See you in Motala

Better late than never. We finally got around to register to VätternRundan. It’s a 300 kilometer bicycle trip around lake Vättern in the middle of Sweden. This year me and Jonas will do our third trip and we somehow managed to trick our brother Christer into joining us.

It’s going to be great fun. We start around one am which isn’t my favorite time – I prefer starting earlier, as it is impossible for me to nap during the evening.

Last year we started about that time too, and we had all intentions of napping. We parked the car in central Motala near a lawn. Had dinner, looked at the commotion at the city square and all the cool bicycle gear up for sale. Went back to the car, unpacked our sleeping bags and lay down on the lawn, set the alarm and hoped to get some sleep.

After 5 minutes the first drops came down. I tried to pretend it didn’t rain. Another 10 minutes of increasing precipitation  and I said to Jonas that we’ll stay the course – it will end soon. Yeah, right… We spent the next two hours in the car while the rain poured down…

Luckily it cleared up and the weather during the ride was excellent.

Anyway, time to get mentally ready for those 100km training trips – and of course gather some nice stuff to listen to. Last year I found a 10 hour series about the Greek-Persion wars which was very interesting. Given the fact that I have forgotten most of it I might as well listen to it again

See you in Motala!

–Jesper Hogstrom