14-Jan-2001 -- I found out about the confluence project from Slashdot.org and informed my friends who were surprisingly
enthusiastic about visiting a confluence (most of them were interested anyway :). So on a nice Sunday morning I (Joakim),
Anders, Patric, Lars and Johnny with his dog Bella set out from Linköping and Vadstena to boldly go where no man had gone
before. (Well as it turned out, someone actually had been there before, but obviously had failed to recognize a perfectly
good confluence.)
The confluence is located south east of Tranås in the southern part of Sweden, which meant a trip of about 50km for
us to get there. The weather was excellent with just a few degrees below zero (C), sunshine and some snow on the ground.
It wasn’t really hard to reach the confluence since we could drive within a few hundred meters and then follow paths in
the wood. The confluence is situated on a small forest road between two man-made clearings. This was good since we thought
we had to get in to the brush, which grew quite thick nearby. We visited the confluence at noon but the sun doesn't get
very high up on the sky this time of year, as you see in the pictures. To inform the uniformed we placed a sign at the
confluence with the distance to the northpole and a reference to the project web-site.
The area is partly used for recreational purposes so after we had visited the confluence we went down to a nearby lake,
made a fire and ate some sausages. We had a really nice day in the woods and everyone was satisfied with our important
mission in the name of science, except for Bella who probably could have eaten a few more sausages.