Sportfack days are to an end and now i’m off to Åre again

Today i did my last day at Sportfack. 3 months as editor for the Swedish sports trade magazine, www.sportfack.se. Working with Martin, Pelle and Linnea has been a pure pleasure, and by the sounds of it they enjoyed my company and effort. If Sportfack would have had their office close to a mountain i would have fought hard to keep the job…

But it was for 3 months and i have done it fullon. No slacking. I’m happy of what i have produced and what i have learnt from the “pros”.

I You feel blue, go for a ben and jerrys…

Linnea has been a shoulder to lean on in times of language problems. We’ve had loads of fun the last months. Pelle has been abit upset lately since they are stealing his Mac… and replacing it with a PC. So it’s understandable. 

Martin Willnersis a guru. Thank’s for all the good schooling. I think my writing has grown thank’s to Martin taking his time to sort me out…

The Sportfack Crew rules!

Some pics from my iphone that was fun…

 A beer called Dead guy ale…

Great to get deaddrunk on…

Pelle took me and Martin and our old friend John to a trendy restaurant on the South. Good friends, good beer, good food and good fun. No complains. 

 John only answered the workphone 3-4 times in an evening with the boys. I think he did good…

 at least he took some time for this sweetie…

I have lived like a royal, and here’s a few from my “hood”…

That’s all from Stockholm. Over and out

Skateboarding to the memory of Oskar

Today it was the Oskar pipesession tribute in Åre and i did not make it there. I decided that i’d go skateboard at frysen and remember my friend Oskar.

Above Macki is flying high in Stockholm skatepark.

It was to be a fun and happy session together with Olov Rickardsson from Undersåker. 

I had a photo sesson in the vertramp, and thank’s to good skating i got some nice pics…

Oh yeah, i skated alot in the little lovely pool. And some in the miniramp and a couple of runs in the gigantic vertramp. The vert boys have my full respect. 

I did a realy nice laybackgrind in the miniramp, soo i thought i’d give it a go in the pool. I mean how hard can it be?

For nonskaters: Laybackgrind is an oldschool trick where U go up the transition and grind the edge with your back towards the pool and then put your back hand on the edge and turn back into the pool. Supercool trick.

Well as you can see in the picture below i did not quite make it..;-). Poolcoping is different. I will try more next time…

 Very unstylish, but atleast i tried…

Lots to do but here’s some news from my last weeks

I have had lots to do and when i had little to do i needed to sleep…

Last weekend i attended the Wilderness and flyfishing trade show in Stockholm. Saturday and lots of people there. Good fun and lots of thing i wanted to buy. But i was there working for Sportfack. So all work no fun? Wrong. I had a great time meeting distributors and friends, some both. 

The Freeflying association was represented.

Sauna is a big thing for Finns. My girlfriend is Finnish. So sauna is a big thing for me as well. I realy like sauna, always have and these mobile and floating ones rock!

Flyfishing was a big part of the show. Flyfishing tools are sooo cool. I found alot of reels and rods i could have bought. Just because they looked sweet. I stopped myself and settled for some pics insted. Beautiful gear.

Kayaking was the other big part, mainly ocean and flat water but also some whitewater kayaking gear. I ended up buying a pfd and a paddle… :-). Already have the rest so now i’m set for springtime waters…

Last but not least there was alot of gourmet food. And the gear needed to fix it with. Check www.handpresso.se. Realy perfect espresso anywhere. Sweet!!!

Then this weekend came along and i felt a big surge for flying. So i spent a day on a 70 meters high garbage dump with turbulent winds. Even though 2 pilot flew for 5 minutes at the time i did not fly. Gut feeling told me to stay on the ground. I might have been wrong. But i felt ok anyway. Sometime it was up to 10-12 m/s and when it settled in it was still 0-7 m/s… So i chickened out.

