A Special Thanks To Our New Host, and those who helped us along the way!!

We are now at Alicia Karpetsky's place in Paris. Needless to say... its quite nice of her to take the three most smelly men in all of France into her home!

here is a cute little picture of us with Alicia, thanks again you wonderful person you!

Can You Guess Where We Are?

Thats right! France and... we have reached Paris! Lets just say that France is a lot "hillier" than the other countries we've faced thus far, but we made it nonetheless.

Here is a short itinerary thus far of the trip:

1) July 13, Goteborg Sweden to Halmstad - 154km
2) July 14, Halmstad to Copenhagen Denmark - 165km
3) July 15, Copenhagen to Koge, Denmark - 60km
4) July 16, Koge to Vordingborg, Denmmark - 74km
5) July 17, Vordingborg to GroBenbrode, Germany - 81km
6) July 18 - Rest Day (Injuries)
7) July 19 Rest Day (Injuries)
8) July 20, GroBenbrode to Bad Segeberg, Germany - 96km
9) July 21, Bad Segeberg to Wischhafen, Germany - 99km
10) July 22, Wischhafen to Bremenvorde - 97km
11) July 23, RAIN AND PAIN, Bremenvorde to Cloppenborg (hotel :)) - 99km
12) July 24, Cloppenborg to Nordhorn - 94km
13) July 25, Nordhorn Utrecht - 196km TEN HOURS ON A BIKE PEOPLE
14) July 26, Utrecht to Breda - 87km
15) July 27, Breda to Herentals, Belgium- 73.4 km
16) July 28, Herentals to Wavre - 75.89km
17) July 29, Wevre to Hirson, France - 128km
18) July 30, Hirson to Mareuil-sur-Ourcq - 153km
19) July 31, Mareuil-sur-Ourcq to Paris! - 88.23 km

Total Kilmoeters thus far: 1795 km

We will now enjoy the weekend and shuffle off on Sunday... or perhaps we may never leave Paris, we'll see...

What You Have All Been Waiting For

Booking It Through Belgium

Here we are in the lovely town of Herentals, at Kris's friend Tim's house, where we were fortunate enough to have an actual bed to sleep in, and more importantly, some amazing Belgium beer! Oh come on now, we deserve some :)

We have kept up our renegade camping sites, because to be honest the thought of sleeping one more day in that tent that now smells like je ne sais quoi... i'd rather sleep under an art gallery as we have pictures of below...

Today begins our long "push to Paris," after we have a delicious breakfast here and recuperate a little more.

Renagade camping in Nordhorn

Woke up in the german city Nordhorn at an improvised camp site yesterday morning. Rain had been pouring the day before that and it was still going. As almost every morning we made coffee on our beloved camping stove under some roof along the way. After a half an hour of biking we crossed the dutch border as our bike computers counted the 1000th kilometer of the trip.

We had second lunch in Arnhem, or first dinner if you will, sat at the big square for yet another cup of coffee.

At 8:30 Kristoffers friend Gert-Jan met us on his bike to escort us the last 35 km to his apartment in Utrecht, where we have now spent the night after setting the record of 192 km on one day. Right now we are resting after breakfast, listening and singing along to Scotts guitarplaying. Next stop Belgium.

/KF

Yes - We Are Alive

Hello all, so its been a while since our last post. Why you may ask? Well lets just say that tiny German towns do not hold a wealth of internet cafes, let alone any at all.

We are alive! We decided to get hotel rooms last night: we biked all day through pouring rain, our bodies tired, and our clothes completey soaked, we arrived in a lovely little town called Cloppenburg, where we got rooms and sampled our last German beer before we reach the Netherlands! So much has happened in this week, and we have many pictures to come once again, however these internet cafes dont let you plug anything in (sad face)

For now though let me give you some of the highlights of the past week...

1) We accidentally went on the autoban, which led to the German police meeting us and escorting us off of it, and they were so nice!

2) I got my third flat tire... yay!

3) We camped in a church sight and a very determined black lab ate all our english muffins, which led to the family bringing us a lovely array of cheeses and meat on freshly baked bread... mmmmmm

4) Woke up that morning at the church and a really nice blacksmith made us hot coffee in his shop.

5) Took two ferrys, and afterwards ended up camping out on a local volunteer firedepartments land where we were greeted by a gentle giant of a german fireman who offerred us fresh fruit

6) Rain and Pain - Biked through terrential downpours (pardon all the grammatical errors by the way I am not adept at this whole German Keyboard) and finally arrived in Cloppenbourg, where we will now head out from to reach Holland!

Pictures of all these things will be up as soon as we stay with Kris´s friend in the Netherlands, where we will actually be able to plug in our cameras!

healthwise, we are all feeling fine, well except our butts are a bit sore, but what are you going to do?

