Looks like a Soft Day

Woke up this morning to some significant rain. Of course.

This is our last 25 mile ride into Copenhagen, near the airport, and we have arranged to meet Anne-Marie and Ole around 3 to get the bicycle boxes and the extra gear that we left with Finn, which they will pick up on the way. (More gratitude for the support!)

As a back up plan, there is a train station nearby, and we could cheat our way into the city, but I would much rather finish the ride, pushing our total mile into the mid-400 mile trip total, which would please me. But, it would also be okay to limit misery (and be safer) to hop the train.

We sat for a long time looking at radar maps and guessing that it would clear, figuring that we had some time to spare. (By the way, it looks like we are cycling into a southerly wind, but a mild wind. More wind in the face.) Judging from the maps, we thought that there might be a break in the hard rain around 9 am. All the mapping things said 90 minutes into Copenhagen, so we knew it would be 180 minutes of riding, just because the mapping devices are so terribly inaccurate, I think.

So, we cleaned up, put our gear by the door, and waited, watching outside, and hoping for a break. And the break, a start without rain is kind of important. It is one thing to go outside and load up the bikes in the middle of a torrential downfall, and it is another to have the downfall grow upon you during the ride. During the ride, you are intact, with some weather protection, one has options for stopping for a while when it is the worst if a friendly tree is available for cover.

A friendly start makes difficult conditions along the way, endurable.

And so, we left our safe harbor, had a chat with Shanti, our friendly Nepalese hostess, and struggled to get out on the bikes (mostly psychological because of the weather-same bikes, same panniers, just context). And the weather held for only the hill going up to Farum village. And the skies opened, and we stopped, for a while, under trees.

The baptism, which should bring up some issues, was not immediate. We were not immediately wet. There may be a larger truth here. We got a little more wet. My understanding from this is that “really wet,” is a process, not an event, and if it is event, well, it could be catastrophic. None of this was such.

We did not get very far, before we sheltered under some tree limbs. And, I struggled with the future.

We were prepared, but, of course, it meant more struggle than a casual ride. All doable, but not particularly scenic nor enthusiastic, memorialized for difficulty, not weather and scenery. We waited a while, and when it seemed to lift, we continued. And, of course the rain did not lift, but rather it pulsed to the turns of our wheels, now strong, now light, now wind-blown, now not. The wind did her duty to Denmark, as she always does, but this time with Lynette and I struggling to Copenhagen.

We passed.

We had one significant, Danish hill, surrounded with forest, with the road to the restaurant by the lake off to the left, and the tunnel of trees sheltered us from the wind and the rain, but charged us the altitude gain with our stupidly too-heavy gear and swearing about the weather. But, the rise was good with the shelter, because every rise, gives a “coast.”

When I was a kid, my bicycle had this braking feature. If you pedaled forward (heck, I think it only had one gear), you went forward. However, if you wanted to stop, you “pedal-pushed” backward and the bicycle braked. It was a Schwinn, with a bulbous headlight and chrome fenders that deteriorated massively over time. It was shiny. For a while.

Of course, we were riding bicycles that were too heavily loaded, bicycles that had spent the night in the rain (morning, get on the bike, wet seat, check!), and had not had any air checks in the last 700 kilometers. I told Lynette as we pushed off, “Remember, your brakes are going to slip in the wet!”

Now, Lynette has been very quiet about this, but she has not fallen on this trip, and all the “knock on wood,” salt on the back of the hand, no-hitter baseball superstitions have convinced her that we should not mention it. And no one has, but a rainy day certainly presented a challenge to her.

We gained the rise, but along the way was the issue of the train. We could have thrown in the towel, gone to at least two different train stations early in the ride, and boarded for Copenhagen with our bicycles on the S Train system. Easy. Pushing elbows with students, but easy.

We stopped at the foot of the rise, and I asked Lynette, “This is a stop. Do you want to do a train?” She said, “I just haven’t got it today. I need to work it out. I’m going to be slow.” Of course I took that to mean, let’s go on.

