I miss riding my bike. When you are kid, your bike is your sole method of transportation that you can use on your own. No pleading or begging for someone to drop you off and pick you up some other time. No, with a bike you were free to go as you pleased, as long as you had permission.

I’ve been very impressed with the bike usage here in Sweden. Young and old alike have bikes and put them to good use. Many of the streets and the sidewalks have a bike lane, providing some protection for the bikers.

When you go by the train station, instead of a ton of cars you see piles off bikes that have been left by passengers. Having so many people riding a bike must improve the general health of the population. It is something I wish we could do more in the USA. I think back to the concrete jungle we call home and I don’t even know where to put a bike let alone think about how one would survive in the Galleria area with as a bicyclist.

In the movie Mary Poppins, there is a scene where Mary and the children come across Bert who has been painting pictures on the sidewalk. After some discussion the children plead with Mary to have them pop into one of Bert’s paintings; they do so and go around the countryside having a merry time.

That is how I feel here in Sweden- we go from one landscape painting to another.
Monday we started our journey at the cathedral in Strängnäs. We wandered around the church yard looking at rune stones and meandered around the interior of the cathedral looking at various graves, religious symbols, and ancient relics. We left at noon just as the female pastor in jeans began giving her sermon. I’ll have to try and wear jeans next time give a talk in church.

We made the short drive from the cathedral to the Gripsholm castle, which overlooks Lake Mälaren. One of my favorite rooms in the castle was the theatre. One of the Kings had built a fully equipped theatre into the top of a tower. The theatre includes lower seating, two levels of boxes seating, and a fully equipped stage. We all just sat there looking around at the beauty and elegance.

Tuesday we made the three-hour trip to Falun to see Carl Larsons house, which was an interesting trip. I was more amazed at the river and lake outside his house. I wanted to get a fishing rod and just kick back and fish for a few hours. We had lunch and visited the old copper mine in Falun. After 800 years, the mine had more than 50 miles of tunnels beneath the surface of the earth; it was finally closed in 1992. In the 1660’s the upper third of the mine collapsed leaving a hole in the earth 600 meters deep. Eight hundred years of mining is pretty amazing.

We went out to a sommar stuga (summer house) for an afternoon snack with some family and we walked into another painting. The sommar stuga sat on a lake with small rolling hills surrounding it. I spent a lot of time sitting on the edge of the dock just looking at the green hills, the white clouds, the sparkling water, and the birds that flew around. The beauty is just amazing, man can do all kinds of wonderful things, but what the Creator has done is always more awe inspiring.

Wow. It’s hard to believe one week ago, Anna and I were chilling with my family in Corpus Christi. We have since driven back to Houston, worked and packed for two days, and then flew from Houston to Stockholm by way of Newark. Can that all really happen in one week?

Anna and I flew out of Houston Wednesday morning and arrived in Stockholm Thursday morning. Thursday is now a blur. We arrived at the airport, drove around the country side a bit before getting to Eskilstuna. The countryside here in Sweden is absolutely beautiful—flowing fields of grass and wheat, fields of yellow flowers, churches on hill tops that peak through the foliage, and bridges over flowing water. And there is something to be said about the freshness of the air. It is all just wonderful.

Our adventures have taken us to the summer stuga (the summer house) up on Lake Mälaren, to various old churches, and through Eskilstuna. We also saw ancient rune stone that was carved over a thousand years ago.

I have loved the weather here. Even though it is the middle of summer, it reminds of September days in Cleveland. Some days are hot and other days are in the sixties and cloudy and the evenings are just pleasant.

Sometimes it’s easy to tell when your trip to the airport isn’t going to be so “speedy”. Last night, I flew from Houston to Dallas on Continental and there were a number of warning signs that the trip would have been faster driving.

Here were those indicators:

• While driving to the airport you run into torrential rain so bad that you loose visibility while driving.
• When arriving at the airport, you can see at least ten planes waiting on the tarmac to take off.
• Security is a beast to get through; even for elite passengers.
• People are running around the airport like they just lost their head.
• While walking by other gates 80 percent of the flights are delayed by an hour.
• White lights are flashing in the terminal because the fire alarm has been pulled.
• The gate for your flight keeps changing.

Anna and I left home at 7:50 p.m. to get to the airport for my 9:10 flight to Dallas. The flight didn’t end up leaving Houston till 11:40 and we touched down in Dallas around 12:35. Final arrival at the hotel was at 1:15 a.m.

Usual driving time between Houston and Dallas is about four hours. So the indicators above might mean you would’ve been faster for you to drive….. well depending on where you going.

Happy Travels.

- Bob

We are finally getting our lives in order. It seems like such a long time since things have been normal; then again, what is normal? It definitely doesn’t go hand in hand with Anna and me.

We had a whirlwind vacation to New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Corpus Christi, a day trip to Houston to find an apartment, a few stops in Utah, and finally a week up in Seattle. We couldn’t make life simple either. During those vacation days, we filled up a pod with all of our stuff and sent it to Houston, Texas. We flew back to Salt Lake in time for Memorial Day, spending the day and evening with family. The next morning we woke up and began our journey to Texas.

Anna decided there was not enough adventure in her life. She wanted to drive from Salt Lake to Houston in one day. I didn’t quite understand, but you got to do what the wife wants to do. We left SLC and Utah Valley early the next day. By 5 p.m. we were in Albuquerque. Moab and just south of it was the highlight of the afternoon. Driving through that beautiful red desert is amazing. We loved imagining different shapes in the rock formations as we droved through Southern Utah.

We drove south to El Paso where we stopped and had dinner. We needed time to get out of the car and relax. Then the real hard part of the trip came, driving through the night in Texas. We thought we had about 11 hours to go on our drive, who knows how really long it took. We stopped around 2 am and slept till 4am, followed by another 2 hour drive. A hour and 1/2 nap and we were off again. I don’t know whose crazy idea it was to pull that stunt… I would never come up with something crazy like that.

We finally arrived in Houston Wednesday around 1:30 pm. It was fun to count the cities till Houston. We were excited. Once we arrived, we got into our apartment, showered and set up the task of moving in. I think I will leave that for Anna to document.

Since June 1 2005, we are now in Houston, Texas living in the Galleria district of town. Together, we look forward to new adventures, meeting new people, and having a good time.