Feminism and FLOSS

Introduction

Let’s start this with some definitions. (No, this isn’t about feminism and gum disease (although that might also be interesting).) FLOSS stands for “Free (Libre) Open Source Software.” As they say, that’s “free” as in speech, not “free” as in beer. FLOSS refers to software projects in which participation is more open. Users can get copies of the source code (this is the stuff that programmers make. you can change it and thus change the program) and do whatever they like with it, as long as what they distribute is also FLOSS. This is what we mean by “free.”
However, to be clear, the distribution model of FLOSS means it is often also available without monetary exchange. Users can go to a website and get tons of cool software for their computer, including an operating system. You can get computer hardware and never pay for any of the programs on it and do this without piracy or stealing. And if you have technical skills and really like a piece of software, you can even add features to it. Or, you can ask for the feature and somebody might even listen to you and do it.

Every piece of software has a certain community aspect. The users are a group of people who care about the software. Thus, all software has some community. But proprietary software owned by big companies can afford to ignore this community or even work against them. Many of the mis-features in the new version of windows were added at the bequest of media companies and are contrary to the needs and desires of the user community. This dynamic is less present in FLOSS software because the user community has direct access to the very essence of the software. If something unpopular gets stuck in, they can take it back out. Thus FLOSS software is inherently democratic, existing squarely within the free marketplace of ideas. The users own the software.
Therefore FLOSS empowers the user. This dynamic tends to have implications in the social dynamic among users. Many FLOSS programs have online resources to help users and the community will often offer help and support to each other. For example a FLOSS thing I use has an IRC group (a chat room). Many users log in and keep it open in the background. If they have a problem, they can ask about it. If they notice somebody else is having a problem that they can solve, they might jump in and help.
Many of the implications and goals of FLOSS have an obvious commonality with feminist goals. In a more concise summary, my internet friend Paula (aka Bastubis) wrote:

I think FLOSS offers better possibilities [than proprietary software] for feminist use because:

  • it’s community owned
  • mutual and self-help model
  • collaborative
  • empowers the user

Women Developers

Despite all the commonality between FLOSS and feminism, it’s still the case that only around 1.5% of FLOSS developers are women. Therefore, we can conclude that while FLOSS has a commonality with feminism, it is not, in and of itself, inherently feminist or women’s participation would be higher.
Ironically, some of the very openness of FLOSS may be part of the issue. All groups have hierarchies and power imbalances. In some groups, hierarchies are formalized and in others they are not. Informal groupings are fine for consciousness raising or within groups of friends, but they can become problematic in groups that are taking more direct action. For example, let’s say a CR group decides to act on a specific issue. One person might have an idea for a protest, but, since this is a new direction for the group, before presenting it to the group as a whole, she runs it by a few friends within the group who offer suggestions. Over time, in-groups and out-groups develop, where a core group of friends discusses things before brining it to the group as a whole. This dynamic can quickly become toxic and it’s why direct action groups often have specific handbooks for how to organize themselves. You cannot try to right a power imbalance unless you first recognize that it exists.
Ironically, sometimes even more oppressive hierarchy can be better for reaching feminist goals. About 20% of corporate developers are women. Corporations invest energy in trying to recruit women and trying to avoid the appearance of sexism (to some extent). This is not because corporations are good, far from it, but because we have been able to use the legal system to force them to be less discriminatory. However, turning the legal system on FLOSS is probably not the best solution to the lack-of-diversity problem, alas.
So, given all of this, what causes women’s non-participation in FLOSS? Well, most FLOSS stuff occurs on the internet. I remember the good old days of “nobody knows if you’re a dog on the internet” and how the invisibility of identity would lead to a truly colorblind, genderblind utopia. There’s multiple problems with this ideal, which can explain where it went wrong. First of all, access issues meant that the majority of (english-speaking) people on the internet were white men. This lead users to assume that anybody they were talking to was a white men. Secondly, anoninimity causes people to act like assholes. A few assholes could spew racist, sexist, classist garbage until populations that were sensitive to this would leave. The answer to this is not to do it in reverse because it’s a terrible model of how to behave and because it just won’t work. White guys are priviliged and this makes them less vulnerable to this kind of attack. So they’re in a position where they can exert this power and have no negative consequences for it. Probably, these are people who don’t feel terribly empowered in their daily lives. In the offline world, most gay bashers are teen boys who are alarmed about their own sexuality.
Informal hierarchies on online forums, coupled with conditions created by institutionalized oppression, therefore can create an environment which is explicitly hostile to women (and other minority groups). Because everyone is equally empowered, nobody is empowered to stop harassers, trolls, and vocal bigots. Indeed, a completely open forum is a situation where a troll (or a spammer) can destroy a community, by creating so much garbage that any meaningful communication is effectively drowned out. The way to solve this problem is to create a more formalized hierarchy, where certain users are granted the power to ban certain users or remove certain posts. These super-empowered users are called moderators. They keep spammers and trolls at bay. There are more refined models of moderation, such as rotating moderatorship or systems where comments are voted on and given certain scores (so users can elect to see only high-scoring comments).
However, moderation is only as good as the moderator(s). If the moderators don’t care about sexism, an informal hierarchy based on sex can still exist. These partially unmoderated portions of the internet are often explicitly hostile to women. The moderated sections are less hostile, but there’s still the nobody-knows-if-you’re-a-dog invisibility. Everyone around you is (apparently) a white man. This does not create a welcoming environment.
So what to do about women in FLOSS? As the hierarchies are most often informal, a legal remedy is probably not the answer. Therefore, I think there are two approaches we should explore. One is to work with prominent FLOSS organizations, like GNU, to put women in high profile positions. I think the Ubuntu group is probably receptive to this. This would create a situation where women FLOSS contributors are more visible.
The other approach is affinity groups. Having groups of women working together on FLOSS creates visibility and an a community which is specifically welcoming to them, potentially attracting more women to become active in FLOSS.
I think there’s also a financial issue Do FLOSS developers get paid for their work? (Frankly, I don’t want to add to the amount of unpaid labor already extracted from women.) Programmers in open source may be living off of donations to their projects. They may be funded by corporations and foundations. Some just do it in their free time. The grass-roots kind of FLOSS that we’re talking about is more in the free-time category of development. I’m guessing that the men who do free time development have some sort of infrastructure to support them. They’re students. Or they’re married and have a woman picking up after them or they have a maid (a woman picking up after them). By contrast, women who are not students usually have to pick up after themselves.

