Chapter Forty-One
The Land of Big Bowling Balls
Bicycle Touring in Sweden: I admit that on this St. Louis trip we wimped out by avoided the rigors of real bike touring (with tons of heavy stuff on the bikes), but we did go on a genuine bike tour once. In Sweden.
There are two reasons to choose Sweden when planning a bicycle tour. The first is this thing called “Allemansrätten.”
Allemansrätten is a sounds-too-good-to-be-true law in Sweden. It translates to “Every Man’s Right” and says that you can go pretty much anywhere you want in Sweden, and hike, picnic, pick berries or even camp. Nice, huh? As long as you don’t actually camp in someone’s fenced-in yard, and you don’t stay too long, you are good to go. As a result, when you cycle in Sweden there’s no struggling to make it the next 30 miles to that campground; you just ride until you want to stop, hop into the woods, and set up your tent.
The second reason to choose Sweden is that in the summer, the days are crazy long. There’s plenty of light to be riding your bike even at 10 PM. To illustrate this, here’s a story.
On my first trip to Sweden, in 1981, when Lena and I had just gotten married, her friend Bjorn, asked if I wanted to go fishing. I said “Ja,” and he told me he’d pick me up later. I was just learning Swedish then and I’d bravely prohibited anyone from speaking English with me. As a result, I found out what it’s like to be a dog. That is, my lack of understanding meant that, like a pet, I was always surprised at what was happening next. I’d say something like “Hey, I thought we were going to the zoo today,” and everyone would laugh uproariously because I had actually said that I wanted to spread lingonberry jam on Lena’s grandmother’s buttocks. But when the laughing died down, they would explain that we had changed plans because the zoo was closed. I’d missed that because my comprehension of Swedish was slightly below that of a collie.
I expected Bjorn to show up at around 2 PM, and when he didn’t, I figured I must have misunderstood. I waited and waited, and he finally came by at, I’m not making this up, 11:30 PM. We headed out in a river, caught some huge pike, and I got back at 3 AM. I guess the fish there are night owls. The point is that even at midnight, it’s still dusk. On a bike tour, you can easily put in some miles after dinner, and stop whenever you feel like it.
Here are a few quick stories from that tour.
This tour happened in 1993. We flew over to Sweden and dropped Jenny off with Lena’s parents. I’m proud of our timing here, because as soon as we dropped her off, she developed chickenpox, which lasted only as long as we were on our tour. I’m guessing that a four-year-old with 72 itchy chickenpox marks (yes, she counted them) is an unpleasant thing, so you can appreciate our talent as parents.
One night on the tour, where we stopped to camp, the ground consisted of big, spherical beach-ball-sized boulders. That is, there was no ground between the boulders, it was just huge bowling balls, shoulder to shoulder, as far as you could see. We managed to get the tent to rest on some of these rocks, and wedged our bodies into the cracks between them.
There was another point in the tour when it had been raining off and on for several days. On this day, the rain was pretty steady, and we were struggling along an unending dirt road. Although it was 20 years ago, I still have a clear memory of huddling under a tree (a leaky tree) while waiting out a vicious squall. We were totally dispirited. But just minutes after that, a small but upscale resort magically appeared in this desolate forest. It was the kind of place to which movie stars go to escape. Lena put her foot down, and we checked in and took full advantage of the buffet, down beds, and general pampering.
The third story comes from a night we were camping in a deserted forest. I told Lena that there must be a house nearby, because I heard someone’s cuckoo clock, and it wasn’t keeping very good time. “No, Einstein,” she said “That’s an actual cuckoo.” So, there’s this real bird (called a cuckoo) that makes a cuckoo clock sound—think of that!
We bailed out of our tour one day ahead of schedule, after some all-day uphills, putting our butts and bikes onto a train. For the tour itself, we ended up cycling from Sigtuna to Sveg at a rate of 50 miles per day. We were happy with that. Maybe we’re wimps now, but back then, we were somewhat less wimpy.