Category Archives: travels

Another Weekend

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“I’ve found from past experiences that the tighter your plan,
 the more likely you are to run into something unpredictable.”
 – MacGyver

Yeah, I know I already used the MacGyver Quote. But this time it’s even more fitting. Last weekend I was in Hildesheim and the weekend before in Bremen. For some weird reasons I decided to go to both places on this weekend. I won’t bother you with any details but up to now nothing acted out as planned/expected besides the fact that I actually were in both places. Back in the days this would have freaked me out. Now I’m feeling quite good because of the good stuff that happened instead. And I’m proud of myself that I no longer take it personally if folks neglect me due to matters which are out of my (and their) hands.

I thought I’d have good and long conversations with the guys from internet & tacos in hildesheim which didn’t happen because they were pulling night shifts to get an exhibition going. Instead of that I had quite some nice chats with other people and a idea for a very interesting project was born. I guess you’ll hear from it soonish, it’s got potential. For now let’s just say I found a perfectly good reason for finally joining facebook.

Saturday I was planning to spend the evening with a friend in bremen (not the same as the last time) at a concert but she got some kind of family emergency. That she tended a loved one was totally alright for me, I would have done exactly the same in her stead. But I was a little disappointed as well because we ended up talking only for five minutes or so. On the bright side I accidentally stumbled into T. and some friends from Göttingen and had a really nice evening with some deep conversations at the fireplace.

Sunday also didn’t turn out as expected, due to sickness and other troubles nobody could spare some time to hang out with me. Instead my Ubuntu Linux didn’t let me log in no more, some known bug related to some graphic driver issues. So I spent the evening fixing up my notebook and after that working on some concepts for the interesting project. Not really a bad evening but still not what I expected…

This weekend I’ll head south for Göttingen and Gießen. Since it’s only a short visit and there are enough friends to crash with I’ll leave the van behind and will go either by train or take the pornstyler.

Internet and Tacos

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Odo: mostly the same
Location: Hildesheim / Germany

I really enjoy places and projects who mix up different kinds of crowds by a common interest. It’s much more fun to have some political, artsy, whatever folks working on something together then just hanging out with tech folks. So when I read about a new project for digital culture and network policy (internet & tacos) in Hildesheim I was quite interested. When they asked for coaches for a HTML workshop on the mailing list of the local hackerspace I had a look at their program for the weekend and a plan emerged: Go there on Saturday to see some presentations and discussions and do coaching on Sunday. Hildesheim is actually a town of itself but being part of the Hannover metro area it’s merely a half hour drive from my place.

I’m working as a “web developer” for more than ten years by now but I never was skilled as a web designer and sticked to programming and using ready made widgets in the last years. So I actually learned quite some stuff about doing bare bones HTML & CSS while teaching it. Sounds weird but it was actually quite some fun and effective as well. Instead of preparing a lengthy presentation and some exercises the other coaches decided to just give a very short presentation of what HTML is and then split up into small groups and take it from there because we had no clue what kind of folks would show up.

My group turned out to be fast learning so their problems soon became to difficult to solve for me without doing research. So I switched from teaching them HTML & CSS to teaching them how to learn that stuff by their selves. Shortly after the switch they started dissecting their own works and other pages with firebug and were sifting through different tutorials to find explanations of the features they needed. It was a really nice day for me and judging by theirs works my group did learn quite some stuff.

I guess I will return there next weekend. Since they are only open for three weeks (up to the end of the month), returning there “sometime in the feature” is not exactly an option. And I’m looking forward to see some presentations about net art as well!

 

Some thoughs on ecology of travelling by car / van

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The best way to be nice to the environment is of course not to use motorized travel in any form, like riding a bicycle or going by foot. The more common approach for holidays is flying though. Or going by car.

If have been 83 days on the road burning approximately 1150 liters of Diesel costing almost 2000€. That sounds a lot.

How about flying to Australia instead? According to Lufthansa their average fuel consumption per Customer per 100km is 4 liters of kerosene (which actually is the main ingredient of diesel). They have to stop for fuel in Bangkok, so the distance is about 16000km one way leading to 1280 liters of kerosene. The price right now is 2150€ (which is probably off season).

So flying Lufthansa is a little more expensive and you don’t have to care about wear and tear on the jet and such. But you also don’t get a place to stay for the whole time… Surely there are less expensive airlines than Lufthansa but I guess their fuel economy isn’t better (less free seats on the plane but older planes as well). And there are plenty of countries where diesel is cheaper than in Scandinavia…

Lufthansa says about 25% of their costs is fuel, for cheap airlines it’s about 40%. Jet fuel is at about 160USD / Barrel (118EUR / 159L) so 0,74EUR / liter leading to 950€ for the flight which is 45% of the total price for us. That seems alright since I used the average consumption on a long distance flight. Planes burn most fuel during take-off, for short distances their average consumption is more like eight liters / 100km or much more. And operating airports also uses up some energy as well..