Non-profits

The ideals of FLOSS have a great synchronicity with non-profit enterprises, but if we want women who are in non-profits, and thus already getting low pay, to take up FLOSS development, it needs to be part of their job, not something for their free time. The good news about this is that there is funding out there.
If we want women who are in non-profits to take up FLOSS tools, we need to give them training and support, face to face, through affinity groups. The money they save on software licenses will make it worth their time. Also, we as developers need to make sure that the tools we give them are self-explanatory. If they want to get a volunteer to come in for an afternoon and do something, they want hir to just be able to sit down and do it, without having to spend too much time learning the system.

Conclusions

FLOSS and feminism could and should work together. To ensure that this happens on the development side, we need to push for both visibility and anti-sexist moderation policies. We can create visibility by getting women into visible formally hierarchical organizations that already exist and by creating our own such organizations. On the user side, we should specifically offer support through affinity groups, so that women have an explicitly welcoming environment where they can learn about FLOSS tools. Furthermore, we should specifically reach out to feminist non-profits as a means to help them become more effective and thus advance the cause of feminism in the brick and mortar world, as well as online.

Distances

And now, it’s the math you’ve all been waiting for. How far did we go?

Den Haag – Emmen: 363
Emmen – Jels: 487
Jels – Slagese = 162
These numbers are arrived at by: For the first section, adding up all the daily totals from when we were still in the Netherlands and I was doing daily totals. For the second section, taking the numbers from the Jutland Fietsroute (“The Viking Route”) book. For the third section, by getting distances from booklets published by the Dansk Cyclist Forbund.
The first and third sections are fairly accurate. However, the middle fails to account for many detours, including following a different cyclepath along the Wesser and taking several detours to fjords. Figuring out the actual distance is too much effort for my lazy self, but the number listed here is low.
No section accounts for wandering around for three damn hours looking for a night lodging that would take dogs, or side trips to campsites and grocery stores. I had a little bike computer that did real odometer readings, but it got dropped and broken in June.
So, in an idealized world where we did not get lost, go in circles or wander far and afield from the route to look at nearby cities, we went 922 km total. (I’m confident, therefore, that the real number is over 1000k, and therefore, I want to buy a touring bike, because I’ve gone far enough to justify it and cuz 3 geared Bromptons are no match for fjords. (Lovely, but dangerous. My sister got bitten by a moose once, for instance!))

By Country

Distance in The Netherlands: 391, in Germany: 374, in Denmark: 247

Last few days in Copenhagen

On 23rd, of course, we arrived in copenhagen. That night, we saw the index award exhibit. This outdoor design exhibit included lots of awesome stuff, including cool bike technology. It had an improved helmet design, a kind of city folding bike where the lock is an integral part of the bike (called the puma bike) and an awesome blinky light design. Often, bike lights either take batteries or they have a dragging wheel generator which creates power, but tons of drag. Some brilliant person came up with the idea of putting magnets on the spokes and using them spinning to power an led. super low drag! And there was a portable wind turbine, which is too perfect. And a solar cooker for backpackers. I wonder if it would work for instant coffee in the morning? Set it up, take down camp, have cofee before setting out. I don’t think it would have been reliable for this trip, but i don’t know.

