I think I stopped really following Scott Adams after he went all crazy with his new instagram “star” / neighbour girlfriend and Donald Trump preaching back then in 2016, but today I was bored so I checked out dilbert.com quickly..
YAWN..
All strips now have 4.5 to 5 star rating but boy the fun’s gone.
Ok, out of curiosity I look up the good ol’ ones.
Love that stuff. Grass was definitely greener in 2014.
When I was about a decade younger, in my mid 20s, I remember that I spent almost every weekend on a bicycle, exploring daily trails and treks around the hilly region where I live. Short 1-2hour trails, longer circular routes of about 90km in length and one way stretches of up to 150km-180km, multi-day tours, cross-country tours with a full-day return journey on a train, these things really filled me up with a sense of a time well spent and something wholesome to remember. In the due time I’ll write somethign about that.
The different bikes accumulated over the years: the old-boy Stevens xc, mid-level racing, fat-bike (which I bought on a fad and sold last summer) and a Canyon 28in carbon enduro as the latest addition.
This winter I felt very acutely how much less of an adventure this all has become. During the whole of the winter season I barely managed to get myself out. The process of pedalling , feeling the wind, my speed, speeding through places I’ve never been to, stopping for a quick bite somewhere nice – this has mostly lost its lustre. Did it become routine? Am I turning into an “adult”?
However it is, Im definitely “over the hill” on that front. Lets see if this stabilizes or speeds up downhill.
What I still do enjoy very much though is to bike with my children.
Anyways, this weekend a friend invited me for quick 80km/700hm asphalt ride that we did on ~27km/h pace. I felt really tired, nauseus by energy loss at the end of it (in fact we even had to cut it due to that) but I think its an okay-ish result for a start of the season.
What was really unusual, and why I actually decided to write about it, was the follow-up day.
Now I have to digress.
I have noticed a weird phenomenon lately – people write about it on Reddit too – an impossibly bad, dejected, out of spirits mood and morose head starting around 24hours from a physical exertion, and peaking at about 36h after. Doing some moderate sports, say, Saturday afternoon would literally ruin the Mondays for me. I would drag myself through the day abusing caffeine and carbs, and no amount of cold water or sleep would make it better (if only just a bit). On Tuesday evening it would start to go away, but guess what: Tuesday I’d do sports again and so destroy the Thursday.
Well, fingers crossed, I might have found a solution this time. After very strenous biking on Sunday I took 3x magnesium pills (3 times the usual dosage) and took a long warm bath with 4 cups of some off-the-shelf rosmarin oil-based additive, pretty cheap, and so far I’m really fine!
I would usually have massive soreness after stuff like this. Like for example a 45min Badminton game after a long pause, I’d be sore everywhere for a week! – with that weird dryness in the eyes and the nose, coupled with what would seem to be a mild depression and apathy. But nothing of that this time.
[Both previous days, however, and I almost forgot about that, I took an anti-histamine pill against pollen allergy in the morning. Could that have helped?!]
Since I cannot muster much energy to write about Iceland, I’ll capture this until it disappears in my darkening memory.
I came over Uncut Gems by accident, and then watched it on Netflix, twice, and some episodes (yes – I admit – those with Julia) more than that.
The movie perfectly captured the essense of “jewness” for me: Limitless Passion, so reprehensible in its disregard and yet so endearing.
Half of me is really jealous. Another isn’t.
Phenomenal chemistry between lead man and woman. But may be its just me: just another ex-colleague of mine looked like Julia, and – what’s worse – she had the same smooth and slightly vulgar way to hold herself which was very, very attractive. But we don’t work together anymore.
…
And then it happened.
The next day Spotify suggested this.
OMG
25.03.21: Nostalgia took over me as I researched the map and sorted photos.. Will continue tomorrow.
06.02.23: The tomorrow has finally come.
That day was a very long one. I woke up about 07:00 and was already 08:30 at the top of Skogar waterfall going up the stairs to the right of the camp.
21.04.24
And so here we are: its year 2024, I broke my clavicula four weeks ago rather stupidly (as my children say in German by now, “papa fährt ski sehr schnell aber schlecht“), it sort of almost healed by itself in about 3 weeks from then, but for more elegance in line and for more classic shoulder form without ungainly bone protrusions I went for a ‘small routine operation’ that for now keeps me mostly home-bound and mostly on painkillers. They gave me a ton at the hospital, also some heavier prescription-only stuff I’ve never tried before;)
I can type though..
