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August 22 Tuesday sunny Bicycle touring Denmark We bicycled to a beach and took a quick dip in the sea. Also had breakfast there, but the aggressive yellow jackets were fighting us for our morsels. I stood on the end of a very windy dock and the bees still managed to make guest appearances. Arran and Rebecca had met a couple of cyclists earlier on their cycle trip who had given them their address near Copenhagen, so they are trying to phone them to see if we can camp over. Arran and Rebecca bicycled of to find a phone
as Sharon and i finished our breakfast. Rebecca hopped on her
bike and said, "We'll meet you by the phone booth."
And then they cycled off to find one. We finished up our leisurely
breakfast and then bicycled off on the cycle path, following
the coast toward Copenhagen. We haven't seen a phone booth yet, so we continue cycling. We bicycled past a bakery, but, alas, we have no money-new country, new money. The Danes currency is still called krones, but now they're Danish krones, so Norwegian krones or Swedish krones don't work-even if we had some, that is. We see a tourist info and stop for maps and history of the region. The public toilets are at the train stations, so we bicycle there. We see an auto-teller and get some krones. We still haven't seen Arran and Rebecca, so we continue bicycling toward Copenhagen. At one point, Sharon and I get off our touring bicycles to walk our bikes along a section of sticky road repairs. Shortly after our hiking detour, a pair of racing cyclists come past us, riding side by side and causing an enormous slip stream. They were just begging us to draft in behind them-which we did. We're cranking along at a good pace on our fully loaded touring bicycles when up ahead we see Rebecca's red panniers and Arran's shirttail waving in the breeze. We can always tell them because of Rebecca's red panniers and Arran always ride with an oversize shirt that's never tucked in. Ha, ha, I think. Then I say to Sharon, "Let's blow by them behind these two racers. That'll really surprise them." We do. It really surprises them. It surprises us, too. It's not Arran and Rebecca. We hit a hill and our racing cyclist draft breakers break away. We bicycle along a long beach that is packed with local sun worshippers. Still no Arran and Rebecca. Sharon reminded me that Rebecca was set on having lunch in Copenhagen, so they probably won't stop pedalling until they get there. At the outskirts of Copenhagen, where cycle route 9 branches, I wonder if we should wait in case Arran and Rebecca are somehow behind us. Sharon figures with all our stops there's no way they can possibly be behind us. They must have gone to city centre. We cycle into centrum and look for a square where bicycle tourists often hang out -- especially if they're waiting for lost buddies. But there's no sign of Arran and Rebecca. By now it's 2:30 PM and after our long bicycle ride, we're starved. We pedal way and eat by a canal next to a pedestrian area which is being renovated. After lunch Arran and Rebecca still haven't shown up. We've pretty much given up on finding them in the immense city. We could leave a message at a tourist office in case they go there, but what would we say? "Have a nice trip?" We don't have their friends address and have not made meeting plans other than "see you at the phone booth." We decide we'll ride out to the Little Mermaid and then follow our route back out of town, just in the off-chance they are still bicycling on their way. Maybe they had a flat that held them up somewhere along the way. As we cycle near the Little Mermaid, a van pulls up and the passenger asks me what part of Canada we're from. Instead of saying, "It's all one country now, you know," (like the Germans who said that to me about their country when we were bicycle touring in Ireland), I respond, "Edmonton." In astonishment, he says, "So are we."
