Sweden!

For those that don't know, I'm headed off to Sweden for work, Örnsköldsvik to be exact. This isn't your typical well populated part of the country, so I'll be able to get a good feel of what life is like in the non-tourist parts of Sweden! I'll be gone until June 11th.

Car free month, the finale

So, today is the first day after the completion of the car free month. I still took the train in, because it is just so much less annoyance to walk over to the train stop and hop the train/bus into work. I only had a half day at work today, so walked back to the train stop, and headed home for lunch. After that, I drove out east, south of Gresham, to visit a hashpoint. On the way back, I stopped to get a new pair of shoes and some cleaning supplies.

The general synopsis of the car free month is this:

1. I like riding the train into work. It is a much less stressful way to get to and from work, even on my short commute.
2. I really don't like shopping via transit. It really sucks.
3. Geohashing, and sometimes sf0 tasking, really should be done with a car. Its just the nature of those activities that often a car is, if not required, then still very nice to have.
4. If I decide to buy a house/townhouse in the upcoming months, I want to keep myself relatively close to a train station, because transit into work is now my preferred way to get there.

From now on, I will probably drive into work once a week, so that I can go out to lunch, and so that I can go shopping on my way home from work.

Car free days 29 & 30

On the 29th day, I rode the train in (as usual), but had a company celebration for the completion of a project, so got a ride from a friend. On the way back, I drove his car back to his place, and rode the train from there.

The last day of the experiment was very typical, except that as I was walking out the door of the office, I saw the bus pulling up, so I ran up to catch it, and rode it home instead of walking.

Car free days 25 - 28

Day 25 was Thanksgiving. I spent the day lounging, cooking, eating, and sleeping, as one should on this day. I also completed my Thanksgiving day tasking.

Day 26 was black Friday. I went out on a geohashing expedition, but was unable to reach the point due to a steep, wet, muddy, and leaf covered incline. On the expedition, I did get some food, and a friend picked me up and dropped me off. However, the friend would have had to have driven right by my apartment to get to/from the hashpoint anyways. Other than that I read.

Day 27 I read through most of the day, took a bit of a nap, and was called to see if I wanted to head out to HUB (Hopworks Urban Brewery) for dinner and a couple of drinks. I agreed, and hopped on the train to a friend's who would drive me to where the first friend called from. We then sat around for a bit watching TV, and headed down to the brewpub, where I had a delicious sandwich chock full of Italian meats, and three beers. The beers were Velvet ESB (because it is awesome), Cask Abominable (because I wanted something new), and Dark Helmet (because of the name).

Day 28 was spent completely in my apartment, sleeping, reading, TVing and the like.

Car free day 24

Completely uneventful. Went to work on transit, came back home on transit (albiet a little earlier than normal). The most interesting thing done in the day was that I spent over 2 hours cooking and preparing food, of which none of it was consumed immediately. It is all sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to be reheated at around 2:30PM or so today. Foods prepared: black bean and jicama salad, red thai curry with chicken, and spicy shrimp.

Car free day 23

It was a cold morning, with temps down around 20F. There was a dusting of snow overnight, but the most significant hazard was that there was about 1/4 of an inch of ice coating all horizontal surfaces. This made the roads and sidewalks quite slick. So, after I hopped on the train to go to work, I was once again stuck waiting for over 30 minutes for the bus to show up, since it had chains again. I'm glad it did, but that's jumping ahead in the story.

While I was waiting for the bus, there were a couple other people waiting there with me. One started up a casual conversation with me, talking about how cold it is, when the bus should arrive, or if it was even running. Then he changed the topic to a brief mention of the incident between North and South Korea. These incidents have been happening on and off for decades, and while definitely not a good thing, I don't think its a sure sign that we're about to be dragged into a war. While that may happen, it doesn't seem too likely right now. Anyways, I was about to make a comment back, basically to that effect, when the "weirdo on the bus" rule took effect. One of the other people waiting for the bus started in on a rant about how the whole system is corrupt and will soon collapse. He would make comments like "we need to change our thinking" but when asked how you would change how people think, he'd just reiterate that we need to change.

Anyways, after 15 mintues or so of listening to this guy go on and on with his rant, the bus finally pulled up. Then, as we were headed into a left turn lane to (wait for it) turn left (shocking, I know), the bus started to fishtail and slide. That is quite the interesting feeling, and I'm sure the car which was sitting in the turn lane in front of the bus was quite scared at that point. The bus driver (who retires at the end of the month, and good for him!) deftly was able to get the bus to slide into the other lane, narrowly avoiding a collision with the car. The rest of the trip was uneventful.

In the evening, I once again walked, but I headed to New Seasons to pick up the last few ingredients I would need to be able to prepare my Thanksgiving feast. I was quite pleasantly surprised at the wide variety of produce and spices. Unfortunately, however, there was no eggplant, so I will resort to using potatoes in the curry to thicken it instead.

Cree free day 22

I went into work via transit yet again. I got to the bus stop at my normal time, but the bus was over 15 minutes late. All of the regulars at the stop were wondering why the bus was so late until it pulled up with chains on the rear tires. Given that it was just above freezing at that point, and was supposed to drop pretty quickly in the afternoon, that wasn't too much of a surprise. Once on the bus, we noticed that it is much louder with the chains on, and it kinda feels like your fillings will get shaken out of your teeth. After work, I walked to the station (the temps had held warmer longer than expected, and snow was not yet falling), and then rode home. I then gathered my shopping list for Thanksgiving dinner, and rode over to the grocery store. I was able to find most of the ingredients I was looking for (I'm just missing a few now), and when I walked back to the station, a couple of flakes were starting to fall.