Cross posted from The ONE Blog

I have a catch phrase that’s served me well along the U2 tour: “It’s not gonna rain.” Thus far with that phrase and the collective will power of tens of thousands of fans, we’ve managed to keep the rain off of us despite what the forecast said. I suppose I should have been saying, “It’s not gonna rain, and there won’t be gale force winds.” But I didn’t, and so that was our weather for the first day in Gothenburg, Sweden. You can get a sense of the conditions from the picture above from when we were unloading in the morning.

But the rough and rugged ONE volunteers braved the wind and the rain, and still managed to sign up hundreds of new ONE members. I was as impressed as I was cold – I’d packed for a summer concert tour and lacked the proper insulation for the 17C windy soggy day.

Everything changed for the second day in Gothenburg. The skies cleared, the wind stopped, and we were in serious business. We doubled the number of people we signed up, and after the concert still had the energy to share a few laughs and a some Swedish gummy candies – Gott & blandat, which I highly recommend if salt liquorice sounds good to you.

It’s now onward back to Germany, where I’m meeting up with a couple members of the German team for a show in Gelsenkirchen. With any luck it’s not going to rain (again).

After 3 days on the road we arrived in Horní Bečva, one of the funniest towns in the world if you say the name in English. I was really hoping for a big “Welcome to Horní Bečva” sign, but as there wasn’t one, we had to settle for taking pictures in front of all the businesses that named themselves after the town. Unfortunatly we seemed to be the only ones who found the name funny, when renting skies the rental guy didn’t seem phased at all by the fact that we said we were staying in Horny Bitchfu.

We spent our time in Horní Bečva eating our brains out, skiing, and sledding. Our first day skiing was shrouded in clouds. Very dense clouds. The picture here isn’t darkened, it was just that dark and cloudy. Made for some slow and interesting skiing. It also made for some snowy skiing. We got dumped on, more than a foot of snow in the few days we were there.

My first few days in le Plange were warm and sunny and made for some amazing skiing. But the catch with a sport that depends on snow is that you have to expect a little bad weather. It’s cooled down the last couple of days and the wind has really picked up. I don’t really mind though since I know it means I’m likely to have some good snow next week in Switzerland and the turbulent weather has a beauty all its own.

One of the fun features of this new blog platform (if you are reading this in the feed you’ll see what I’m talking to by going to the site) is the background. Each week I’ll toss up a new picture from various adventures and miss-adventures.

The current background comes from a backpacking trip I took with my friend Brian in the Adirondacks. The weather was hit and miss to say the least. Several days we found ourselves trudging through torrential rain and sinking up to our ankles in mud. The next day would be perfectly sunny and warm, offering great views from the mountaintops.

This particular day started off looking great, but as we started up Mt. Marcy, the tallest mountain in the Adirondacks, the weather started going south fast. We slogged up the mountain through this chilly fog, and when we reached the top were met with winds whipping over the ridge. It was miserable weather, but at the same time, there was something very beautiful about it, which I think comes through in the picture.