When we were going along the Moselle river back in Germany, Nick and I spent a while talking back and forth in badly accented English of various flavors, complaining about how awful Americans are, and how badly Americans do everything. I played the Frenchman, saying stuff like, “Look at zese passenger trains. Zey are so much better than ze stupid American ones. Zey are on time, and zey don’t smell of piss and hotdogs.”
Nick came back with, “Yah, in Austria de trains have actual room, you know? You can put your feet up. But we don’t; ya? Because ve are not de tasteless savages like de Americans. In der flip-flops und baseball hats.”
Well, this morning we boarded our first French train, out of Luxembourg.
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Crammed our piles of stuff onto the terribly designed French trains, and we’re on our way…
Nick managed to get about half an hour of napping, until a German man wandered into the train car talking loudly on his phone. The man paced the aisle and ranted, getting more and more upset, then disconnected the call and left through the sliding door with a murderous expression.
Nick was not pleased.
It’s so gauche to complain on vacation. But from a bike tourist perspective, I do have a few minor complaints to air about the French trains. For one, they sold me tickets with a six-minute transfer time, to get between two trains that arrived at opposite ends of a massive station, and our train pulled in late. Even without two loaded bicycles, we would have needed to move at a dead run, threading through crowds.
When we missed that connection, the ticket counter attendant said that missing the train was “our fault” and that the best they could do was put %15 of the ticket price towards later tickets. So I had to pay another $140 for failing to get across the platform at unsafe speed.
(The elevators were so small we had to stand the bikes vertically and go one at a time. The elevators were also very slow. This is a concern mostly for bicycle tourists like us, but also, woe betide you if you’re in a wheelchair and the person pushing it isn’t willing to sit on your lap for the ride to the platform.)
When I asked them which platform the next train would arrive on so I could be prepared, they said they did not know, and had no way of knowing until 20 minutes before the train was due to depart. Not when it arrived … when it departed.
When that time comes due, they start flashing the name and platform of the train on the big electronic signs, including the one in the lobby. At that moment, several hundred people suddenly stand up and begin shoving themselves and their luggage down the hall. The only reason I can think of for doing it this way is so people waiting for a train don’t wait “too close” to the designated platform and interfere with people catching trains before them. … But if they knew the time and platform in advance, with enough confidence that they could time their walk to the platform, most people wouldn’t do that. They’d sit in the waiting area where there are comfortable benches.
The train was ten minutes late, cutting ten minutes off the time it would linger before departure. Nick and I had to wait with our loaded bikes in the main hall, staring at the departure screen, waiting for it to update and show the platform, so we could dash for the correct elevators and ride them up.
When we got to the train we had to run the bikes to the far end of it, to a car with no external labeling indicating it conveyed bikes. The bike area inside was up two steps, around a sharp bend, behind a completely useless sliding door that kept closing on the bikes as we were moving them … and then up two more steps. And again, at the same time, if you’re in a wheelchair or not entirely able in some other way, the French train system says, screw you.
Traveling on the Belgian trains was alright; traveling on the German trains was a pleasure. The French train system is a dumpster fire. Not the trains; the train system. Even the lowly American train stations back home – and the subways, and the bus terminals – can tell you what platform each one will be arriving at, with near-realtime accuracy.
Aaaaanyway…
When Nick and I emerged from the train station with our bikes, we were in Paris, and it was instant chaos. We dropped into the nearest bike lane and zig-zagged through city streets, tumbling in the chaos of cars and people and bikes and scooters all fighting for gaps. It was pretty intense, after polite Luxembourg. Nick performed quite well in it, saying “my rides in Oakland prepared me for this.” We got lots of interested looks and comments from even the jaded Parisians about the bikes we were riding.
This is the face you make when you’ve survived your first ride through Paris bicycle lanes.
We had to pass through two security gates and open an apartment door that was built stronger than the door to any other apartment I’d ever stayed in. It was like entering a vault. We pulled the bags off both bikes to fit them through doorway.
