Today Mary Helen went for her 2nd Thursday walk, "walky-talky" with the Petroleum Women's Club (PWC.) Last Thursday 16 women did a 3 1/2 hour strenuous hike about a half hour away and 310 meters. It was quite slippery in places and very rocky. However, the views from the top and the lake were we lunched were spectacular. Mostly sunny and at times, short-sleeve weather. On a scale of 1 to 5 they rated it a 3+ but said there were no 1s and 2s in Norway.
Today it rained - ranging from misty to pouring and we did a 1 level walk - 15k around 2 lakes with a short detour to a rose farm where you make your own bouquets and pay on a honor system - about $1.25 to $1.75 per rose which is much less than the stores. There were 17 women walking today and the only complainer was the youngest! I noticed that none of the Norwegian women came today - 6 French, 2 Dutch, a German, 4 or 5 Scotch, 3 Americans and a few I don't know from where. I was quite pleased that another American and I led the group at the end. This may toughen me up - I would never walk for 3+ hours in the rain in Ithaca.
Last weekend Larry and I walked around a nearby lake on Saturday and to another fjord on Sunday - each walk about 3 hours. And on Saturday evening we played bridge with 7 other couples, most of whose wives are PWC members. Larry, who hasn't played much bridge, improved quickly though he raised me to 3 notrump although the women to my west was bidding spades and Larry didn't have a stopper and once when he was playing no trump he continued to play the initial suit led even though his opponent had bid it. A delicious pot-luck dinner and bridge until after one a.m. in the morning.
If they haven't lived in Houston or someplace else in the states, almost everyone in this group has visited more than once.
This group is terrific for me and it was fun for me to introduce Larry to a broader group of oil related men.

Quiz - match the photos with Larry's post as I haven't figured out how to put a caption with the photos.

Today fall begins and I went for a hike in the mountains with a group of 14 women from Scotland, France, Netherlands, Germany, 2 other Americans and 1 Norwegian, our leader - ranging from 33 to 61. It was a very rocky walk and quite slippery as we had two days of rain, but the weather cleared and it was sunny and warm. The scenery at the top was spectacular as well as by the small lake where we lunched and sunned on large, fairly flat rocks. The women are spouses of oil companies Shell, Total(France), oil service companies like Schlumberger most of whom have lived in the Middle East, Houston, Aberdeen Scotland and more. One of the American woman's husband works for NATO here.

I really enjoyed the geology tour on Saturday. Again the students were very international, including 6 Africans - and they all were quiet by American standards.
I was surprised to learn that during the last ice age (c. 10,000 years ago) the ice didn't cover all the Northern Hemisphere - Siberia, and parts of Alaska were ice free.

Blog from Larry:

On a September 16 trip to the southeast coast of Norway run by the University of Stavanger we examined (Figure 1) current sedimentary processes: sand at an intermediate energy beach with nearby river supplying sediments, and cobbles on nearby high energy beaches where sediments are not supplied.

We then visited an old vicarage (Ha Prestegard) built on a site which had been land 8,200 years ago and then was near sea level until a few thousand years ago, when the land emerged a few meters above sea level again, and the vicarage was built. Figure 2 shows the fields to the east from the knoll on which the vicarage is built. Figure 3 shows the history of flooding and emergence from the sea. Glaciers had depressed the land and reduced sea levels, and as the glaciers melted the land and sea level rose, but a slightly differing rates at any locality. Sometimes the land uplifted more than sea level rose and the area was above sea level; sometimes the land rose less rapidly than the sea and the land was submerged. Figure 4 shows the sediments exposed in the foundations of the vicarage. The fine sediments at 8,200 years indicate the area was above sea level at that time, and could have been farmed as the area is today. The cobbles from 5,000 to 4,600 years ago indicate the location was near a high energy shoreline, and the areas surrounding the knoll would have been beneath the sea.