The path first went uphill along the impressive Skogar gorge raising almost a kilometer (from 0m altitude a the Skogar camp to 1000m at the to the Magni/Modi pass with the Eyafjallajokul glacier on the left). Back then I was pretty young (and headstrong) so 1000m with a 20kg rucksack — i think i didnt even notice that much.
Still, by about midday on that day I was walking in complete solitude. Some dude overcame me jogging though at some point. He didnt even have a bottle of water on him, to say nothing of the backpack. I never seen him running back so I reckon he’s been jogging over to the Þórsmörk. Must have been an amazing jog, that route.
As I passed Eyjafjallajokull on the right, the glacier felt like a menace, I tried to pass it quickly. In 2010, as I was blissfully not being aware of whats happening in the world, but the eruption of that volcano make huge news back then – I remember that somehow, it was in the late spring and the volcano dust grounded the airplanes for a few days with business people charting taxis to go from DE back to UK and so.
Its funny though that that particular eruption was nowhere near what the volcanos can do (and did in the past) in terms of dust produced. It was rather benign. Enjoy air travel while you can…
Anyways, about 13:00 I started to descend toward Þórsmörk over the black snow and magma fields, being quite under the awe of that particular place of Icelands nature.
About 14:00 suddenly many people appeared, most of them walking towards me (duh!). What I didnt consider, is that the descent to the Þórsmörk is for the most part without water access as it follows a dry rock ridge downwards. I didnt know that of course so I struggled a bit with empty bottles until I was almost at the bottom.
2016 was a pretty rich year for me: I was about to finish my posh MBA degree (urgh), got accidentally hired by Microsoft in the spring ’16 and also our 6month-old son was growing up quickly.
To use up the rest of the vacation and to have some ‘me’ time away from nappies I planned something I wanted to do since a long, long time: that is, a hiking trip to Iceland.
Now, Iceland fascinated me since I was a teenager.
The Icelandic names alone! All those æ’s and ð’s!
I think I was totally engrossed in an Œuvre of one particular high-fantasy author who, as I learned only later, ‘borrowed’ most of the content from Icelandic mythology and sprinked it with some random sex in the process (definitely helping its popularity among high school-level audience). I remember I was totally thrilled.
Anyways, in Aug’16 I packed my 20kg Penguin, booked a one-way bus ticket to Skogar for 6000ISK and got on a WOW air (RIP WOWair :/) flight to Reykjavik for the price of 315EUR.
I had two weeks to enjoy myself in Iceland with complete hiking gear and provisions for 1 week.
My plan was simple and ambitious:
Week 1: Start from Skogar, finish at Geysir. The first third of the way I’d follow the famous Landmannalaugar trail and then improvise
Week 2: no idea. May be Eastern Iceland. But i’d have to come back to Reykjavik to restock.
In retrospect, Week 1 worked out as a charm. I made the 160km trek in 6 days and returned to Reykjavik almost in good shape (but more of that later). Week 2 I kind of botched 😀
…..
On 4th August 2016 I boarded the plane to Reykjavik, filled with a sense of adventure and an expectation of something mystical to happenen. And oh boy so it did!
On the plane I was seated with a young lady who, suprisingly, was visiting for Reykjavik as an intermediate stop for a layover to USA. That’d be cheaper, and she’d have a few days in Reykjavik to party. Her husband worked for Microsoft too, what a coincidence. But I partying wasn’t on my todo list this time! I had to disembark quickly to catch the Reykjavik Excursions bus to Skogar, where I would make the camp for the night and early next morning start over the Landmannalaugar.
Well, first thing that went awry was this: I spent an hour waiting for my rucksack to appear (the two Icelandic ladies working the baggage told me this is now normal: so many tourists are coming over they are barely managing) and I missed the connecting bus. No problem: for a meagre fee of ca. 15000 ISK (100EUR?) the taxi brought me to the gas station outside Reykjavik where I was picked by the bus to Skogar.
It was an amazing, mild and sunny afternoon in Iceland.
The bus to Skogar took about 4 hours, I think, but it did stop at various sightseeing-worthy places for long enough to enjoy them.
The one stop that forever will be in my memory was Seljalandsfoss at about 8pm that day.
About 9pm I was at the full, but still surprisingly quiet Skogar camp, put my tent, ate, went quickly to the chilly waterfall nearby, returned and fell soundly asleep. Tomorrow I’d start off early: I didn’t have much time.
