Day 19

This is the real august 19, not no-coffee, fake august 19.

On account of it beng sunday, we slept a bit late. Then we went to a bakery and got danishes. Danish danishes! They call them snegls in danish, which means snails. Oddly, the french call fancy little pastries (aside from ones they call escargots) vienese. Anyway.

I always right these during downtime, which means pre-coffee or right before sleeping, so uh zzzz.

(I’m not fixing the right/write typo above.)

So we biked to Jels, which is well known for both it’s dutch-style windmill nad it’s viking themed attractions. Alas, viking take sundays off. All i wanted was an unhappy, surly teen in a goofy hat to serve me an overpriced, inauthentic alcoholic beverage, but it was not to be. No orgy of viking goofiness was to be had.

And with that, we parted from the viking route and the ancient military road. We turned eastward again, towards copenhagen.

We were pining for the fjords.

Poor xena seemed exhausted. Dogs are only supposed to be awake for like 8 hours a day and she’s been up for 12 most days. This morning, she just refused to get up for a long time. Her parentage is a matter of much speculation, but i’m guessing none of them were bred to trot up fjords.

So i carried her down dirt roads that i would have made her run. And we didn’t go up a fjord today, but we did go down one. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s down 3 fjored in 3 days. We’re built fjord tough.

Surprisingly, the dirt paths didn’t end with the military route. Some of the 64 wasn’t even jeep track, but a single narrow bike track. There, xena ran along.

We went throught the woods and passed bronze age burial mounds. I couldn’t see them through he trees, but they were nearby.

Then, we came to kolding. We followed the signs for the tourist office, but we followed the car ones, which lead us up and around and around the fjord like a snegl. When we finally got there, it was closed. So we started consulting hotels listed with the bike map. They were a step up from germany. 4 stars! We turned to another book, but the hotels were up more hills and almost as pricey. My knees were done for the day, so we went to the 4 star that looked the snootiest. I started blahblahing with the clerk sarah dotie style. “If you’re ever in california, you should stay at the hotel my dad owns. it won the ugliest building in silicon valley contest 7 years in a row.”  Nicole is some of my favorite company, but it gets a little isolating doing long trips. I just wanted to talk to somebody new, but some charges got waved and 4 stars got  pretty reasonable.

Um anyway, nicole and i had a conversation earlier that went like:
ME: “Sorry this is so hilly.”
COLA: “It’s not so bad. It’s easy after that fjord.”
ME: “Uhoh. It sounds like you just built some character.”
COLA: “I did not!”
ME: “It was challenging, but you learned what you were capable of. This has turned into a character building holiday.”
COLA: “Damn it! Why did you tells me this? This is your fault!”

So much for just being lazy and having fun.

I there a fjord in our future? I don’t know as i haven’t goten all the maps that i need yet. I suspect we will have moe opportunities to appreciate the work of Sartibarifast.