Vasa museum, cold weather, shin splints, etc.

Hej hej! Sorry to keep you waiting in suspense, but nothing too exciting has been happening around here. My mom was here for a week, and it was nice to see her and also spend some more time exploring all the touristy things to do in Stockholm. Oh ya and I ate a lot of really good food and drank a lot of good alcohol (Thanks again, Mom!). One of the things I enjoyed most was walking around Sodermalm (the south island). It used to be where all the working class and poor people lived, but is now a very young and trendy area (think East Village in NYC). I've been there many times at night (where most of the bars and clubs are), but I thoroughly enjoyed exploring it in the daylight and sober.

One of my favorite things we saw was the Vasa museum. I must say it was the coolest museum I have ever been in, and I'm pretty sure I could have spent an entire day in there...So now for a brief history lesson on the Vasa: it was Swedish King's pride and joy; a huge warship built in the 17th century. Unfortunately it sank on its maiden voyage, not even making it out of Stockholm's harbor(oopsies). It sat underwater for the next 333 years, but stayed extremely well preserved; the cold temperature and low salinity of the Baltic as well as the high levels of toxic pollutants in the harbor at the time meant the organisms that normally breakdown wood couldn't survive. In 1961 the ship was lifted out of the water and began undergoing a very extensive conservation process that included spraying it with a chemical multiple times a day for the next 17 years, followed by 9 years of drying. For me learning about the whole conservation process was the most interesting part, because no one had ever really done this before. They're still learning about better ways to preserve/treat the wood, and the conservation efforts are an on-going process (any of you mechanical or chemical engineers out there interested in material science, jump on that!). So anyways, a permanent museum built around the ship opened in 1990...of which I took way too many pictures, but you should check them out.

Hmm what else? Oh ya, there's this little thing called cold weather, and it is a bitch. Highs around 40, lows around 30, and don't forget to throw lots of wind and rain in the mix for added fun. Not quite sure how I'll manage to make it through December...

And since I've started ranting, I'm going to move on to shin splints. I've had shin splints for about the last 3 weeks now, which has really screwed up my marathon training. One month ago I was able to run 12 miles, and now I can barely run 2 without terrible pain...all of my recent runs have turned into long walks, and even walking can be painful, especially right after a run. If I were on track with my training, I'd supposed to peak with a 20 mile run in about week and a half, which will clearly not happen. For now I'm taking a whole week off in hopes that my shin splints magically disappear, and then I'll see how it goes from there.

Moving on to better news, I leave for Prague tomorrow morning! It will be a short trip (Wed to Fri), but I'm really looking forward to it.

New pictures: 304-493

Oh yes, and if you are out there reading my blog, you should comment! It'd be nice to know I'm not just writing to myself!