Check-in, check-out, done. This was a nice camp site, but with 200 SEK a rather expensive one.
Before leaving, chaintenance was in order due to the dusty roads yesterday. What I already felt the last 500 km, became obvious when I removed the chainglider. This chain is through. It has lengthened by roughly one segment. It’s so loose, it can be just taken off the chain wheel. Every time I puts pressure on the pedal, it takes a few degrees of crank rotation before there’s a transmission to the back wheel. This is very annoying. So there’s a new side quest: find a new chain.
In Bollnäs, I headed to the centre for shopping and saw an Intersport store. Sadly, it had no bike section, but one of the employees pointed me to the nearby Team Sportia. They had a surprisingly good bike section and workshop. They had the exact Shimano CN-HG53 chain I was driving in stock. However, I bought the better CN-HG93, since the current one was kind of disappointing. I did not expect to need a replacement chain.
Next stop: gas station. There, I filled the tires, for the firsts time, back to 6 bar. Yesterday, they were down to 4.9 and 4.7 bar respectively. The pump I bought for the trip, a Lezyne Alloy Drive ABS specified for 6.2 bar, is a total failure and a hot candidate for the “most disappointing gear”-award. Even at 4.9 bar, it took me, a rather fit male of 100 kg body weight, a lot of effort to add just 0.25 bar. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or the pump is faulty, but like this, it is only good in case of emergency to get some air into a repaired tyre to reach the next gas station.
Grocery shopping today was at Lidl, which felt a little like being back in Germany. It is much cheaper than Swedish chains like ICA. I bought pretzels and yoghurt for lunch.
Some kilometres along the road, the old chain fell of the rear sprocket while driving. Maybe I didn’t put on the chainglider right this morning, or it actually came off due to the lengthening. Either way, good call to buy a new one.
I rode until a point where I had to decide whether to use the EV7 through the country or the EV10 along the coast. Due to my lack of planning, I was literally standing at the very crossing where both ways parted, trying to spontaneously come up with a decision that would affects the rest of the Swedish part of the tour. I took the coastal route because it looked like less height meters and more towns. Later on, I wished I had taken the other one at some points, but it might as well have been worse.
While I was still deciding, a man in a car stopped and asked me if I have problems with my bike. We chatted a bit and he invited me to join him and his friends to something barbecue related, which they would do in “the old way”. I’m not sure if it was an actual barbecue or if they were making charcoal or something. He described the way like “a big red house on the left and there will be smoke in the forest”. Every house along the road was red, as are 90 % of the houses here. I looked out for smoke but didn’t see any. However, a very nice guy.
Later, I tried to cut some parts of the official bike route, which usually works fine and saves some kilometres. Well, not today. I didn’t manage to get on the E4, which was probably for the best as it seemed to be a highway at this point. The alternative shortening was a sandy horse riding path. I instantaneously got flashbacks from the early stages in Germany. Driving there was really tough, and the 6 bar tire pressure were not helpful in the sand. My cursing could probably be heard to the next town.
As if this wasn’t enough, I noticed a strange sound from the back. The splash guard was grinding on the back tire. Took me some minutes to figure out, that the cause was a lost screw from the back carrier. I followed my trail in the sand backwards, and actually managed to find the screw. Otherwise, I would have had a replacement part, but deep down in one bag.
Finally back on the official route, I was pedalling the last kilometres to the camp site, when suddenly a man stopped me by waving from his garden at the side of the road. He handed me a yellow high visibility vest with the words: “This is for you. I passed you twice today, and you are hard to see because you are so dark.” Excellent, my Ninja outfit works. Joke apart, I put on the vest and thanked the man. This country is full of nice people. I mean, this guy was so worried about my safety, that he actually waited outside his house for the moment I would pass by to give me the vest.
When I arrived at the camp site, there still was someone at the reception and I could check in regularly.
As soon as the sun and with that the temperatures go down, the relative humidity goes up to 100 %.
In these conditions, I put all cloth into plastic bags to keep them dry. The wet bike outfit from the last day dries during the ride, when I put it under the bungee cords at the back. It often is not fully dry when I arrive. In these cases, I put it into my sleeping bag overnight. Most mornings, the tent is completely wet, as if it rained, but it dries fast when the sun comes up. Although on some days, I wipe it dry to speed up the process. I wonder if humidity is going to become a problem further north.