Marvil the anti-marvel

This is Marvil, the evil 2nd-hand mountainbike that I bought for about $180. Notice that it is not a "marvel", and is in fact anything but. It is evil. The worst decision I made since being here was choosing this one over a model from a better brand but twice as expensive.



The list of things that have gone wrong so far:

• handlebars came totally loose (day 2)
• mudgard came off and stuck between spokes
• chain broke
• new chain not installed quite correctly (my fault),
  
• mudgard keeps getting loose and rubbing against tyre when going over any bump
• rear brakes frozen to rim on a cold night. Had to drag it back home and kept remembering The Neverending Story, where the boy leads his horse (Atreyu ?) through the waist-high mud fields, but the horse eventually sinks into the mud. OK, so the 4cm of snow wasn't quite as much of a life or death struggle, and it was icy enough for the back wheel to just slide along, but still, it was an ordeal
• gears refusing to change. Got down to just 2 out of the 21 at one point.
• puncture in the front tyre. Fixed it, and on the first ride, got a puncture in the back tyre
• rear brake pads totally worn

So now the bike has a new studded front tyre for extra grip on the ice, but its rear puncture is still unfixed so it is hanging in the basement storeroom. I have a 1/2 hour walk to work, or in more lazier moments a 7min walk and 7min bus ride (about $2.50).

There are extensive bike paths around the town, which is good. But I dunno how much it can be used in winter - it is very slippery on the ice (1 fall), and even when the ice melts the gravel and water on the road is also a bad combination (1 fall). Temeperature will become a factor, but down to -20oC it is apparently still common to see people on bikes.

If only I would have won that car lottery I entered...

Hot hot hot

The biggest employer in town is the LKAB steelworks, and we had a tour of the place. As far as steelworks went it was pretty cool. It's not huge on a worldwide scale (45Mtons/yr) , but managed to stay competetive and remain open by switching to specialty high strength steel and becoming one of the most automated steel plants in the world. Most of the iron ore comes from the north in Kiruna, where the ice hotel is, and which operates at 1km below the earth and is also one of the most automated in the world. They sure love machines here.

Almost a Raiders of the Lost Ark moment

Getting Darker

The opposite of the midnight sun is of course the midday dark. At the moment sunup is around 8am, and sundown between 2:30 and 3pm. It isn't so weird when I'm at work as I never had an office with a window in the past so never knew what was happening outside anyway. But on the weekend, after a big night and long sleep-in to get up at 2 and have the sun going down is a bit creepy. Some pics.

Window view around 1:30pm

Window view around 3:00pm

More Svenglish