I settled in with the computer, working mostly on photos, and Nick laid down for a few minutes. Then we got up and went searching for food.
We passed several restaurants and cafes, jam-packed with talking people, almost all of them smoking with one hand and drinking with the other. The noise of conversation even outdoors was jarring.
We arrived at a little cafe I’d picked randomly on the map, and the head waiter took our orders. He debated with his companion, who was from Argentina, what the definition of “Argentina spiciness” was, but couldn’t find an English translation. We rolled the dice.
First French meal, at a restaurant a few blocks away.
The meal was tasty but not quite filling. I suggested that we get right up and go looking for another, and Nick readily agreed.
He led the way, picking streets at random. I vetoed a couple of spots that looked too expensive or too boring. We eventually wandered into a restaurant facing an extremely busy traffic loop running around a square, and went inside because it was a little bit chilly in our cycling clothes. The big windows gave an easy view of all the passing cyclists, and I schemed about coming back some later day with the camera to make an anonymous gallery of them.
I ordered a bolognese and ate about half of it. It was very heavy. Nick ordered honey-glazed salmon which was cooked perfectly, and I stole some.
After that we went walking again, generally in the direction of the apartment.
Inside, Nick laid down for a while again, then got up and exploded his luggage and re-configured it into a smaller version, using one of my stripped-down bike bags as a carry-on for the plane flight he was going to be taking soon.
We were both up until about 2:00am, with him organizing luggage and me sorting photos. There were a lot of them to sort… About 1500.
I packed up my stuff relatively quickly, though I had to unroll the tent again because I accidentally wrapped my headphones and GPS tracker inside it. Nick had commandeered one of my folding chairs and was browsing memes while slowly waking up. He looked so comfortable I decided I would leave him be and go take a shower.
Oh boy, shower time… Looks a bit grody… Here we go.
I wheeled the bike over to the restaurant just in case, but it was closed. The shower was alarmingly grody, so I changed out of my clothes while standing in my biking sandals and showered with them on. Still way better than no shower at all!
Not bad for an all-you-can-eat ten dollar breakfast.
Just as we were starting to chomp, Nick realized he’d forgotten his battery back at the campsite, so I spent some time at looking at train schedules and moving photos around.
After that we rode along the riverbank, absorbing the pleasant air and sun.
A few hours later we stopped for drinks at a roadside restaurant, just because we could. I got hot chocolate and he got a coffee drink.
We talked a lot about urban planning, about the paranoia his parents had about strangers and getting lost that was imposed on them by the suburban life, about how different it was when I was a kid. We tried to think of ways we could adapt urban environments, so they were better for families, and turned people away from the madness of car-based environments.
We pedaled on, drifting apart and then back again. Soon we threaded into Koblenz, large town sitting at the juncture of the Moselle and Rhine rivers, and stopped in a plaza. There we found a tall monument depicting the history of the region.
Contemplating such a massive span of time, and scraps of earlier conversations, Nick sat down to work through some things in his head. I walked around and gazed at the people and ate a snack.
From there we squiggled a bit farther north and found some other interesting sculpture, eventually reaching a park right at the confluence of the rivers, with an enormous statue of Kaiser Wilhelm overlooking the slowly churning water.
It was a nice day for lingering, but we did have more ground to cover. We rode west, following the Moselle. Going was very, very slightly tougher because now we were headed upriver instead of down.
We stopped at a greek cafe up a hill, next to a train station. I got gyros and wolfed them down, and Nick got some tortellini which he ate at a more sensible pace. I planned a train ride for tomorrow to make up for lost time.
How do you make amends, as a government or a nation, for an act of murder that was so complete that there is no family, even extended family, left to return stolen property to? When they’re dead, and the people who killed them are dead, and the officials and the lawmakers who were “just following orders” are dead by firing squad or rotting in prison, and your bombed-out, ruined country is now one enormous crime scene, how do you set it right?
