Chasing my tail

Anna and Anne finishing their first half marathon in Style! Me proud.

What have I been doing the last 2 months? Can you really have 2 weddings? What happened with the garden? Would I survive the bachelor party with my revanche hungry friends? and why does Swedes eat so much herring? Calm down... you will get your questions answers and more in the following 2-3 posts.

The Chesapeake estuaries are festering with beavers and eagles
The perfect spot for some Indiana Jones action

My great friend George and his small car

Spring is always such a hectic time for some reason, and even more so when you are planning a wedding on top of everything else. So although I did squeeze in some fun weekend trips during April/May which included exploring the Chesapeake estuaries and camping & fly-fishing in the mountains around Camp David, most of it was working crazy hours and weekends to get ready for our Caribbean field mission coming up (I even got busted for leaving work after regular hours and labeled a security threat...), and then preparing for our big celebrations on any extra time I had - yes, this is my lame excuse why I did not write any blog posts in 2 months. Trust me, you did not miss much this spring. But boy am I making up for it now...

We don't golf, we fish. Me and Boss Tim out fishing in one of many
beautiful Maryland creeks stocked with browns and rainbows. Even Trevor caught a few!

A friend along the trail... Suddenly found myself standing 2 feet from this guy
A small squeak might have slipt my mouth

I also finished a short movie project that I recorded during our trip on the Nancy Foster in March, to try and amuse my colleagues and satisfy their illusion of me as the big movie producer (certain pressure was applied to deliver the goodies during our monthly branch meeting).

Loading up the Volvo with gesundheit in Germany to get ready for the B Party!

I finally reached the finish line and made it onto my flight back to Sweden, one week before the wedding. Anna was already there since a few weeks back doing the heavy lifting together with Jan and Gunilla who helped us tremendously with everything. I arrived pretty exhausted to Copenhagen airport were Jan was waiting for me with his Volvo V70 (we all drive volvos if you didn't know). We then drove 3 hours to Germany to go shopping for the party - alcoholic beverages are 2-3 times cheaper in Germany compared to Sweden. All in all I had traveled about 36 hours with little/no sleep and quite a bit of wine tasting in Germany, when we arrived Gothenburg late Friday night. Anna kept me a up for another few hours before I exhausted fell asleep at 1am Swedish time (about 7 in the morning in my internal clock). I looked forward to finally getting a long looong sleep.

5.20 AM. Knock knock knock!!! I drowsily open the door and find my "friends" Martin and Stefan standing there with a grin on their faces.
-Time to pack din gottegris (sweet tooth)!
- but I just got here...
- Bring everything you got, you are not coming back!
- ehh....
As I had not yet unpacked my bag I guess I was pretty good to go. So I said farewell to Gothenburg and Anna, and blindfolded followed Martin and Stefan to an unknown destination. As I was pretty hungry (I had only eaten some sweets, and a sandwich for dinner while driving back from Germany the night before) I kindly asked my "friends" for some food once we got settled on a train on our way to somewhere. They had cinnamon buns and lösgodis (Swedish assorted candy) for me, and tasty sandwiches for themselves. Great. I begun to see a pattern and also suspected who could be the mastermind behind this.

Once in Stockholm 10 more friends joined up, dressed me in a short wetsuit and let me continue the journey through the packed central station on a small pink bounce ball. I could sense that my "friends" had been looking forward to this for quite some time. Next transportation was a surfboard through the freezing rapids in stockholm river, to the amusement of a japanese tour bus among others. I could not feel my arms, but had some more candy to warm up. We then drove out to the sport complex Bosön to play hockey and eat a great lunch. Well, I only got to eat more muffins and candy and drink dr peppar while the others where feasting on water, beer and a healthy pasta salad.This sugar overload was of course my "friend" Olles idea, trying to make a point of my sometimes above average consumption of sweets. Point taken. Cured? Not so sure.

Then to top it all we had a go at Bosöns SkiJump. Something I was dreading in the back of my mind since my blindfolded arrival to Sthlm. I am pretty susceptible  to this kind of peer pressure in addition to my own suicidal instincts. So it was scary, not so much to do the first jumps, but because I knew we would push our limits. In the end we did some flips and spins, stepped it up in the large jump after additional peer pressure and had some violent encounters with the water surface. Totally awesome and we all came out in one piece for the waiting well needed sauna (swedish "summer" temperatures prevailed  in the lake we landed in)

View from the ski jump take off  at Bosön

Thanks totally awesome friends for a great weekend, and for treating me with a solid herring/knäckebröd/snaps and bbq dinner later that night. Also to Schlyter who got me (sold out) tickets the following evening to see him perform the lead caracter in West Side Story at Sthlm Stadsteater, grymt.

Sister Karin and Theo!

The following week day I got to meet Theo! I am since 5 weeks back a very proud uncle for the 4th time (first for my very little sister), his anatomy suggests he could grow up to be a copy of me, lucky guy! I also got to pick up the other 3 daredevils from kindergarden/school and did my duty as an uncle and attempted to teach them how to use the skateboards I brought from the US. They will soon ollie over my head, I am sure of it!

Alex, Wille and Uncle G

After this friend love overload weekend I found myself on the slow train to Åmål. Overtime for some solid sleeping.
To be continued...