Sally and Vera

Finally! It took almost three months, but we finally have our own set of wheels!

I hadn’t really been missing having a car at all. Umeå is quite small, and as such everything you could possibly need is within walking distance: my work, groceries, H&M, kebabs, systembolaget (state-run liquor store), picnic grill sites (they are freaking EVERYWHERE here, I’m sure we live within walking distance of 500 of them and I am NOT exaggerating), beach volley (the fact that they have dropped the ‘ball’ out of the title does not indicate that there is any lost love for the sport: there are at least 4 outdoor, and 6 indoor beach volley courts within 10 minutes of where we live). So you might be wondering: what more could you possibly ask for?

Although everything is so nearby, we were still getting pretty burnt out from having to walk everywhere.

We would jealously watch as cyclists flew past us on their bikes, baskets full of groceries, moving places with an ease and rapidity we could only dream of. I would enviously check out bicycles as they passed me, critiquing whether or not it would pass my high standards for bicycle use (two wheels…a basket…air in the tires…chain attached). Having a bike started to symbolize freedom. Imagine getting places so much faster… being less tired… not having to carry

groceries…venturing further than our small little world consisting of Ålidhem, the river and the downtown.

So obsessed I became, that anytime we passed a parked bike, I would check whether the bicycle was locked or not. Not that I was going to steal one, but -much like the garbage room (see previous post)- I had heard that the national obsession with recycling also extended to bicycles. People, when moving away from Umeå, just ride their bike to the bus station and abandon it there, knowing that someone else will take and use it. Reduce, reuse, recycle..or at least that is what I had been told.

After trying with no avail to find second hand bikes (yes, I know everyone says use ‘blocket.se’ but it was hit and miss, and our search of three different second hand stores was fruitless as well) and not really willing to get the bad karma of actually stealing or ‘recycling’ a bicycle, a co-worker suggested that the ICA Maxi (Sweden’s equivalent of the Great Canadian Superstore) sells new bikes for only a couple hundred kroner more than a used bike.

So now we’ve got our matching mustangs… Scott named his ‘Sally’ and I named mine ‘Vera’ (I was catching up on Coronation Street episodes at the time).

So we’ve got freedom now. We have cycled around Nydala lake, and cycled down the river, and out of town in both directions. We are working ourselves up to take the 40km Umeleden trail along the river valley in Umeå, or else 40 km in the other direction to Täfteå to see the Gulf of Bothnia on the Baltic Sea.

We’ve got to get moving though, the days are getting noticeably shorter already.

Not yet sure though how well we will fare as winter cyclists.

I try not to think about it.