A short story in six words

Not many things smells that good.

Another year and it just felt like 6 minutes 21 seconds!

What a short year again.

Room with a view

Road trip 70ties style in the 21st Century

It’s you and your wife in a hired car in a foreign country. Your bags are in the trunk and a road map on the lap of the passenger. No hotel precooked at the next location and no healthy alternative restaurant or artisan coffee shop spotted anywhere in the proximity of the planned route. The only plan is an estimated area and a timeframe for when you start looking for vacancies and a place for supper.

Wow. Frightening?

Doing a road-trip in the 21st century way is very convenient and easy. GPS, Trip Advisor & Google knows it all, or at least can find it for you as you go ahead. Hotel booking apps can help you find and reserve accommodation. It is convenient, efficient and desirable because you can get exactly what and where you want and plan ahead when to arrive and where to eat when. However, there is not many surprises or challenges doing that, really. It doesn’t put you in too much discomfort because you can always just google the route, the best hotel, cafe or restaurant or whatever else you could need nearby your current location.

So therefore, after nearly two weeks of our roadtrip through the eastern Maritime provinces of Canada the very convenient 21st century way, we challenged ourselves to one day doing road trip 70ties style. No google help on the route. Just a map and the signs of the times, or in this case, on the road advertising various diners, coffee shops, motels, hotels or be it B&B’s.

Not too many years ago this was the only way to do a road trip and I have done so myself, so why on earth feel nervous?

Yes, we were kind of nervous. We, are my wife and myself if you need to know, and you probably do if you are reading this and have no clue who “we” are.

I’ve done plenty road-trips myself in the 80ties, the 90ties and also at the very beginning of the 21st century and this without GPS, Trip Advisor and Google knows everything. In the 80ties it was by luck and some preplanning and with the use of maps you could buy at filling stations or it could be by asking around. Meals was mainly either cheap sandwiches or at the “rast platze” at the German autobahns and French ditto. Or it was along the less busy roads in idyllic Spanish villages and towns, Chech republic hostinec’s or whatever the different eateries are called in various European countries. Sometimes the help was in form of a “Lonely Planet” book or any German or Danish equivalent. Somehow I always got from where I started to where I wanted to go. All that in between was just always the interesting “unknown” that made - and still makes - road trips so fascinating and enriching. Pure adventure. There has always been someone else along on these road trips friends or girlfriends and we have always shared the driving and the navigating and map counselling between us.

However, this time I was with my wife - as I said - and to tell you the truth, she does not know how to read a map. It is fine as long as the GPS or Google kicks in and tells where to go right and left and what to follow and look for, but she cannot navigate and direct me with an old fashioned map on her lab. Ok, I could read the map then? Well, I could - and would, but my wife doesn’t drive either, so there is no other way.

So why then do this at all, you might ask. Well, simply for the challenge and the excitement of it. Just for the thrill of not knowing what was next and where we would go to bed and what to expect as the next breakfast.

And so we set off in the direction of the Quebec province from Miramichi(http://www. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miramichi,NewBrunswick) in New Brunswick on a Wednesday morning. Without a map, as we thought we could get one from a filling station later when we got closer and needed it to find smaller roads and towns.

And a motel or something similar. And then walk in and ask for a room. Just like in the movies, older movies that is.

How did it go then? Well, quite good all the way up the highway and until we reached the area we targeted as the place to find nutrition and shelter. We needed a map. We stopped at a gas station and went to look for this map. But do you think they sell maps anymore at filling stations?

No.

And why should they, I mean with GPS & Google and all that, who would ask for one, ever?

So when we asked, the girl at the counter just looked at us. “You can get one in the town at the info office” she said and kind of showed the direction with her eyes and a head movement. That way.

In our car again and we drove that way the girl in the shop had indicated. Towards a city. Dalhousie it was called. We got there and drove to the centre of it. Not too much of a centre. The city wasn’t really a city, more a town and I just followed my instincts and went the way the most cars came from. Often you can find the most interesting places in unknown towns and cities doing that. Smaller towns and cities that is.

At the end of a straight road running parallel to the water we went to the left and soon found us self at the building just outside a huge camping lot. Like in many small towns there was free parking spaces just outside. Not like in Hong Kong, Quebec City or Toronto where you never can find parking or if you can, it costs the green out of your nose to park there for an hour.

Wait a minute, this just made me think why on earth did I mention this about parking and how difficult it is in cities. In fact, I hate cars in cities and damn them far far away when I see them drive around to find parking or double park or park on the pavements and what do I know.

However, when you are a driver yourself, you kinda change, don’t you.

Anyway, just so you know I normally take that approach to cars and drivers and think cars should be banned from city centres and such. Ohh, here I reach a dead end and let us continue where I lost the plot.

Plot. We’d found this car park outside the camping office which at the same time was the tourist information centre. Outside on a bench some teenagers eating ice cream.

In side the building was a tourist office with a lot of brochures and maps on the walls and small pamphlets with various information about places and venues and other kind of things to do and there was advertising for various B&B’s, Inn’s and dinners in the area. A lady in there was surrounded. Y a group of ladies eating ice cream and holding a huge dog on a leash.

We just had a look around. The ice cream ladies and the dog was more interesting than two bloody tourist looking at pamphlets and brochures. All the while we were really trying to find a map of the area to help us get in the right direction towards Quebec province and find a roof over our heads for the night.

