Holiday Part 3

Provence is a big place and it was HOT so we didn't want to spend yet another day just sitting in the car driving round inspecting toilet blocks (MK's white gloves were getting dirty anyway). The first stop was Orange to check out the amphitheatre and get some lunch whilst trying to get inside information about camp sites.
Lunch was fine, the amphitheatre was cool but the camp site info was thin on the ground. We bought a map and a guide book and headed in the direction of Carpentras. I think MK did a toilet check in 3 or 4 campsites before we found the municipal camp site in Carpentras. They had one place left and the bogs were clean and there was a big swimming pool next door that we could use included in the price.
We spent the week visiting loads of little villages and bigger towns. There was a stage of the Tour de France up to Mont Ventoux that we went to watch and of course we swam.

Holiday Part 2

Many years ago, I was lucky enough to canoe through the Ardeche through the spectacular gorge. I remember the trip fondly and we agreed that the Ardeche seemed like a good destination as it wasn't too far away and there would be plenty of campsites. We found a site online and headed there through hot sunshine and then torrential rain. The site ended up being full so we drove on down the only road through the gorge looking in horror at the huge crappy looking sites beginning to think that it may be hard to find a site we liked. The they stopped. We had entered the national park and there was nothing at all other then spectacular views and 13 mountain goats.

Not really our sort of campsite

By this stage is was getting late and we were giving up on the camping for the evening and decided that Provence was going to be a better destination, but first we had to find somewhere to sleep as it was getting late.

Ardeche Gorge

Coming out of the national park there were a few places beginning to appear along the road and we spotted a castle perched on the cliffs across the river. After declaring that one should always "head for the castle when looking for somewhere to stay", we ended up in an idyllic little village with a room for the night and a pretty good meal.

Aigueze

Holiday part 1

Before we had driven 15 minutes J had thrown up and it was becoming apparent that the new GPS wasn't going to work. Thankfully my technologically sceptical wife had a map book with her so we continued our dash to the ferry and headed south in search of sunshine.

There had been talk of stopping overnight, but without having book anything, that entails stopping at about 7 to look for food and accommodation. I didn't think we had made much progress so we stopped for a very German dinner and then I drove down the Mont Blanc valley where we slept for an hour or so in the car before places started to open that served coffee and croissants.

We stocked up at the supermarket and the big camping shop on some essentials such as food, sleeping bags and coats and then went to the camp site to put up the tent. All went ridiculously easily as we drove straight there and pitched in a "shaded" spot, happy to be out of the now rather hot sun.

Then came the clouds as a prelude to the rain and thunderstorms of the evening. The tent was fine and only really damp inside from condensation, but we woke up cold and the shade over our pitch meant that we barely warmed up and dried out before the next afternoons clouds and rain came in.

The second evening we had to cook inside the tent which was somewhat hazardous and smelly so I suggested that we should remain true to our plan and head south until it got warm. So after 2 nights in the lovely Domes de Miage campsite we packed out bags and headed South.

(Photographs later when I have the camera back)

Chef DK

Thanks for the presents B,E, T & K.

DK's new apron

Thanks to Bicester for this and the book

Happy Birthday DK

J and Mormor have worked hard on pirate hats and themed stuff for his birthday party so he decided that a pirate cake would be more apt than a football cake.

After a little google research, I make a treasure chest cake and I am rather proud of it.

Now we are waiting for chaos to descend in the form of 9 4 and 5 year old boys who will spend the  afternoon having sword fights and searching for treasure.

barefoot shoes

Quick review

I love my new Vivobarefoot shoes. They are really light and fit perfectly so that it is almost as though you're not wearing shoes at all. Exactly as they're supposed to be.

My only complaint is that they are not as smart as I would like them to be, but I'll get over that.

I then got a promotional email from them this morning that there is 30% off everything on their site today so I have ordered some more and a pair for MK who wanted a pair of flat shoes anyway.

Birthday Preparation

DK is 5 tomorrow. That is 24 hours away or as he would like to point out, it is 18 hours. He has been asking how long it is until his birthday more or less non stop for about 2 weeks now and it is getting really rather boring.

We are having the boys from his group at nursery home for the afternoon along with the Danish grandparents (who are also allowed to stay for dinner and help clear up the mess)

There are some pretty standard requirements for a birthday party - namely a cake, in this case a football pitch with players because that is what J had, birthday bread rolls which are really iced buns without icing and a treasure hunt.

We are going with a pirate theme so J and Mormor have been making pirate hats and eye patches for the last couple of days.

We've bought him a garage for his matchbox cars and the rest will be a surprise, but there is talk of fishing rods.

