In the summer of ‘59 the Vardonian City Band went on a spontaneous mission of friendship to Murmansk. It was decided that getting visas and STUFF would take too long, so they just cast loose . . .

Despite the chilly political спални комплектиcatv climate of those times they were received with flowers, smiles, honors, and hearty hospitality. Later that same year the Russians made a return visit, and now, 50 years later, we are at long last setting sails for Russia again. Stay tuned!

Beware: The “Russian” titles in this clip are raw machine traslations- so they will at times be hilariously incorrect. Still, with some good will a native Russian speaker ought to be able to surmise the original meanings intended. There will eventually be more picture materials from the Russians’ visit to Vardø incorporated, and when this is edited I will also submit my Silicone Russian for proper review.

If you have moderate speed on your internet connection, try this first one:
[See post to watch Flash video]

If you have high speed on your internet connection, try this second one:
[See post to watch Flash video] ]]> http://www.afoto.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=220 http://www.afoto.com/wordpress/?p=218 http://www.afoto.com/wordpress/?p=218#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:32:08 +0000 Dagfinn http://www.afoto.com/wordpress/?p=218 Hello from Vardø!

This image should float to the right side of the text.

Here they are: æøå ÆØÅ
Then with h3 formatting..

æøå ÆØÅ Æda Østfor Måne.

Da va da.

This may, or may not be the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pictured.

Click for full size

It’s been ages since the last entry here. Time to let the World know I’m still kicking

So here we are, my crab and I on the Barents Sea. Long time no fishing. Last time I hugged a KingCrab was back in 1968 on the good ship Bernice captained by Ed Gundersen off Kodiak island, Alaska. Now these crawling goodies have come to Finnmark, and if you live here you are free to go out and catch what you can eat, and give the rest away. There are lots of them. Too many as a matter of fact. They are known to be invasive and put a heavy strain on other marine life.

It was a bit windy out there this day, and so I got seasick of course, and then I fed the crabs. A case of give and take.

Click for full size

Since my flight from Lithuania got in to Oslo airport at midnight, and today’s leg to Alta takes off at nine, I decided to camp in the nice and dry cave close to the checkin counter. I could tell I was back in Norway by the frequent approving nods at the reindeer skin.
Later today I may have a chance to do a little skateboarding with the luggage. At this point it weighs in at sixty kilos with carryon.

икониикони

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It has been four years since I was here. At that time too it was a night’s stopover, heading east. There is something undeniably mysterious about the pines swimming in the thick grey mist outside- and ever so peaceful.

The trip from Vardø¸ to Volda with Hilde went well. From here to Lithuania is about the same distance - a little over 2000 kilometers.

икони

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It has been a long day`s trip for Hilde. From Volda to Vardø.

It is time to enjoy a fresh local cod, and hit the sack.

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Here we go again with the Phenom, the Nikon Coolpix 950, and the old Siemens ME 45.
The laptop displaying the Wordpress blog is attached, it should float to the right side of the column.
The original is shot at 1024 740 and then reduced using Ultragraphics on the Phenom to 800 600. When received by Wordpress it is thumbnailed to 400 300 for display, linked to a full sized version that will open in a new window.
Many things can, and will go wrong since the post is scripted through a virtual can of worms before making it (fingers crossed) to the final formated layout.
Let’s see if it works then 21:06:32

Click to see at full size

The sun is out, it looks like spring finally got up even here.So, it is time to get out and away from the computer, right?

Wrong. I have this old Windows CE machine: the faithful LG Phenom Express. It has travelled far and survived many hardships. It will come along camping, and help me stay in touch by mobile phone and GPRS. I see these little critters are getting impossible to find these days- I suppose they are dismissed as relics from the stoneage, but still, they are quite amazingly powerful cigarbox typewriters.
So, naturally I’m setting up a blog to receive posts by email, and also to display any images I attach properly formatted, with CSS controlled text flow to the left or to the right. It’s faster to type, and the original file is much more human-readable.

*My faithful LG Phenom on Old Unfaithful*

For testing I am putting the first image here above to the right, and the the second to the left, using the “float” property to flow text around. When clicked they should display at full size in a separate window. The geek-in-me insists that i **MUST** make some resident macros for the divs that position images: hit ctrl-l and the flow-text-left-template is entered automatically. Wordpress will resize uploaded images to a width of 400 by default, but sometimes this should be overridden. And then, and then, and then . . . maybe by the end of summer the system will be ready. . . in the meanwhile I’ll just stay put and THINK ABOUT communicating.

Let’s see if an attached photo will be posted as well . . . here is one from a trip to Hamningberg:

click to enlarge
And here is camping at that quaint little village:

It will be interesting to see how the html formatting embedded in this post displays.

Today the cannons went off at the old fort to salute the sun. Twice they fired as the sun cleared the watery horizon to the south. It is sunny and clear, hardly a cloud in the sky, perfect day for a stroll.

I noticed that a number of other “Vardonians” had the same impulse. Those two salutes signify the beginning of a new season here, long awaited.

From now on the days will get lighter and warmer, and before we know it the magic of spring is upon us.

click to view full size

They like to go swimming in the icy seas every other week-or-so, and it’s
a MUST to go for a dip when the sun is on its lowest, turning around to
come back up. That’s today, at 7:35PM local time to be precise: Winter
solstice!

I was very honored and pleased when they invited me to come along for the
ritual- how could I resist?!

The happening took place at Svartneset, on the coast of the main land just
on the other side of the tunnel. There is a
nice sandy beach there, and none of the treacherous currents that can
sweep you clean out into the Barents’ Sea from the
island of Vardø.

So exactly as the sun reached its low point of the year we ran screaming
into the waters to let the waves cover us. Then
we all came back up with renewed energy and glee to share the hot and
sweet “gløgg” that Ingrid had so thoughtfully
brought along.

A good time was had by all, and we now feel very much at one with the
creative new energies of the coming seasons.

And yes! Even the weather cooperated nicely. Yesterday sported a mean
northern gale with snow blizzards. Today however,
conditions were perfect with powdery snow, bright Northern Lights, and the
sea a balmy four degrees above freezing.

At the end we all agreed we would do this more often.

Unfortunately, my batteries passed out when everybody stripped.
This photograph is taken after the main event.
I’ll try my best to deliver some more nudity on our next dip.

(click to see full size)

The fishing was good, and Mamertas is a masterful chef. Sometimes I miss my friends in sweet little Lithuania.