My Reluctant ~Cycling~ Adventure

Denmark has a national strategy to encourage active recreation vacations. To see how and if their strategy is effective, we took a little vacation from Copenhagen. We took an easy 2-hour train ride with one transfer to Svendborg in Odense. We stayed at a hostel in Svendborg and took the ferry to Æro (which I talk about in a previous post). The next day after Æro island we biked another 44km (nearly 30 miles) to the tiny little town of Korinth. We were biking on more traveled roads than I’ve ever been on and while the cars generally gave us plenty of room, I still felt uncomfortable with the speed at which they were passing us. And, while there were few of them, we did get passed by a few large trucks. On this second leg of our mock vacation, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the bike infrastructure. Near the end of our journey, we actually had to bike on the tiny six-inch shoulder of a highway next to cars, trucks, and tour buses driving 80 mph. I’ve never been so stressed and never felt more on the edge of death than that 1.5 miles of road. I stopped to let a giant tractor pass and Payton came up to me. The first words out of her mouth were “I’ve never communicated to god more.” And that hit home for me too. That stretch of highway biking made me angry and ruined that day of riding for the group. It felt like I was back in the states, biking down highway 101. Something I would never possibly dream of ever doing. I do not consider myself a cyclist and am lucky that I am in good physical shape and was able to complete that stage of our journey. I won’t forget that easily and will never go blindly on a cross-country bike trip ever again without knowing the route and the infrastructure available in advance. 

I consider myself very flexible and down for any challenge but that trip was too far outside of my comfort zone and I felt unprepared, un-expecting, and un-consenting. I’m just venting. 

Lesson learned from stage 2 of our legitimate cycling tour: Denmark cities may have superior biking infrastructure but their regional biking infrastructure is not passible for normies like myself. People shouldn’t do it unless they’re a lycra-clad road racing “cyclist”. 

When we got to Korinth people were angry about what they had just been asked to do without being prepared for it. The next day we had the option of biking only 10 miles on a trail through the country and then taking the train the rest of the way to Odense which I happily accepted. Some biked the whole way again which was another 27 miles. People were very happy to take a break from biking for the next couple of days.