Thursday, March 31, 2005
Spring is in the air. Sure the temperature is still hovering around freezing, except now it is hovering on the warm side of freezing, which I suppose can be referred to as melting. I have stopped wearing my long underwear, my scarf and my ear muffs. Even last night, on my way home from the Kataja basketball game - a thriller which saw the home team, a 7th seed, take a 2 games to none lead over the 2nd seed (Who says March Madness isn't a global occurrence?) - I didn't even wear my wool cap.
But this melting thing is a pain in the ass to be sure. Everyday the ice melts and every night it freezes again, making the ground look like a bunch of crushed glass and making the trips to and from work really, really messy. To make matters worse, the tire guard on my front tire came off on Tuesday and that means whenever I ride through a puddle, it splashes all over me. I think we have a few more weeks of this stuff before it really does begin to feel like Spring, but I will take what I can get when I can get it.
Good news on the travel front. Karoliina will be joining me in Cannes this year. This is good news on a couple of levels. First, is that a trip to the South of France with the wife, on the company's dime no less will be a lot of fun. Second, I no longer have to feel guilty about making the trip, again, without the wife. K's mother has even offered up her SAS flight miles, which means her trip can possibly be free. That is definitely the third level of good news.
This trip makes our summer plans a lot less complicated. Since we will be in France for 5-6 days, there is not a whole lot of pressure on us to make another European trip during the summer. With a potential move to Helsinki lined up and a possible trip back to Texas in the mix for October, a free French fling will allow us to save up on both fronts.
What else can I say? We may be going snow shoeing this weekend. Don't worry people, there is still over a foot of snow on the lake and the ice is well over a foot thick. People are actually taking their cars for a spin on the frozen lakes.
I went ice fishing with Timo and Antero while in Turku. At first I was a little worried. The snow on the lake had all melted and left pools of water everywhere. Our feet sunk in on every step, but once we found our spot and started to drill some holes, I stopped worrying. The ice was at least 15 inches thick and there were dozens of people fishing out on the lake. However, this caused a bit of a problem because each person had drilled about a dozen holes, which meant that there were literally hundreds of holes on the ice. You really had to watch your step out there.
Timo sat on his styrofoam cooler - hard to believe that it could hold him, but it looked about as old as me, so that must be some pretty tough foam - drilled the hole, put the little larva on the hook - when told that the larva would become a fly, I had no problem baiting it - put the hook in the water, told us how to hold the line and then said, "And now you catch the fish." and he did, right then, at the end of his sentence. He caught a fish. He went on to catch several more. Antero and I caught, we think, the same small fish, but we both threw it back. I think Timo was a little disappointed in us, and so he threw back his 4 fish before we left.
One other really cool element of ice fishing is the fact that you can hear people who are easily 2 football fields away and you can hear them clearly. Timo went investigating some holes dug by fishermen who had left hours earlier - we were, by his estimation, 5 hours too later to catch a damn thing - and when Antero and I need to talk to him we just talked and he talked back, event though he was at least 100 yards away.
But this melting thing is a pain in the ass to be sure. Everyday the ice melts and every night it freezes again, making the ground look like a bunch of crushed glass and making the trips to and from work really, really messy. To make matters worse, the tire guard on my front tire came off on Tuesday and that means whenever I ride through a puddle, it splashes all over me. I think we have a few more weeks of this stuff before it really does begin to feel like Spring, but I will take what I can get when I can get it.
Good news on the travel front. Karoliina will be joining me in Cannes this year. This is good news on a couple of levels. First, is that a trip to the South of France with the wife, on the company's dime no less will be a lot of fun. Second, I no longer have to feel guilty about making the trip, again, without the wife. K's mother has even offered up her SAS flight miles, which means her trip can possibly be free. That is definitely the third level of good news.
This trip makes our summer plans a lot less complicated. Since we will be in France for 5-6 days, there is not a whole lot of pressure on us to make another European trip during the summer. With a potential move to Helsinki lined up and a possible trip back to Texas in the mix for October, a free French fling will allow us to save up on both fronts.
What else can I say? We may be going snow shoeing this weekend. Don't worry people, there is still over a foot of snow on the lake and the ice is well over a foot thick. People are actually taking their cars for a spin on the frozen lakes.
I went ice fishing with Timo and Antero while in Turku. At first I was a little worried. The snow on the lake had all melted and left pools of water everywhere. Our feet sunk in on every step, but once we found our spot and started to drill some holes, I stopped worrying. The ice was at least 15 inches thick and there were dozens of people fishing out on the lake. However, this caused a bit of a problem because each person had drilled about a dozen holes, which meant that there were literally hundreds of holes on the ice. You really had to watch your step out there.
Timo sat on his styrofoam cooler - hard to believe that it could hold him, but it looked about as old as me, so that must be some pretty tough foam - drilled the hole, put the little larva on the hook - when told that the larva would become a fly, I had no problem baiting it - put the hook in the water, told us how to hold the line and then said, "And now you catch the fish." and he did, right then, at the end of his sentence. He caught a fish. He went on to catch several more. Antero and I caught, we think, the same small fish, but we both threw it back. I think Timo was a little disappointed in us, and so he threw back his 4 fish before we left.
One other really cool element of ice fishing is the fact that you can hear people who are easily 2 football fields away and you can hear them clearly. Timo went investigating some holes dug by fishermen who had left hours earlier - we were, by his estimation, 5 hours too later to catch a damn thing - and when Antero and I need to talk to him we just talked and he talked back, event though he was at least 100 yards away.
// posted by Howard @ 2:14 PM 
