Travel with a Kettlebell as your only luggage

I have now traveled with my Kettlebells a few times and I thought I should share my experiences with some do and do-not.

When I been traveling with the Kettlebell my first attempt has always been to put the Kettlebell in my luggage as part of everything else but the weight has often resulted in that I have had to rethink that strategy. It's however been kind of fun when you get the the baggage drop with 10kg excess luggage and they inform you that this will never work, and then all of a sudden you got 6kg to spare - How could that have happened.... :-)

Trying to bring it on as hand luggage was however not a really good idea, so that time I did end up getting it sent back to me through DHL since that was much cheaper then paying for the excess weight on the flight.

But the best experience was actually this weeks flight when I got to Hamburg from Gothenburg, on the baggage band the my only luggage was the Kettlebell, they had lost my suitcase! Well at least the kettlebell made the flight unharmed and luckily late in the evening I got a call that they found my luggage, glad not to lose my five-fingers and the rest of my other cloths :-).

Below are the main points that I thought myself throughout my experiments with traveling with the Kettlebell.

1. A kettlebell is a heavy items for flight personnel, if you put 16kg in an already full bag you are very likely to exceed their maximum 30kg lift limit.
2. Even if you get your bag to be below the maximum 30kg your weight limit might only be 20kg. Luckily for me when traveling with a seaman's book I usually get 40-60kg. So it might be tough to get both the kettlebell and your suitcase within your weight limit. Just bringing normal hand luggage and checking in the Kettlebell would be your best solution if you can manage your trip with only that.
3. You can't however bring the Kettlebell as hand luggage, tried that already for you. Even if there isn't a single sharp edge on the Kettlebell it's not permitted as hand luggage the main argument seems to be that it's a potential weapon but since they could just say that it's well above the 4-8kg weight limit for your hand luggage so not much to argue about really :-(.
4. If the kettlebell is not going to fit within your weight limit the cheapest option might be to send it through DHL or similar, costs about 60 Euro while the excess luggage can set you back as much as 100 Euro.
5. But the best option is probably just to check in the kettlebell all by itself, it has a nice handle so with a bit of convincing the airport personnel can't really refuse it.

Running half-marathon in brand new shoes - Good or bad idea?

For all of you who has followed my blog you know that I have been doing barefoot running for a while now.

• 5th of June 2009 - No pain no gain, or no shoes running...
• 23rd of August 2009 - 10 000 meters almost barefeeted

And now I did the Göteborgsvarvet Halfmarathon in a brand new pairs of Vibram Fivefingers Flow that I collected from the post office yesterday evening.

First why did I order new shoes?

My Vibram Fivefingers classic that I bought last year has been great but there was a few things which I missed with them:

• Was getting a blizzard on the left heal when running longer distanses with them
• Unable to swim with them since they are only secured by the toes
• Couldn't use a running pod to measure the speed, my attampt to use one before was the reason for the blizzard during the Midnattsloppet.

The reason that I went with the flow was that I wanted a pair which I could swim with and use all year around. I also wanted to be able to use the running pod as well as get rid of the flap that was causing my blizzards.

I got my order for the new shoes done online on Monday morning and was crossing my fingers that I would get them before the race, I did hope to get them a bit earlier to have a chance to try them out but knew that might been a longshot. So I got the shoes yesterday evening and tried them on while I was bicycle back home from the post office, they fitted well and I was feeling confident about using them at the race.

So how did it go?

First - who ever you asks they will tell you that you have to run in your shoes, since the fivefingers are almost like a sock I was hopping that would be the case for them... I was kind of wrong...

When you run a half-marathon of 21km most shoes will give you some blizzard, so how did a brand new pair of fivefingers compare?

• 10km bare feeted resulted in massive blood filled blizzards - notthing to really recommand before you have adjusted your feets.
• 10km with Fivefingers Classic resulted in blizzards at the heal but not much more.
• 21km with Fivefingers Flow resulted in massive blizzards under both feets and on some of the toes, the big difference against other blizzards was however that they didn't bother me during the race, even now after the race they don't bother me so if it could be better and worse kind of blizzard these where atleast the better kind.

