The 103rd. is behind us, all peaceful and happy. Great time with a wonderful woman.

Prep for the Norway trip in full swing and will be having the spiked tyres fitted on Tuesday and ready from the sneak up to the boarder and out of Germany on the 21st. Illegal here but the motorway is only 2 kms., away and once on that and hoping I avoid doing anything silly that attracts the attention of those that should not be attracted all should go well.

In the process of preparing to load up found that the back hatch will not close, which could be a bit of a problem by sub zero temperatures so thats to be fixed as well day after tyres fitted.

After that its just packing of winter wollies etc. Although a look at the weather forecast for around the Tromsø area, which is more or less as far north as I intend to go, is currently showing only around -5 degrees C so that is not too intimidating, been getting that here.

Aurora forecast is pretty dismal at the moment, all centred around Alaska and Canada
;~( Think positively I suppose is the motto and all things being equal there should be plenty of great image opportunities.

Well I finally managed to take delivery of my new toy as I mentioned on the 12.01 and am as happy as the proverbial pig in ….
The first evening I did nothing other than unpack it and then alternated between picking it up to get the feel of it and then putting it back down again
Too nervous to try anything with it, which given my clumsy paws was probably the right decision.
Yesterday was spent entirely reading the manual, understanding and making the various parameter settings. Late afternoon I actual got to take a couple of images to be sure it actually did so.
Today I finally took it out for a walk and revealed in the pleasure of using it.
Happy me.
Being Medium Format I guess its first big try out will be on the first Norway trip this year.