PS. Sausages and curry = yum

Ciao Ciao

Convalescence: A Necessary Thing

Well, I like to give the bad news first: we are still in Daytona Beach aka Großenbrode

Good news: Kris´s knee feels a bit better, and Forshfvud`s health has improved! We just want to take one ore day to make sure that they are in tip top shape for biking tomorrow. So do not worry families, things are looking up, we just have to spend one more wonderful night here... which to say the least once again, is far from wonderful.

Keep you updated, in the meantime, we are well working on getting our tan equal among are upper bodies, since all of us have pretty bad biker tans... oh yes, there will be pictures

Cheers

Scott

Stranded in Limbo

Hi all,

first to warn you we cannot upload any of our wonderful pictures at the moment, because we are at a campsite in northern germany on a computer that does not let you plug anything in... ps german keyboards confuse me.

But we are here in Germany! We took the ferry over, and found a campsite near the water.

Now for the bad news...

The reason we are resting here is twofold: Curlyloxs health appears to remain the same: not so good. Were hoping he just needs rest, and wish him a quick recovery.

On the other hand, Kris's knee continues to worsen, and we are worried that it will continue to do so despite rest. We expected these things to happen, we just wished it did not happen so quickly!

Last night, we have sourkraut and Sausages for dinner (which we have great pictures of if only I could put them up)

We will continue to push on and hopefully reach Utrecht in a couple of days, though it all depends on the knee and the throat of curlylox.

A ongoing thanks to those of you who donated so far, we have been spreading the word about Opportunity to those people we have met along the way so far, including a wonderful Danish farmer who let us camp on his land, brought us beers, and took us to a swimming hole on Denmark! Pictures to come

As for my health, I am doing fine. No problems yet, and I hope to remain that way, but one never knows when the knees and joints will begin to buckle.

By the way, yes mother, we are wearing suncreen!

Hi to my cat Merlin.

Thats all for now... RIDE OR DIE!

Scott

Wish I could be, Part of Your World

Today we visited the Little Mermaid statue, depicting the famous little mermaid from H.C Andersens fairytale... that was turned into a movie!

Cycling Update

Here is a little update of our life on the road...

July 14, 2009: Day 2

1) Woke up in Halmstad, Sweden at our campsite around 8:30, started biking around 11:00

2) Biked around 65km (45 miles) to Angelholm where we met Alf and Nanna, who bought us snacks (thank you!) and said they would meet up with us later "Chez Ida."

3) Our rumps and knees are not doing the greatest; this is the price you pay for being so foolish and doing almost 95 miles the very first two days of the journey...

4) Taking the Ferry from Helsingborg to Denmark.

Ridetime: 8 1/2 hours

Average Speed: 19.57 Kilometers/hour

Trip Length: 140 Kilometers

Odometer: 289 Kilometers

Denmark: Quick, Easy, and Absolutely Perfect

Here we are in Denmark, at Ida's house, who is the sister of Kris´s uncle´s (Alf) wife (Nanna). We are living like Kings at this beautiful house.

How perfect, we were met by some wonderful Danish people, who fed us danishes in the morning, and to top it all off... we were met with dinner waiting and great company, including our friend below...

















In other news, we leave today for Rødby, in Southern Denmark, and then we will be in Germany by tomorrow!

Away We Go!

Well, It is 9am and raining and cold outside... though it was tempting to stay in Forshfvuds comfy apartment, we are ready and underway... below is everything we are bringing with us, along with a few cute pictures to please our families and loves. Yay!

The Day BEFORE Tomorrow

Well The American is here, and it is the day BEFORE the day that will live in infamy...

We are all packing and repacking and what not, but lets get to the more interesting things.

We, as stated below, went shopping yesterday, and then did a bunch of preparation on the bikes while Curlylox cooked a wonderful meal of sweedish meatballs and salad and some unknown product he claims is "organic."

As for Jet lag... well the picture speaks for itself...

FYI... right after that picture was taken, I awoke myself because I poured the beer in my hand while I was sleeping all over myself.

We saw the great sights of the city yesterday, and met a bunch of Curlyloxs friends who were awesome. It is a beautiful sunny day here, we may going sailing... we may go biking... we may go into the city...

But one thing is for certain, tomorrow it begins

Forshufvud and Grönlie in Billdal

Friday July 10th 2009.

Its Friday night!! Forshufvud and I are "practice packing" in his moms place in lovely Billdal (a hole-in-the-wall suburb 20 km south of Göteborg). I got here yesterday with a train from Oslo, and forshufvud came with his bike to guide us home. It is flaaaaaaaaaat here, at least in the city. Hoping it will be like this all the way to France :-S

Coincidently, Forshufvuds mom is also packing for a bike trip. She is biking for a week on the islands of Tjörn & Örust with her friends so we've all had a cyclotron to share. She leaves tomorrow morning so she wont get a chance to meet our third wheel, Scott. We hope she gets good weather and some happy trails :-)

We pick up Scott from the airport tomorrow at noon and scramble to do some last minute shopping before everything closes on Sunday. We plan to start moving on Monday morning and it is expected to rain :-(

Thats all for now.
Grönlie