When I landed in Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, I waited a few minutes for my cycling gear, then a few more minutes for my bicycle. When the giant box appeared on the conveyor belt, I took it off, dragged it a few feet to a quieter part of the luggage-receiving room, and wondered how I would get it out of there. It was simply too bulky to drag all the way to the metro, and then across town from the central station to my hostel. I decided to ask the ladies behind the counter if I could assemble my bike right there — after all, they were chatting and giggling and seemed nice. They said of course I could, so I tore into my packaging and began assembling the bike. As I did so, tourists glanced at me now and then but mostly kept to themselves. That was until a little boy walked up close to me and my bike, which attracted the rest of his family. It turned out that the dad was a cyclist, and that they were from England. I told him about my plan to cycle down to Rome, and he wished me good luck and we said our goodbyes. These were the first friendly and sociable foreigners I met on my journey — there would be many, many more to come.
After fumbling around with my bike for about an hour, I realized two not so great things: (1) I didn’t have the right wrench size to install my pedals and (2) for some reason I couldn’t get my portable pump to inflate my one tubeless rear tire. What this meant was that I had to “roll” my half-deflated, unridable bicycle, along with 4 panniers full of gear through the airport, down to the metro, up from the Stockholm metro, and across Stockholm to finally arrive at my hostel — all while being fresh off an 11 hour flight. As sucky as this experience sounds, I knew ahead of time that I would face many difficult situations, and that I had better get used to them. I tried to keep this lesson in mind as I struggled to get to my hostel without having a public melt down. Though it proved impossible to keep in mind all the time, even having it occupy a measly 10% of mental bandwidth was a huge help.
I took the metro to Stockholm’s primary terminal, T-Centralen, which was about a 20 minute ride. After pushing my non-so-pushable bike onto the metro and wedging myself in a corner of the train where I wouldn’t be a nuisance to other riders, I sat back and enjoyed the views. Sweden is very green. Very very very green. The whole ride, it seemed, was lush with trees and verdant pasture. It was a stark change from my home in Southern California. As I took in my first real views of Sweden, my mind drifted to the long journey ahead. Would I be able to cycle my way all the way to Rome? I mean, the farthest I had ridden up to that point in a single trip was around 60 miles up and down the coast from San Luis Obispo to southern Big Sur. I had only spent one night on the road that trip. This trip would take several months. I let these intrusive thoughts of doubt wash over me, and sharpened my mind to the beautiful and personally unexplored city of Stockholm ahead.
Milo Klein 