It’s the national day in Sweden today, which pretty much only means that it’s a day off. I have been working some late nights in the recent weeks and felt that I could use more time off than just one day, so I took out Wednesday and Friday as well and now I’m enjoying a very long weekend in the cabin. The idea was that I could paint the one remaining wall of the cabin so I could finally have it done with, but as it turns out… it won’t get done. I had not counted on my neighbours not being at home, which is a problem in that I need to borrow the spray canister so I can spray the iron sulphate. It is also possible to use a conventional brush for it, but since I’ve done the other three walls by spraying, I’m not sure how different it will be from spraying. And with this last wall being the front wall, I don’t really want to experiment. I’m so sick of this… I’ve invested way too much money on the cabin already, but I absolutely loathe the idea of waiting until July and my summer vacation so I can finish the job which I don’t like doing in the first place. So I’m more than willing to pay someone for doing this for me! Anyone?

Anyway, with this paint job out the window, my mini-vacation is just that. Vacation. I took my mountain bike and rode to Kappruskaftet, which is one of my favourite places in Messlingen. There are some old tracks going across the plateau so I knew that it would be easy to bike up there, so I took the trouble of dragging the bike up the badly eroded serpentine dirt road that leads to the plateau. It was really hard work, and so was cycling through the patches of wet land that the trail went through. Difficult to wear the right clothes… sweating buckets when the sun was out and the going was tough, and then ice cold when the sun went behind a cloud and I was standing still with the camera. The air as such was a little bit on the cool side (9 degrees when I came back).

There was one picture in particular that I wanted to take, and it’s a picture like the one I took last September except now with bright greens. I walked around for a while but couldn’t find exactly the same spot, and just when I found something else that worked, the sun disappeared. There was a small cloud, followed by a big cloud, with a small gap in between so I figured that I should be able to get my picture during that gap. Unless of course the clouds would morph and merge, in which case I might as well give up. And it was the worst case scenario… the clouds were merging together, and there was a break of only a few seconds when the sun peeked out. It wasn’t as good as full light, but better than nothing. After that, I pedalled back home, I figured that I wouldn’t get any more light anyway. And I was right, actually.

I was dead tired when I came back. I have never hated the big hill leading up to the cabin area as much as I hated it last night, it took a lot of sisu to make it up. The trip was about 22 km, containing a total climb of at least 250 m, and some soft terrain for heavy biking. I must’ve burned… dunno, up to 1000 calories? My energy intake during the trip was… hmm, how much calories in an apple? No wonder I was so spent afterwards. I always make this same mistake, I totally underestimate how hard these trips are so even if I eat before leaving, it’s nowhere near enough to keep me going for hours. And then I don’t have enough food or even energy bars to refill my muscles. Why is it such a difficult concept for me?!