Merry Christmas!

 

Kayaking for Christmas - check.

Pantone colour of the year

I just have to complain about Pantone's choice of the Colour of the year. 

Ultimate Gray and Illuminating yellow.

Like this:

As if I haven't had enough grey in my life already... According to them, gray is "emblematic of solid and dependable elements which are everlasting and provide a firm foundation" and "quietly assures, encouraging feelings of composure, steadiness and resilience."

No.

Grey is bland, foggy, empty, unexciting, neither fish nor fowl, and ... just ... blah. 

I'm keeping my homepage in Classic blue for another year.

Christmas cards 2020

Now it's the perfect time to reveal this year's Christmas cards!

As I've been working quite a lot with wood this summer (kayak, remember?), I decided to use wood for the cards as well. So everyone got a tiny Christmas tree :-)

Now everyone can have the tree just as they like it: aligned, twisted or random.

Virtual cycling

Since we are still not allowed to leave the municipality due to Covid restrictions, we continue to cycle virtually.

After climbing Col d'Eze from Nice a couple of times, today I climbed Mt. Ventoux from Bedoin.

My time? Well... 2:19:32. 

 

This is a picture from Eze. Taken last year, when the world was such a different place...

A mess

What a mess it is...

But the result is pretty. 

You will have to trust me on that one ;-)

Enjoy it!

 Enjoy it while it lasts... 

When the day is short

When the day is short ... 

and when you're sure you've had enough ... 

it's time to do something!

So we did.

Returning back to the fog wasn't that pretty though...

November rain

It is a strange life we're living if the first proper November rain is the most exciting thing that has happened in quite a while...

Hm.

In times like these...

 ... I could write a long post about all the things I am not doing. Limited to our municipality and leaving the house only if necessary, my life is just an eventless uninspiring continuum.

But the Christmas cards are all finished waiting to be written.

My book is in press.

The terrace fence is painted. 

We do get out occasionally, staying away from everyone. What could be more appropriate than the middle of the river.

Perfect!

And .... again a cycling post. 

With Covid going on, the Giro and La Vuelta overlap for a few days.

So Slovenians managed to win two Grand Tour stages in one day :-D

Well done, Tratnik for winning the Giro stage and Roglič for winning the Vuelta stage.

We are so being spoilt by these guys!

Almost perfect

Imagine compiling a 326 page document in latex and ending up with:

0 errors, 0 warnings, 2 badboxes...

You cannot imagine how these two underfills bother me. But they are in the table of contents and I just gave up on tweaking the toc line spacing. Oh well.

Almost perfect. Almost happy.

Getting ready

I know it's only the middle of October but I so want this year to be over soon that I already started thinking about Christmas.

Plenty of presents are already ordered (and some already arrived!) and I even started making Christmas cards...

So this is probably the earliest Christmas card teaser ever:

:-)

The importance of understanding mathematics

Current situation is a perfect proof why people need to understand basic mathematics. 

Everybody - and I mean everybody - should know how an exponential curve behaves. Period.

A lovely late summer

What a lovely late summer/early autumn it is!

We are paddling:

 

And yes, this is a home-made kayak. 

Our corona-baby :-)

We are hiking:

We are cycling:

No, we are not bored.

And and and and ...Alaphilippe is the world champion! Me happy. Me very happy :-)

And Giro starts tomorrow!

OMG LE TOUR!!!

A Slovenian winning the Tour, the white and the polka-dot jersey. 

And another Slovenian in the second place in GC.

And yet I am not happy.

I feel so so soooo bad for Roglič.

 

MORE TOUR!!!

I no longer know what to say...

Roglič & Pogačar still in yellow & white, still places 1 and 2 in GC.

But now Mezgec, a third Slovenian, getting a second place in sprint in Lyon!

HOW?!?

OOOOH, LE TOUR!

Roglič in yellow.

Pogačar in white.

Screenshot from Eurosport

Places 1 and 2 in GC.

Screenshot from Eurosport

Am I dreaming?!? 

Or is this too good too be true?

Ooooh, Le Tour!

Pogačar winning.

Roglič coming second.

And Roglič in yellow!

