Kin-Newfie: Loch Ness Monster, More SIV, Snakes, Volley ball, ski jumping, tents

Nurhan's take:

Could this be an answer for the Loch Ness Monster? Bit of bluring... low light conditions?

This last week should have been the beach volley ball in Stavanger:

This was a great week in Stavanger. We've had the volley ball for ~eight years (incidentally, I'm told that if you look really closely, you can see a ball in this picture... yet to spot it...). The whole of the harbour area was converted into volley ball courts with all the sand shipped in (to start off we had this one week and then they moved the sand around the corner and had beach football). Sadly this is no more...

Although some smart person came up with this fantastic idea:

Complete with bubble machine at landing to break the surface tension, so it didn't matter how you landed.

Now Kin hasn't been good in crowd situations before, so this was a perfect opportunity to expose him to crowds and folk wanting to meet him, and he did very well, lots of folk stopped him to get a picture with him and he was fine :-) Although whilst I was watching this he did climb up on the bench next to me and gave the man sitting next to him a friendly lick, which I only discovered as he had a bit of an adverse reaction to this traditional Newfoundland greeting. Still there were so many folk around laughing he did see the funny side of it (and you get very used to appologising for Newfoundland dogs if you live with one!).

Got a whole heap of new pics of the SIV kurs from Pawel and Mel. Here you can see Kin going around checking on all the pilots before we head for the start.

Kin watching me as I head off to go and do stuff I don't really want to do, so have the condemned man look about me.

Kin resigned to a long wait.

One of the best pics of me flying, which is ironic as I really wanted to be on the ground on this flight. Very strange conditions at take off, and with paragliders we don't have huge safety margins... therefore if the air is being funny (and we know about it) we don't fly.

At landing which was in between the tents :-) Here Frode is giving feedback on SIV exercises. Note the life jacket that I'm wearing SIV courses are done over the water as if you do get into trouble you have less chance of being injured if you land in water than on the land (we have a rescue boat in the water as well, which one pilot made use of, and I have on a previous course).

Stavanger Aftenblad seems to like having pictures of three family generations, does this count, Mum, Kin, and I?!

Not really sure what's going on here but it's a good pic and one of the few that has both Kin & I in it.

Mel had kindly offered to drive the buss up to the take off for us, she also kept an eye on Kin, and unbeknownst to me, took the little chap for a walk, whilst we were up top engaged in the age old art of para-venting (para-waiting for conditions to improve so we can fly... even if you didn't take a dip in the sea, you got very wet this weekend!)

Now Mel has known Kin from when he was a puppy, and she's Canadian, but she still made an elemental error when close to water with a Newfie, and I have no idea how she didn't let go of the lead when he did what comes so naturally for a Newfie and ran in the water, bearing in mind that Kin has quite a few kilos on Mel... good effort Mel.

Main time that I Newfie is really 'dangerous'...

He had to have a run in the snow on the way home (and on the way to the SIV kurs). Although he was a bit tired and had to be helped up into the car.

Thanks to Pawel and Mel for the above sequences of pics.

He was pretty tired, here he is sleeping after opening my bedroom door, he's sleeping with his head on the door sill as then he has full control of what's going on.

Top of the stairs is another Favorite, where he has 'full' control...

Here he is behind the car waiting for the trip that he knows will come when we finish flying.

Unlike when he's walking. I'm beginning to think that he's got some kind of internal radar, as I've noticed that I've never seen him stand on a slug... One walk we were on he stepped right over an Adder (poisonous snake), I don't think he noticed it, BUT he stepped over it, not on it (have snake venom in glove compartment of car, problem would be to get him back to the car). Didn't manage to get a pic of it, but it hissed at me. I've met a big one while climbing before and he was on the ledge I wanted to get onto... this one was maybe 300 mm long and about 10 mm wide, but you should have seen the speed with which it moved off the path and disappeared into the undergrowth. On the same walk he stepped over a toad, and I don't think he noticed this one either!

Think this pic is from 2005. This is Karma, with his head in the tent, while we are on a trip up into the mountains. At this time I had two tents, this small, light weight one hoop tent which is excellent, and a South Col of Everest (this is not an exaggeration) 3 man dome tent. One wild night on the island of Skye, in a climbers campsite, when we went to bed there were about 30 tents in the morning there were two that survived the night, both Terra Novas (a North Face Expedition tent had the poles broken in the early morning by some of the more savage gusts). Couldn't find a TN tent but the dome tent I have is the same design as (Father Stomping Ted) Kennedy's Terra Nova Hilton (came from Mountain Equipment Co-Op in Canada) - great tent, as is the above Coleman's tent, which was cheap and is fantastic, based on the good experience I've had with that tent, and the experience from the SIV kurs, I had a brainwave (okay, sometimes I can be quite slow), why not find a tent that Kin can sleep in as well... A search for Coleman tents led me to:

http://solvkroken.no/

Norwegian supplier of Coleman's products (incidentally Coleman's many years ago used to be the importers of Hobie Cats to Europe - and I sailed Hobies at the time).

This tent isn't sold as such, but it's a two man (or preferably one man, one woman), and one dog tent - and Kin can sleep inside :-) Ideal for car camping.

Now you can't get a Gortex jacket for 2000 NOK, but you can get this tent!

And the service from the above website was excellent, tent was at the post office within two days of ordering it.

Here we are trying it in the garden, rather than in the dark, rain, wind,... which is the more normal way that folk learn how to erect their tents and find out what's missing (in this case nothing).