Camping life and crashing cars

I'm back from this year's summer holiday trip. Since we just replaced our tiny, red, three door Citroën with a bigger, red, five door Citroën (totally coincidental, I don't as of yet feel any loyalty toward any particular car brand), using the car as transportation seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Some may say (actually: many have already said) that a change of car was about time. I don't know. True, we have three kids, true, the car had an appoinment with the shop as often as I have an appointment with my hairdresser (actually says more about how rarely I see my hairdresser than it says about the car), but it served its purpose. It took us where we needed to be, and we even managed to bring with us whatever luggage we needed. Or the size of the car made us sensible packers, I don't know.

Anywho, we packed our stuff and our kids into the new car and took it to Denmark, for one week of camping life and amusement parks. I would say it went fairly well. I don't think sleeping in a sleeping bag in a tent ever will be my preferred choice of sleeping arrangements, but for a few days it's ok. The lack of showers doesn't bother me that much, the absence of a fridge bothers me more. And I don't like eating my breakfast on the ground. (What I have mentioned here are of course stuff it is possible to do something about, but I'm not a very advanced camper, so it will have to wait for the next time around).

Denmark is a cute and flat country. I have only been to Copenhagen before, so it was nice to see the more rural parts of the country this time. And now I realize that I'm starting to sound a bit dumb and dull, so I'll leave the geography part at that. Legoland and Fårup were nice - I'm a sucker for roller coasters and other scary rides, but I realize now that 1)I have been getting a lot older or 2)It has been way too long since the last time I visited an amusement park, because a couple of the rides really freaked me out. But in a good way. I guess.

On the way back we stopped a couple of days in the southern part of the country, and then a couple of days in Stavanger, where my in-laws live. And there our lovely new car ended up looking not so lovely anymore. On my way out of a roundabout, a crazy German youngster in a rental car came rushing from the right, and there was no way I could avoid hitting him. ( I say "crazy" - he seemed pretty normal. I say "youngster", but when he first stepped out of the car I ballparked him to be in his late thirties, at least older than me. He turned out to be born in 1985. 1985!) So, there we go, our new car is a wreck (not technically, I guess, but in my mind it is). I kind of miss the old one. Yes, it was small, but at least it looked good.

Summer misc.

Summer holidays are here, hence my absence from the blog sphere. It is well established that it is when being at your most busy you are most likely to find time to activities like blogging, which is, lets face it, an example of a somewhat superfluous activity. Only natural, then, that with more than one week of days filled with nothingness, blogging is not even within thinking distance.

So far I have been camping with family and slept two nights in tent, and I've spent one week in the house where I lived in my childhood days (and my adolescence days, for that matter). Both accompanied with extremely good weather, which made my summer holidays hitherto a success.

I've had a project going the week I spent in my hometown. See, I got myself a new cell phone, a Sony Ericsson with a step counter on it. Yes, I guess I did know that my activity level these last few years has not reached the desired level, but little did I know that having a step counter would be such a slap in the face. You are supposed to walk about 10 000 steps each day. My average number of steps has been something like 5000. So, to make up for this, I decided to reach 15 000 steps every day for this one week. Did I manage? Yes I did. Did I do this fair and square? Well, you be the judge of that.

I have (with mild force from my husband) been doing a lot of walking this week. But I have also discovered a lot of other ways to collect steps. Badminton is one. It is amazing how many steps an hour or so of intense badminton playing will give you. So far, so good, you can hardly call this cheating. But after a few days, and with other activities seeming somewhat more appealing than walking, I became worried that my project would end up a failure. Desperate means call for desperate measures, so when I felt that I was more in need of, say, sleep than walk, I started sending my cell phone with other family members when they were out walking. And when I was really desperate, I simply placed the cell phone on the phone holder in the car when driving, as I had discovered that this really got the steps running. So, my project was a great success, and with my newfound knowledge, I think I will even manage to keep my number of steps where they should be, namely around 10 000.

A few days in Bergen now, before I am heading for Turkey. Danish foreign ministry warns against traveling to Turkey because of recent terrorist attacks in Istanbul. I am more worried about the heat.