I don’t know. These little bricks are obviously no compensation. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about what happened on the path to World War II and how it played out, but not much on what the Germans did afterward…
I made a note to do that, then dragged my mind back to the present, and the fine weather. The steep vineyards along the river were ridiculously pretty.
As I passed through a quiet intersection I hears a kid’s voice coming from a side yard. He said “Alahoo Akbar, reep reep, Alahoo Ahhkbarr,” and made a bunch of snorting noises like a pig. I was confused, then suddenly realized he was saying this at me, because he saw I was wearing a bandana, and decided that it must be some kind of keffiyeh under my bike helmet, and was mocking me with a religious phrase he connected to them.
I felt quite incredibly offended on behalf of everyone in the Middle East, and turned the bike around slowly, and rolled back by the yard. The kid who’d made the noises was still muttering nonsense to himself and kicking a soccer ball against the gate. I didn’t say anything, but grinned rather intensely at him, and when he saw me he jerked back, then stiffly gathered his ball and about-faced to walk to his friend at the far end of the yard. If I’d had more forethought I would have said something sarcastic to him in English. Hopefully I at least surprised some caution into the little shithead.
The incident was unsettling, and made me very thoughtful about the degree to which I was able to assume that the people around me in this foreign country meant me no harm. I mean, I’d known going in that I already looked very German, so as long as I didn’t open my mouth I could blend in; to the degree that a dude riding a recumbent festooned with too many bags could blend in anywhere. It honestly never occurred to me that they might also assume I was Middle Eastern because of my freaking bandana, which is, okay, an exceptionally thick white cotton cloth with an elaborate pattern on it in bright red ink, but generally smaller than any keffiyeh. Were Germans looking at me with some suspicion because of that? Was the shitty rambling of this little kid just an overt sign of an internal bigotry churning below the surface of the adult minds all around me?
I passed out of the town and down a steep hill, then zig-zagged to the campsite. The woman at the booth spoke broken English and was very friendly, though I also detected a strange note of nervousness in her demeanor, and I couldn’t help thinking it was the bandana again. It probably wasn’t. But the sense of discontent lingered with me.
I looked for Nick on my map and saw that he’d blown past the campsite. I called him and told him to read his texts, which he did. He turned right around. “Dang, I was just cruising along, feeling good. I could have gone a bunch more miles today I think.”
I ordered a giant glass of ice with tapwater in it, and they brought it to me, plus a refill. For that I was charged six dollars. Nick hemmed and hawed over the menu and eventually chose a rhubarb soda, which tasted a bit like a carbonated sports drink but came in a very nice tall glass.
We chatted about cultural differences, and the presence of so much designer label clothing around us. Nick pointed out that it was very expensive to get a drivers license in Germany. I opined that it was typical of Europe to make rules designed specifically to shut out the lower classes, as if they weren’t allowed to exist. I came to Germany expecting to find everything either the same as or better than the United States. Better land, better customs, better laws… Instead I’m finding that it’s a mixed bag, and some of the stuff they do seems outright crazy. I thought crazy was a mode that belonged only to Americans.
We found an open patch and set up our tents, then I bought more laundry tokens in the restaurant.
Two 7-minute showers and two washing machine runs.
We loaded laundry into two machines. Then we sat around organizing the campsite for a bit, then just reading our devices. One of the dryers ate two of my coins, so we consolidated.
By the time our laundry was done it was fully night, and we snuggled in, listening to the occasional bird calls from the swampy inlet on the far side of our little peninsula. It felt a bit like summer camp. Tomorrow we would wake up and go climbing around on ropes, and decorate pinecones to look like Mr. Potato Head, then have a sing-along around the fire.
I woke up early, checked the time and listened to the announcements, then tried to nap a bit more. The captain’s voice blared out from the speaker on the wall inside my room, declaring that we all needed to be out and gathered in the hallways, and making my heart bounce off the top of my skull. No more sleep for me. In half an hour I was out sitting next to my bags in a hallway with only 5 hours of sleep.
