Cycling

Last year, we got quite into cycling — I guess we’re at that age where tour-cycling is considered fun and good exercise. We used our basic bicycles (mine doesn’t even have multiple gears!) but we managed to go 30km in a single day. We also considered the possibility of getting e-bikes so we could range further, but we thought we could just rent ’em if there was a part of the country we’d like to explore on bicycle.

But then in June, when we were on vacation in Denmark, we got infected with COVID-19 and that was basically the end of it.

This year, as the weather got better, our thoughts turned to cycling once again. But going 30km seemed like a large hurdle — maybe an e-bike would help there after all? But e-bikes are expensive, and could we justify spending that kind of money on it? And we would need to get a special bicycle rack if we wanted to take them anywhere — ebikes are heavy and our Prius doesn’t have a trailer hitch to put a rack on…

So the idea was to get a foldable e-bike. After a thorough search, our choice was the Urbanbiker Mini, a Spanish model that is street-legal in the EU. I ordered one, it came in, we tried it out, and then I ordered a second one. It has the right kind of range, and we cared a lot about having 20″ wheels and hydraulic brakes. And the price was really good as well.

We can chuck these in the car and just go somewhere. In fact, with a bit of wriggling we can put them on the backseat, leaving the trunk for other luggage. So we can (and have!) take them on holiday.

With the normal road bikes, we have to start and finish at home, limiting our range — and we’ve seen most of the nice paths and routes near home already. It’s kinda dull to have to go through a part of the route that you have done 20+ times already before you get to somewhere new. Last Sunday, we put the bicycles in the car, drove 12km and did a tour of 30km from there — it’s expanded our range tremendously.

We usually ride with only minimal support, just to overcome the size difference of the tires with a normal bike. We don’t have to zoom around at 20km/h! And this also means that we do some actual cycling, not just perfunctory rotating the pedals to activate the motor.

We’re very happy with these — and it allows us to get some exercise in again, which is also good.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Denmark 2023

We hadn’t really made any plans for our summer, and when we checked with my sister the verdict was that they were happy to host us again in their summer house. We had to delay our trip by two weeks because there was no place in the kitty hotel, but that was not a big problem for us.

We went by car again, and once again across the great belt bridge. It’s a longer drive (especially with all the road works going on in Germany, and especially around Hamburg!) but the toll is significantly cheaper than the Puttgarden-Rodby ferry. And we like that you don’t need to be at a certain place at a certain time, or just take your luck with how busy the ferry is.

It was great to see the family again, we don’t get to see them that often. Though we stayed at the summer house for the most time, so we did not intrude on their domestic life that much. That’s also where my sister has her glass workshop, so we also got some good ‘glassing’ in!

You can make shapes in glass by putting the glass in a ceramic mold, and as it melts it will take that shape. Turns out my sister had a mold for buttons! She was not that interested in it, but we were! So we made this batch of eight buttons, made of scraps of glass in different colours.

I made a set of seven glass poppies. The technique is a lot of fun: discs of transparent glass, and then mixing water with coloured glass powder to create a ‘slurry’. I used a red base with a dot of yellow on top, and because it’s a bit runny, the colours blend a bit, which gives exactly the right effect! Some black glass grit provides the black specks, and as it all melts together you get this result! I glued iron wire to the backs so the poppies can be stuck into the ground.

I made a glass portrait of the cat of a friend. We mostly exchange kitty pics, so I had quite a few good shots of her cat. And indeed, when I sent her this photo, she immediately recognised her cat in it! This is going to make its way to her.

I didn’t try to make a portrait like this from Mikan or Yuzu, because you just can’t get that tortoiseshell exactly right — I guess you could do a black, white and orange slurry, and that would result in a tortoiseshell cat, but would not afford the kind of precise control you’d need to get it exactly right for a specific tortoiseshell cat…

Klik made these panels to go into a LED-powered lantern. A nice mix of techniques and colours.

We had bought metal holders that originally held discs of (ugly) glass at a furniture store. We discarded the original discs, because we wanted to make a disc of our own to go into it! This is a bit of abstract art, which I called “Eclipse of the midnight sun”.

This is easily the most impressive piece, made by Klik. It took two tries to get the dish correctly shaped, and the result is spectacular!

We also met up with a former colleague, one of the two that live in Denmark that I still play RPGs with! We had a really nice evening at the sea-side, eating and chatting. That evening was actually our 20th wedding anniversary, and to mark the occasion we went out for dinner with my sister and her husband, to a Japanese teishoku restaurant where we had been before. The food was (again) great and we had a nice time.

The next day we walked around Copenhagen city centre, and at the end of the afternoon I had an event from ProductTank, a world-wide network of product management meetups. I had been there before with a colleague, back when I still worked for the company with the Copenhagen office I regularly visited. So I contacted him, and we met up at this meetup. The meetup was interesting, and afterwards we went out for a beer and a good chat — I had not spoken to him in three years, so we had to catch up for a bit.

It was a great vacation, though with all of the glass work it was maybe not as restful as it could have been — but we have some beautiful glass pieces in return!

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.