So, In August I flew up to the remote north of Sweden with Jane (from work) to dig holes and try to find some elusive saprolite. In the meantime, one needs to eat....

Welcome to Sweden, have a Lovesteak (available in a bun or wrap).


This photo is a bit out of order, but it makes a nice overview of where we were. This is the rather flat part (all things are relative) of the country, on the border with Finland. It was essentially hills and swamps. Anyone who has spent much time in northern Minnesota will find the landscape strangely familiar.


The roads up there were very long, very straight, and very empty.


Officially working. Batil (improperly spelled), our master of the backhoe dug some rather spectacular pits. This one (which no one entered so no calling OSHA) was something like 7 meters deep. We never did find the saprolite though.


Between standing around and peering into holes in the ground, we stayed at a local youth hostel (I can not recall the name, but it is near Parkjora). This is possibly my all-time-favorite hostel rules sign. The first one is pretty straightforward, clean up after yourself. However, next comes the more enigmatic, Please don't take your meteorites indoors, followed by numerous other meteorite related rules.
It ends up that this is one of the premier meteorite locations in Scandinavia.


The forests up here (we are at about 68 degrees North Latitude here) are breathtaking. You can see for miles through the trees. Now we know where the Moose evolved!


I rather liked the backhoe.


At last success. We found the saprolite. Here is my knife stuck into a corestone. For those who are not aware of it, saprolite is essentially completely rotten rock. It looks like solid rock, but is quite soft.

The sunsets are also quite lovely, and rather late.


And of course, I can not forget about the reindeer. They were everywhere. Much to our astonishment and delight, they were in fact more abundant than the mosquitoes. Here are just two of the numerous critter that littered the roads. They are super cute.



Finally, we had to fly back home. First from a tiny airport, in a Beechcraft KingCab, to a small aiport. Then from the small airport (in a 737 I believe) to a medium sized airport. And finally from the medium sized airport (in an Airbus of some sort) to a big airport.

How the Blog is organized

I figured that now that there are a couple posts. We should actually explain why there is a blog at all, and how we are writing it.
Honestly, the blog seems the easiest way to keep all of our family and friends up on our comings and goings. We still plan on maintaining normal correspondence (or as normal as one can expect from us), however now I will not have to ask jen if I already told Mom and Louie about the excellent curry from the other night or if I sent Andrea and Jason the funny photo of the sign on the train.
So, now to organization. As will probably surprise no one, I am writing all of my posts in orange text and jen is writing all of hers in green text. So you will always know who is responsible.
This is not designed to be high art. There will be some photos, there will be some text. We are planning on just writing what comes to mind. Things that we have found interesting or entertaining (or (hopefully not) horrible).
Well, That should do it for the introduction. Enjoy. Kevin

The Tour de France

So, we decided we needed a wee break from Germany and thought we would drive south to see our friend Jerome who lives in Toulouse. A car was rented, water and sunscreen were bought. We set off- late as usual.

Though we had signed up for a Smart we got a new Beetle. A car that is as wide as it is long.

We are pretty out of practice with car travel and it seemed to take us for ever to get to Jerome's home. i had no idea how accustom we had become to train travel. We spent the first night in Lyon, in a hotel not worth naming or documenting.
Late the next day we made it to Toulouse. From Potsdam to Toulouse it is nearly 1,700 km (around 1,050 miles) and it occurred to us that it would have taken less time to drive to Rome. i don't think i have ever had the occasion to think of Rome being close before.

Once there and rested up a bit we went out too see UNESCO site Carcassonne.
Which as you can see was pretty impressive.

Due to it's specific placement this city has be inhabitied since pre-Roman times. The hill that the city sits on is between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and also between two heafty mountain ranges and is at the source of the Aude River. This medieval city and it's fortifed walls comes complete with Gothic cathedral and castle plus lots of delightful winding streets to walk down and sample wine in.

Outside the outer walls. Baking hot. (Hot enough that I was actually willing to walk around in a Marcel (the French term for an A-shirt).

Carcassonne steet, pigeon view. (For all who wish to know, I actually took the photo because of how flat the cobbles have been worn. This is hundreds of years of continuous foot-fall in action, anthropo-erosion!)

It was really sunny and extremely hot that day, but well worth the trip.
Here is Kevin attempting to document the whole thing while both of us stay in the shade as much as possible.

We also went into Toulouse, a really charming city, that the french call the ville rose due to the pink colored brick many of the buildings were built from. It is an externally romantic place, with lovely parks and interesting architecture. Also French wine, cheese and bread- can't forget that!

Typical Toulouse style street.
Delightful iron work- the buildings look like they are from a picture book.

Here Jerome (and it was 102 this day) gives into the heat and begins to dance in front of the city hall. i look more like i am going to faint.
Sadly, we had to go to Switzerland to look for an apartment (on the bright side, we did find one), so our french fun was cut short, but it was great to see Jerome again and witness his heat-overload boogie!