winter sports

On my hunt for the windmill I noticed someone kite-skiing out on the sea. Basically you have a kite or parachute like thing, and the wind moves you on skates or skis. Looks like fun.

The small black speck on the center of the picture is the kite.

The people who came to get their fresh air at the sea side paths or on the ice, got there by car! Well, lets hope they were from further away, not neighbours too addicted to the cars. To be honest, there were a few families with small kids with them out at the camp site. Also I dont know how much gear a kite-skier has with him. But I saw one ice fisher on his bicycle on the way home, he had the big ice drill and all the gear with him.

On Saturday I noticed a norwegian bus at the parking lot of the local sport field. It's close to the bikeways, and can be seen in the comparision video. I got curious and went to see what was going on. In winter, the field serves as a skating ring. I had thought it was mostly used by kids playing ice hockey, but this time the users were speed skaters.

The weather was not the very best, as it was snowing, but at least it was not windy. The event was Barents Match, Barents area championships. Well, I can tell you they were fast despite some snow on the ice.

The funny thing is that I noticed that something was going on when I was cycling. So I cycled closer, through the gates and almost where this photo was taken. The sports field is large, and they had the speed skating tracks in the middle of the ice, with some ice around the tracks left unused. So I biked on the ice to get close to the skaters. Nothing weird with that. But when I tried to leave, I noticed that the ice was so slippery that I could not get on my bike. I had to walk my bike off the ice. :-)