Some assorted pics from this week’s excursions. The black vanilla orchid is work in progress, I still haven’t found a good way of shooting them. It doesn’t help that I only found seven individuals, out of which some were still barely more than buds. So I will need to visit the location again, hopefully find more of them and figure out how to present them in the best way.
I also did one memorable cycling trip, no pictures from it though. But as far cycling goes, it was as epic as I’ve ever done! The route I wanted to do follows the Nordic Ski trail along the west side of Ljusnan. You can follow a road for a bit, then there’s a stretch of 1km on the Nordic Ski trail until you reach another road that leads you to Flon in Bruksvallarna. I attempted this in June but it was too wet and I only had my hybrid bike which isn’t very good in rough terrain. But now with an MTB and later in the summer, it should be easy, right? So easy that I didn’t even bother to take mosquito repellent because surely that 1km roadless stretch will be easy. Right… what I hadn’t quite counted on was that almost all of that 1km would be mire. Wet mire. Uncyclable mire. And that there would be millions of mosquitoes (that should’ve been a no-brainer but normally when you ride a bike, mozzies are not a problem!). So I had no option but to drag my bike through the mud and uncharacteristically be so optimistic about this mire ending soon that I didn’t even consider turning back. And by the time I might have considered it, I was past the point of no return anyway. Then I started getting doubtful about that next road, I felt that I had gone far enough but there was no road in sight. I had to stop and suffer even more mosquitoes to check the map and sure enough, I had come far enough for the road… except that I had been going parallel with it for a few hundred meters and now the road was about 100m on my left. Not such a long distance, you might think, but there were some complications: 1) It was all uphill. 2) It was forest. 3) It was a rocky forest. 4) When it wasn’t rocky, it was covered in juniper bushes and the bike was constantly stuck in them. 5) The mosquitoes loved the forest even more than the open mire. 6) When I finally got to the road, there was a threshold of a kind about 1m high, nearly vertical. 7) I have poor upper body strength.
I think I very nearly had a panic attack in the forest and by the time I reached the road, I barely had any strength left in my arms. Of all the stupid things I’ve ever done, this must rank among the stupidest. Not crazy stupid, not dangerous stupid, just plain stupid. The mosquito bites have still not stopped itching!
