2025-01- a Warm January

Warmer Winter

Normally the first week brings extreme cold temperatures and a lot of snow. However this year the first week was only about -15C. That’s not a difficult temperature to work with as it is also very dry. I had time to get out and enjoy the snow before the first week of work. The deeper snow arrived at the start of the second week and then weirdly it rained and went to +7, melting a lot of the snow and causing it to fall from roves. At 5 am, hearing about 0.4m deep of snow slide off the entire garage roof as one solid lump was loud.

On the third and fourth weeks it stayed mostly around -1C to 0C which makes this a mild January compared to previous years and also made it difficult to use the snow because certain types of activity work best on certain types of snow.

Snowpack Cycle

Thanks to some inspiration from an old university friend up north in the UK who cycles a lot, I figured I better make an effort to cycle despite the weather. So below is a video of cycling down the snowmobile track from the hill over the village. The ride worked a lot better than I expected. The camera was a normal phone hanging from a handheld gimbal that I strapped to my rucksack. The gimbal wasn’t made for this use and the camera struggled a bit with the snow and sun but I was happily surprised it worked. I thought it would be a total disaster.

The video doesn’t have great structure and I hadn’t thought about the wind noise until I played back the footage, but it was my first recent video and gives people a taste of the area. I could only do this at a certain part of the month due to the way a hard supporting crust formed on the snow.

Snöskor walk

I also tried to video a short snowshoe walk. I initially found this tricky to shoot a story for. There were some technical learning points too; the phone battery died on the last leg of the loop and my gloves were too warm for the temperature but also didn’t work with a touchscreen. So I had to keep swapping my hands in and out of the gloves. But I learnt a lot about video editing while putting it together. I think I can make future videos better. I’ve also got some thinner gloves with a touchscreen filament on order.

Stugga Visit

The next weekend, my wife and I went out on snowshoes to find a specific “stugga” in the forest nearby. It’s a hut that is open to the public with a fireplace and room to eat food. We had done the same last year but went the wrong direction using a different route and had to abandon the attempt. This year it was easier although we were pushed for time to get there, eat food, and get back before the sunset started.

Ours were the only footprints in the snow, so it felt like a fun adventure.

Swedish

Through January I averaged about an hour a day with my Swedish learning, which doesn’t sound much but is progress. Some days I did the bare minimum due to other activities, on the best days I did 3-4 hours. Working through tasks like memorising 500 verbs is gruelling but I am noticing that my spelling is a lot better.

I still get frustrated talking to people especially if it’s an unexpected conversation. I think I need to relax more. Even in English, I get nervous talking to people sometimes and I think the language difficulties exaggerate that. There is also a wide range of preferences from Swedish people as to whether they want you to talk in English or Swedish, and adults don’t tell you what they want due to layers of politeness, so sometimes I only realise which one they want at the end of the conversation.

I just need to plug away at it and put the hours in, there’s not much else to it at this point.

Skipping

Perhaps a bit out of sorts to the other activities but… I’ve been learning to skip. I wanted to improve my cardiovascular fitness and have some kind of energy outlet. I can do it in my garage when the weather outside is dark and crazy, even if the good part of the day has been eaten by other activities.

I started on day 1 feeling like a clumsy elephant but forced myself to do 15 minutes of attempts. By days 3-4, I was still bad but could sense some minor improvement in technique in that I was making fewer clumsy mistakes.

After about 2 weeks I was getting to the point where I could spend an hour doing intervals of skipping for perhaps 60-90 swings, then stopping and repeating, but it was now fun rather than a chore. I can also see my body fat percentage reducing on the scales I use which is motivating.

I also looked up what other people are doing on YouTube and ordered a beaded rope which is supposed to make the rope more predictable for learners. There is a cool shop called Dope Ropes which sells skipping equipment in both the EU and UK.

