Hi all,

I've rather enjoyed appearing as a disembodied chunk of knowledge, but I guess all good things must come to an end ;-)

Anyhow, here I am, slightly more fleshed out.
I live in Sweden.
For my age and nationality I have a tad more than average education, although nothing to brag about, I was quite happy to step over into a professional occupation when time came to leave school.
I am/was an voracious reader, and a surprising amount of it has stayed with me. Preferred genres are SF and fantasy, but as reading is something that I do fast and at no particular effort I've gone through a lot of the classics as well.
Contemporary crime and adventure books also go down a treat.

I do work for a living, in an office setting mostly these days. Exactly what I do wouldn't make sense to a lot of you, and among those who understands it the majority would be bored to death - or tears, or sleep, whichever comes first.

What I prefer to do with my free time to do is to use it up. The local branch of the Scout movement is always a handy hole to sink some hours in, or there are all kinds of crafts one can get up to. Welding is a bit more fun than sewing, but I do enjoy both. Wood working is nice too, although dusty. And eventually finding a use for your finished projects eventually become something of a challenge.

I like bikes.
I like them as manufactured objects, their engineering aesthetics appeal to me.
I like them as machines, they're neat and sort of easily within reach to work with.
I like the skills element when riding them for fun.
I like the fatigue element when riding them for exercise.
I like the utility aspect of them, the way they act as force multipliers enabling a human to travel useful distances in an acceptable amount of time only using his/her own power.

I used to be badly hooked on sailing, I've sailed everything from dinghies, slender catamarans, small boats to mid-sized yachts and even a couple of ships, although no full sized clippers.

I did a lot of snowboarding in the late 80's and early 90's, and for someone not doing the skibum thing logging seven weeks of riding each season is quite a commitment.
In the beginning I built my first boards, which was fun but not really practical. What got me all steamed up was when I got my first alpine board. That was the year I kissed my skis goodbye and went for it. Didn't look back for a good ten years or more. These days I'm not adverse to a good set of carving skis, but I find it hard to find pairs that can slice up a slope the way my alpine boards can.

Skating is fun too, both inline skates and the European specialty of tour skating on ice.
You won't see me doing any grinds though, touring is my thing. Mile after mile, hours on end, that's the thing.

Oh, did I mention that I like bikes ;-)