 

PS. I like the nickname our two cyclists were given: 

Rog-Pog :-)

Oooh, Le Tour!

Roglič winning.

Pogačar coming second.

And Alaphilippe keeping the yellow jersey.

Just perfect.

EDIT: One day later. Meh.

EDIT: Three days later. Double Meh.

Watching LeTour

I wanted to be there, in Nice, when the whole thing started.

I wanted to be on Col d'Eze, when they climbed it.

I wanted to be on Promenade des Anglais, when Alaphilippe won the stage!

I wanted to be in Sisteron ...

You get the picture.

But I am watching them daily - and riding the hometrainer while watching them!

MrMojcek takes care that whenever they start climbing, he immediately increases the difficulty level for me as well :-)

Escape Town

We escaped from Škofja Loka!

After we finished the challenge, we took a stroll around the lovely and vibrant medieval town.

Seaside

At 5:15 pm we just stopped paddling and swimming in a totally calm sea. The wind just about started to blow...

At 5:30 the sea turned into this:

At 5:40 it looked like this:

God, I love insane weather!

 

 

The next day was calm again. So we did an 18 km tour along the coast, while the kids were competing in sprint.

A lovely detail from a lovely beach.

What to do Nr. 24

Watch cycling, obviously!

I mean - what a start into the new cycling season. Roglič beating Bernal and winning the Grand Colombier.

It will be a very VERY interesting Tour this year. 

So looking forward to it!

I've been away

See if you can guess where we've been.

Clue Nr. 1: These Royal Gardens were planned by Napoleon.

Clue Nr. 2: These buildings on the main square are from the XVI century.

Clue Nr. 3: The main street in the city is not even a street.

Venice, of course!

We are all made of stars

I know, I know - I should have planned this and gone somewhere where the lights don't shine.

But I was still able to photograph the Neowise comet both from my terrace and from ... somewhere... about a 15 min drive from my home.

The Milky Way (with Jupiter) was pretty too :-)

But, Earth, could you please next time stop rotating for about 30 seconds? It would make star photography so much easier :-)

Oh, and People, if you switched off all the lights, it would be easier as well!

A bit of hiking. And history.

Since my hand is still recovering from the injury, I cannot do much - but I can walk. So I did.

There were wonderful examples of Martagon Lilies (Turška lilija).

On the way back, we stopped in an old iron-smelting town.

They are organising an Escape-town, so we will definitely be back and try to Escape from there :-)

A simple equation

Let N be the number of hours spent on the bike.
Let n be the number of hours spent at the ER.
Let m be the number of days one has to rest after the trip.

If N>n ∧ N>m then the trip was a success.

Mine wasn't :-(

Negative!

Usually it's good to be positive in life.

But sometimes being negative is what you want :-)

Another lovely day

The achievements in road cycling are usually measured in distance or elevation, that is in kilometres and metres.

What about the achievements in mountain-biking? The hours of cycling? The falls? The injuries? The bruises? Sore muscles? Mosquito bites? Hmmm...

Middle of nowhere

Let's say you plan a lovely and relaxing afternoon home alone.

And then you get a phone call to collect someone in the middle of nowhere.

You drop everything you're doing and drive about one and a half hours towards ... middle of nowhere.

Which turns out to be a very pretty place.

What to do Nr. 23

As travelling is still very much limited (at least to the places I would visit), I have to be happy with what I've got. So, maybe it's time to re-discover my own country!

We started with Postojna Cave.

The train-ride was great, the cave is still fantastic, but the tour was on the boring side and rushed. Oh, well...

A fun fact: since a Cave is technically a closed space, we had to wear masks all the time

We obviously continued with Predjamski Grad. This one is even more spectacular than I remembered it.

A lovely day it was.

What to do Nr. 22

Well, what you could have done - is join me and the others at a charity event: 24 hours of paddling.

Obviously I didn't paddle for 24 hours straight (although some did!), but I nevertheless managed over 38 km (7 laps). Mr Mojcek did 77 km (14 laps). And the "winner" - she (yes, SHE!) did 165 km (30 laps)...

Now I've got blisters, feel tired, but happy and proud.