I did my first successful trick in the last week of crossing over the ropes and back again whilst skipping. I’d like to get to the point where I can skip continuously for 5-10 minutes, and I’d like to be able to do some of the alternating foot movements (e.g. “boxers walk”). But there’s no rush, I’m just doing 15 minutes or more per day as time allows.

In the last few weeks of the month I got leg injuries on my knee tendons from playing Innebandy. It’s a bit frustrating but I’ll need to take a break for exercise for a few days to heal properly.

Photos

Despite being dark I’ve been able to get some photos I’ve been happy with in that they show the good bits of Swedish life. All my camera gear is the older generation, about 10-15 years old, which I’ve been buying second hand but it works fine. Lots of people are selling off the older gear as they are moving to the modern full-frame camera system. I’m quite happy taking their old gear.

Ski Preparation

I realised I needed to tar the bottom of the wooden skis I had and spent some time in the garage with a hot air gun, smoothing the tar-like coating all over the bottom of the skis. The instructions said to do it in the summer sun outdoors, which I couldn’t wait for. I do wish they had added “because it stinks like a bonfire and will make all your clothes and anything you touch stink too”. It is hard to air the garage without losing heat if it’s -15C outside.

The remaining weekends haven’t yet been right for skiing. When the weather is right, my aim is to strap them to my rucksack and disappear into the forest to practise where no-one can see me practising.

SnowBoard Fail

On one of the ideal weekend days I tried to get up the local hill with a snowboard but preparing was a bit of a disaster and I didn’t get out of the house.

Most snowboard rucksacks let you strap the board to the back of the pack. I don’t have a snowboard rucksack but have lots of other rucksacks (confession: I love rucksacks) and I couldn’t get any of my rucksacks to work like that – the straps were all either in the wrong place or too short. The boots and helmet also take up loads of space. I tried snowshoes with the snowboard boots but the boots are designed to be stiff and the straps on the snowshoes don’t fit over the massive snowboard boots. After 2 hours of trying everything I gave up as I was half way through the 4.5 hours of sunlight to use.

I checked online afterwards for what people who have a clue about snow actually do. Apparently the options are:

• dedicated snowboard rucksack, and swapover normal+snowshoes in the snow at the top for the big snowboard boots and helmet. Comfy walking but needs a big rucksack and you snowboard down with some vicious-sharp snowshoes on your rucksack which will work might not be ideal.
• dedicated snowboard rucksack, fix the snowshoes to go over the big snowboard boots and just force your way up the hill in stiff boots. Similar to the first option but without the boot change and space needed in the rucksack. Not fun but people have done it and it meant they got to snowboard.
• dedicated snowboard rucksack, fix the snowshoes to go over the big snowboard boots and buy snowshoes with a feature that relaxes the heel to allow for better walking uphill.
• forget the snowboard, snowshoe up the hill with skis strapped to the rucksack side and then use skis down
• forget the snowboard, ski uphill with grippy skins attached, then take the skins off and ski down
• Buy a “splitboard” which is like two halves of a snowboard, one on each foot, used like skis with a grippy skin pulled over for the climb up and removed at the top. Then the board fits together and becomes a single snowboard. This is the best solution but also the most expensive (you need the board, the shoe bindings, the grippy skin for going uphill…) and I can’t afford it this winter.

I think I’ll just tough it out and walk up the hill this year but might change my boots and rucksack for next year.

Budget

This months budget included improving resilience. More was set to savings, we refilled depleted shelves in the food cellar, and I purchased storage boxes and jars to help manage what we have a bit more efficiently.

The basement workshop had been difficult to use for projects as lots of equipment was sat on the floor. I was able to invest in a small stand for the bandsaw to sit on, the correct stand for the table saw, and a stand for the mitre saw. I saved money buying the cheaper Einhell stand that was half the price of the Makita stand, but seems to be identical apart from the colour and stickers. Likely they are both products made in the same third-party factory line as different production runs.

With these in place the workshop is starting to look better but might take the rest of the year to turn into a mature environment.