New Year, fireworks, moment of change: Nurhan's Take:

Nurhan's take:

New Years Eve, and like many folk I'd take Kin & Zorro, to Bråstein to get them to un around and be tired for an evening that's normally filled with many bangs. In the car to and from Bråstein, I'd worn ear plugs and played firework noises obnoxiously loud from the car's stereo system. The above picture shows Kin & Zorro, after returning from Bråstein and having eaten. This was shortly before we all went to Ingunn's (Zorro's owner) for New Year's Eve celebrations.


{As an aside, I asked the pet shop how many 15 kgs sacks of dog food I bought for him in 2011, he's eaten 16 sacks!}.


The day before managed to sneak off and went skiing in a new area for us:

Steep soft snow up from the road, we should have used skins, but by the time we came to this conclusion the terrain was not conducive to stopping and putting them on (pic show's Svein).

Some difficulties in finding the best route through the terrain put us on a summit just after 'cut off time' (time when we need to head back to the car or risk having to ski down by head torch). Shortly after leaving the summit, I had my only real fall of the day; light had gone flat (i.e. with cloud cover it's no longer possible to pick out terrain features, dips and rises). We were skiing down the summit face which we'd just come up, and I didn't notice a small rise/bump, my skis did, inertia took over and my downhill progress was rapidly stopped by my face in the soft snow (obligatory ski tracks finished, followed by a gap and then a rather large dent in the white stuff!). Svein followed the normal procedure for having observed such an incident - laugh, when able to speak again through the tears of laughter, ask if I am okay, and then knowing where the bump is, ski around it!


We found a place out of the wind, and with a couple of minutes with a shovel and a bivvy shelter, stopped for a welcome bite to eat out of the wind, on our own tailor made 'sofa' complete with foot rest, tea holder, and back rest.


It's interesting how age changes us. Ten years ago, I would have skied with just a light (normally a HH Lifa) thermal, and a wind layer on top, today was big hat, wool thermal (Helly Hansan Warm), fleece, & a wind layer.

The route we found down was considerably better than the route that we found up, 3/5 ths of it like in the above picture with Svein, was on beautiful snow, with all the rocks covered, which left you free to ski as you wanted and link turns, then we hit a scree field where the snow wasn't uniform, and to ski quickly here was to risk broken bones, followed by another good section down onto the flat. Interesting area definitely worth another look now that we have a better idea of the lay of the land. - Norwegian maps generally have the contour lines separated by a vertical distance of 20 m, a vertical drop of up to 19 m can really spoil your day and these are not shown on the map, this area was quite craggy, in poor light conditions, it made for very careful and sometimes slow skiing.


Irritatingly I managed to twist my ankle the next day taking Kin (and Zorro) out at Bråstein, so now I have one painful ankle that's shaved and taped; and hopefully will be pain free by the weekend.


Initially it seemed like the firework phobia prevention had been a complete success. Come ten to midnight we ventured out to watch the fireworks and I took Kin with us, and initially he was fine. Often with animals (and people) something subtly changes and the change is noticeable (even if the cause isn't), and then it's just a case of waiting for the dust to clear and seeing the 'new lay of the land', that you are no longer able to influence. On this occasion there was no doubt as to what changed his composure, despite Stavanger sentrum being a, private firework free zone, some twat let off a banger practically right next to Kin. It made me jump, Kin's reaction was more pronounced. Situation should be salvageable, if you show no worry/reaction, so I took him for the walk back to the house without trying to calm him down at all. I now wish that I'd left him in the house with Zorro. When back at the house he seemed fine (as did Zorro who'd been in the house the whole time).

Now Jan (who often takes Kin out whilst I'm working/away), has a party at his house on New Year's Eve for which he generally cooks a turkey. The left over used to go in his dog, Tony, then when Tony was 'chasing clouds', Karma got the left overs, and here's Kin very happy about keeping this tradition going.


Shortly after the above picture was taken, Kin went out to sleep in the garden, there was a loud bang (someone close by setting off fireworks). I opened the door and he came charging in (I'm tempted to say, "as though someone let a firework off, under his arse",  but sadly that's a little bit too close to the truth) and hasn't gone out in the garden since. I'm still waiting to see the 'lay of the land' after the New Year's Shift...