A Canadian in Sweden

Waxbox full of pain

So my advisor Jan invited me over to his house yesterday. He and his wife Lena have three kids, Frida (13), Rasmun (10) and Maya (6). What a great time. After a few hours of just chatting, Frida mentioned something about her guitar class or something, so I asked to see her guitar.

Right now you are wondering how the title of this has anything to do with what I am talking about. Stay with me.

This simple request on my part caused a chain reaction which ended up with me staying past 10 pm. Frida has been playing guitar for 2 years and she already kicks my ass. I couldn't believe it. She is awesome. So Jan mentions something about his guitar, which has been in storage for over 20 years. Lena didn't even know about it. He went to get it, and it is this great classic electric guitar. It needs some work, but I had it tuned in a few minutes. It turns out, Jan was in a band when he was a teenager, they used to travel around playing bars and stuff. He played all the way up in Luleå once (250 km north of here). His band even put out two albums. He played keyboards principally, but messed around on guitar as well. Amazing. Then it turns out that Lena played "a bit" also when she was younger. As soon as she had a guitar in her hands, she had to go cut her long nails in order to play properly. You know that a woman plays more than "a bit" when she goes to cut down her long nails as soon as she picks up a guitar.

Anyhow, Jan went to find a keyboard and we all jammed together all night. Mostly Beatles and Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was great. I showed them how to play Johnny B. Goode which is just a simple blues riff, and that got Jan and I to talking about how it would be appropriate to write a Blues song about the abysmal ski season we have been having over here. It was still raining yesterday. The only trail open is Nydala, the 1.8 km loop I have done over 500 times since it opened 3 Novemeber. And that, gentle readers, is where the title of this post comes from: my suggestion for the title to our as-yet-unwritten blues song about cross country skiing.

Other suggestions are warmly accepted. The Comments are open.

posted by Jeff @ 1:26 AM