So there’s still the difference that the plane covers three times to distance to Sydney than I did. But the plane puts it’s fumes in the sky where they basically stay since there are no plants to convert CO2 back to Oxygen and Biomass.

Archive pic. Note the total lack of trees at an altitude of 10km...

Archive pic. Note the total lack of trees at an altitude of 10km…

But in Scandinavia there are quite some plants… Most sources say that the the impact on the climate of plane exhausts is three times higher than for cars exhausts.

Typical road in Lapland. Vegetation on both sides, occasionally even reindeer on the road..

Typical road in Lapland. Vegetation on both sides, occasionally even reindeer on the road..

So here we are: My old van has the same climate economy as an airplane while I’m traveling alone (!). If let’s say we were traveling with four people it would be almost four times better since a couple of persons more do not change the fuel economy of the van too much…

http://www.robinwood.de/german/verkehr/fg/Die%20Legende%20vom%203-Liter-Flieger.pdf

With the given Mallorca example (one ton of CO2 equivalent per trip, 2600km), my trip equals three trips to Mallorca and I did even more distance than the plane…

Reasons to head south

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Location: 100km north auf Fauske
Odo: 288554

Today I saw something whitish on the shoulder of the road. What might that be? Flour? Coke? Hmmm. Then I saw the whitish stuff on the road. Not too much but there. By instinct I reduced my speed very carefully and watched the truck driver some distance behind me doing the same. Can’t be, can it? This night the heater kicked in suspiciously often, the windscreen was very moist due to condensation at morning and yes, it felt crisp somehow. But it’s around midday and the sun is shining. But hence to the high mountains there’re some places where the sun doesn’t shine. And I don’t mean anybodys arse by that, just in case you were wondering.

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yep, that's ice on the puddles...


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Some mud roadsite. At noon!

Yesterday, after almost three days without much driving I checked on my battery and found out it was only half full. I didn’t watch no movies and only used the tablet for internet access. In Germany the solar panels (160Wp) could easily sustain the fridge and some light and the sound system. I did some troubleshooting, cleaned up the solar panels and then it hit me: There’s nothing wrong with the solar panels, the solar system is to blame! In the arctic the sun does not climb that high to the sky anymore and my panels are pointing straight up since I had no time to build adjustable mounts. Since a client asked for some work to be done the same day I’ll need to incorporate some driving (for charging) and working in my daily schedule… Seems it’s time to head back to base…

Reinebriggen / hiking like an idiot

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same odo and location...

The famous Reinebriggen, the interwebs and different magazines say it’s one of the best views in Norway. I parked just in front of it by coincidence yesterday. Some nice czech guys got up and I didn’t because there was rain on the horizon and the surrounding mountains (same height) were already hidden in the clouds. They got wet and didn’t see much, I “failed” at integrating some sensors in my power supply. The improvement didn’t pass my own safety check and I really don’t want to mess with unfused (solar panel…) 8 amps in a wooden interior.

Anyways, the guys said the hike is steep but alright and they want to do it again next day for the view. The interwebs said 440m height difference, up to 75% incline, difficulty T3 (more info: http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAC-Wanderskala) , three hours return, not advisable when wet, completely unmarked. Today was not really wet and I met them on their decent shortly before the saddle of the mountain. “Yeah, it’s nice, enjoy, take the detour right on the saddle for the lookout and goodbye, we’ll do another hike today”. Ok…

I took the detour, enjoyed, went back on the main track. After about 1:30h I arrived close to the top of a summit but the track stopped at a small “wall”. I saw a well frequented climbing route, just 3-4 meters, probably UIAA grade II, so easy to get up and alright to get down again (which is the tricky part since I was alone by now on the mountain and the rock climbing gear was in the van). To cut a long story short: It took me another 1,5h with multiple short climbing passages in a terrain where you really don’t want to fall until I reached highest point around. Just imagine a drop of a couple of  hundred meters on both sides. After six hours I was back at the van, really exhausted and worried about myself. Taking twice the time that normal people do, shitting my pants on climbing passages the czechs didn’t even mention and being really exhausted while they go on a second hike… I know I’m out of shape but is it really that bad?

Luckily it isn’t. After some research I found out I actually went over the Reinebriggen up to the Helvete. 730m height difference, difficulty T6+ (according to some guy on hikr.org), seven hours return, or as the geo magazin put it into words “advisable only to experienced rock climbers with ropes&harness”.

PANO_20130924_132933_small

Well… I guess I made some mistakes here. First, I went out without a map and proper research. I thought I didn’t need a map because you can the the whole track pretty much all the time. I was correct about that but a map would have been helpful to figure out which summit is which. And in front of every tricky passage I thought like “a well, this is probably the last one” until finally one were. This is something which can become very dangerous when you have to retreat by the same way…

To sum it up: It was a really nice day! I was in a bad mood for some time because I thought I’m horribly out of shape but besides that I had a good workout and a nice view. But really: The track sucks. This has been my steepest hike since the Volcano on Ometepe/Nicaragua which was probably ten years ago… At least now I understand why the Norwegians are using these hiking sticks…