Part Ti

So after visiting the family burial site, I thought it be fitting to also show some of the family land. These few pics represent a plot of land that my father, uncle and aunt inherited from my grandfather. Its filled with a bit of debris, so maybe next year we can clean it up a bit. I hung out here for a little bit, before catching a bus to the airport, as this is the last day in Sagesund.

Part Ni

Part åtte

This is my cousin, Dag, who is really fun to hang out with because he's lived in Sagesund his whole life and can tell you so much about the people and history of the region. He took me sailing up the coast a ways to the municipality of Risør. He's going to the annual wooden boat show there. I've been to it before, it's awesome, but this year I wanted to visit the family gravesite.And this is his friend George, who, by the way, is cool as hell. Both of these guys are. George is a mechanical engineer who worked for Shell Oil in Syria. Four weeks on, four weeks off. Anyway, it wasn't very windy that day, so we didn't actually sail, we just cruised with the motor at about five knots. The upside of this is that we could drink beers, munch Cheez Doodles, and chew the fat.

George talked about his time in Syria; the strong loyalty of Arabs once they trust and respect you, the politics of the region, and how things will most likely never be solved there. Dag talked about the island of Sandøya, which we passed on the way to Risør. You see, Sandøya--with a population of 250-- is one of the few islands with no bridges leading to it, yet has a curiously large number of redheaded folk living there. Ummm, yeah. To quote George: "When you're in Sandøya, and you see a ginger hair, you begin to wonder...". Well put, my man.

I know this photo is a bit blurry but check out that kid cold chillin' on the mast. Like what both Dag and George said... its a good life.



Taking this four hour tour left me with a new found desire to learn how to sail. As we were talking along the way, I had the strong urge to pick up a length of rope and start learning how to tie knots. Did you know about the six motions a boat can make? These motions are based on an X-Y-Z axis. Yeah, yeah, and there's two motions for each axis and the... hold on a minute, look at me chatter on here. See what I mean? I wanna learn this stuff! Like this! And ooh, this! And all of these too!

Part Syv

Down by the fjord, getting sun, diving off the big rock, hanging out with the fam, feeding ducks...




Wait a minute...This frickin' brat kid has his own boat?!

N-haa, I'm just joshin'; actually it's very affordable to own a boat in Norway. The government encourages boat culture very much here. It's very common to see young boys with inflatable motor boats and big life jackets on, tooling around solo. I saw this one kid--not even ten years old I suspect--all puffed up in his vest with a little captain hat on and his hand on the throttle. It was so adorable it made me seasick.

Part Seks

These delicious spices poke at my white boy guilt a tad too much.

Part Fem

Ok, so before I write anything further, almost every house in the village has a working lavatory. The cottage I stayed in had a flushing toilet, even though you had to let it chill for ten minutes between discharges. That being said, if the house my grandfather was born in dates from 1890, so does this shit house. That's a century of feces! Let's venture inside shall we?
Ooooh! I like what they did with the place, quite cozy-- besides the strong smack of poo. That painting of a Spanish bomb is very tantalizing. But why are there two evac holes? I know that the cottage that this outhouse is next to used to be a mill, but... ohhh, I guess back in the days of having more then seven kids, there'd be many points in their lives when two or three would have to dunk at the same time. Weird. I've never deffed right next to someone without a door and a divider before. I wonder what the conversation would be like.

Part Fire

So on the way back from 'the end of the world' as the family here has dubbed the walk through the woods and along the fjord, I found a trail to a spectacularly vast lake; which is also quite secluded.
The sun finally showed the fuck up after some days of rain and clouds, and so I whipped out the picnic I packed...
...squeezed in some hours of naked sunbathing, and took a dip.
Hey there punters! Almost hit you with a full moon there huh?!
Haahaa!!
(pssst...Ladies, pics of my emancipated bottom are available for 200 kroner.)