I felt exhausted. I had to move my bags to be nearer a window and get cell signal, and from there I looked at maps and prices and found a hotel in a city 15 miles south of the ferry dock for a decent price. The weather report was good so I figured I would ride there even though I was tired, keeping the day from being a total waste in terms of ground covered.
When I moved my bags I accidentally left behind my Airpods case, and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I double-checked all my bags and it was definitely missing. I threaded my way up the long hallway to the reception desk, passing a long stream of people exiting the boat, and asked an attendant if they’d seen a headphones case. I held up my other case to show her. She nodded, turned around, and pulled my case out of a drawer. True to that Danish sense of courtesy, someone had found the case and walked it all the way over to the lost items desk. Back home in Oakland, it would have just disappeared into a pocket.
Thank you, kind stranger who found these, wherever you are!
You need a vehicle like this, in case you need to, like, run over a beer can in the road or something.
I had to stand around for a long time waiting for cars to move, since me and the other cyclist had been boxed in by three very long tour buses parked too close for a bike to squeeze between. I moved my bike several times to make space for the buses to turn, and the other cyclist followed my lead. Finally I got a gap in the outgoing traffic, and I was down the ramp and in Denmark.
It was a pretty grand entrance, actually. The first thing I saw beyond the ship was a busy staging area full of moving vehicles, then a procession of metal cylinders in the distance, disappearing up past the ceiling of the cargo bay. When I emerged I saw that each cylinder was the trunk of a gigantic wind turbine, the blades gracefully rotating as flocks of birds sailed between them. Then the shadow of the boat ended and I felt a wash of warm sun all over my face and arms — the first I’d felt in weeks. I was so distracted I had to pull the bike over into a cargo stacking space and just hang out there, absorbing sunlight, for ten minutes. I also took the time to remove my sweater. Wouldn’t be needing that…
The wind gently guided me onto a side-road, and after only a few minutes I was well away from the ship and moving into town. I was starving so my first stop was a little cafe. The woman behind the counter had light blond hair and a deep brown tan. She reminded me of being a kid at the beach in California, running around in Junior Lifeguards class with all the other little tan blond kids. I settled down at a table outside in the sun, and ate a massive open-faced sandwich and most of a mocha.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
Back on land that can grow vegetables! Eaten open-faced, of course.
As I ate, I chatted with my Mom and gave my impressions of the country, and learned a bit of family history.
Me
Wow, Denmark is as amazing as I remember it for biking… Bike lanes in many places, extremely polite drivers, nice and flat, and SUNSHINE!!!!
A 70 year old man held the door for me at the cafe I visited, since I had bike bags in my hands. I just saw two women in their 80’s out for a walk together with sticks and a walker, and both waved and grinned at me.
Mom
That’s how I remember the people too! Friendly, slightly reserved, and very polite! I believe “gracious” is the best word.
Me
Good word!
Going from extreme hills and 90mph winds to this is quite a shock. Camping in the Faroe Islands weather would have been a disaster, but there are campsites all over Denmark, more than anywhere else I’ve seen. I wonder if grandpa got an interest in camping from memories of Denmark? Or was he too young?
Mom
Your grandad was only five when they came here, so I doubt it.
Me
Hmm, well perhaps even at the age of five he had some interest in camping already cultivated.
Mom
Part of his growing up was in San Francisco very near Golden Gate Park where he spent a lot of time. Later there were many trips to Muir Woods.
Me
I did not know that!
Mom
Also, my uncle Happy, Denny’s father, was in the class above my mother at Berkeley High, so later they must have lived in Berkeley.
Me
I assume Berkeley is where grandpa met grandma?
Mom
I think so. Mother had a friend Essie in her dance troupe who was his cousin, so it was through her that they met.
Did you visit Copenhagen the last time you were there? That was where your grandad was born.
Me
It’s on my itinerary! I fly out from there.
