The Colonel's Forum

  Well, another day, another successful excursion. This time I went back to the islands and took the ferry to Vrango. It's a 1 hour ferry ride but it was worth it. As you can see, the view is fantastic. They have a nature park that takes up the whole south end of the island. I did some hiking, saw some deer, and got some great pictures. We enjoyed sunshine almost all day today, which is so rare that everyone was in a great mood. Had dinner with Teddy from Dallas again, and we had some baked halibut topped with fresh grated horseradish that couldn't be beat. I'll be sleeping in tomorrow, that's for sure. 

That's my advice to you this weekend, amigos. "The road goes on forever, and the party never ends." I'm sitting here listening to "Blues for Inga-Maj" as sung by its original artist, Cornelis Vreeswijk . He was born Dutch, but his Swedish is impeccable and he was (may he rest in peace) the unofficial troubadour of Sweden. I got his two disc "Basta" (greatest hits) for just over $15. It's already one of my favorite CDs, and I can't understand a word of it. It's unmistakably Swedish though, and that's what makes it so cool. So far I have learned two things from listening to Cornelis: 1) The Blues truly are universal 2) The Swedes love to sing songs about the sea Cornelis really is a legend in terms of traditional Swedish music. He gets a whole row of CDs in the folk section at the music stores here, so he must be popular, right? I barely got out the first syllable of his first name today at lunch when the two receptionists ...

  Well, today we made our trip to the islands. It was really cool. We took the tram to the ferry terminal and then out to the Goteborg archipelago. People have been living on these islands for over 4000 years now. They're not that big, and they're not very far apart. The ferry ride took about 20 minutes. That included 2 stops and the boat wasn't going very fast at all. Our destination? The isle of Brann(o) , of course. There are no cars on these islands. The residents take the ferries into town, and many of them keep cars at the ferry port. The exception to this is the Branno Taxi, which greets the ferry at the dock to take the old folks to and from the boat. On the islands at the ferry dock, there are about 50 bicycles and a collection of modified mo-peds that people use to get any goods they bought on shore to and from their homes. Mostly, the locals just walk wherever they need to go. Yes, even in the Swedish winter. The weather was pretty good today, for S...

 Let's talk for a moment about my job. Basically what we do at EDS is help companies meet their business objectives by making sure they have the best IT solutions for their needs. This is a fairly intangible product we offer. Often, we have to travel to a client's facilities to provide our services, which can mean spending extended periods away from our friends and families. In my case, this trip to Sweden is 19 days (domestic trips are generally 4 days). One of the perks we enjoy is that the company pays for our meals while we are travelling. This is nice. Occasionally, this means room service. In light of the brewing blizzard outside and my lack of knowledge of close local restaurants, I decided to eat-in for lunch today. Most times we're staying at a holiday inn or something and room service is nothing to write home about. This Radisson SAS here in Goteburg is an exception though. The Radissons here in Sandanavia are several steps up from any Radisson I've ...

  Well I finally got a chance to get out and around town. Unfortunately, it was also the first snow of the year here. Not a real heavy snow, but enough to make it a nuisance to walk around and take pictures. Then again it's winter in Sweden, so I figure why not take some pictures of the snow. This is a picture of the Goteborg cathedral. The choir was rehearsing their winter concert for tomorrow evening and I got to listen in - very nice. The stunning thing to me about this cathedral is how simple it is, especially as compared with the ornate cathedrals of mainland Europe. These Swedes don't even have anything painted on the ceiling. They have some ornamental gold trim in the sanctuary and a gold sculpture at the head of the cathedral, but that's it. It's beautiful on the inside - don't get me wrong - but much more simple than other cathedrals I've seen. Now off to the tram station to see if Jeff and I feel like braving the weather to check out the islan...

Not the Swedes, that's for certain. After a week on the ground here I am thoroughly impressed with this town. Only 400,000 people here, and the sun sets about 4pm each day, but this is really a very active town. Tons of bars and restaurants, an opera, several good museums. They don't let the cold and the dark stop them from having a good time. I've had nothing but excellent meals here. I'm staying at the Radisson which is also where our idiot in chief stayed when he was in town last summer. They have an outstanding breakfast for us every morning - fresh fish, cheeses, breads, fuits, plus the traditional English and American breakfast items. They serve a lunch at the office, which varies from meat and potato dishes to an Indian buffet they brought in today. Great stuff. Dinners have included grilled salmon, black marlin, veal with lingonberry gravy, and last night a spectacular diced sausage and potato dish topped with a fried egg. Alcohol is very expensive he...

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be in one of those "hurricane hunter" aircraft that NOAA flies, give me a call sometime and I'll tell you all about it. Yesterday, I was in a 737 that flew through a hurricane. The winds on the bridge to Oslo yesterday were clocked at just over 98 miles per hour (85 knots) - a category two hurricane. It's very rare for the storms up here to bring that much wind, so I guess we were just lucky. Our pilot tried to land in Goteburg (I've seen 4 different spellings for the name of this city and I still don't know which one is right). About 1000 feet up, he aborted the landing. We were all being tossed around in the plane like popcorn, so we were just fine with the idea of finding another airport. The pilot did not know the conditions on the ground at the airport (GOT) because the winds were so strong they destroyed the weather equipment at the airport (and also caused a blackout). So we landed in Oslo in con...

I know it's been on my list of links for some time now, but I must take a moment to commend the Daily Show on its exceptionally witty political commentary. To start with, there is no good news on TV anymore. By "good" I am not only referring to the fact that most networks only cover the death and destruction stories anymore, but also to the fact that the caliber of TV journalism has deteriorated so far since the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, it is almost beyond recognition. I can't even watch the NBC nightly news anymore. They spend so much time talking about their other shows, their "feature segments" and they don't cover international news at all. CNN was McNews to start with, and they've gone completely downhill since AOL bought them (big shock there). I've found that I can get all the news I care for at news.google.com, where I also have my choice of providers (reuters and bbc are my favorites). No flashy graphics or ca...

The new year has brought with it a number of changes. Ella was voted onto the board for the Parrothead Club (Bluegrass Chapter). This is a big deal. For those of you unfamiliar with the Parrothead clubs, check out the link. In short, it's a Jimmy Buffet fan club, social club, and charity organization all in one, but that really doesn't do it justice. Mostly it's a great group of people who "party with a purpose" (their motto), and they all understand the value of taking an occasional diversion from the rat race of life to spend some time in Margaritaville. After being voted onto the board by the general club membership, Ella was appointed by her peers on the board to serve as President of the club this year. That makes me the First Monkey, or something. Whatever it is I'm proud of her. There are also a number of other young members on the board, so I'm looking forward to an even more exciting set of events this year. We've made a lot of go...