Headworx

I'm writing this post in December, 2025, in preparation for couple of weeks' holidays In January / February. I understand packrafting now may sound a bit extreme, but hey, it is peak summer now in New Zealand. And NZ is where it all started - I found this article (see the snapshot) in an old magazine that was left in one of the New Zealand's mountain huts. That was in 2024 - almost two years ago. Since then we have completed a white water packrafting camp to get familiar with packrafts and river rafting / kayaking in general. That was in Slovenia, and is a great idea for an active summer adventure in Europe. Then we found a great supplier of packrafting gear in Poland - I mentioned packraft.pl in my Spring'2025 post on the subject. Now we are back to where it all began. Not as ambitious as Mitchell Radford, but his documentary is definitely a good one to understand what this activity is all about.  We're also trying to pack much lighter than he did. 39 kg / 85 lbs...

2025 was very travel - intensive for me. Needless to say I managed to ern the 1K status flying only in (often deeply discounted) economy class.  This can be nicely seen in the Flighty app . The app that I called useless (because all it offers is already possible in the native airline apps). But on the other hand Flighty is really pretty and the visualization of flights overlayed on top of Apple Maps is cool :) Travel is the inherent part of my job and I do it by choice. Honestly speaking I do not understand many people that I meet who "feel for me" and do not like to travel at all. Yet they still either do international business or actively participate in global standardization efforts through different standards committee memberships. My response in such case is almost always in the lines of "have you been sentenced to do this job?", which of course may be rude, but ultimately I believe that everyone is the architect of their own fate. And in most fee / democratic ...

I'm about to leave for a 4-week mostly off-grid holidays. This takes some preparation: planning places to visit, updating topographic maps, completing the gear. At the same time I've been preparing my online / electronic side of things for the prolonged absence. This basically includes two things: 1. Minimizing the stuff that will bloat my inboxes. Mostly to avoid the post-absence trauma of dealing with hundreds (if not thousands) of different kinds of notifications and messages. These days just about everything wants keep you "up to date", and this is an enormous trap. The mails and notifications are mostly useless, outdated or conflicting. And they contribute to 90% (or more) of messages you get. So very patiently I have been removing myself from any distribution lists and subscriptions. That has worked, as over the recent days I have been receiving significantly less traffic. Calming and liberating this feels. 2. Making sure the phone battery lasts as long as possi...

Another year behind us - time flies. Steps - wise I more or less matched the 2024 numbers, which I called "definitely below expectations". Now the expectations were trimmed and I am quite happy with the outcome. Yes, lowering expectations is the easiest path to happiness! The knee and ankle injuries took longer to heal than I expected and affected my walking distances at the beginning of the year. 2025 was also very travel - intensive (if not the most!). And especially considering the long distance nature of my business trips, I am quite happy with the amount of physical exercise I was able to put. This physical exercise is BTW the best way to fight jetlag and quickly accommodate to new time zones. So no real downs in 2025 and my total is now about a half of the Earth's circumference: 19667 kilometers (with the watch on). Some TZ changes were quite brutal. In late August I flew from Poland to California (9 hours shift) for the 3-day IES Annual Conference and then overnigh...