I was now both nourished and totally wired, and it was time to ride. The Danish countryside did not disappoint, and I stopped constantly for photos.
It was wonderful. A enchanting reminder of just how relaxing and healing a bike ride can be. The sun warmed me, the air was fresh, the wind was behind me, the hills were gentle, the cars were shockingly polite and no one was speeding, and there were nice separated bike paths and birds and farm animals all around.
I stopped near a field and saw a mound of apples, left out for horses and cattle to find, and picked a few out for myself.
I sliced it with my pocket knife and used the backpack as a kitchen table, and stood there eating perfectly ripe apple by the side of a field on a quiet country road for half an hour.
I don’t care who you are, I could convert you to love bicycle touring in one week by getting you a long-wheelbase recumbent bicycle and putting you at the northwest end of Denmark, and giving you a phone and a sweater and telling you to cycle to the southeast corner. By the time you arrived you would be in such a state of nourished relaxed sun-tanned bliss that bicycle touring would forevermore be part of your life.
I also passed through a bunch of little towns. I felt very slightly disoriented by the transition between houses and countryside, and when I realized why I laughed to myself: I come from a place where farmland is in one region, and communities are usually pressed together in another. Mostly because of the presence of suburbs defined by the automobile, but also because parcels of farmland are generally bigger back home, with the houses on them set way back from the road.
There are parts of California where one can cruise from farmland to houses to farmland in the space of a few miles on a bike, but they aren’t typical. I was getting the impression that in Denmark, it’s like this by default, everywhere outside major cities.
I learned later on that this is the pattern in the north of Denmark, but suburbs and sprawl appear as one goes south, making the experience more like California.
Also, you know how I could tell this was a low-crime area relative to Oakland? Two things: Unlocked bicycles are everywhere, and even the young women out jogging alone look up and smile hello as I ride by.
One woman was out walking her dog, and she saw me and made her dog sit down on the grass next to the sidewalk so I could pass more easily.
I saw people out and about, but even as I entered an actual city, I consistently saw fewer people in public than I was expecting. Were the Danes still largely sequestered due to COVID restrictions, even a year and a half after the pandemic? Perhaps the vaccine roll-out was slower here than back home? Or was life just slower here?
By the time the 15 miles was done I was in fine spirits. The city had a quaint central area, and I took a bunch more photos, then checked into the hotel without trouble and re-fitted the bike for an evening out. From there I imported and sorted photos in a cafe while enjoying another tuna sandwich.
In spite of the lack of sleep on the ferry, I felt awake. On a whim I decided to see a movie. The local cinema was showing a recent American release, “Dune”, in English with Danish subtitles. I rolled the bike over and almost wondered if I should bother locking it to the rack or just leave it standing there like most of the others.
Everybody milling about with snacks, before the movie.
The movie itself was kind of disappointing, but I still had a good time. It was a very posh theater experience, and hanging out in close quarters with a bunch of Danish people felt oddly comfortable. They stood very near each other and made a low hum of conversation, sounding more like a classy dinner party without a band, instead of a bunch of strangers in public. It was interesting comparing it to the standoffish Icelanders I’d been dealing with. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing that many people so close together anywhere in Iceland, except inside a few of the tourist-filled restaurants in the capital city, and the noise in those was appalling.
I spent the day indoors, trying to get my body to stop aching. In the afternoon I took a nap.
The AirBnB owner came by to chat, and when I asked about food he volunteered to give me a ride to the local restaurant up the road, and waited in the car while I grabbed my phone-in meal. What a great guy! Along the way we chatted about work and travel schedules. He said he wanted to visit the US some time. I said he could stay in my spare room if he ever visited San Francisco.
He asked about my journey and I talked a little about Iceland and Denmark, and how I had managed to negotiate a chunk of remote work. He said that getting time off to travel was a very different situation in the Faroe Islands: “If you want time off, you just go to your boss and say, ‘I want to take three months off,’ and your boss will nod, and off you go.”
