Barbeques, a race and a cabbage-wrapped knee

"We'll cycle a little bit every day, right?"

Right. We didn't. We cycled maybe two or three times over our two week stay in Stockholm.

What we did do:

We drank beer in Tanto. Twice! We watched Carl's youngest brother, Ludwig; graduate, climb aboard a lorry full of beer and friends, disappear, reappear drunk and euphoric, have dinner, sleep, wake up and jump on a bus to another party. Well done! We had a million barbeques with friends and Carl's family. We swam in lakes. We slept in almost every day. We've participated in a bike race, more about it in a minute. We've been bitten by endless amounts of mosquitoes and Carl had a tick removed. Met our friend Tej, who had come from London to Stockholm for four days to work. Hope he got up on Tuesday morning. We visited 'After...' and it was epic. Of course. We went to Debaser and a lot of good people showed up! We had dinner (non BBQ'd) at Sanna's, which was delicious and fun!

Phew!

Oh, and Sal's got a new bicycle. It's a Kona Deus Plus. It's got disc brakes, 700c wheels and 24 gears. It's matt black, and it's shit hot! Now I'm super speedy and Carl is jealous.

On saturday Carl's dad, Peter, took us (Carl, Sally, Kicki, Björn and Ludwig) to Motala. Motala is kind of in the middle of Sweden, but not really, cos Sweden is funny shaped. We stayed at a friend of Peter's, who took good care of us and told us what to expect of the cycling race the following day. The race is a half distance version of a classic race around Sweden's second largest lake, Vättern. The full length version is called Vättern runt, the one we did is called Halvvättern. We had ten hours to cycle 150km.

The day started with sunshine but a nice breeze, about 30km in we got a few raindrops, but it was soon over and our focus lied mostly on the stunning views and the free buns, bananas and blueberry soup we were given at the depots. We'd set off with good speed and kept it going, so Kicki, Björn and Ludwig had fallen behind. We found out after about two thirds that Carl's brothers had dropped out and been driven back. After about 90km Sally's knee started to hurt and at the third depot Kicki caught up with us. Another 10km after that, Sally reluctantly had to throw in the towel, less than 40km from the finish line. Just about managing to hold back the tears until being picked up by the recovery vehicle when a fellow race drop out commented "but you're so close...!" at which point it was very hard not to act like a three year old who just had their favourite toy taken away. But thanks to a very understanding race attendant and a very large bag of pick and mix sally was able to keep her composure.

After the loss of a very talented and inspirational cyclist Carl and Kicki somehow managed to continue. The rain came back, the thighs made themselves acknowledged but the pace increased. Carl crossed the finish line at 16:40:42 and Kicki at 16:40:45 and due to one second difference when crossing the start line, Carl was only two second faster. We started at 9:28:12 and 9:28:13, so Carl did it in... hang on... hmmm... 7 hours 12 minutes and 30 seconds..? Think that's right.

So here we are, Sally's got white cabbage wrapped around her left knee (witch craft method from Kicki, it's apparently used by swedish ski queen Anja Pärson), we've got a train tomorrow morning at 9, and a few things to do today. So it's time to stop writing and start packing!

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