Day 14: Beat Car!

Time to wake up this city!

Wind down the windows - and pump up the volume!

although the weather was cool, we spent five minutes of our travel to work in our car polluting the city with our sound system as if we were a pair of teenagers with our first car. We got a few looks, including some double takes as we made it through a couple of tracks of Fatboy Slim on the way into the campus of the large UMCS state university.

Day13: Do it like they do...

Tried to keep it simple today, focusing more on generating some micro-adventure ideas for next week, and for Ania's trip to Lodz over the weekend. Went to the gym and we each tried out some new machines. You know how it is - you start something and it seems quite adventurous but quite quickly you find yourself in a rut where you keep doing the same or similar things. We want to keep going and work our way through all that the gym has to offer, learning what is good for us. It was more of a challenge than we realized, because some of the machines are in German, making figuring how to get them going quite a problem.

I tried one of those machines like you see on the adverts, a strider, plus this awkward one that I have never seen being used that is like climbing a steep slope. The strider I will definitely use again, although Ania reckons she needs to build up her knee strength on the bikes before she tries it again. The step climber - well, maybe if I get bored with all the other machines or if everything else is being used.

Such is the life of the micro-adventurer, having fun while other people get on with their lives around you!

Day 12: Piecing it together

We needed something to put our shoes on in the closet, and we bought a set of shelves that fit the available space. Not much of an adventure, you might think, but assembly, as usual, was not as easy as it could have been. However, with Ania in control and me doing the grunty bits all the issues were soon resolved. As it is Autumn it is an ideal time to sort our closet out, and delving into the clutter will require the efforts of adventurers of spirit. Anything that is now worn out or which we never wear will be got rid off, the latter donated to a local charity.

I am still experimenting with the blogging format, and the kind of ideas we should use in our adventures. I like the idea of taking a quick picture, and today I have also made up some paper slips we can jot down any ideas we have for future adventures. I would like to put the slips in a pot so that until we put our hand in and grab a slip we will not know what adventure is coming up for the day.

Day 11: Climbing the walls

When I was a lad, my brother and I devised a way of climbing up narrow passages by leaning against one surface, putting one foot against the other surface, and then putting the remaining foot on the wall below your bum and levering yourself up. I even used the method in childhood adventures such as to get up on the roof of a local school. Much later I discovered this to be a common method used by rock climbers, but that did not diminish the pleasure of discovery.

Today we went down to the basement to try this out as our adventure for the day. I tried in the doorways at home, but the woodwork was too smooth to get a grip on with my feet. However, the basement walls were nicely rough, but I am afraid that the strength has gone from my legs, mainly as the result of fifteen years of arthritis and a more recent lack of exercise. Both of us 'ageing' adventurers did manage to get both feet off the ground, with some mutual assistance, but in no way could you say that we climbed the walls. Perhaps in some months time, if we keep up our efforts in the gym, we will be able to repeat this adventure and climb high enough to touch the ceiling.

Day 10: Where are those new buildings?

Today, early in October, the sun was shining with only a slightly cool wind, and being a Sunday, we found we had more time on our hands than usual and our five minutes adventure became one lasting several hours. Our aim was to take a closer look at some new housing blocks we can see rising beyond a housing estate when we stand on our balcony.


We knew that they were building a new main road to take some of the traffic away from the roads on the western edge of the city and redirect the flow around the southwestern corner, but we had sen nothing of that other than the new junction at the western end. After making our way through the pleasant housing estate, where I got pictures of a locally made Zuk van and a classic 1970s Communist supermarket building still with its blue-painted aluminium roof cladding, now very faded, and some yellow flowers against the blue sky.


The road was a lot more advanced than we thought, and the new blocks were next to the new road. What we remembered the most was that the previous times we had adventured here it had been a mixture of fields and abandoned land. I have some great shots of a small combine harvester cutting the wheat in one of the fields now featuring a new block. The road follows the ridge, and the blocks are just south it, so the city has breasted another barrier on its ever-continuing push forward to the south.

Day 9: Three Blind Mice

Today's adventure was Ania's idea: to stand on our balcony and sing 'Three blind mice'

Three blind mice,
Three blind mice,
See how they run,
See how they run,
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
She cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice!

It was just dark when we did it, but no one seemed to mind - or notice!

Day 8: Subway Adventurers

Today was the first day that Ania felt well enough to go to the gym, and as it is located only the other side of the nearby main road and it was a pleasant afternoon, we decided to walk there. Well, a little free exercise to warm up before we got to use all those expensive calorie consumers was an added benefit.

