Tour de Denmark: A Tale of Flat Tires, Windy Seas, and Hardy New Friends

I arrived back to Copenhagen, Denmark after my visit with my family in the USA with miraculously no flight delays, but feeling a bit jetlagged. I met up with Lene and Kim, who graciously hosted me, and had also stored my bike while I was away in the states, which was a massive help. Some of Kim’s family from Jutland in northern Denmark were visiting on the same weekend I arrived, and we had a lovely dinner then watched the Euro soccer championship together. After getting past the initial awkwardness of the strange American riding his bike to South Africa amongst their family gathering, they quickly and warmly welcomed me, and were all curious about my trip. I was especially touched by the care and concern Kim’s sister Henriette showed for me, who said her motherly instincts immediately acted up when she heard my wild travel plans, and she had a dream that I had gotten stranded in Germany with my bike and needed to call them for help. We made a pact that I would keep her updated on how I was doing, and decided that if I made it through Germany and avoided her prophetic dream, then the rest of my trip would be smooth sailing. I was so grateful to get to know Lene and Kim and their family, and by the time I re-packed my bike and was ready to head out, I felt as if I had gained a second Danish family. To go from a traveling stranger to a cared-for and close friend meant so much to me, and it felt hard to say goodbye. But before I pedaled off, I made plans with Henriette to meet again in northern Jutland on my way towards Denmark’s west coast.  

Thank you so much Lene and Kim for hosting me and storing my bike!

And great to meet Henriette, Sophia, Simone, and Stefan too!

I then biked 5km to the home of Catharina and Martin, my Warmshowers hosts for the next two nights, who were preparing for their own bikepacking family adventure with their two young boys Michael and Benjamin. It was a wonderful and easygoing stay, and we had thought-provoking and meandering conversations about academia, bike travel, and never-ending engineering projects. I spent one day exploring Copenhagen and eating delicious sourdough pastries. On the way into the city, though, my back tire had two flats, spewing air and much of my newly added sealant onto the pavement. The incident foreshadowed impending tire calamities, and certainly deflated my confidence, with inner worries about my capabilities to tackle Africa if my bike was barely holding together on the third country of the trip.

The following day, I met with LOBPA, Denmark’s interest organization for people with disabilities using personal assistance and the country’s largest non-profit personal assistance provider (see my blog post about LOBPA and their important work here). After the meeting, I rode on from Copenhagen, and through the beautiful town of Roskilde, with its massive cathedral. I almost made it through the day without any flats, until my back tire popped again, forcing me to add another plug (maybe the fourth or fifth plug at this point), and another ominous omen of tire doom. Eventually, I arrived to my camping spot on the Sonnerup beach, and spent the evening watching a gorgeous sunset color the sky fiery and vibrant hues of orange and magenta, and the rays of the sun painted a streak of gold along the bobbing waves of the sea. It was my first time on the trip seeing the North Sea instead of the Baltic, and I watched in wonder for a while, at the dramatic and tumultuous building and breaking of the waves, and the endless expanse of blue, while I munched contentedly on my simple dinner of rice and lentils.

The simple bliss of sunsets and cooking with my camping stove.

The next day was a wild one. It started with an early wake-up, and speed-packing my bags to catch my ferry to Aarhus at 9:10am. I noticed when checking my bike that my back tire had less air than when I’d gone to bed, but there was nothing to do but pump it up and cross my fingers. Riding towards the harbor, one of the plugs began poking further and further out from the rear tire on every rotation. I was sure it wouldn’t hold, so in a Macgyver-esque scheme, I pulled out my super-glue, and stuck the rebel plug back into the tire. I jumped back on the bike, pedaling hard to still make the ferry, but feeling proud of my inventive repairs. My back-patting didn’t last, though, as within 3km from the harbor, I heard the dreaded whoosh and squirt of air and goo expelling from the tire. I was barely on pace to make it to my ferry, so in true “race mode” (and after exclaiming some necessary profanities), I whipped out the plug kit, jammed a new plug in my zombie tire (not without frustratingly losing two extra plugs inside the tire in my frantic rush), pumped like hell with my mini-hand pump, and sped as fast as I could to the ferry gate. Miraculously, I made it onto the ferry with less than a minute before it departed the harbor, with my tire on the verge of exploding… But, I made it. I sighed and flopped onto the fake leather seats, my hands, clothes, and even my hair caked with gloopy sealant, super glue, and dust.