In a magazine like brochure about the area we managed to find some sort of map, however it just showed the town we were in at the very top left of the map and we needed a bit more to the north and in to the next province. Quebec. They had no other. This had to do. Still we were not looking at our devices even they were burning on our pockets. A principe is a principe and like the saying goes: “if you snooze you loose” and we do not do that on our holidays. Snooze I mean. Mostly because we don’t need to snooze because we sleep as long as we like anyway. It’s only in the real world we loose, but there you need it to try to show who’s in charge.

To be continued...

Antique Stalls at Durbar Square in Kathmandu.

From the window at Himalayan Java coffee shop. A Nepalese equivalent to Seattle’s or rather the worlds “Starbucks.” Only this is better in a way or maybe not. It is definitely one of the more well of of Nepalese chains of coffee shops.

Meeting Thursday.

My Thursday normally begins with a meeting first thing in the morning. Later in the morning another one just before lunch and one again straight after lunch as a warm up for a forth and last meeting in the late afternoon just before going to coach two U 14 badminton teams.

Today the one meeting just after lunch was not really a meeting and I escaped to do other things, however, a totally new meeting got pushed in just to start at the same time as this Thursdays usual last meeting as a kind of “two on one” meeting solution. So the amount of meetings on a Thursday is constant even with one cancelled.

#meetingsformeetingssake  

Poor self management skills...

I'm worried that I have lost all my creativity!

Even I do not really think I have, I am afraid to have lost my self management skills or at least think they are too weak to keep me away from instant gratification in form of iPad games.

Honestly, I do play too much. All that time I use sitting on my backside parking virtual cars or scoring goals in a silly digital football game, I could have used to play my bass guitar, write stories or draw, paint or build.

Maybe I should just delete those digital distractions, and sit down to to be creative instead. It worries me I feel scared to think that thought. Then I really must be an addict.

But isn't this what it is said about sins or addictions for us humans,  the level is constant. So if one smokes, drinks and what more and stop one of the addictions, the rest just increases to keep the level the same.

I've stopped smoking 4 years ago and quitter alcohol 2 years ago and I do not get onto other women (maybe not even to my own wife) so the level of my sins or addiction is probably just on iPad games. 

Maybe that is a good thing and I shouldn't really worry too much?

Look good naked.

I have this exercise app on my phone. It is a daily five minute work out -well, if I do it everyday it is- and it should tone my body in a way so I could even get to look good naked. It is a good and tough work out and I try to do it every day.

It has become my wife's favourite app, but not (only) because it tones my body. No, mostly because I always find ways to procrastinate the exercises and often do house work instead.  

Friday 18th. of August.

And I have nothing much to say, so I'll say it. “Nothing much”.

Today would have been my mothers b -day. Would have, she isn't alive anymore.

She would have been 87 years old today. She died when she was 66.

21 years ago. I was 34 years old back then. The following year I left Denmark to go to Spain and study. I have never moved back.

How would she have been like, had she lived until now? One of those question you can never find an answer to. So why try?

Maybe because I visited one of my uncles and aunties in Denmark this summer. And they are the age my mother would have been now. Well, my uncle is one year older. And he is fine. Absolutely fine. Healthy, witty, interested and curious and has a huge growth mindset. So has his wife. She must be the age my mum would have been and she still roams around in the kitchen and make and bake and cooks and cleans, and argue with her husband and he is nagging her back. They have always been this way. I think they need it like that.

I must write to them. He gave me his email address. Imagine that. He is 88 and he has got an email.

I must do that, soon. This weekend. Okay.  

Tokyo Tales #1

Outside my window lies an urban landscape so very different from any European urban areas. At the first sight it reminds me of the Star Wars "Death Star" surface as Luke Skywalker peace over and through it in the first Star Wars movie.

I am in Tokyo in the Shinjuku district in a room in a hotel. Well, room is perhaps not the right word. Probably bedroom could do as it is simply a queen size bed with a bathroom attach. And a TV. Yes, the room I've booked is that small.

From high above the city seems so sterile and empty. Grey concrete, glass and metal structures as far the eye can see. On the surface though, when walking the streets, it is lively colourful and inspiring in this certain Japanese sense of being inspiring.

This is my 3rd time in Tokyo and even this time is only a brief stop over on the way to a rock festival in the mountains, it still leaves an impression.

Typical Japanese impression I could say, but what is that?

Is typical Japanese the way the houses are build and the way it all look like it has been randomly built, with no greater plan and concept?

Is typical Japanese the bright colours and light and noise coming from speakers and shops and the numbing number of neon signs and advertisement boards?

Or is all this what it means to be typical Japanese?

At least for me this seems to be what I recognise every time I get to Japan, either the main islands in the north or Okinawa further south.

There is a certain feel and vibe about Japan. Japan to me is a mix of new and hyper and extreme old fashion.

It is hard actually to explain this, but on street level it all seems so ultra modern and cutting edge. Extreme fashion statements and technology from all corners. When you get inside a post office or train ticket office, you suddenly feel like boosted some years back in time. There is paper folders and old fashioned computers and calculators. An a lot of paper. Piles of paper and grey cub bards. Nothing much cutting edge or 2017 like here.

3 X manipulated Centre point perspective.