Category Archives: Travel

Including places I never expected to see.

Nightscape Odyssey Goes to Press!

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By the miracles of modern technology (a technology I contributed to!), it is possible to self-publish a book without a minimum printing run of thousands or more.  I recently took advantage of one of these services to make a limited edition of my collection of stories and essays, Nightscape Odyssey, posted previously on this site. 

It was tricky to get the layout just right; it took two proofs, but I’m happy with the result and the experience was satisfying, especially taking delivery of the final copies.  Even more satisfying was giving them away as gifts. 

If you didn’t get one, it was because you probably aren’t one of my nephews or nieces, whom I felt should have some artifact of their odd uncle’s interests, and stories about what road trips were like way back when.   Don’t worry though, if you really want a copy of this book, the same company that published them for me can make one for you!  You’ll have to pay the going rate however, and you may find it more than you want to shell out for just another coffee table book. (https://www.blurb.com/b/10435240-nightscape-odyssey)

But if you don’t insist on an actual physical hard-cover book, Nightscape Odyssey can be had for free!  A pdf version is available for download (20MB).  I hope you enjoy it!

Watching for Perseids

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Extracted from a frame in the timelapse series showing a Perseid meteor streaking along the path of the Milky Way toward the current position of Jupiter.

Every year in August the Earth passes through a comet debris field, and when a grain of comet dust falls through the atmosphere it heats up and vaporizes, showing as a streak of light and sometimes leaving a glowing trail.   We enjoy seeing them as “falling stars”. 

This year, as part of our Covid-coping strategy, we were on a two-day camping trip to a state park during the meteor shower.  It was a fortuitous coincidence, unexpectedly accompanied by clear weather.  I set up some cameras hoping to capture the meteors, but they were elusive.  As a consolation, I assembled the frames into a timelapse and although only a few frames caught meteors, they did capture some of the other beautiful elements of the night sky.

The brightest star is actually planet Jupiter, and it has a bright companion to the left, Saturn.  The Milky Way is visible as it moves slowly across the sky with them.  Some of the bright spots move more rapidly.  The steady ones are satellites, the others are airplanes.  Mid- and high level clouds form, move, and evaporate over the duration of the timelapse (3-1/2 hours).

A meteor itself is a momentary flash, leaving a faint streak on the image frame.  A sharp-eyed observer may find some in the video, but it only shows as one frame among the 30 per second.  One such frame has been extracted, showing a meteor strike seemingly aimed at Jupiter.

I have accidentally enjoyed the Perseids throughout my life, as I have often been on camping and backpacking trips in August.  The night sky is awe-inspiring in any dark sky site and it is all the more so when accented by the long bright streamers created as we travel through comet dust.

Swedish Candelabras – Finis

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It is considered good practice to finish up the old projects before embarking on new ones, but that doesn’t seem to be my way.  The new one gets started and the old one languishes in its nearly complete state, sometimes for years, until I grant amnesty, allowing it to fade into memory.

I had reached the point in the Swedish candelabra project where the challenges of woodworking had been solved, a working prototype had been made, a dozen pieces had been crafted, and all that was left were the trivial details of wiring the electric LED candles.

It turned out that, while not technically challenging, it was incredibly tedious, threading wires, stripping insulation, soldering the bulb contacts, splicing connections and gluing the simulated plastic candlesticks in place.  The first one I assembled took hours.

With eleven more to go, I found lots of excuses to not do them.  Eventually however, when the summer heat advisories provided reason to retreat to the cool workroom in my home, I would complete one, or maybe two, each day.  Eventually I reached the last one, by which time I was proficient– only an hour of assembly!

I can now declare this project complete, and I look forward to displaying the candelabras in our windows when the season shifts once again to long cold nights.  I hope they are seen by the passing neighbors as signs of hope, warmth, welcome, and good cheer, just like the ones we enjoyed in Sweden.

The ancestral home of my great-great-grandfather Sven Johan Lundberg in Mulseryd, Sweden, during a light snowfall last December. If you look closely you will find that each window hosts a welcoming candelabra.

Swedish Candelabras

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A modest Swedish house in Skalo, Poldi’s ancestral home. Nearly all the houses are in this traditional red color with white trim.
A close up shows the candelabras in the windows, a wintertime custom here.

While in Sweden over the Christmas season, we noticed the popularity of candelabras placed in the windows of people’s homes.  In these northern latitudes where the darkness of the winter night dominates the few hours of daylight, the distinctive chevron of lights provided a cheery greeting from the windows of the traditional-styled Swedish houses.  

I thought it would be a nice accent to our own home with its not-so-traditional windows cut into a mansard roof.  Surely Ikea would have such an item, with some suitable unpronounceable name, but I was disappointed.  Perhaps I needed to shop the Ikea stores in Sweden rather than our Americanized versions of them.

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The Best Dinner of My Life

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It is a concept that was introduced to me by my colleague Phil, who while recalling a dinner that we both participated in, described it as the best he had ever had.  This struck me as one of those hyperbolic statements one sometimes makes in the competitive company of peers, but after contemplating his superlatives for a moment, realized it was true, and then adopted that same experience as my own best meal of a lifetime.

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Copenhagen Solstice Celebration

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After checking in to our extremely compact room in Copenhagen (“you’ll find a towel, blanket and pillow for the second person in a drawer under the bed”), we decided to find a local establishment for dinner.  The modern phone is an amazing tool for this as it allows you to locate restaurants within walking range, and even get a sense of their menu and pricing and how others have reviewed them.  

We identified a candidate and walked the few blocks through the new winter night to find it.  The European style bistro seemed just right for the occasion, so we entered and immediately found ourselves inside the coat check room.  We weren’t sure we wanted to surrender our coats; it might be cold or drafty in there, but there was no option.  All coats were checked; we were told that there simply wasn’t enough room inside.  

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