We got to a spot near the top of the altitude gain. “Do you want to look for a train?” She said, “No, I can do this.” Her face was grim. She drank some water. I took it to mean that she was having a lollipops time (kidding) and ready to go on.

Now after the hill and the tunnel of trees, the path was pretty urban, pacing the main highway, protected, with hills or tunnels as we passed major perpendicular highways, but wide and smooth. The issue of the train became irrelevant, we were too close to Copenhagen.

Lynette asked, “How soon to a break?” Soon, I said.

The issue for me was vision. Moisture, not necessarily downpour, was abundant. My glasses were obscured, but the rear-view mirror was also impacted, and it is absolutely necessary for me to see raging Danes cycling up behind, and making sure that Lynette saw the last turn. I wanted a bakery stop, but between navigation and rear connections to Lynette, it was all too hard. My GPS was in my handlebar bag, and I would have to flip it open to look at it, keeping it dry from all the moisture.

We entered the heart of Copenhagen in an unusual way from my past experiences, and not much was familiar, until we hit Tivoli, and the back end of Christiania, which resonated. And, finally, a block from my destination of a storage company, we pulled off to a market center to split a sandwich and have a coffee. It was a good, needed break.

Now Anne-Marie’s husband, “Blessed Ole,” and I will always call him that in third person from now on, had found me some bicycle boxes for the return trip. Not only did he find them, but he repaired one of them and prepared them both for our packing with the thoroughness of a true educator. I think he is a craftsman, an educator, a teacher. A good man.

Anyway, Blessed Ole and wonderful Anne-Marie volunteered to bring the boxes to our hotel across from the airport and meet us today at 2:30. (I booked three days at the end here, in this hotel, to be close for departure and have time to resolve packing issues.). It is not a trivial drive, and we were so appreciative. Plus, they stopped off at Finn’s home to pick up a bag of overpacked goods that we had left with him in late August.

But, I worried. Last night, my usual solid sleep was ragged with the issues of leaving, and problem solving those issues. So, in case the bikes and tires would not all fit in the boxes, I decided to purchase a couple of flat boxes to shape to hold at least two tires, not adding to our luggage tare, but completing our allotment.

After our break at the bakery, we rounded the block and stopped at a Shuregard storage facility and purchased two flat boxes, with a lot of conversation with the guy behind the counter, as always a friendly guy, curious about what we were doing. The problem was that we still had six kilometers to go to get to the airport, with damp, overcast weather, and some wind.

Here was the solution:

The package held just fine. We achieved the hotel intact. The guy at the hotel was great-we put bikes and flat boxes in the luggage room and verified that we could use that area to disassemble the bikes and pack. Blessed Ole and Anne-Marie arrived about 40 minutes later with our two bicycle boxes, thoughtfully prepared with tape and a pen for us to scribe address upon them-Ole is a master, and bundled together for easy transport. So good.

And, the rest was left to just that, rest. We lounged and snacked and took a trip to the market nearby for beer and wine and hummus. It was good.

We did take a walking trip to the airport. I discovered that Airshells (a bicycle box transport rental company) had sold me the boxes last year. They do sell them, but they did not have any in stock currently. So Blessed Ole’s efforts were particularly valuable. We also checked out the conditions for tomorrow’s adventure, two trains to Roskilde, and then a Bridge ceremony for the new bridge across Roskilde Fjord near Fredrikssund-a major, local event. (Lynette’s great grandmother would have crossed that area in the 1870’s on her way to Flensburg, and then immigrating to Wisconsin in 1882.). Looking forward.

Not many photos today. Tough with the rain. I am always caught between taking my wet, dribbled glasses off in a storm, or not. If I take them off, I lose my rear mirror. This time I compromised. I left the glasses on, holding the mirror, but looked over the rim ahead to decide on routing, only using the rear mirror to make sure Lynette was on my tail.

And, enough. Right? Like any journey, it is important to reflect back from time to time. The mirror enables that. But it is also important to look ahead and be mindful of the moment, even when your vision is obscured.

Cousin Finn just sent me a Viking quote that relates:

“There is more honour in accumulating little by little than in reaching for the sky and ending up flat on your face….”

Words to live by.