#SunsetSunday Sunset near Skulsfjorden

Saturday Morning Hike Up Nordtinden

Wow, there is just not enough time in the day to get done everything I want.
This quick post is just a few pictures from the top of Nordtinden, a 640m mountain near Skulsfjord where I was staying with my friends Harvey and Angelika and their dog Yukon for the past month.

Now, I am temporarily house-sitting for a researcher who works at NPI. His name is Hakon Hop and he is a biologist and an extremely experienced under-ice diver.  I met Hakon in 2010 when I joined two cruises with NPI.  He is going on a cruise for two weeks and his family is going to Canada to visit relatives. So this luckily Canadian is house sitting in a BEAUTIFUL house with an great view.

The house is near Tonsvik, another small town near Tromso (about 22km away).  The bus connections and internet are a bit better here than in Skulsfjord, but I already notice how quiet it is without Yukon, Harvey and Angelika (probably no great fishing trips in store for me for the next two weeks).

OKAY, back to the real blog post content, my hike up Nordtinden.  Saturday morning I woke up and checked the weather forecast.  It was going to be overcast until 2pm and then start raining, and it would keep raining all day Saturday and Sunday.  So I decided I better take Yukon out while I could stay dry.

Nordtinden is the mountain you can see in this blog post, 7th picture down (from my last longer hiking trip near Skulsfjord). (or you can just look below for the small version, the link has a bigger version).

Nordtinden

I wanted to climb up this the last time, but did not, I was tired already and so I just went to the small waterfall you can see in the picture above.

So by about 10:30, off I went with Yukon.  It was a nice hike, the very beginning and a short bit near the end were the steepest sections but overall a nice hike, not too difficult.

The clouds were low on Saturday, very low, sometimes they would buildup and surround me and Yukon and then quickly fade away.  Luckily when I got to the top we had a bit of a break, the clouds where a bit above us and away from the views.

Well that's all for this post.  Want to work a bit on the post about a buoy....coming up very soon I hope, just need to analyze some of the data for you to give you a few figures and facts.

Holy Mackerel! and cod!

Maybe you guessed from the title, but I went fishing this weekend, twice, and with great success.

Harvey and Angelika were back from their hiking holiday and we had some sunny breaks.

The weather had been pretty rainy and windy last week, but on Saturday evening, the weather cleared up a bit and we decided to go fishing.

We did not go very far from Skulsfjord, and went near a small island in a fjord.  One one side of the island the ground below drops quite quickly and we thought we'd try fishing along the drop as our boat drifted over it.

I cannot remember the last time I went fishing, but it has been awhile, and it has been much longer since I have actually caught something, actually for all I know, I never have. So maybe it was beginners luck, or maybe just Harvey's expertly chosen location but we brought up 15kg of fish, mostly cod.  Harvey was fishing shallow with a rod, and I wish fishing near the bottom with a line with multiple hooks on it.

After just a few minutes, I had a bite, and up came this cod.  I was pretty excited! OKAY! Great!, but Harvey wanted his freezer filled so back to work I went.

My first fish and cod!

 A couple minutes later (at most) I had another bite, and it felt much heavier and stronger...I was excited, was it a much bigger cod, or something else..

Turns out it was just 3 cod, just 3.  SWEET! Okay, well if it keeps going like this, maybe we will fill Harvey's freezer, but surely it can't, it must just be beginners luck I thought.

Just a couple minutes later....note there are three!!, that's right 3!!! fish.

A little more time and more fish. Man this is my kind of fishing.  I do distinctly remember fishing once for hours and hours on a lake and not catching a thing, but this, this I like.

After just a couple hours we had 8 cod, and 3 coal fish, about 15kg (including heads but no guts).
Harvey really did not get much chance to fish, as he was right away gutting and cleaning the fish a bit. I have no idea how to do this but it seems that you make an slice behind the gills and then split open the underside and then remove the guts (feel free to inform me if I am wrong).

The final haul

We decided that we had enough for one night, it was beginning to rain a bit and it was 9pm and we had not had dinner yet.  We arrived in Skulsfjord and the weather was nice, cloudy but no rain here, we anchored the boat and started loading into the dingy.  In about 30seconds the weather changed, lots of rain and wind, waves, We sheltered in the boat for a bit, as we would not really be able to paddle the dingy to shore in the wind and waves.
After a few minutes there was a lull and we went for it and made it to shore without problems.  Was pretty amazing (and a little stressful) to see how fast the weather can change on you.

After getting back, Harvey turned the kitchen into a slaughter house and we put away the fish.  I had the fun task of splitting the heads into smaller pieces so that Yukon (the dog) can have them.  This would not have been to bad, except the hatchet I had was a bit dull, okay actually it was really dull. But with a knife to help out and a bit of force, I managed to cut up the heads, and in the process see parts of a fish I'd never had, and still don't have, any interest in seeing.

On Sunday, the weather was again variable in the morning, windy, rainy, then sunny, then windy and rainy all over again.  However, at about 2pm the weather cleared.  At 5pm we went out fishing again, to a new spot. Again after just 2 to 2.5 hours we caught 15 mackerel.  There must have been a school of them swimming around because only one cast had just one fish, all the others had three or four and I think one cast even had 5 fish on it.

