My 2016

opisska

Poland8852 Posts

January 13 2017 19:53 GMT

2016 had its highs and its lows for me, but honestly most of the lows were just due to the brutal rebound from the highs. Looking back at it made me realize that I enjoy doing so many different things that it's getting hard to find time to do them more than once in a long while - but also how great it is to have such a selection of activities so that I no longer need to be sorry about things that I would like to do but can't (usually because I can't find people to do them with and am too scared to do them alone, such as freeriding).

So what did I do in 2016? Some things I already shared with you, for example when I

- climbed a six-thousander "peak"
- hiked around in Japan
- watched some of the largest telescopes ever built in action
- met Cascade down under

But that's not even remote everything even just for "larger scale" travel as I went to some more conferences in Argentina, Dublin, Barcelona, Karlsruhe and Bologna - and around the first three I managed to steal some days around for travel and birding. Speaking of birding, we made our first big dedicated birding trip in Israel in March and I just came back from another one from Morocco/Western Sahara.

Twice I went down a river in a canoe and visited a star party. The list of things I managed to do just one includes ice skating on natural ice, cross-country skiing and snowboarding - and visiting my first ever live SC2 tournament! I also made a short two-day hiking jaunt into the Alps and another two-day walk in Polish Carpathians.

Speaking of Poland, should I mention that I actually moved to Warsaw in the middle of all that? The new place has opened completely new possibilities for exploration, so the short trips around were countless - here, you can make a day trip to a primeval forest, a completely untouched river basin or even the sea coast. Not to mention some exciting twitching excursions and the ability to watch a meteor shower under totally dark skies or to see the epic celebration of the All Saints' day with possibly hundreds of thousands of candles lit.

Obviously not everything goes always according to the plan - such as right now when I am sitting in Prague, waiting for my car to get repaired while the greatest outdoor ice of the season gets snowed over in Poland, and in two weeks, I have to come back again to get an MRI scan ... but at least those times when I have to go back to Prague allow me to stay in touch with my friends here - needing a place to sleep is a incidentally great opportunity to meet with people

You may ask what is the point of this blog, besides a simple brag - but for me, putting together all the things I did really made me appreciate how great a year 2016 has been for me. And also to remember that all this has only been possible because of the greatest source of happiness that I know - my glorious wife, who not only took part in many of the things I listed, but who also is really the main factor that keeps me above water and able to live to the fullest.

(Yeah and and sorry for not putting up any 2016 images, but I will spare them maybe for some less wordy post; to add insult to injury, the image below is from 2017.)

[image loading]