A Walk on the Ice

I was this happy even after finding out that
my camera was useless.

My sleeping pattern is all messed up, but the bright side is that I am much more awake than I normally am during daylight hours. This gave me a smashing Easter day on the ice with the husband - also probably one of the last days the ice was safe to tread; spring is coming fast and early this year. I brought the nice camera, but failed to remember the memory card, which was still stuck in my computer. "That´s a new one", said the husband, but I couldn´t be very miffed - it was too much of a glorious day for being grumpy for more than a split second. The husband had his iPhone, which takes very nice photos, and I had my watercolour sketchbook, which I got out when we found a warm wall against which to take our small picknick of tea and cookies.

The ice road going from the northern harbour. 

Can´t have skaters tripping on dog poo. 

Our lovely resting spot, a boathouse near the Bergnäset bridge.

A slightly wobbly panorama from our spot.

The bridge.

The steel works far away. As you can see, there is no Easter holiday rest for those who work there, the steam comes from the coke manufacturing.

Luleå from the southern harbour. 

This old crane is a museum piece and a very distinct part of the skyline.
 Had to draw.

In several places there were kick-sleds (Sw. spark) offered on loan. They call these spots "sparkings" (as in spark + parking). 

Had to take a turn, it´s been ages. You can get quite speedy on these! 

The Yellow Bike

It´s been busy lately, and will continue to be busy. I have started a drawing course and it´s so much fun, but also so much work! The first exercise is measuring to get proportions right, and it´s a lot harder than I thought, but so very rewarding.

But I haven´t forgotten the summer trip and all those photos waiting to be posted. When we were in York, we saw yellow bicycles all over the place - this year, Tour de France (I am not into cycling at all, I thought it was a biking competition around France, but apparently not) passed through the UK, doing three distances: Leeds - Harrogate, York - Sheffield, and Cambridge - London. We were not in York on the day, missed it with almost a week, but we saw some of it on television. The colour yellow alludes to the yellow jersey, worn by the race leader. If you need more information, Wikipedia has an article about it.

This one was outside a kindergarten/school.

Good Spirit

Sometimes, you end up outside your comfort zone and that is a good thing, usually. The husband was offered two basketball tickets for the first of the final games in the Swedish championship and what a treat that was! Our local team, Northland, was up against southern team Norrköping, and the audience were in high spirits. The ladies played amazingly, they were regular gladiators!

Much if this is thanks to the international cheering section from the university, a motley crew of students from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, India, and, naturally, Sweden. In an interview at the Swedish Radio, Ruben Suleja of Spain, says he has put 18 songs and rhymes together to cheer their team to victory. And of course they did. The final score was 73 - 59 to Northland!

I shot a very short and shaky film while the team was warming up.