Norway #7 These two weeks are about as typical and boring as things get around here.
The week after we good back from London wasn't all that full of a week, we got back to the school on Tuesday evening, after a day of shopping in Trondheim. Hey, we were on vacation. Which quickly ended when we got back and started washing up from our London trip, and packing for our 3 day sailing trip that would leave the next day. No time to relax there. Turns out there was too much wind, which means that, if you went outside you'd have blown away. This was the most wind I've seen in one place, so I was glad we didn't go out sailing.
And the snow! In October! WTF is this doing here? I realized something about this snow stuff; I don't like snow anymore. I used to like it, sure. When it was 'over there' and I went to it for special trips filled with exciting and exotic things like skiing and snowball fights. Now it's here. I'm home and it's covered in snow. No sunny shores to go back to when this weekend is over. I don't think I like it. So we were all glad to stay inside for sailing class and talk about wind and boat stuff without freezing out butts off.
We did go out sailing the next day. And the wind was much nicer, but friggin cold. But no rain! That matter so very much on a boat with no cabin, have I mentioned that before? Anyway, the wind was grand and the waves were big as we flew over the peaks. This was the first time we had really sailed in wind strong enough to tip the boat as it pushed us through the water. This new condition resulted in a quick conversation between me and Vegard, that went something like this:

V: 'If the water starts coming in over the side of the boat,
just let go of this rope.'
me: 'water...'
V: 'See how the water is almost over the edge there?
 Letting go of this rope will drop the power out of the sail,
and the boat will right it's self '.
me : 'OK!'

Let me tell you about motivating speeches. My attention didn't waver. And yes, the water was almost over the edge, our front man in the boat was riding the waves out with his feet on the edge of the boat because A) it was tipping that much, and B) his feet were stopping the water that was squirting in through some of the rope holes that were now under water. Good times.
We did some driving around in circles this day also, which began in a weird way; there we were sailing along happily when Vegard tosses out a buoy and some rope, 'Man overboard' he calls. We did manage to pick up the stuff durring this drill, but the moral of the story was 'don't fall overboard'. We took about 10 minutes to get there. Not good. So he tosses out another one, and we turn and tack and stuff and get that back, and he tosses out another. Jokes about tossing out the problem began... but it did make sense when we had 2 targets in the water; we could work on fine boat handling skills without running the boat into rocks. Kinda exciting to weave around these things without hitting them.
The next trip it appeared either Vegard was exceptionally lazy, or his confindence in us is going up. He sat in the bunk reading while we did all the thinking and working to get out of harbor. We did manage, but it was slow and did show us that we have much to learn.
Our last day of the week was spend working in a boat house moving stuff and fixing things. Barrels of salt cod, apparently, had been moved around in the years past, and we had a bunch of rusted wooden barrels that were now old and empty. So we fixed up most of them and moved them to another boat house, and I've learned a few things about barrels. Barrel creation is an amazingly exact science, I have no idea how they managed to do this stuff without computers and CAD Tools. The wooden slats are wider in the middle then the edges, and 14 of these are put in a circle and the ends bent together forming a water tight seal at every junction. Just amazing how tight the tolerances were for these things. The rest of the day was spent at the other boat house cleaning up stuff, including fishing nets that mice had chewed on. Messy. One more reason I don't plan to pursue a career in the fishing industry.
This weekend the teaching staff put on the first Saturday night party ( the students get to put on the rest of the years parties), and it will be hard to top this performance. The dinner was damn good food of salmon sushi like things and tomato fish soup. An on-stage performance followed. The opening skit was the staff sitting on a couch watching TV, trailer trash style. Beat up old couch, hair styled in the 80s, wearing long underwear and smoldering cigarettes dangling form their lips as the smoke rolled off the stage and filled the room. Typical trailer trash humor involving beer cans ensued. I guess trailer trash jokes are an international phenomenon. The rest of the skits were no less funny, but words don't do them justice.
Words don't do justice to the dancing and party after words either, but it's at least worth mentioning. Some folk music was put on and some organized stuff started to happen, kinda like line dancing but with 2 lines that interact with lots of spinning. The steps are easy, and really quite tiring once you get going. Vegard commented that next time he would have the 'right' music so it would go faster. That will be interesting.
Back in the wood shop today, my box is going well and Karin is making bowls on the lathe. She's getting quite good, as several of her attempts have been bad wood, so she is getting much practice.
Worked cleaning a restaurant for a day on this 'work for a day and donate the money to charity' thing that Norwegian schools do. We took about 5 hours to clean most of it, I spent it all in the kitchen fighting grease rivers. This stuff was caked several mm thick and amazingly resistant to the effects of soap. I learned that I shall not own any type of food service establishment. Even it's a quaint little bistro.
Posted by byron at November 08, 2002 11:54 AM