On our first walk around Copenhagen we went through the aforementioned Assistens Kirkegård cemetery where Niels Bohr and Hans Christian Andersen are laid to rest. This place is incredible. It has atmosphere and then some. There is a rich flavor to the entire cemetery. The greens are lush, the trees old, and the varieties endless.

Around one corner you may find a couple having a picnic. Around another you may find curious tombstones in a unique setup. Some gravestones have runes on them as well. I’m not sure if they are Viking, Anglo-Saxon, or, more likely, Younger Futhark or Rok.

The only thing that disappointed was the graffiti. Niels Bohr’s tombstone is a mess on the backside (not pictured). You can see what Hans Christian Andersen’s currently looks like below.

The graffiti relates to The People’s House Copenhagen located at Jagtvej 69. I don’t know all the details but apparently the government sold the building, and the new owners are going to demolish it against the wishes of many people.

This is the front of Niels Bohr’s gravestone. The graffiti on the backside contains several English curse words. I have no idea why.

Posted on June 30th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: cemetery, copenhagen, Denmark, famous danes, graffiti, hans christian andersen, kobenhavn, living in copenhagen, norrebro, pictures. Comments: 1

At long last we arrived in Denmark on Thursday morning. We arrived but some of our luggage wasn’t so lucky. I believe this is the fourth time in my life that some, or all, of my luggage has been lost or delayed. Losing luggage seems like something that shouldn’t happen to a person more than once in their life.

The letter I received from the university said that someone would meet us outside of customs. No one was there. When I called my contact person they said the person was inside the baggage claim area, and I had missed them. Great! How does one go backwards through customs?? It turns out in Copenhagen you can.

Customs in Copenhagen, I should mention, are the easiest customs I’ve ever been through. You just follow the sign that says you have nothing to declare and walk out the door. There wasn’t a single person there to look through your luggage, and the passport stamp didn’t involve a single question. I’ve been interrogated in our friendly neighbor Canada more than once. In Mexico you push a button and about one in three people who get a light when they push have their luggage gone through. Copenhagen was a welcome change.

At our apartment we learned another lesson. The 2^nd floor in Denmark is what we would normally call the 3^rd floor. So when our apartment key envelope said “2^nd floor” we went up one flight of stairs and tried the doors. Our key didn’t work. Luckily the occupants weren’t in or we would have looked like robbers. After much stress (we were jet lagged and very tired which didn’t help), we tried more doors in the building, eventually finding ours on the 3^rd floor.

I feel asleep immediately as did the rest of the family. Somehow my wife woke up after a few hours at about noon (3 a.m. by my body’s clock) and woke the rest of us up so we would sleep that night. I felt like the walking dead for a half hour or so.

I snapped a few pictures from the inside of our apartment, as well as a couple of what we can see outside our windows like the local church–Sankt Markus, before we went out exploring for the first time.

Posted on June 29th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: frederiksberg, living in copenhagen, pictures, Travel. Comments Off on Arrival in Copenhagen

Just a quick entry today as we are off for Europe. In fact, we are probably in the air as this blog post gets added.

The Chicago Cubs currently have the best record in baseball (even though they’ve been pretty bad on the road). Who knows how long that will last? I figure I’ll capture their current glory with a picture I took at Wrigley Field last summer.

I was actually trying to get a picture of the batter (Moises Alou) as he was on my fantasy baseball team at the time. A guy stood up in front of me so I refocused on the bleachers. Two seconds later Alou deposits a home run ball into the area I was photographing. The Cubs did go on to win the game though. 

You can have some fun with this picture. Get a friend and play a version of “Where’s Waldo?” Can you spot the guy who appears to be waving at me? Can you see the ball? Can you find the lone Mets fan?

I have some other pictures (and video) from this day that I’ll share in a later entry. Skål!

Posted on June 24th, 2008 under Other. Tags: baseball, Chicago, pictures. Comments Off on Cubs win!

Yesterday we met up with friends at Lake Siskiyou in California near the town of Mt. Shasta. We got rained on in the car on the way down I-5 and could barely see Mt. Shasta so things weren’t looking good. Once we got there the rain resumed. However, after an hour or so the weather cleared and we headed to the beach.

The day turned into a great one as the skies cleared and the beach was nearly empty. The remaining clouds danced around Mt. Shasta for our viewing pleasure.

I attempted to take the same picture four times using four different settings (vivid green, vivid blue, vivid red, and sepia). The first three all look identical to my eyes. The sepia one came out kind of nice looking though.

We rented paddle boats and the kids went exploring.

Last, but not least, is a vertical shot (which probably looks better in a vertical blog than the others). They all look best if you click on them after maximizing your browser window.

Posted on June 22nd, 2008 under Other. Tags: california, clouds, mt. shasta, nature, pictures. Comments: 2

I just got back from my third ride in under a week in the Siskiyous. It’s been 5+ years since I’ve ridden up there three times in a single week. I didn’t have my camera on any of the occasions though. However, I need to test out my laptop (and the photo editing software on it) before our trip to make sure that I can post decent pictures on this blog while we are on the road. So, to that end, I’m going to share some old photos from the laptop of mountain biking in Utah with you.

Two summers ago I was at a family reunion at Aspen Grove Family Camp near Sundance Resort. I brought my mountain bike with me. One day I road down to Sundance and then road up, around, and down some of the single track trails on the mountain. I don’t remember all of the names but some were Archie’s Loop, Scott’s Pond Loop, and Black Forest Loop. There were some crazy downhill parts called something like Rock & Roll and Bonecrusher.

I had so much fun the first day that I went back again on Sunday. It may just have been because it was a Sunday in Utah or something, but I rarely saw anyone else. On the second day I purchased a lift pass which allowed for more downhill riding since you could take the ski lift up. (I know, pretty wimpy, but once you’ve climbed a mountain once the thrill and glory is gone and subsequent climbings are just a lot of hard work. I did climb it once without the lift!)

This was the lift as I waited for it to open.

Seldom do you get to see this shot. People usually don’t take pictures mountain biking, myself included, since you don’t want to be hauling the weight of a camera around or risk breaking a camera in a fall. Those pictures you do see are usually of people on bikes on a trail taken by a non-rider. This is a picture while riding with no hands that gives you a good feel for the actual view of the mountain bike rider. I thought it was pretty cool, but as the photographer I’m biased. 😉

A self portrait among the Aspen trees… Some of the scenery was spectacular. What made it even better was the complete lack of people.

Not having spoken with anyone beforehand I didn’t know what to expect once I got up the trail. I was pleasantly surprised to find a pond near the top.

If you look closely at the above picture (lower right portion of the photo) you can see that the single track isn’t always great on Sundance. Sometimes it is pretty rocky and in this case it is also pretty dangerous; if you were to take a spill here you may end up going over a cliff of sorts.

Every view was amazing, not the least of which was this backside of Mt. Timpanogos in the Wasatch Mountain Range.

Posted on June 19th, 2008 under Other. Tags: bikes, mountain biking, pictures, utah. Comments Off on Mountain biking on Sundance