Still somehow made the ferry to Aarhus

Arriving to Aarhus, I knew my bike was in no condition to ride, so I awkwardly walked pushing my bike down the ferry ramp and trudged for an hour to the town center. I was the solitary walker for most of the path, and, turning up the volume of my headphones, I began belting out energetic tunes to release the pent-up energy from the frenetic morning. There were only a few instances of quickly muffling my spirited singing into an awkward cough when an unexpected passerby walked around a blind corner. I caught a train to Aalborg in the north of Denmark, and when I arrived I had one mission in mind: find a bike shop to replace my rear tire and get my bike back in riding shape. I was initially discouraged when the first shops I tried didn’t have any suitable tires, but then I found the Pedal Pushers bike shop and café, and I was saved. I met the owner Kristian, a tall friendly man with dark-skin and flowing dreadlocks, from Trinidad and Tobago, who had recently opened the shop with his Danish wife. Kristian was knowledgeable about bike repairs, and thankfully had high-quality tubeless ready mountain bike tires. I bought two, realizing the importance of having a spare tire. After some delicious waffles and coffee on the café side, I got to work. It was a huge help to use the repair stand and ask Kristian for useful advice, and after my newly-cleaned hands had gotten very dirty again, I had a functional back tire. Kristian’s son Milo came by the shop, and we snapped a photo, beaming together with my recuperated bike. Thank you so much Kristian and Pedal Pushers! I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t found your shop, and I mean it when I say you saved my ride. I excitedly jumped back on the saddle and pedaled on, feeling happy as the knobby rubber of my new tire glided along the pavement.

I have a new tire (and very dirty hands again)

It was such a big help to use the repair stand at the shop!

Thank you so much Kristian and Pedal Pushers!

That evening, I met back up with Henriette (Kim’s sister I met in Copenhagen) and her daughter Sophia. I arrived a bit later than planned because of my bike troubles, but this wasn’t a problem for them, and they greeted me with so much warmth and familiarity. We chatted about subtleties and eccentricities of American versus Danish culture over a lovely dinner, and I learned Henriette was well-traveled, worked hard managing her own business, and was a wise and reasoned parent, whose morals I grew to admire. Sophia also had her own dog, who was incredibly well-trained, and I was happy to get some rare puppy time. In the morning, I said a heartfelt thank you to Henriette and Sophia, feeling touched for so openly welcoming me like a member of the family, and for Henriette’s genuine care and motherly concern for me. I assured her I would be safe, especially on my ride through Germany. In what has become one of the nicest parts of my trip, Henriette got me in contact with another of their family friends living in the next town along my route, so I already had a destination and friendly face awaiting me.

Truly felt like a member of the family. Thank you Henriette and Sophia!

On my way to Hanstholm, my destination for the night, I stumbled upon the Vigsø Batteriet beach, scattered with concrete bunkers from World War II, their cracking concrete walls splattered with graffiti and rebellious signatures and tags. The beach was popular, with many groups of friends and families exploring the bunkers, relaxing on the soft sand, or dipping their toes in the water. I sat for a while, listening to the sounds of the waves and intermittent playful squeals of the children splashing at the edge of the tide, and gazing at the bunkers, many partially or fully submerged, relics of war being gradually eaten away by the sloshing ebb and flow of the sea. It was one of the first times on the trip I had taken the time to sit, do nothing, and just be for a while, and it was deeply rejuvenating, and reminded me to take those moments, and cherish them, when I can throughout the trip.

The many bunkers lining the beach

I rode on to meet with Simon at his home in Hanstholm that he was completely renovating from the ground up, almost entirely on his own. Simon was a carpenter and handyman, and I was so impressed by the magnitude of his project, and the depth of knowledge and technical skills needed for such an undertaking. Not only was Simon building his home from scratch on his own, but he was also working full-time as a carpenter during the day, and would come out to work on the house at night after a full day of working on other houses and projects. And I thought biking to South Africa was hard… And perhaps most admirably, Simon was also a humble, easygoing, and nice guy. Because the house was still in construction, strewn with sawdust and spare tools, Simon proposed the idea for me to stay the night in the storage shed. I gladly accepted the offer, and laid out my sleeping bag on top of two thick sheets of leftover foam insulation, strung the rope on the door handle over the adjacent nail on the wall, forming a makeshift door lock, and stared at the cloudy sky through the small hole in the roof of the shed before drifting to sleep.

