Where I’m
from
Part I: Mountains
I guess it
all started when I got a job in southern Germany in 2000/2001 at the base of
the Chiemgauer Alpen. I bought a second hand Klein mountainbike (more about the
bike later) and a ditto Trek for my wife in a friend’s shop in Kirchberg, close to Kitzbühel: http://www.tonis-proshop.at/ We’d just
had our first child and bought a bike trailer for her. Work was crap, so we
spent most of the time riding up in the Chiemgauer mountains, enjoying fantastic views in
little Alm-restaurants with simple cheese sandwiches and Weissbier accompanied
by the characteristic scents of manure piles and grazing cows. Our closest,
favourite ride was up Kampenwand with a stop at the really small Maisalm, which
on occasion gave us a beer out of the fridge even though they weren’t open.
Awesome!
The Maisalm
on an overfull summerday.
We also
quite often drove the 1 hour to Kitzbühel where my wife and I had met about 10
years earlier and rode up some of the mountains there and caught up with old
friends. A favorite ride was up the Hahnekamm side to the Einsiedelei alm to enjoy
some afternoon sunshine and a beer. It was great. I probably have some paper
photos from this time but can’t be bothered scanning them, unless of course the
public demand is really overwhelming!
We had a
lot of difficulties down there though, and my wife just couldn’t feel at home
in Bayern, but the mountains and cycling we will never forget. Because of the
non-cycling rest of it, we decided to move back to Stockholm. We knew we would
miss the Alp-feeling, our friends and the cycling and I had this ridiculously strange,
uncomfortable vision that, hey, I may in future change to road riding and one
day start riding really long rides. Maybe even as far as about 600 km, which is
the distance from home to my wife's family's summer place on Öland. You know; sort of with a few overnight tent
stops, lots of bags hanging off the back of the bike and so on. Ridiculous! I
forced back this stupid idea and forgot about it.
In Sweden
there were other things to do. Work was good and we had another two children
the following years. So my cycling interest was more or less limited to an
annual craze watching the Tour de France on TV. The ridiculous road riding idea
was well and truly forgotten.
Watch this
space for what happened next J
/Toni
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