As it is quite a little way to the crossing, we decided to try out the subway that passes under the road. Although recently repaved, it was dirty and not cared for, with smashed bottle glass everywhere from its other use as a haven for serious drinkers - and there were no lights. I don't think we will be using it again, not even for drinking, and so on the way home we decided not to repeat today's adventure and instead used the road crossing.

Day 7. A Bridge over Troubled Traffic

We went on a short trip across to the other side of the city to get my hair cut by one of our relatives. It is a very poor district where she works at a small beauty salon, but she is good and there is a pleasant atmosphere there that we enjoy, even if the attempts to modernise the interior of this 1970s shop fail to conceal the familiar communist-era toilet doors and second-rate heating systems. Surviving in business here is its own form of adventure! As we had arrived a little early and she still had her previous client, we went out and had an adventure by crossing a footbridge across a busy road. Interestingly enough the entry to the bridge had been split into two, one half being shallow steps and the other being a smooth slope. Almost no one chose to use the steps, the sloped part was the first choice unless it was already busy.

There was a good view over this part of the city, including of the Roman Catholic cemetery chapel, slightly hidden in a light mist in the darkening evening light. This was a very peaceful adventure, the interest being in discovery of another aspect of our city and how people use it.

Day 6: A Walk in the Park

I skyped Dominik, my friend from a small box-like office two floors down, this morning and asked him if he was busy. He was about to head off to Wroclaw for a few days, but luckily he was still in his office. We bunked off work for five minutes to take a walking adventure around the park to chat about things, such as how by naming something you change its nature and hence block potential ideas. Call something a 'project', and it becomes a different beast than if you call it an 'investigation', 'research', or 'check'. it is easy to think that we can choose the name for what we want to do without it affecting the final result in a negative way, making it less than it could have been - a project and an investigation have different methods and goals - but what you really want is the best answers. Perhaps it is best not to give open processes any name at all.

It was a great little adventure, perfectly suited to our needs and desires of the moment - with some useful little concepts that we might not have formed had we remained at our respective desks. Viva les Adventurers, to mix languages ;)

5: Down in the basement

I start work late on a Tuesday, and we took the opportunity to go down to the basement...

Anyone would think we were teenagers instead of being about half a century old ;)

4: Smog

We left some pictures untaken yesterday, partly because we needed pictures of pollution and everything simply looked to pleasant in the sun. This morning we got up earlier than usual and drove around taking pictures of chimneys and car exhausts, such a great change to be driving in the going-to-work traffic and having fun instead.

3: Railway Station

We were taking pictures Ania needs for a book her department is creating, and we ended up at the railway station. This is not easy to photograph well as it is always in shadow at the front and messyn from the track side. While there we explored the end of the platform where you can actually walk across the track, and we found another lift for the disabled - which we just had to try out as well.

Most of the time people walk past places and never get to know them, but you learn so much more by just taking a moment out to explore an interesting looking alley, or looking behind a familiar building. Often there are signs of an earlier world, or there may be hidden gardens.

2: Elevating the basement

A simple one today; we were at Plaza, the largest mall here in Lublin when we noticed an elevator we had not noticed before. This one was to help disabled people move between the shooping and the parking areas below - so we went down in it and explored the underground carpark.

1: Me and the Microadventurers: saying hello!

After spending a couple of months taking self-portraits with my my camera and then uploading them on to Flikr as part of the 'Flikr Group Roulette' (yes, that is the name of the group, go check it out), I realised that that the 30 minutes to 5 hours I was spending on producing my pictures and commenting on everyone else's was simply taking too much time every day. But I missed it, not just for the comradeship, but the opportunity to explore me and my lefe every day.

So, I created the micro-adventure - a whole five minutes every day spent on personal development rather than on work, family and home matters. That's it - except that every day it has to be something different, and each time it should push the envelope in a different direction. All parts of your life should be used, and new potential areas explored.

For me , Day 1 was a trip to sign on at our local gym, a kind of place that I had never visited before in all my 46 years - if you do not count the school gym, of course. My wife, Ania, has been many, many time, but since I spend most of my life now sitting behind a computer screen I thoughtit was time for a change.

I did not plan this to be my first micro-adventure, it just happened. It is not huge, although since I am very shy in contacts with people, it is very important. It was also a good lesson for Ania, as she has little practice in entering strange places without the protection of being a teacher or group leader.