Mac Mason and Susanna Ricco are among our most intrepid friends. Mac, who has been previously featured on this blog as the other stoic roboticist, is an Alaska native who regularly climbs glaciers, fights off bears, and lets his friends shoot his high-powered handguns, (which may or may not be wise).
Susanna was a college track and field athlete who – along with Gavin – anchored every computer science department graduate student intramural sports team at Duke. What I’m trying to say here is that she wasn’t the one who ran the bases backward in softball or the one who tore a rotator cuff playing dodgeball. Far from it! No photographic evidence of these sports teams exists, unfortunately.
Instead, here is Susanna kayaking in Alaska.
Another feature of their intrepid spirit is a willingness to travel across continents with a toddler. Thanks friends! It was super fun to have Julian here with us, and he is shaping up to be just as tough as his parents, especially now that he is eating sursild (pickled fish) and wearing diapers sponsored by a ski wax company.
Or at least his dad eats sursild.
Thanks to (mostly) good summer weather, we got to spend most of the trip outside. Here are some highlights:
We took the Obligatory Trondheim Picture.
Julian jumped on an in-ground trampoline. These have appeared on this blog before, but featuring people less cute than Julian, who was fairly delighted.
We hiked along the fjord out to our favorite restaurant, Lade Kaia. The fjord was a bit overwhelming for Julian, who was mostly pushed in the stroller up and down the mountain by his parents.
Julian got pushed in a viking cart.
We hung out at the ski jumping stadium.
Due to incredible luck, the Norwegian National Team was practicing while we were there. We sat on the bleachers for a couple of hours and watched the ski jumpers fly off the in-run and land on the special plastic-covered landing field that can be used for summer training. Please enjoy the flight of a professional ski jumper that might be Johann André Forfang:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLUlXUyuzNs&w=560&h=315]
All this excitement led Julian to inform us that he too wanted to go down the “slide.”
We made an important discovery, which was that Granåsen stadium has not just the two large ski jumping hills, but also several smaller ones for beginners in a different area. This answered some important questions about how a person would learn the sport. Compare and contrast:
All in all, it was a great time. Thanks friends for visiting us! We love you and we really appreciate that you made the effort!
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