So what is the verdic? Fivefingers are not immune to blizzards especially not when they are brand new and not worn in. They where however extreamly nice to run in and I don't think that I ever will got back to run in "normal" running shoes ever again.

Regarless of a minimum amount of training, which didn't even feel good when I did it - the Five fingers help me complete the half marathon more than a minute quicker then last year with a final time of:

1hour 46minutes and 48seconds.

Not my personal best but considering my training leading up to the race I'm more then pleased with the result. If there only is one thing that I want you to take away from this post so is it this, after 21km of running my legs, knees and rest of the body is still in a very good shape and that is not thanks to my physical form but to the fact that bare feeted running truly works.

Brilliant executed review of StarWars the Phantom Menance

Just found this video review of the Phantom Menace and it's absolutely brilliant. I'm a bit of a StarWars fan myself but this is just to good and true to miss! Sure the review is almost as long as the movie but the review might actually be better then the movie, so if you only plan to see one of them, consider watching this review then.

Part 1 of 7:


Part 2 of 7:


Part 3 of 7:


Part 4 of 7:


Part 5 of 7:



Part 6 of 7:


Part 7 of 7:

Video of Anti-Glare film application

Video done with the Canon 7D showing how to apply an Anti-Glare film to the MacBook, music by Kate and After (http://www.kateandafter.com). Max time of filming in 24fps full HD is about 12 minutes which results in a 4GB file.

Bye bye glare, welcome sunshine...

From first being very pleased with my glossy screen on my MacBook I soon realized that even if it was great inside it didn't matter how strong the LED backlight was, it would still not be readable outside on a sunny day.

For a while I have been considering changing my MacBook for no other apparent reason than to get a non glossy screen. But once I say http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/12/swap-a-macbooks-glossy-display-for-matte/ this week I decided that I should solve the glossy issue and save myself over 1000 Euro. I didn't go for the exchange of screens but went for an even cheaper and quicker solution, I ordered an anti-glare protection film from RadTech (https://www.radtech.us/Products/ClearCal-Displays.aspx). The Fedex package arrived from the States today and I'm happy to announce that I no longer have a glossy screen.

First impressions is that it's obviously not as good as getting a non-glossy screen from the beginning but it feels like a really good alternative when you can not get a non glossy screen or as in my case when you already has a glossy screen. The only real drawback that I have noticed yet is a slight shimmering effect from the film, it might be something that goes away when the film has cured properly but I guess not. But the main thing to mention is that the difference between before and after is much greater than I had hopped for and I'm looking forward to try out the "new" screen in the sun tomorrow.

The film is suppose to been specially sized for the 13.3 inch MacBook, I would however have preferred it to fill out the whole screen area to the outer edges and not just the display area. Maybe not a major thing for many people but if it would have gone all the way to the edges it would be hard to see that there are a film on the screen while now you now clearly can see the edge where the film is starting.

I took some video while applying the film and will see if I can manage to upload it for everyone to see and make their own judgment. The whole procedure took well under 30 minutes, but will require a bit of patience to ensure that no or minimum amount of particles get trapped behind the film.

500kr Ryanair

Comedian Niklas Andersson compare buying Ryanair tickets with buying candy in the 80:ies. (In Swedish)

Canon 7D is alive

Got my Canon 7D today. See it coming alive below.



My first impressions are very positive, the camera feels solid and the controls are well layed out. That you can customize most functions to some degree is a big plus aswell. I'm looking forward to push the video posibilities with this one, but the most noticeble from a photographing point of view is the view finder, reminds me of when I first holded a 5D and realized that you actually could see details in the view finder.

The only disappointment so far doesn't have to do with the camera but with Canons "wireless" flash system. I didn't realize that it used light pulses for the communication which feels outdated. If I like to use light I should be able to use any primary flash, idiotic. The function seems to work but I was expecting something similar to the pocket wizards so got a bit disappointed on their technology.