Swedish days full of rain

If you’ve been following this blog and have been getting kind of jealous, this post won’t do that to you. We left Jonkoping on Sunday (6/24/12) and hit the E4 (big highway) and after 5 minutes Chris decided he wasn’t going to ride on it. To be honest it was kind of sketchy, the shoulder is open to scooters, but its bigger than most of the shoulders we ride on. We got into a slightly emotional discussion that might have frustrated one or two of the people in our group and Chris pulled out his Gps and it told us that we need to backtrack about 10 miles. Now I really didn’t mind getting off the most direct route so Chris would feel safer and getting on a road that won’t lead us straight to Helsingborg, but I refused to add 10 miles to our day. I pulled out my compass to find south and said that we need to go on this road. Chris didn’t seem excited to blindly go down some road, but oh well. The road we found out actually snakes around the E4 most of the way to our destination. We rode in an awkward silence for most of the day until we set up camp on a lake that I’m pretty sure said no camping, but it was in Swedish and ignored it.

The next day we woke up and got right into the ride. Then the rain started. I don’t mind the rain at all. Josh seems to be pretty good it in, but Chris says it’s miserable, but we still kept on pedaling. Halfway through our day we decided to stop for pizza. We eat pizza a lot. I think we eat pizza once every 2 days. Afterwards we rode until we were soaked. I was wet from my hat down to my socks. Chris started pointing out places to camp, but it was early and none of them looked good. We started to get cold so we parked our bikes in a bike path tunnel to get out of the rain. We came up with the idea to go buy a 6pack of beer from the store right outside with some food and try and dry up a bit. It worked a little, but what it really did was give us our first chance since our talk about the E4 to stand around and joke with each other. Once leaving there and meeting a very interesting Swedish boy we found some abandoned cabins off the main road in the woods. It was creepy. No other way to describe it.  No signs about not camping and at this point even if there was it wouldn’t matter we decided to set up camp on one of the porches all huddled together telling each other that we were going to get murdered and raped. 

                                                        can anyone see the figure of a man?

We woke up with our lives and no stabbed wounds so we were happy, but it was raining still. A very hard rain that showed no signs of letting up. My clothes were still wet from the day before and made the whole day very cold. We knew we were going to hit Helsingborg in 66 miles so that made it better. We rode and rode and rode. The rain at times just started pouring on us then would turn to a drizzle and go back to heavy windy rain. Right before we hit the city Chris’ chain broke. He did a quick fix and got on our way and into town around 6. We looked for a hotel and the only thing we could find was a four star hotel. I was stuck outside shivering and I didn’t care what the price was. So that’s where I am now. Sitting in a bet chillin online in a warm bed. Hope the rest of the trip is better, but if not it would still be better than working all day in a coffee shop for my summer. Hope you enjoyed the read and next stop is Copenhagen! 

some pics thanks to josh and dont forget to play the game!