New term - new uniform

There is something of a school holiday feel to our vacation this year. MK and J actually follow school holidays and I will be working on a project in a rather different environment when I get back to work. Normally that doesn't mean too much in the grand scheme of things, other than the type of work that one does. However from a sartorial standpoint there are a few places in Denmark where the usual shirt and chinos doesn't quite cut it and this is one of them.

I haven't worn a suit and tie more than a couple of times for work in the last 5 years or so and I have only one suit that fits and isn't over 10 years old - the same goes for smart shirts and ties!

So I need to stock up on some smart clothes. After a bit of consideration, I think it will be a blazer, a pair of trousers (or maybe 2) and some shirts with or without ties. Under normal circumstances, it's fun to buy some bits and pieces of clothing, but to be honest, it's rather tedious to have to buy several outfits worth and there are many other things that I'd rather spend the money on.

Crash

I was a little late home from work last night so I missed the excitement of watching J ride his bike into the back of a parked car.  He's been told hundreds of times to look where he is going, but apparently the only way to learn that particular lesson is by riding into things repeatedly.

He'll either figure it out or Darwinism will take over the decision for him.

Yesterday it was a rather large Citroen C5 estate parked about 50m from our house that he went straight into the back of. There is a noticeable scratch and a small dent so we are expecting either an insurance claim or to pay for the repair at some point.

Most annoyingly of all, I bet he would do it again today under the same circumstances.

The Chimp Paradox

I am in the process of (adio) reading The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters. Dr Peters is the psychologist for the British Cycling Team and has apparently been instrumental in Team Sky wining so many bike races including the Tour de France last year.

The book breaks the functioning of the brain down into 3 parts: the human, the computer and the chimp who seems to be responsible for many undesirable characteristics and behaviours. Basically, if we want to be happy and successful, then we need to  learn to manage our inner chimps and not let them wreak havoc whenever they feel threatened or scared.

It's a great book (adiobook in my case) and I heartily recommend it for anyone who occasionally finds themselves behaving in a way that they later come to regret or who wonders why they do things that, even at the time, they know are stupid and irrational.

Feet

Shortly after I stopped running regularly I started to have problems with my feet. The doctor usefully looked at my feet and reassured me that I was going to have problems with them in the future.

I apparently have hammer toe - as a result of wearing shoes that are too small. I take full responsibility for this, it's not my mums fault! I also appear to not walk on the ball of my foot behind my big toes.

I ditched all of my shoes that were a little on the small side and made a concerted effort togo barefoot at home and wear birkenstocks when out in the summer.

The feet problems have gone away, but I always have a few problems getting back into my "normal" shoes at the end of the summer holidays and my feet feel cramped until they get used to the shoes again.

The next step has been to search for some shoes that would keep my feet happy whilst being acceptable at work. I found a pair of Teva shoes at the outlets a year or two ago that have been OK, but are not really smart. Then after some research, I have finally ordered a pair of vivobarefoot shoes that should be OK at work and look after my feet too. I'll review them when I get them.

Time and tide

It's been a pretty hectic week so I haven't blogged much. I can also now see that I don't have much to say because the stuff that has kept me so occupied isn't really all that interesting or bloggable.

I hope to get out sailing tomorrow morning and then I have got the kids for the afternoon and evening as MK is off to TWO parties in one day!

I'll have to try to think of something interesting to do with them so any suggestions are welcome.

Hurry Up Summer

The sun is shining and I am stuck inside an office again today. Yesterday I worked from home and managed a few minutes in the sunshine during the day whilst I ate some lunch and hung the washing out to dry. I even managed some of my crossfit session outside. That's probably it for the rest of the week though which seems like a terrible shame.

I also have evening meetings and other stuff to deal with during the rest of the week so spare time is going to be something of a rarity.

Now it's a matter of counting the days until we can pack up the car and hit the road.

Wet Weekend

Another weekend has passed and now J only has 2 more weeks at school before his summer holidays start.
I went sailing on Saturday morning. I wasn't very early out of the house and by the time I reached the sailing club the only other Finn going out was already on the water. I had to re-assemble the boat a bit after the regatta last weekend so it was 10:45 before I was afloat. There was a pretty strong wind blowing (around 10m/s, force 6 or 25 knots) and waves that were at least a metre high. Sailing upwind was hard work and good fun. I was happy that I didn't really have any problems making progress or managing the boat. The downwind was something more akin to a roller-coaster ride with the boat rather unstable side to side and surfing or nose diving over and through the waves. I was amazed that I got home without having an unplanned swim, I was pretty wet from the spray, but no swimming. I only managed 1½ hours on the water, but in the end I was getting tired and decided to quite whilst ahead. I didn't even manage to say hello to the other Finn sailor as our paths didn't manage to converge before he went back to the harbour. I really enjoyed being out in the wind and the sunshine and was very glad I took the chance to go out.