Matt
I had no idea you were out there! Aren’t those the islands off the West Coast, off San Francisco?
Me
Uh…
Matt
The ones we dumped a ton of radioactive nuclear waste around? Or am I… I think I’m mixing that up.
Yeah, isn’t that what you said? Oh the Faroe islands. Right. Now where in the hell are those?
Me
Usually they’re just south of a big swirly vortex of cold wind.
In the evening I watched more brainless Marvel entertainment: “Thor” and part of “The Avengers.” There were whole middle sections of both movies I’d completely forgotten. After that I stayed up much later than I expected, writing short emails to catch up with friends and workmates.
As I settled into the bed I could feel my mind scratching at the old relationship question again, like a dog digging around an old burrow, asking, “What do I want in a partner now, given that I’ve turned down so many different kinds of people over these last few years?”
By the time I passed the pizza joint up the road it had started and stopped raining twice. The joint itself was closed. Glad I bought stuff the previous night!
I crossed over the bridge just beyond to the town of Oyrarbakki, then stopped at a gas station. They sold two-part epoxy which would have been a much better material for repairing my mirror and headphones, but I had already used the superglue. Oh well! Nothing on the shelves was inspiring, but I grabbed some peanuts and a chocolate bar anyway.
I doubt there were ever covered wagons in the Faroe Islands. They’d never get up any of the hills.
I doubt there were ever covered wagons in the Faroe Islands. They’d never get up any of the hills.
At the checkout counter I noticed this headline on a local paper. It was about the recent slaughter of dolphins during the yearly hunt called “the grind” that the Faroese consider a tradition. Over 1400 dolphins had been killed this year, which was causing an international backlash. The massacre had occurred in a fjord just a few kilometers away from where I was standing.
Here’s the best I can do to puzzle out a translation:
Sunday night’s massive killing, which is the largest in our history, has put the Faroe Islands in the crosshairs of the international media. It is worse than the previous massive killing in the Faroe Islands, but there are also several examples of poachers letting large groups pass, precisely because it would have been overkill to slaughter them.
I was not at all surprised by the defensive tone of the reporter.
On the way out of the little town I accidentally missed a left turn, and rode up a big slope alongside the hill for no reason. Whoops!
For the next couple of hours I rode north. Rain and sunlight passed over the road multiple times. I put on music by Joe Hisashi and reveled in it.
I arrived at the coastal town of Eiði, a picturesque collection of houses on rolling hills, dominated by a church with an orderly graveyard tacked onto the side. I went to the one store in town and parked there, then rambled around inside for a while trying to find things I actually wanted to eat. I bought a pear and a banana, plus a little box of chocolate milk. The town cafe was closed, but that was alright: I wasn’t hungry enough for a full meal.
I poked up and down a few streets, then went up towards the church and looked down the road towards the campsite. I was expecting it to have quite a few trailers and RVs in it, like I’d seen in the campsite across the bay, but there were only a few. It looked very exposed to the wind, and I didn’t fancy the idea of setting up a tent in the rain and having it nearly ripped out of the ground some time at night.
I decided to continue up over the pass and get to Gjógv. It meant that I wouldn’t have a day to spend climbing Slættaratindur, the tallest peak in Faroe, but on the other hand, the peak was lost in cloud cover now and would almost definitely be lost in cloud cover tomorrow as well. Might as well skip it.
Before leaving town I stopped at the little Fisk And Kips wagon parked by the church. The wind was blasting all around and I had a hard time finding a place to rest the bike, but eventually located a sheltered alcove built into a set of public bathrooms nearby. I hunkered down in there to eat the meal, and it was totally delicious. The chef had given me four huge chunks of fish which seemed excessive. Maybe he knew how hungry bike tourists are in general? I could feel my body drawing the heat out of the food as I ate it.
