Viking Biking
At five I knocked off work, ate some leftovers, and packed my bike on the car. I dressed up in the closest approximation of "serious cyclist" I could come up with - running tights, rain shirt, and hiking shoes - and secretly prayed that I would be late, no one else...
Updates from Denmark
24 March I'm in Sønderborg. It's a little town, kind of in the middle of nowhere by the Danish-German border. The house is in the countryside and the next door neighbours are horses, but everything you could possibly want is about a five minute drive away. Bo is one...
Taxes
It’s almost tax season and I enjoy taxes a little too much. You may have heard that wealthy corporations and millionaires avoid paying taxes and meanwhile the little people like yourself have to pay huge amounts. Want to act like a millionaire and avoid paying your...
Recursing For Bike Polo
This week I got to write a recursive function for the second time in my programming career. I'm always excited when this happens, and the event is so rare that it gets a blog post every time. If you don't know or care what recursion is, now's the time to stop reading....
Can he suffer music?
A lot of languages have gendered nouns and articles. For an English speaker, this is difficult. Gender is only relevant to your doctor and the person you're sleeping with. Why does a book need to have a gender? Why does a table need gender? French has made me familiar...
Words for feelings
Danish lessons continue here, where I'm learning about Mette's new boyfriend, and how difficult men are to buy presents for. "Mænd bliver aldrig glade for sko," imparts her friend, after she suggests that she might get him some new shoes. This means, "Men are never...
How to learn a language when your attention span is shorter than a puppy’s
I don't know if there's a standard best way of learning a new language, other than immersion. I've tried French and Spanish so far, and although I can read both languages well enough to navigate French and Spanish countries, I'm nowhere close to fluent. So I can't...
Morgenkys
I'm learning Danish. When I learned French, they started us on colors and seasons, then moved on to verb conjugations. It was pretty dull. The first Danish I've learned is "morgenkys". It means morning kiss. That is what happens in the morning during traffic when cars...
There aren’t any tow trucks in Port Renfrew
We came upon a motorcycle accident on the way out to Port Renfrew today. I was leading a group of five motorcycles, and ahead of us was a different group of three - two big Harleys and a BMW Dakar. Ahead of them there were a few cars, going slower than motorcycles...