It may have looked a bit like this (at least in my minds eye)

I made another big batch of sausages on Saturday afternoon. Last time I chopped the fat by hand, this time I used the food processor, neither is really right so I think I'll have to get a mincer. The batch that we sampled in the evening were really good though.

Sunday was all about J and rain. There was the annual outdoor inter-school football competition that his class won last year. Despite having only 7 boys in the class, they won again this year which is pretty impressive. Yet again it was won on penalties, but there was no injustice in them winning at all. The only real downside was that it rained quite a lot so I had to go home in the middle to get dry clothes for me and more clothes for everyone else.

Straight after the football, we had to drive to Sorø for the outdoor gymnastics display that is traditionally held on the wettest weekend of the year. We sat in a bit more rain (and a few moments of sunshine) whilst J did some somersaults and a various variety of gymnastic things. The group that he will be in next year looked impressive so he'll have to stay in training.

More New-Age Mumbo Jumbo

The squatty potty!

I spend my otherwise wasted commuting hours listening to podcasts from many different places and on many different topics. I love the BBC and am a new convert to RadioLab from NPR in the US. However, over the last few months I have been listening to a lot of health and fitness shows, one of which was about having the perfect poo.

I am quite a convert to the idea of functional health and fitness and also the ideas of evolutionary medicine. The basic idea of which is that our bodies evolved in a certain way, but modern society is pushing us to use them in another way. There are many examples of this -  we don't get enough sunlight, we sit down too much, we don't move correctly and we don't sleep enough.

One of the things that many of us (me included) are not able to do as adults is squat correctly because we have poor mobility and flexibility. Apparently the structures that stop your poop from coming out when you don't want it to are only really properly allowed to open up when you are squatting. When you are sitting as you do on a normal toilet, things aren't quite aligned as they are supposed to be

We haven't bought a squatty potty, but we have a range of different sized plastics steps around the house for the shorter members of the household to reach things (that's everyone else in the house). After a bit of experimentation, I can conform that the 20cm high Ikea step works fine and you really do notice a difference when you use it.

I heartily recommend giving it a try with some sort of step or box so you can make your own minds up. I am also going to get DK to try a step to see if we can save 20 minutes of our evening that we normally spend waiting for him on the loo.

Starting to look like a holiday destination.

Mentioned

There are a few online reviews from the Helly Hansen Cup last weekend, but I get a mention here as one of the several rookies taking part here

Sleep

Going to bed early has never been one of my strengths. In fact, until fairly recently, I have always gone to bed late and (unless enticed) always thought that there was something more interesting to do than be in bad.

I have now finally discovered the wonderful benefits of sleeping well and sleeping for a long time. We aim to hit the sack at 10:00 each night although it is usually 10:30 by lights out so that we can try to get about 8 hours per night. We have also put up blackout blinds to get the room as dark as possible.

I have noticed that I am a lot better in the mornings now, I feel much less irritable and I don't crash after lunch feeling sleepy through the afternoon as I did for many years. Part of that is certainly related to my diet, but I am also sure that getting enough sleep helps to ward off tiredness. I would certainly never want to be the sort of person who falls asleep at the dinner table (for many reasons)

A great deal of statistical information appears to link insufficient sleep with all sorts of health problems from high cholesterol to weight gain and type 2 diabetes. How much of that is true is hard for me to say, but the average amount of sleep that people get has gradually been declining as average body weights have been increasing.

Helly Hansen Cup

I'm tired but I am, as you can see, available for sailing equipment catalogue shots in the dinghy park. 

I have spent the last two of days taking part in a sailing regatta in Rungsted. There were a number of firsts over the weekend. First regatta away from my home club so the boat had to be dismantled, transported and re-assembled before I could sail. My first time sailing with a reasonable amount of wind and my first 2 day regatta.

Saturday was the most interesting day. I had to assemble the boat that someone kindly transported to the club for me on his double trailer. There was plenty of wind and I did fairly well considering my abilities and lack of experience. The starts went well and I enjoyed it a lot despite getting battered and bruised a bit and maybe breaking my little toe.

Sunday was a bit of an anticlimax as the wind let us down during the second race by shifting and too much to run proper races so racing was abandoned after just two races.

Results

I wasn't last, but I was last out of the people who took part in all of the races. My best was 14th place in one race but I was also last in a couple. There is work to be done...

I'm NED724

Not in last place

Still not in last place

Probably in last place