Then I started uphill, due east, towards the base of Slættaratindur. The wind was at my back and seemed to shove me up the road. I barely had to pedal as the highway squiggled for a bit, past sheep laying low in the grass. Soon I reached a plateau where I could look northwest out to sea, and see two rock formations called Risin og Kellingin, or the Giant and the Witch.
As the legend goes, these are the remains of two creatures from Iceland, who came to try and steal the Faroe islands and haul them back to Iceland with a giant rope. But the task was too difficult and as they struggled the sun rose, turning them to stone.
A bit farther up the road, I came across a strange formation of shells mixed into dirt. It was as though someone had collected an enormous quantity of shells, then heaped dirt on top of them, and the dirt had eroded on one side causing the shells to spill out.
What in the world was this? An early settler trash midden? Why so far from the water? Is it the effort of a farmer or a soil scientist, trying to enhance the topsoil or provide nourishment to animals? I could not figure it out. Why would shells be mixed with fully-formed soil, 300 meters up from sea level?
My best theory was that it was cheap reinforcement for the soil used to shore up the highway. Perhaps some time in the future I would find an answer.
After some long pauses to snack and empty my bladder, I wiggled my way to the top of the pass, at the highest point of the road. Slættaratindur loomed up into the mist to the north of me. The wind made the clouds move alarmingly fast.
Have a picnic here at the highest pass in the Faroe Islands!
I sat around for a bit, admiring the mountain, and then began the descent. At a fork in the road I went left. Below me to the west I could see the town of Funningur, but my destination was north.
Just past the fork a gust of wind battered the bike and my side mirror snapped off. As soon as it hit the pavement, the wind tried to scoot it along over the edge of the road. “Hey! I need that!” I yelled at the wind, and chased comedically after the mirror as it scooted away. I scooped it up just before it sailed down towards Funningur, and jammed it into a bag. Perhaps I could glue it on again tomorrow.
The wind shuffled a bit, then began to push at my back again, moving me upward over another small mountain pass. Then the road was just a long gentle coast downward to Gjógv, and I had to apply my brakes constantly because the wind kept speeding me up like a poltergeist intent on murder.
“Whoo-eee!” I shouted, but in my mind I also thought, “I hope the wind isn’t blowing this way tomorrow, or going back up over this pass is going to suck.”
As soon as I swung the bike into the town, I aimed for a restaurant. It was late in the day but they were happy to feed me. I ate a good meal plus dessert, and used the wifi to figure out a riding schedule for the next few days.
On the wall I noticed this cool old map. I was in the town in the upper right.
I also did some shopping for a new jacket, but left the item in the electronic cart, since there was no point in ordering it yet. Even if I had my nephew prepare me a package for DHL to send, where would he send it? Copenhagen? I’d be there only a few days before flying home.
I went from the restaurant to my AirBnB, and unpacked my gear all over the dining room so things could dry out. The bike was dripping on the floor so I laid a few towels under it. While I was fumbling in the kitchen I noticed these cool glass drawers:
I was tired, but felt the need to settle down before crawling under the covers. I opened the laptop and rattled off a few notes.
An interesting thought: There are car campers, and there are backpackers. As a cycle tourist, I carry an amount of gear somewhere between these two groups. But it skews toward the backpacker, because unlike the car camper I still have to use my own energy to move all my stuff around. I pay a price for additional weight, just not as high a price as a backpacker.
My biggest extravagance? Definitely my camera. With the extra lens and the battery, it adds 3.7kg – eight pounds – to my load.
If I had all the relevant statistics, I could probably come up with an accurate estimate of how much time I have lost from every day of biking, by spending additional energy pedaling up hills because of the added weight of the camera. My completely unsubstantiated back-of-the-envelope calculation, sitting there in the gloom of a cement-walled house on the windy shore of an island in the North Atlantic, put the cost at an extra 15 minutes out of an 8-hour day, or about 3% of my time on the bike.
Considering the fact that this extra 3 percent of my time on a hill would also be spent looking at beautiful terrain and listening to a podcast, that’s a pretty good tradeoff…
