Each day challenges
us in unexpected ways -
and we just started!
Lesson in geography and climate: Denmark is not exactly warm this time of year. After a frigid night spent camping in the outskirts of Copenhagen, we shivered out of our sleeping bags at about 0700, made some quick handlebar and seat adjustments, and were on the road by 0800. Cycling in Denmark is a unique experience; there is a definite cycling rush hour, with cyclists crowding the bike lanes in the morning office-bound rush. It is not uncommon for people here to bike over 20 km to get to work - quite a difference from the car culture of most North American cities! In Toronto, for instance, the average commute from the suburbs is roughly 80 minutes. The similarities to normal rush hour stop there, of course: bikes are compact enough to allow dense packing of the lanes, and cycling both reduces stress and improves cardiovascular health.
We hit Roskilde roughly an hour later, stopping along the way to eat a quick but delicious breakfast of pastries, oranges, bread, and garlic-herb cheese. (The mark of a true cyclist, after all, is that they can outeat pretty much anyone in the room.) From there it was onwards past beautiful fields of green and yellow to Ringsted, where our insistence on following road signs led to an almost-complete circumnavigation of the town! (Note to selves: on a continent where most places have ring roads, riding through town is faster and more enjoyable.) Wind turbines are a common sight in the Danish countryside. (Despite our knee-jerk NIMBY reactions back in North America, these turbines are very quiet and quite pleasant to look at.) As we found out on our way across from Ringsted to Korsør, wind power suits Denmark admirably; we fought against strong headwinds for the remaining 50 km.
Once in Korsor, we headed up along the coast to the main bridge over to the island of Fyr; here we had to take the train, as bikes are not permitted on major highways here. Given that we were offered a place to stay in Odense by some of Valkyrie's relatives (and that, owing to jet lag and questionable sleeping conditions the night prior, we were incredibly exhausted) we decided to take the train across to Odense. We'll remain here for a day to rest, eat, explore, and grab any items still missing from our gear list. (We left the lube and grease at home - these are flammable items, which might have aroused the ire of overzealous airport security agents!)
On a bike trip, the small things will catch up on you: don't neglect maintenance and tuning! This point was demonstrated twice - once when my foot basket came loose, and again a short time later when the front fender lost a nut and went flying off amidst a storm of profanity. (On the plus side, I'll certainly remember to check next time!) Other things you want to check frequently:
- tire pressure. A small bit of glass embedded in the tire (and there's lots of that along the bike paths here, courtesy of more liberal public drinking laws) can easily deflate your tire over time.
- chain. If you leave the bike outside, rust can easily build up; this needs to be cleaned away as soon as possible. Also, you want to be cleaning and re-lubricating the chain frequently.
Given that this is likely the coldest weather we'll encounter, that we're still getting accustomed to the weight of all this camping gear, and that we're still recovering from an overnight flight and a six-hour time difference, this day is good news - it can only get easier from here! We also managed to get the webcam on the bike for the first time; it recorded just over seven hours of footage before the netbook batteries ran out. (If anyone has any suggestions on how to extend this, please pass them on! We've thought about solar chargers, but it's difficult to find one powerful enough to charge a laptop. We could alternatively pick up a second battery, but that would mean having to charge two batteries whenever possible - about seven hours of charging time, which is non-negligible.) Unfortunately, we still have to do a bit of debugging on the GPS unit; gpsd (which we're using to grab GPS readings from the USB datalogger) was recently updated in a non-backwards-compatible way, so our scripts have to be updated. We hope to figure this out by tomorrow so that we can get this part of the multimedia working!
Our Internet connectivity is sporadic for the moment, so we'll have to settle for uploading these when we can. (Again - suggestions are welcome! 3G coverage appears to have improved measurably over the last few years; is anyone familiar enough with the European market here to provide advice?) We'll try to get the handlebar video compiled and uploaded soon, and we'll be writing daily posts even when we can't upload them immediately; keep posted!