Ups and downs

For a good chunk of June I had the opportunity to travel through

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus with my wife on a great summer

holiday. We got to enjoy fantastic weather, extremely favourable

pricing compared to Finland, and some very interesting parts of the

world. I had plenty of chances to indulge my weird (and not at all

politcally motivated) fascination with the material remains of the

Soviet Union (especially military stuff).

We got back home just before the mid-summer public holiday here, where

a huge chunk of the population heads out to summer cottages in the

woods to spend time relaxing, swimming in lakes, walking through

forests and, of course, enjoying sauna. We don't have our own summer

cottage, but thanks to some contacts at the university where I work,

we were able to very cheaply stay in a small cottage on a small island

in the local archipelago. The cottage is owned by the university and

was built to accommodate researchers doing fieldwork on the island

(mostly marine biology stuff, I think). It's very minimal - no

running water, no electricity. It was amazing to spend 3 nights on,

literally, our own private island, living an extremely simple

lifestyle. I brought my shortwave radio along and had the best DXing

time of my life, hearing many stations I had never heard before. Not

just the usual national public broadcasters and religious groups, but

utility stuff (like a time station I haven't identified yet, but which

certainly wasn't the WWVH station in Hawaii that I often heard in NZ,

and also the Deutscher Wetterdienst) and even the famous Chinese

jamming station "Firedrake"[1]! My enthusiasm for the hobby is much

renewed, and I have emailed requests for many QSL cards.

So, I had been feeling pretty good lately, and looking forward to

resuming the bicycle projects I put on hold whie travelling.

My wife got a phonecall at about 5am this morning from her brother

back in Australia. Their mother died of a heart attack the night

before. We are flying back tomorrow to help with the funeral

arrangements and to figure out what to do with her belongings. She

rented, and lived alone, so everything needs to be sorted out fairly

quickly. Dealing with such a huge undertaking at the same time as

coming to terms with the loss (which I don't think has even begun to

sink in for anybody yet) is going to be brutal, and a very marked

contrast to the rest of June. I won't be without access to SDF or

Circumlunar Space while we're away, but obviously I will be far less

active on email/gopher/Mastodon than usual, even though I just got

back from a long absence. I will try to keep my aNONradio show

going, but we'll see what happens (tonight's show will certainly go

ahead as planned, as it's already fully prepared).

[1] https://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Firedrake