We bicycled off, shaking our heads about the smallness of the world sometime. We looked at the Littlest Mermaid bronze statue with a crowd of tourists clambering about and on the poor lass, snapping shots of themselves in various poses. Supposedly the head has been sawn off twice. Some people do pretty weird things. After looking at the Littlest Mermaid for as long as possible, we get back on our touring bikes and leave. In about a block, I discover I have a flat rear tire. We drop our touring bicycles onto that grass to pump up the tire. When we try to inflate the new tube, we find our bicycle pump is busted. Great. It won't put any air into the tube. The seal in the cylinder isn't sealing. I attempt to make a new seal from an old inner tube, but on my first try I make it too big and it won't slide, then I cut it too small and it won't seal. But hey, there's lots of cyclists in Copenhagen, right? We'll just stop one of them and borrow a pump. How hard can that be? Very. When we try to borrow a bicycle pump from the many passing cyclists, they either don't have a pump or the one they have fits Presta tubes only and won't fit my Schrader valve. Drat We could drag my stricken bicycle to a gas station. But we haven't see one of those either. Sharon, having not given up completely, asks a passing cyclist for his pump. He whips it off. It's Presta. But he is helpful, he gives her directions to a bike shop. Sharon leaves me with my dead bicycle and rides there. After some time, she rides back. Time always seems to pass slower when one is waiting. But she doesn't have a new pump. She says that the pump they have costs 55 krones, so she didn't buy it. What the? I don't know why she didn't buy it. It's not like I can inflate the tube with my lips. She wants me to see the new bicycle pump, because it's a mini pump, she explains, and I didn't like the one I had before. Jeez. I don't see what choice I have, considering, once again, I can't blow the tube up with my lips. Right about now I figure any pump would be better than none. Sharon also reports that the bike shop said I could use their pump to inflate my tire. Unhappily, I bungee my rim and tire onto the back of Sharon's bike and trundle, unhappily, off in the general direction of the bike shop, carefully following the directions Sharon has imparted. I cycle up to the bicycle shop and enter just before it closes. "I'll take that 55 kroner mini pump," I say. The owner tells me, "The 55 kroner pumps have all sold out." What the?! They had a run on the 55 kroner pumps in the last fifteen minutes? "But," he continues, "more will be more in on Monday. They're very popular." Terrific. I hadn't planned on waiting a week in Copenhagen so I could buy a bicycle pump. "I do have a whole drawer full of 225 kroner ones though," he adds helpfully. I buy a Schrader to Presta valve converter instead and go to use the bicycle shop's pump. I get it all pumped up with just about the right amount of air in the tire. When I begin to bungee the tire to Sharon's rear bicycle rack, air starts hissing out of the tube. Seems to be at the valve stem. Terrific. I'm afraid that the valve stem area has been sliced by the sharp rim hole. As I examine it, sure enough, I see cut marks. Man, what next? This is crazy. It's like someone doesn't want me to get this tire fixed. I bang on the now locked bicycle shop door. They kindly open and sell me a new tube for 47 krones ($10!). It's a Presta tube. Ha! Now I have no problem filling it up. And, in the future, I will be able to borrow a bicycle pump from any cyclist in Denmark. I finally get the tire strapped back onto Sharon's rear rack and pedal back to the tree where I left Sharon with my bicycle. We put the wheel back on my bike. After doing so, right next to us is a washroom. We go and wash the grease and dirt off our hands and apologize to one another for being such cranks when things go wrong. We promise that we'll try harder to look at the bright side of things in the future. Aren't flat tires and busted pumps fun? We repack our bicycle touring tent, sleeping bag and sleeping pad and rear panniers and are just getting set to continue our Danish bicycle tour when I tell Sharon to look at what is coming up the road. Arran and Rebecca! Yep, they had spent the entire day looking all over Copenhagen for us. They left a message for us at the tourist info. They ate at a park with a lake because they know we like lakes. Still not finding hide nor hair of us, they had given up, and decided to pedal to the Little Mermaid to have a look at the famous statue before heading out of town.... As they rounded the corner, I called out, "What took you so bloody long?" Just like we had planned it. Yeah, right. It was after 7 PM (it had taken us three hours to fix the flat-good thing in retrospect or we would have been long gone and probably would have never seen our Kiwi bicycle touring buddies ever again). We bicycled out of town, heading towards a green forest area marked on our map. Partway there, a student started cycling alongside me, asking questions. Arran says, I should have said, "Do you know where you're sleeping tonight? We don't." Anyway, a few kilometres farther, we bicycled to some trees. It wasn't long before we found a free bicycle touring camping spot past a pond overgrown with algae. As I set up our Whisperlite stove to cook supper, Sharon set up our Kelty tent, but not before first doing a hard face plant after she entangled her foot in a hidden root, smashing my camera bag in the process. For supper, we had a combined effort of spaghetti with Arran's amazing curry spice sauce. Fully fed and moderately happy once again, we agreed we all should be more specific about meeting places in the future. |