Finally we visited a quarry that exposes 70,000 years of earth history. The character of the sediments show that ice moved across this location about 70,000 years ago (lowest ice label), and again about 45,000 and 20,000 years ago. The ages are uncertain with a lot of scatter in the 14C dates, but what is fascinating is the clear evidence that the area was glaciated two and possibly three times during the last ice age. Exposure of sediments as old as 70,000 years (the start of the last ice age) is rare in Norway.

It was a great field trip, with great beach scenery and a wonderful and very international group of students.

The pictures are of our apartment, Larry's scenic 20 minute walk to work and the research lab where he walks. I did upload them in order but the blog had other ideas.

Impressions after the first week
Beautiful, beautiful scenery and marvelous vistas, wonderful system of paths – interspersed between homes (very close together with small, well-kept yards edged with bright flowers and clean, clean windows) and driveways and happening upon wooded parks with lots of paths, high prices of everything, only one laundromat in the center of town, no tennis courts nor many exercise facilities, Moms walking/jogging with baby carriages [mothers get a year’s paid leave from the government], lots of day-care centers, many women smoking, everyone doesn’t know English though most clerks/bus drivers know enough, so comforting to have a McDonalds ½ mile away [as well as the closest place for us to use the ATM.] Grocery stores that we’ve found don’t have big packages of toilet paper/paper towels, large sizes of yogurt [haven’t found non-fat or low fat plain yogurt either], or much soup of any kind. Thankfully our apartment has wireless [though I’m even more addicted than at home] because there aren’t as many internet cafes as I had expected and it costs to use the internet at the mall. If I keep walking as much as I have this week, I’ll be able to run up the driveway when I get home.

Stavanger has an unprecedented 5 days of sun! We missed one of those as we were in Bergen for 2 days where it rained. Celebrated our 32nd anniversary with dinner at the art museum's restaurant where the prices were outrageous. I read in a Stavanger guide for expat's that we shouldn't keep converting the kroner to dollars and I'm worried that will happen to me and eventually a pint of beer for $7 or the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu for $40 won't seem expensive.
Larry gave a talk at the University of Bergen and I toured the city (where 29 years ago we began a 3 week tour of Scandanavia), gamle stan and visited the summer home of the composer, Edward Grieg. Bergen is a beautiful 5 hour drive from Bergen with 2 ferry rides and 3 (5 mile) tunnels under fjords. On the hour long ferry return Larry and I were one of less than a dozen (more than 120 passengers) to sit outside in glorious weather and terrific scenery.
On Sunday we took a bus to Sandnes about a half hour away. It's at the bottom of the Gandsfjorden (a 15 minute walk from our apartment.) Sandnes has a bicycle factory and offers free bikes to tour the city. Unfortunately, on Sunday everything is closed. So we walked back about 10k to our apartment. There are many paths for bikes and walkers and clearly marked signs. Paths go between streets and houses in a haphazard way but Larry thinks they are meant for children who can walk to school without being on the roads.

The Cathles in Europe will describe highlights of our experiences while Larry is on sabattic for the academic year, 2006-2007.

Larry's portion began with travel delays and misplaced luggage at Heathrow dealt with 20,000 bags after the August terror threat. He then travelled to Moscow for a conference and China for field work in rural, southwestern China where westerners are a rarity. Mary Helen enjoyed visits to Cape Cod at the Mahon-Hayden cottage on the bay in Dennis, Cayuga lake r&r at Cathy and Carl's cottage on the West shore, meeting Cormac Kennedy, sharing Melanie Kalman's joy at becoming a Nana, unexpectedly driving a LARGE red Dodge Ram truck to Syracuse airport.

Larry and Mary Helen met up at Stavanger and are adjusting to life in a small, basement apartment in Stavanger, a city on a fjord with mountains as a lovely backdrop. Larry is working at a research institute and Mary Helen is exploring the area. Most surprising to mhc is the language differences. Although many people - except our landlords - understand and can speak English it's not what you hear on the streets. The library's book collection is about 12% English and concentrated in fiction area.