the blood of my firstborn over in the US. Some of my old friends I've caught up with, some I'll see soon, and some I won't be seeing until next year (bummer!). Even with the hop over the Atlantic behind me, my buddies from not-so-way-back have spread out enough over Sweden/Europe that I'd need a private jet to see all of them. But hey, once that Nobel Prize lands in my pocket...

There are a few other cultural things that are easier to spot when you don't live in the middle of them. One is the way everybody looks around here. I'm not talking about the beautiful Swedish women (they're kind of a given); it's more of a fashion thing. Swedes are, by and large, quite well-dressed and stylish. I've heard comments from exchange students about feeling slightly intimidated by all these chic people, and I certainly remember thinking that Americans dress like slobs when I first came over. The latter is true, of course, and it only serves to highlight the difference. But once you get past the surprised stage and look beneath the surface, you'll soon find that everyone sports the same style. I'm guessing most people shop at some combination of H&M, Dressman, Lindex and so forth, and while the clothes are certainly well made and expensive, they do tend toward a certain uniformity. If you're even slightly aware of what the High Lords of Fashion dictacte this year, you can spot a Swede a mile away. The tight jeans/leggings, the faux-eighties sneakers and the short-ish tunic gives them away every time:


Another vast difference between Sweden and the US is the sad fact that Swedes are, on average, a dour fucking bunch of people. I mean, say what you will about Americans (and there's certainly a lot to say!), but at least they talk to you. It's often superficial and glib, but it is conversation. Around here, though, people pretty much shut up. The nine-hour bus ride I took to get here included probably half an hour of talking, tops, and that was between husband and wife playing cards! The rest us did what Swedes always do in these situations: spread out as much as humanly possible and avoided eye contact at all costs. This does make sleeping a lot easier, but come on, would one little word hurt? But the habit is deeply rooted. Just consider the Swedish word for "small talk": "kallprat". Literally, "cold talk". Ergo, not something you would engage in unless forced to.

The same goes for interactions in e.g. retail or beaurocracy. "Service", a well-developed concept in some countries, is not in evidence beneath the Swedish sky. No "How are you?", "Can I help you?" or even a "Thank you!" when you hand the cash over. This probably boils down to the absence of tips around here: the minimum wage is astronomically higher than in a hard-core capitalist economy, and hence there's no particular incentive to provide special service to anyone. It is a commendable state of affairs for society in general -- waitresses suffer way less here than elsewhere -- but not that great for the customer. And yes, I do know that any warmth and attention you get from a half-decent waiter in the US is as fake as a North Face jacket from Bangkok, but I don't care. I'll take fake politeness over real indifference any day of the week, especially for 30-second interactions that have little or no relation to the rest of my social life.

With that rant, I think I've said enough. I'm even getting myself depressed at this point, so I'll go enjoy some of the things that Sweden and no other place offers: tasty lösgodis, great coffee and the company of my dear grandparents. It's pity Christmas comes only once a year...

The long and winding road

While I don't especially care for the Beatles' final album (they pretty much lost it sometime shortly after Sergeant Pepper, I figure), the song title does seem appropriate. I'm penning -- well, keyboarding -- this at Denver International Airport, where I've been for about five hours now. "What, is he stuck in a blizzard? Or did Lotta just have an unwholesome influence on his sense of timing back in London?", you ask. No, no, nothing that bad. While the snow has been coming down for an hour or two, it looks like DIA can handle it. A good thing, too, with half of the US population travelling today. No, I'm simply a victim of the complete absence of public transport in the West. Laramie sports exactly two ways of leaving town: driving or flying. Flying from Laramie to Denver is a fast, stupid and expensive option, and I don't own a car, so this means I'm at the mercy of the circumstances when it comes to going to the airport. The good news were that I was able to catch a lift with my last advisor Alex and his lovely wife Amy. The bad news were that they left town at 7.30 AM this morning. The very bad news are that my flight doesn't leave until 5.30 PM tonight. So I began my already extended journey -- 13 hours of flights plus waiting time -- by... doing nothing for about eight hours. Granted, it's been better than expected: I haven't really gotten very bored, had some good coffee, seen some funny people, and I found free Internet. Props to DIA: most airports don't provide free WiFi, and some only install those bogus kiosks where you pay $500 an hour to surf at modem speeds. All in all, not bad so far.

It's probably superflous to mention it, but I've now finished my first semester (of up to 12) at UWyo. It went fairly well, although the amount of work involved was surprisingly high. I'm fine with spending long hours in the lab -- after all, I'm slaving away for my own greater glory -- but this whole schtick with taking several classes at once and trying to get some science done has been mildly frustrating. As you Swedes know, university back home involves taking one class at a time, and then an exam every 5/10/20 weeks that determines your grade. This suited me extremely well, since I have all the multitasking powers of the average male (can only just walk and chew gum at the same time) and a penchant for concentrating 'til my eyes pop out. Juggling several different classes at once (with associated homework) kind of caught me by surprise and smacked me one upside the head. However, recalling Clint Eastwood's immortal words in "Heartbreak Ridge", I improvised, I adapted, and I overcame. Can't wait for these classes to be over, though, so I can concentrate on what's actually important.

Now, my next line here was going to be something derogatory about Americans and their horrendous Christmas decorations. Every passing year seems to up the stakes and increase the number of lightbulbs employed. I'd even formulated a plan to go out and take some pictures of the worst offenders around Laramie, and gleefully demonstrate the folly of having e.g. a purple glow-in-the-dark Christmas tree. Unfortunately for me, the residents of Laramie turned out to be quite restrained in their choice of cheerful lighting. The ugliest thing I've seen all month was a raindeer that used some blue lighting to indicate a harness or something, and I kind of liked that one. The best I can do is to give you a hint of how bad it could have been.

In closing, I'll comment on something that does feel truly bizarre over here. Just the fact that there is a "Department of Homeland Security" is a sure indicator that something has gone wrong (Departments of Correct Thinking and Random Torture, respectively, are sure to follow) in Western Wonderland. And the constant speaker announcements here at the airport don't help. "The Deparment of Homeland Security Theat Condition Level has been raised to Orange. Please be vigilant of any suspicious behavior and report unattended luggage immediately to the authorities [...]" If this was followed by "Anyone caught thinking seditious thoughts will be tasered and immediately transported to Guantanamo for several years of electrocution and waterboarding. Have nice day!", I wouldn't be surprised in the least. In some respects, Sweden definitely has an edge of the US. Shit, even Osama likes us...