After checking in with the rest of the cattle at the Tulla holding pens we set off and after what seemed like 3 weeks I emerged bleary eyed and a smidge tired at Copenhagen to meet up with the 2 Mike's!
They showed me no mercy as D Mike had a familiarization ride of around 50 kms panned for the next morning.
The first thing you notice about Copenhagen is how incredibly cycle friendly the city is with an extensive network of lanes even with their own traffic lights. Melbourne has a little way to go but we do have Wellington St ..Wow !
When walking in Copenhagen you need at least 4 sets of eyes looking for cars and gazillions of cyclists and the regular yobbo roadie who thinks he's Mark Cavendish going 3 times the speed of other riders !
I came very close to reducing the population of Copenhagen by 2 when I stepped out on to the road to visit the little house on the other side of the road aptly named the "Pissoir"!
I turned 180 degrees to give Mike my cameras when I heard a bell ring followed quickly by 2 wheel blurs in front of me and at my back.
The first cyclist gave me the dirty look of the century obviously no humour !
The huge number of bikes in Copenhagen might have something to do with the Govt taxes imposed upon cars. The Govt wants people to buy small economical 1.2 litre cars or below and if you want anything bigger you pay the cost price of the car plus a tax penalty of 180% plus 25% vat and any safety extras also at 25%. No wonder the Danes say there are one of the highest taxed nations on the planet !
I needed some small gear adjustments on my tourer and was told there was a bike shop very close to our hotel. In I went but they were too busy, another shop 100 metres away too busy, another one 300 metres away same story. I walked the main road for about 3 kms and had called into 8 bike shops before finally reaching the 9th (yes there are heaps) who was thankfully able to do my adjustment.
We are currently on the ferry to Oslo and noticed a wine list with an Australian wine which we thought wasn't that bad at $27 a bottle until we realised that it said $27 a glass !!! - i don't think there are too many wine alcoholic's in Scandinavia !
We are about to dock in Oslo and the weather looks a frag miserable. D Mike has planned our Swedish (H meant Norway but keeps saying Sweden) leg and has included4 days over out of 8 over 100 kms with lots of hills, doesn't he realise he's dealing with one lard arse geriatric (H put 2 but as editor I have the right to ignore). Hopefully the weather will be kind to us and we can thankfully enjoy the spectacular scenery on offer in this region.
P.s. the above as you realise was typed under duress by M after H spat the dummy when he originally wrote his post and didn't save it as a draft !!!
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