My cozy shed for the night

Out of a funny coincidence, my hosts from Uppsala in Sweden, Jess, Lars, and Syne, were in Hanstholm at the very same time as me, and we met up in the morning for breakfast at Lars parent’s summer house. I then took some time to explore more WWII bunkers in Hanstholm, one of which was sunk deep beneath the grassy hillside, its many interlocking rooms decorated with a menagerie of strange and eerie graffiti, which had to be illuminated with my phone’s flashlight, as there were no working lights inside. It was a spooky experience, tentatively creeping through the crypts of the bunkers, feeling like the unwitting side-character in a horror movie about to be assaulted, or worse possessed, by the long-tormented ghost of a Nazi soldier. I learned the Northern region of Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII, and many soldiers lived 24-7 down in these bunkers, manning enormous cannons that would fire shells across the Skagerrak straight aimed at targets in Norway. I was happy to escape back into the sunshine and pedal on, shivering at the horrors of history and life during war-time. I rode further to the town of Klitmøller along the northwest coast of Denmark, designated “cold Hawaii”, when professional surfers settled in the area thanks to the strong winds fueling good waves and nice surfing. They brought with them some of the laidback aloha spirit to the frigid waters of the North sea. I met back up briefly with Jess, Lars, and Syne for ice cream and a short walk along the beach watching the surfers. It was an unexpected but appreciated coincidence to see them again, and we joked before I continued riding about the next place we’d make another spontaneous meeting.

The exterior of the bunker

The creepy, graffitied interiors

Denmark had an amazing network of camping shelters spread across the country, discoverable using an app, which provided beautiful (and free) places to stay the night for traveling bikepackers. I relied on the network for the rest of my ride, spending nights under the roofs of the small wooden shelters tucked into patches of forests or nestled along the coastline. I made a stop at the Bovberg lighthouse to try some Koldskål and Kammerjunker (sweet buttermilk soup with cookies). The final days in Denmark were marked by the rain and the wind, and while my hand-me-down and second-hand rain gear put up a surprisingly heroic fight, eventually the sogginess won out. But, the fantastic biking lanes and beautiful countryside scenery kept my spirits from dampening too much. The persistent rain had awakened an endless barrage of slugs, that lazily, and seemingly suicidally, oozed along the trails. It demanded focused riding to dodge and weave through the crisscross obstacle course of squishy bodies. On the last day of riding in Denmark, it felt as if the country didn’t want me to leave, relentlessly pushing me back and slowing my progress with a horrendous headwind, mixed with frequent spurts of hard rain. Eventually, though, I pushed through the last sections of western coastline along the North Sea, and crossed the border into Germany, finishing my eventful Tour de Denmark.

One of the shelters that I stayed the night

Koldskål and Kammerjunker at the Bovberg lighthouse

The dreaded gauntlet of the slugs

There are many moments that will stick with me from my time in Denmark: my dramatic tire saga, exploring decrepit bunkers, sleeping in shelters and storage sheds, and watching the crashing waves of the North Sea. But, the thing that will leave the most lasting and meaningful impression is definitely the people I met. Lene and Kim, who were going through tough family challenges and working 24-hr shifts, and still so warmly and openly welcomed me to feel like another member of the family. Henriette, working hard running her own business and instilling values of independence, curiosity, and kindness in her daughters. Kristian, following a dream opening a unique bike shop / café in a new home country, and lending a sincerely appreciated helping hand when I needed it most. Simon, renovating his new home from the ground up, taking on the immensity of the task with a cool determination, and finding ways to offer a modest place for me to sleep. There was a humble kind of hardiness that so many of the people I met in Denmark displayed, along with a relaxed and genuine friendliness. They were traits that I grew to deeply appreciate and admire, and, in riding through the country, I hoped a little bit of those qualities had rubbed off onto me.