Translocation

As Dace has asked for fewer of all these difficult words and more illustrations to look at, I will keep the entries for the next two days very brief and include a photo or two, hopefully this will keep it on a level were even Dace can follow it.

Friday 1. August
Most of the day like the rest of our holiday. Sun, relaxation, reading. Slowly getting into The Russia House. Takes more work than Grisham, but so far has the promise of being good. A sentence caught my imagination. One of the characters says: We have to execute our past to build our future. Wondering whether that is true? While we most of the time probably build our future on the past, is there sometimes where the past is so infected that we have to execute it to be able to build a future? I am thinking organisationally, not on a personal level. (Here Paul agrees with John Le Carré, cf. 2. Cor. 5:18 or thereabout)

Both families headed off for town in the afternoon as Tour de Denmark (we do not really call it that, but it is a bike competition in several stages from one end of Denmark to the other) had placed the end of a stage there. As you might know Denmark has no mountains, but we do have hills, and in Vejle there is a street where the uphill slope exceeds 20%, quite a challenge to ride up on a bike (it is actually forbidden to ride down the road as it would be very serious if you brakes should fail).

As always we spent an hour or more just waiting for the riders to arrive, but as we were close to the finish, they actually went past us three times. Every time they came up the hill, more and more riders just could not follow the leaders. I am sure some of the foreign riders felt cheated: Is Denmark not supposed to be flat? We all enjoyed the experience and all the kids managed to collect a number of souvenirs from the different sponsors.

Saturday 2. August
Time to move on. We are heading off for Aalborg to stay with Lisbeth’s brother and sister-in-law for a couple of days. We had a good long breakfast, talking about all the things we had not done yet (playing cards, watching a movie together etc). The drive is a bit less than 200 km and we were wondering how the car would manage, but there was no need to worry. Apart from occasionally being shaken, as the car several times hacked and spluttered quite violently. Apparently it does not like to reduce the speed by releasing pressure on the accelerator. No big problem, you just keep increasing the speed. We were making app. 500 km/h when we arrived in Aalborg.

Edel and William had just come back from London the night before. They had been over to see Richard and Heidie off, as they travelled back to Zambia after their homeland furlough. Their, Edel and William’s, had been delayed, so they had not made it home before 2 o’clock in the morning. It suited us fine just to have a relaxing day, with a delicious barbeque in their garden. We had 2 minutes of rain in the afternoon, but nothing serious. We have been warned though, that the weather will change and a front from the British Isles will reach Denmark after the weekend, bringing, surprise surprise, rain!

No reason to worry about that for now. The sun is shining and it should continue tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a great day too, but different. Not all relaxation, but more about that later.