On sunday it was to be towing on Barkaby flyfield. And winds were nice and weak so we went there. It was nice to finaly get to fly there after 3 months in Stockholm. It’s actually scenic to fly over Stockholm. But today the roof was at 300 meters so not much airtime… Though i got to do a SAT and a reversal. I was very happy for some freestyle flying. Big smile. After that i tried helping out and taking some pics.

Later we went for a Cirrus reserve repacking session and i packed 3 reserves in an hour with the help of Tor, Rickard and Johan. After that i was tired again. Long day and no food… Pizza was had in Sicklas finest.

Stubai, sleddrace and paragliding

A weekend in Austria, In Stubai to be more exact. Started my weekend with beerdrinking in a womens prison. Ex prison… Later that evening we tried the Kölsh bier at the pensionat were i stayed. Sleept like a baby that night.

And on saturday i was introduced to alpine pleasure, walking 400 altitude meters and then drinking snaps to be followed by a sled race down again… Great fun and a perfect activity during a windy grey day. After a 10 minutes powernap and a shower we went to Innsbruck for some traditional Austrian food.

Wiessbeer and a piece of good meat with sauterned onion and potatos. Good food. I cant remember the name of the dish. I then got a Åre choclate strut out of my bag of tricks and dessert was had, even for Herr Ober. He too liked cloudberry truffel.

Sunday was bluebird and flyable. So after a long easy breakfast i got picked up by Richi and we went up on the Schlick lifts to do some flying. And takeoff was a nicelely snowclad southside with a view over the stubaivalley over to Stubaigletscher in the west and all the way down to Innsbruck. Breathtaking for a “cityboy” like me. I realy need mountains. Makes me happy.

Snowboarding comes to my mind on the way up for a second flight, the terrain is perfect. And there’s still lots of snow. And the sun is shining.

We took off together and i was in the way of Richi right away as he was about to thermal!!! I though he was joking. But we stayed up awhile. Big smile on me. Then out over the valley some some cruisin and play. Big smile on me. Life is very good.

the Cobra as seen from the harness mentioned below.

I have a new favorit harness for walk and fly, traveling and normal flying around for fun. Airwave GT Light. Check it out. Just what i need, reversable and enough room for a normal glider, even an XL still not bulky. Sweet.

After a landing over at the Airwave office, Richi drove me down to Innsbruck airport. It was a very sunny and beautiful day, and i told Richi that it felt utterly stupid to leave Stubai… He laughed.

I got an hour of chilltime on the roof of a parkinghouse next to the airport. Warm sunrays made me happy and i felt charged for a new week working at Sportfack, Stockholm.

To get the most out of my miniholiday i had Bratwurst and sauerkraut for late lunch. Great food!

Big thank’s to the Villingers for a great weekend. I’ll be back…

A weekend of fun and play in Stockholm city

Slacklining friday afternoon at work started of good, then i slipped of and bang my crappy knee was back in pain. I got last place in the Sportfack olympics… I will be the laughing stock for a long time to come. And i’ll be limping…

Fred and Jonna on the posh side of Stockholm. In times of recession i get to live in a big place if only for a weekend. Still fun and intressting. I could never live like that…

However me and Jonna had a great weekend. But, saturday promised northerly winds and i knew all to well that it meant flying at Ormberget(means Snakemountain)in central Stockholm. I had to fly there!

Jonna is a understanding woman. Thank’s for putting up with me.

Going on the tube for paragliding is a different feeling.

I flew but only toptobottoms. Fun was had, trees were landed in, not by me!

Johan watch out for the treeeeee…

Oh well there’s a bunch of good tree climbers in Fenix. I wonder why?

I fly my orangegreen Octane FLX and in weak conditions i go down…

Then dark clouds came in fast, it started snowing and i packed up but some enthusiastic pilots continued…

And after returning my kit to appartment we went to Piazza Italia for a superb diner.

The lovely italien ladies that run the place speak italian even if U understand or not. Sweet!

This is my first blogg from my new Macbook…:-)