It's time for an out

If you followed Climbfish the last year you might have noticed that activity has slowed down to a crawl. It is time for an official blog time out! I'm to lazy, and I'm trying to keep to the motto "less screen time, more fun time" - though sporadic infrequent or very frequent updates may still occur...

To finish off in style, for whatever short or eternally long time it will take before I do any updates again, I made a highlight summary of what I've been up to lately. Highlight means I've excluding anything else, like commuting, dentists visits, car breakdowns and other totally unnecessary ingredients in life.

 1. Highlight - Scientific diver check!
After a persistent campaign to convince my bosses that they should let me join the NOAA dive team. A pile of paperwork and some actual training later I finally got to go on my first Scientific Dive Mission to Puerto Rico earlier this fall as a part of NOAAs great dive program. Should make for more opportunities to get out of my cube in the year to come. Here is one of the highlights from that first week


2. Highlight  - Swedish Time
It took me a full year to get back to Sweden again after our wedding 2013, but lately I've found myself going back to Sweden a lot, both a few weeks this summer as well as a fall trip a few weeks back, with a trip over Christmas to come as well. Friends, Family and some networking, check! Damn good.
 

3. Highlight  - Garden of success!
This is one of the blogs I planned to do this whole year but never came around to... I was very exited this spring when me and Trevor engineered a passive watering system for my garden boxes out of a few cheap PVC pipes and some water absorbing textiles. All I can say is that it worked beautifully, and that all plants that did not have this phenomenal system did pretty great to... I'm still munching off the Garden, down to kale, some straggling carrots, and a few happy basil plants who just got to move inside.


4. Highlight - Living off the land and anything else found edible

Aside of the very occasional dead bodies,
downtown Clifton Park also produce
a bountiful harvest of chestnuts!

Anna was in Kenya for 6 weeks this fall and left me to roam around Baltimore City all by myself. I decided that shopping was no fun and tried to live on anything I could harvest and salvage. When I ran out of milk I traded our room mate for some for a loaf of sour dough bread I just baked... 2 months later and only 100$ spend on food I consider it a success! Though partly thanks to a stored food reserve in the freezer, a bountiful harvest season, good friends, and the life of two deer which I shot with my compound bow together with my friend Rob (who got his own deer too). No pics included to save those who are sensitive...  First time I shot anything with a bow so I was a bit nervous, but it went great and the kill was as "clean"  as any gun experience that I have had (meaning that the two deer died very quickly from the powerful arrows).
Not allowing myself to go shopping  for a while was great to stop wasting a bunch of food and it made me realize what you really need. Totally and highly recommended! I ate better and healthier then in a long time (and not in any way on a diet).

Delicious dumpster dive fetch, together with some fresh veggies from the garden

5. Highlight  - Hamden Fest and Druid Hill Cycle Cross
Hands down, one of the best days of the year was this years Hamden Fest. Baltimore's own Future Island played for what felt like thousands of people as the sun was setting on the avenue a few blocks from our house. Not bad. I also took part of the awesome Cycle Cross Race that my friend Jay help set up in druid hill park each year. It kicked my ass but fun, finished 50 out of 135 starting. Best Cycle Cross course in history.

Druid Hill Cycle Cross in full action!

Mazen givin it his best! 

More racing... The infamous Hamden Fest Toilet Race 

Party Time on the Avenue

Future Islands

6. Highlight  - Brooklyn Brewery
Finally made it off Manhattan to explore Brooklyn on a Sunny Saturday. Almost like Baltimore = Good times. Anna brought me to NY to see First Aid Kit play live. Bliss. That said, all you Swedish friends (yes, that mean you to!) who keeps going to New York without visiting Bmore should get out of the (indeed very nice) NY bubble and come down! Just do it, you wont be disappointed in my jungle tour


... over and out