August and Wally Hits A Ton

The first day of August gave us splendid weather with thick clouds all around the horizon, but clear sunny skies above. We knew we had a big day of riding today, as we had been texted by Nadia's friend Suzy and she had requested that we arrive tonight or early tomorrow. It was still about 150km to her parents, so a big day indeed. But even knowing this we still didn't get out of camp until after 11.00, as Jon decided to pick a few more blueberries. The wind was up and down all day, mostly in to our faces, as today we were heading south east towards the town of Grums, before turning east. Once turned to the east we were on the E18 road, which is the main road connecting Oslo to Stockholm. Along this stretch of road we tucked into single file and hammered along as the traffic whizzed past. Bike paths eventually appeared on the side of the road, so we were able to slow down a bit, but we still arrived in the main city of Karlstad early in the afternoon. Karlstad was a decent sized city located on the northern shores of a lake I think is called Vanern. For us the main point of interest was the library where we picked up a few new maps and souvenirs. For Jon, his main interest was once again based around his bung back wheel. To try and find a good bike shop here, he and I backtracked 10km to a big shopping complex, where we found all the bike shops already closed for the day.
Jon was fairly certain that his bike was going to break if he went much further so he made the decision to stay in Karlstad for the night, whilst Nadia and I pushed on to cut the distance we had to cover tomorrow morning.
We seemed to cover the kilometres very quickly this late afternoon, and arriving in Skattkarr we treated ourselves to a pizza dinner at a little Italian restaurant. We were able to watch TV, and saw the Aussie ladies swim team take out second place in the 4X100 medley relay at the World Champs, which was very nice. Another reason for eating out was that we wanted to keep riding a bit further and didn't want to worry about cooking and dishes, and so we were back on the road in no time flat. Leaving the suburbs of Karlstad far behind, we had bikepaths for a while, and when they disappeared we took back roads to the side of the highway, only reammerging at the small towns of Vase and Olme, before we headed bush on a short cut attempt towards Storfors. The sun was going down as we decided to take a dirt road pointing in the right direction. It turned out to be the road we were actually looking for, which meant we knew we only had about 30km to do the next day. By this stage we were very keen for a nice, flat, soft place to put the tent on, and checking the bike computer showed 117km of travel for the day. The forest was hugging the road very tightly and it took a few kilometres to find a seldom used dirt track heading away from the road, so that became bed for the night, and this day became the first day I had ridden over 100km, finally dropping the bike at 120 kilometres. The campsite turned out to be 'the' place to be for Swedish ants, and they came out in their thousands to tickle our feet.

In the morning we packed camp and got moving without brekkie, as the ants were still running riot, and we knew we didn't have far to travel until we arrived at a house offering food, hot showers and a few days off our bikes. Our ride on this morning was straight forward – after joining the main road heading north to Storfors, we rode for a bit over an hour before seeing the signs we were looking for. We passed a bus stop named Slabraten, and in accordance with the directions given to us by Nadia's friend Suzie, we took the first dirt road to the left. After 10 minutes of being lost we got directions that had us back on the main road just as the family we were looking for drove past, apparently looking for us too. They quickly pulled to the side and the Suzie's brother ran back to make sure we were the right set of lost Australian tourists. We were only about 200mtrs away from their house, so a few minutes later we pushed our bikes into their garage and met our hosts of the next few days. Our Swedish parents were Eva and Pentti. Unfortunately we didn't get to see too much of Pentti, as he slept through the days after night working.
As I mentioned in the last blog, Nadia and Suzie met whilst they were both working in South Africa. They only met each other a few times, and hadn't seen each other since then, but thankfully had kept in touch. So here we were meeting Suzie's family in the middle of Sweden, and Suzie herself wasn't arriving from Stockholm until the next day. They did the right thing and put food in front of us and showed us the washing machine.
Once refreshed we found out Jon was on his way from Karlstad, after having no luck with his bike repairs. He arrived just as lunch was served (bbq turkey and corn cobs), and then shortly after lunch we jumped into a car with Eva to head back to Karlstad, where we were appearing as surprise guests at a 60^th birthday party, being the birthday of Eva's Mum.
After eating my fill at the bbq lunch I was now presented with a seat at a long trestle table that must have been struggling to remain on its legs with the mountain of food on top of it. I was staring at a smorgasbord of little lobster things and bread and cheese and softdrink and then dessert was huge stacks of pancakes topped with walnuts, and chocolate mousse. I stuffed myself silly and had a very good time meeting lots of Suzie's relatives, before Eva took us for a walk along the northern bank of Lake Vanern to aid our digestion.

The next 2 days were spent relaxing in a very nice style, with Eva looking after us way too much. The food kept coming too, and I'm sure we must have emptied the fridge a few times over. Pentti does a spot of moose hunting during the hunting season, so we got excited and set the alarm to wake us at 6.00am. All 3 of us headed out in the morning and found lots of blueberries, but no moose. Disappointing as this was, we were cheered up with a sauna later that evening.
Suzie finally arrived and spent a beautiful day showing us around the country that she grew up in. We saw her old school (also attended by the prince of Sweden), a nice church, a lake and lock and finished up at her Mum's work. We had gone a full hour or so without eating so Pentti took a salmon he had caught out of the freezer and delighted us with a demonstration of his home made smoker. The fish became our early dinner and tasted absolutely delicious. One of Suzie's old friends was also home for the weekend, so we went to visit her after dinner. We met her on the deck of her lakeside shack where she had freshly made blueberry pie and wine waiting for us. A very nice evening indeed that ended in a very enthusiastic moose hunt. I think that the moose were pretty safe.