Executing on the blog’s purpose, I really liked re-reading what I wrote about my travels. You’re so vain, Carly. But it does bring me back so completely. Almost as if I relive it ✨
It takes me almost a day of effort, I think, to write and edit a day’s report. But this starts to pay off!
So, without further ado, with this post I endeavor to describe my trip to Iceland in (counting the years) the Year 2016.
I estimate to be done by June 2021.
So, headphones on, Fleetwood Mac rollin.
I keep coming back to thinking about this.
Do people in general have internal, in-one’s-head monologues about that? Weighting pros and cons? Is it like, typical at all? For what part of population? Is it age-related? And what are the outcomes?
There must be a subset of population that never even gets to ask this, or that isn’t interested in exploring it in the first place.
I think some lucky people carry the implicit assurance of their own worthiness in themselves, never doubted, the brilliance of a purpose never fading, the hard question never asked.
I think I was like that too in my early twenties. This warm, optimistic and empowering feeling of something big, world-changing, pre-arranged for you, but forever unknown, ahead of you along the road of life, something to justify and fulfil. [What a dick isnt it] Even now, in my late 30s, this feeling comes back sometimes, but instead of basking in its generous light whenever I want, now I have to search for it with a flashlight. It must be buried at the end of this dark corridor, I tell myself, but sometimes there its just darkness.
The big thing never arrived. [Obligatory True Detective cue]
Or has it?
Actually, lately my experience have pointed to the fact that I am a rather average – or slightly above – person toward my talents, ways to think and also physical traits, and, putting it methaphorically, the veil of self-uniqueness has slowly fallen from my eyes, so I assume that this is a totally common problem for both men and women my age.
This realization makes it a bit easier already – but, as with any problem that is met by sufficiently large group of people, mustn’t there be best practices or patterns? Or should I outsource this internal debate to religion? Well, that would definitely look like a cheat to me.
— update next day
OMG that’s so profound. I must have overdone myself on that one. Put it all to wine .
I think I’m just bored.
A glass of red wine made me write this.
I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being ‘General disinclination to do work of any kind’
I was playing around with this Jerome K. Jerome quote since forever.
This year, I think, I truly felt it.
‘Rest and a complete change,’ said George. ‘The overstrain upon our brains has produced a general depression throughout the system. Change of scene, and absence of the necessity for thought will restore the mental equilibrium.
I think I need to follow George’s advice.
A bit problematic changing the scenery though, with Corona restrictions still all over the place.
A friend of mine went to Tenerife, WFH. Not gonna meet a customer physically for foreseeable time anyways.
Where will this lead us all to? Caves of Steel?
Anyways, as I write these lines I already feel better.
True to this blog’s original purpose, putting one’s thoughts to paper actually does help.
Another mind-blowing game I played on the Oculus Quest. I just sat on a couch, around midnight, and couldn’t stop until the headset run out of charge and my head set in spinning like after a barrage of bad drinks. Pure entertainment!
A few days ago I went to a new fitness studio, fittingly named “Old School Gym”.
Now, to digress, I used to view myself as an above-average fitness level kind of a guy. I thought pretty high of my ability to handle high-intensity, high-power exercise.
Until that very moment.
More precisely, I went to Old School Gym’s Kickboxing session which the owner, whos name is Max, described rather humbly as a nice warm-up exercise with some kickboxing elements in it.
And I definitely warmed up. You know its getting tough when the sweat suddenly starts to fall in ones eyes, but this time it was just the beginning. At some point it became my partner’s sweat, I noticed but didn’t care. Everything became covered in sweat. I literally couldn’t see because of it flooding my eyes, getting into my nostrils. At some point I couldn’t gather any breath between those mad, ridiculously intense sets, loud, sudden laughter of the trainer mixed with the animalistic grunts of other people all just flooding with sweat, bloody in the face, jumping and kicking violently; this all put me in a weird delirium-like state.
It was pure suffering. WHO ARE THESE TITANS?! – Was the only thought in my head as I watched other guys, most of them in their teens and early 20s continue the exercise as I slumped down on the sweat-covered floor, having given up with that over-exhaustion stomach sickness, simply looking at this feast as man who, having finally accepted his death, looks for the last time at life’s unnecessary rumble from somewhere far away, just about to transcend in peace.
The taper-off activity consisted of 150 pushups, 200 rapid stomach presses and 250 back crunches to be done in about 10 minutes.
If I ever make through this training in full without slacking, I’d buy myself a treat!