Hi gang, Just thought I'd let you all know how it's going here in Norway! (I've connected my PowerBook up to Jostein's home PC-driven network, and with minimal fuss and slightly reconfiguring one control panel, I'm *in*... :-) [but not able to send, more on this later]
We arrived in Oslo on Thursday after a hot and sweaty sleepless night with friends near Stansted where I managed 90 minutes slumber before rise and shine at 5 am. An hour and 35 mins after take-off we were descending into Torp airport south of Oslo where a coach was waiting to whizz us on another 90 minute trip to the capital. They say Norway is expensive, and after the driver quoted us the cost of return tickets, I was debating whether or not to buy my own coach for two journeys and stick it on eBay at the end... ;-) A merry Jostein met us at the Bussterminal where we gotten in der auto-driven-carr-thingy (*not* a Ford BTW) and took us round to his hill-top home. We are currently enjoying some tremendous Norwegian hospitality. The weekend itinerary includes, yes - you guessed it, a trip to a *fjord*, which I am very much looking forward too. Apparently these things are like 'Yosemite with knobs on' (colloquial UK expression :-) and I've loaded up with plenty of film before UK departure. Things I've brought: LX+drive Tokina 17mm Tok 28-70 2.6 Tok 70-200 2.8 AF280T Leica CL+40mm "WHAT NO PENTAX GLASS?" I hear you shriek... Well, I debated long and hard when packing - you know what it's like: you squeeze in half a dozen bits of kit only to swap things about again ten minutes later. Then a further ten minutes after that a further swap as pieces of equipment play 'musical chairs'. This goes on for at least an hour until you end up with what you started with. Then there's a delay until 5 minutes before walking out the door, when in a flurry, everything gets dumped and a blind panic ensues as anything and everything gets bundled into the bag, lenses and bodies flying like lemmings over a cliff. The Tokinas are my only zooms, and I don't have a Pentax wide. Jostein has some good Pentax glass, I might see if he'll lend me the 20mm for a few minutes <g>. Stefan (my son) has brought the Z-10 with the SMC F 35-70, so we might get some shots through Pentax glass yet! Everything's in a LowePro Stealth backpack, PowerBook nestled in there as well. Come the glorious DSLR arrival (Pentax *or* Canon), the PowerBook will come in very handy. Hope everyone is well and as soon as I can get my hands on a *real* beer here in Norway, I will raise a glass to the PDML. Regards, Heedey heedy herdy herdy heedy herdy Cotty. :-) PS - about 5 days later: I can connect up via Jostein's home network using ethernet and receive my regular email, but for some obscure reason could not send. Hence, a bit like using an RT with a broken mic, I could hear but not speak. I've been writing responses to posts as I've seen them, saved them, and will be hooking up once I get home on the 15th of August to send a batch of useless nonesense to the list. We're nearly at the end of our stay here in Oslo and it's been magnificent. Hectic, but magnificent. At the weekend we drove for seven hours in two cars to the fjords and stayed a couple of nights in 'hytters'. These are small wooden chalets, or huts, and seemingly occupy any vacant corner of hillside and valley. The fjords (well the VERY small bit of only one of thousands that we experienced) was awesome. I have seen the Grand Canyon, Yosemite et al, and this was easily on a par. Absolutely breathtaking. A 3 hour boat trip provided plentiful shooting opps and boy did we make use of them. Jostein wielded his beloved 645NII and various glass with big grins. I darted about with LX and zooms trying to do some justice to the humbling scenery which we floated past at a sedate 12 knots or so. I feel a photo-essay coming on for this... Other highlights were a train ride up a mountain, a car journey up windy mountain roads and through numerous tunnels (the longest of which I experienced was 11km - narrowly missing one that is 25km long and the longest car tunnel in the world), visiting the capital Oslo where the women are simply gorgeous (*sigh*), seeing the 'Fram' (sailing ship that Roald Amundsen went to the antarctic in), Kon-Tiki, and lastly but far from least, super hospitality and a 645 slide show of some magnificent trannies from Jostein himself. I'd like to thank Jostein publicly for putting up with us for the duration - any one of you would share with me the sentiment if you had the chance to meet this pillar of the PDML. Simply: What A Guy. Oh yeah - and he can shoot pictures as well ;-) As a thank you, I'm cooking a meal on our last night - Indian (well, my interpretation anyway) and the paneer is made and cooling, the wine is in (no easy task in Norway, I can tell you) and it's all system's go for a little ringstinger. Time to raise a glass of chilled Chablis to the PDML - and to you, wherever you are. Cheers! _______________________________________________________ Personal email traffic to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MacAds traffic to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Check out the UK Macintosh ads http://www.macads.co.uk - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