Again, Harvey was kept quite busy cleaning and gutting fish, having time to cast once or twice with a rod before having to work at cleaning full time.  However we came a bit more preparred today so he had a few more buckets to use to help organize and he was much quicker.

Quick Fishing Trip

Yesterday Harvey and Angelika returned from their holidays in Germany.  I met them at the shopping center in town on their way home from the airport.  We had a bit of late dinner.  Harvey and I had beer marinated whale meat...mmmmm, delicious!

Then we decided that since it was such a nice night we would go out for a little fishing trip in their boat.  Since the boat is just a few hundred meters from the house, this is rather quick and easy to do.

We headed out and I stuck the go pro up front to take some pictures, just in case.
We did not catch any fish, but it was very nice to go out on the water.  It was calm and quiet and relaxing (though a surprising number of boats were out and around). We did see some jellyfish.

On the way back, Harvey noticed some ripples that did not seem to just right, so we stopped and turned around and saw a porpoise splashing around.

MY this place is beautiful!

Well it’s the weekend. Usually this would mean relaxing, sitting back with a good book, maybe catching up on some TV shows, and walking the dog. And of course running errands, groceries, etc.

Here it is a bit different for me, but not a lot.  It still means a bit of relaxing, though I am also trying to work at least 4-5 hours each weekend day, sometimes taking a whole day off only to work 8hrs or so the next day.

I find that the weekends is when I most miss my wife and dog. Normally we spend a lot of time together on the weekends. Also my weekends here tend to be just working or hiking, but in any case just me (and Yukon right now).

On Friday I came home, ate a quick supper and then walked with Yukon for an hour and a half or so.  I finished off the Wheel of Time series and didn’t do too much else besides staying up late reading.

Yesterday, I slept in, fed the dog, ate breakfast and relaxed a bit and then worked from noon until 5pm.  I’m trying to spend the time working on the weekends on work that I am not doing here going my fellowship stay. This weekend, I am looking at some CryoSat-2 data and writing some new scripts.

Last night Yukon and I went for an nice almost three hour hike to the top of some of the hills/mountains behind Skulsfjord. It was nice to go around and up and down and so forth.  However, the flies were starting to drive me insane, constantly buzzing around my head…and my one toe felt like it was starting to blister so we headed back without going up the bigger peak that I wanted to get to. Nonetheless, the hike offered some amazing views and we did walk a fair bit.

Last night after we got back the local reindeer decided to come eat the grass near Yukon’s run.  He was a bit excited by this but overall was very calm and behaved considering.

Last night I again stayed up late reading (the new Steve Berry book, it was only okay), so I slept in again this morning. I went to the kitchen to make breakfast and found that a spider had made a web from the window to the sink.  So I stopped to take a few pictures before removing it.

The rest of today I will work a bit, walk the dog and make supper and relax (probably with a book).

On Wednesday I fly to the Netherlands for some meetings at the European Space Agency ESTEC.  Then Friday-Sunday I will visit with my family in Holland. Looking forward to seeing them again so soon. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and let me sit outside a bunch and maybe wade around a bit in the ocean, though in this case I will definitely miss the midnight sun.

An important day

Today I have been away from home for 1 month already (but only in Tromso for three weeks)! and it is my mom's birthday, Happy Birthday Mom. Did I mention that my mom and brother are coming to visit me in October.  Very surprising. Mom, I'll save your present for when you are here.  My wife is coming to visit me too (even more exciting to be honest, though perhaps less suprising), and even though I was away for her birthday earlier in June, she is nice enough to come here over my birthday!

So what's happened over the month?

I've been trying to post often, though I find that i often just use Twitter to share a quick picture from my phone.  I should start trying to only use my blog to do this stuff, as it feeds to Twitter and then to Facebook.   I will work on this over the coming month.

I've been hiking, seen some of the country side near Tromso, walked and hiked more this month than I have for quite awhile before hand.  I've watched a marathon, and have been cooking for myself (though honestly I am making more or less the same 3 or 4 meals each day since I arrived). I've seen birds, porpoises, reindeer, and lots of dogs.

Otherwise I have worked alot, many evenings, most of my weekends.

I haven't had much chance to really explore Tromso. At least, I don't feel like I have.  The island is a good size, and I've really only been around downtown and to the southern tip (closest to NPI).  

I've been out to a restaurant/bar and to a total of two bars (one of which closes at 6pm). I'm able to understand a bit more Norwegian, mostly through the wonders of grocery shopping.  However, my spoken Norwegian has not improved at all, that is to say, I still don't speak a word of Norwegian besides numbers and thanks.

I need to be working more in the evenings, though it will be difficult in July as I need to make sure to catch the bus out to Skulsfjord where I am staying at Harvey and Angelika's place (as the bus at 4pm is my last option for the day).  But as long as I plan ahead and download enough data to my computer, I can work.  But it is also nice to take the evening, make supper and then walk/hike with Yukon. Just tonight I hiked up the hills behind Harvey and Angelika's.  Only a few hundred meters elevation gain, but well worth it, even if the views today were a bit clouded/rained in.  Today it has been raining hard, we even had thunder and lightning (while i was at work, not when hiking on the mountain)!

I've also been reading away much of my spare time.  The last book in the wheel of time series came out in April (ebook version) or something, and in preparation I have been rereading the entire series of books so far (13 of them, each 700-900 pages).  I am not sure when I started, but I'm on the final book now.