On top of the world – again

Close to the North Cape

On the way back from the North Cape

Even Sweden has some epic places

Stekenjokk

Stekenjokk and the Boyfriend

Meeting the locals

My trusty (and slightly dirty) ape on gravel

Flatruet – one of the highest roads in Sweden

Click here for the entire gallery.

Even the view in the rear mirror is great

On top of the world

Fjord!

Through Nærøyfjord

Over mountains

And over bridges

And a lot of small ferries

Lofoten – a cat’s paradise

The perfect campsite

“The land shall be ours”

A scenic gas station

That’s it! Click here for the entire gallery.

It’s bleak, is what it is. Typical northern-Germany-weather, except that it’s already pitch black at around 3pm. Coming back from sunshine and 25-30 degrees it’s all rather depressing.

So, the first day at work has been a bit of a challenge. Not ready to fit back into the 9-to-5 job and everyday life. It all feels a bit meaningless. Unreal.

Midlife crisis come knocking? Possibly. Maybe it’s time for a change.

Lately I’ve started to see a point though. I treat new year like a scrum retrospect; a time to consider what went well and what didn’t go quite so well. And most importantly, what to do about it. A time to lift your head from the “small stuff” and take a look at the bigger picture. Am I where I want to be right now? Where do I want to be in a year? What should I do about it?

People change, priorities shift and sometimes what you imagined you wanted to achieve a year ago is not even in the picture anymore. If you don’t lift your head to adjust your path from one to time, you’re going to pass by your goal by a mile. Or walk into a tree.

I’ve had a lot of time to think during the last week. Zickzacking across the argentine pampa will do that to you. There is only so much plains and cattle you can take before you start questioning life. I’ve realised that my priorities have changed a lot over the last three years. When I set out to acquire my motorcycle drivers license in the beginning of 2009 I didn’t think it’d end up having such an impact on my life, my way of thinking.

Having had the privilege to travel to Bolivia, Chile and now Argentina helps to give you a certain perspective as well.

Last year the boyfriend and I travelled 7000 kilometres in 17 days through Norway, Sweden and Finland to the north cape. This year we’ll be gone for four weeks. Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, possibly Macedonia, Greece, Italy.

If it doesn’t fit on your bike, you don’t need it. Sounds simple, but it’s turned out to be a lifestyle. One of my plans for next year is selling off a lot of the “stuff” which inevitably is acquired by most of us over the years.

Of course, there is no need to pick new year as your yearly retrospective. In fact, a year may be too long a period to begin with. But it’s important to do this once in a while and to get started, new year is a good a time as any.

…instead of returning your greeting, your colleague exclaims “But you’re wearing make-up!” upon entering the office.

Compliment or insult? To be decided..

But if you fail to do either of those things, at least have the brains to fuel up at the first opportunity.

The meter might show that you’ve only driven 30 kilometres on the reserve and you might think that you have 20 kilometres left. But trust me on this: you don’t.

And then you head to the office kitchen. Pour some water in a cup and shove it in the microwave. Because the coffee-maker (which only produced lukewarm water to begin with) has been removed and a water cooker has yet to be purchased. And you wait for two minutes, all the while trying to not think about that tiny little tea house you found some time ago, where they managed to get the tea just right. And then you open the microwave and retrieve your cup. And you put your tea bag in (because, of course, you’ve run out of the real tea some time ago and haven’t had time to buy more yet) and you set your timer and you go back to your table.

And then, after your timer has gone off, you extract the abomination from your cup and you look into the cup. And you see that your tea bag had been punctured.

Your know? It kind of sucks.

I shudder to think how it takes for them to develop an actual feature.

We do have a map (digital, so far) with interesting bits and pieces of routes and alike jotted down, but nothing is decided. The whole not-planning-thing has become a bit easier for both of us I think. Easter, we went on a bike trip with two friends for three days in southern Sweden. Neither the boyfriend nor I had anything to do with the planning which is rather unusual for us. And guess what, it worked out great!

Depending on how often free Wifi can be found, I’ll try to update our current position, but don’t expect anything too frequent.

I really need to update my blog header.