I woke up on the morning of the 24th and started making  phone calls, trying to find a cheaper hotel. There was nothing. The bed and breakfast booking guy told me not to come to copenhagen this weekend. Oops, too late.

So i extended our stay in the phoenix hotel. Apparently, this posh hotel was built on the site of the former headquarters of the danish communist party. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes . . .. They should definitely have a star confiscated.

We got breakfast and then i went to sleep some more. If i’m going to pay for a nice room, i might as well spend some time there. Nicole went on a long walk. She came back in the afternoon and woke me up, so we biked over to chrisriania, the hippie island.

Some time in the early 70’s, a bunch of young idealists moved into empty military baracks on the island and set up a hippie village sort of thing where they did art and sold pot, etc, etc. Amaxingly, this has persisted until present day. But the cops have decided to quit tollerating soft drugs and other minor vices. There’s a lot less dope for sale now than there was when i first visitted 6 years ago.

Have i mentioned how i feel about cops? Why can’t they ever let well enough alone? Over-controlling pigs. But, of course, they obvoiusly have the support of the city government in these actions, which implies that the voters and therefore the people of denmark have decided that the era of ideals is over. By coincidence, i will mention that denmark has a lot of military going on now and even troops in iraq.

But despite the whole world going to hell in a fascist handbasket, christiania still lives now (may it always) and there’s a bike store there that i wanted to see.

There’s an old danish design for a city bike with a suspended saddle. It is really light, because the metal parts only experience compression stress, they can be really thin. Aso, the floating saddle was clearly made for cobblestones. It’s like levitating over them. It’s just really comfortable and would make a great city bike, good for potholes and smooth roads alike. However, it cost a bit more than i anticipated, so i’m not coming back with one, alas. Imay yet order one, depending on what birmingham is like to bike. This kind of bike is called a pedersen bike, i think.

Ayway, christiania is full of nice cafes and offleash dogs, so a good time was had by all. As we were walking around, i noticed that the thing to do seems to be just to set up your tent around the edges of the hippie settlement. It’s too bad that i had already asked for more nights at the hotel. I would he been funny to go from 4 stars to wild camping, squatter style.

We got dinner and i was still tired, so we went to sleep really early.

The morning of the 25th, we decided to go to the other bike shop that i wanted to see, but we walked over because my knees just couldn’t deal anymore. The brompton seat post is just a bit too  short, so i never got full knee extension, which gets to be hurty after a while. Also, folks in copenhagen bike really fast, especially in comparison to the dutch. It’s fun zipping around the city, but, yeah, my knees.

We walked to the bike shop, which, by cooincidence, was next to the hotel that i had slept in my first night in copenhagen 6 years prevoius. In fact, all those years ago i had gone to the same bikeshop because it was a bromtpon specialist and i thought they might be really good for the kind of city-to-city-by-train travel that i was doing then. They turned out to be pricier than i had expected then, but i had been wanting one ever since, at least until i final got one in may. And then, without remembering, i rode it to the place where i had first seen one.

So we went in the shop and  looked at the dansk cyclist forbund (Danish Cycling Federation) merch, which includes a kind of nice long sleeve sweatshirt which i didn’t get. And i noticed that half the bromtpons had seat pole extenders!! I talked to the shop guy and he told me it would be easy to put one on my bike that very day! So we went back to the hotel and grabbed our bikes and now my knees are very happy. Yay!

After making me love my bike again, we went across the street, where there was a goofy soccer festival. A bunch of teams of few women were playing on tiny fields, marked out on the asphalt. Al of the teams were wearing funny costumes. One team had painted themselves blue and were dressed like smurfs. Others were dressed like pirates or housewives or cheerleaders. There must have been a hundred tiny teams, all in silly uniforms.

We observed this for  a while and then decided to bike along the tourist walking route. We came to the latin quarter, by the university, which was full of students and gay bars! There was some sort of street festival going on. So we stopped for lunch. The cafe had soy milk! It was great.

Then, we continued on to the city hall where gay pride was happening! (And, it turns out, also at the festival whicch we had just left.) No wonder there were no hotel rooms. We parked our bikes and watched the parade. Hooray! I love a parade. This one was especially great because it was small and not commercialized. It was also campy as hell. (I looove camp!!) There were drag queens galore, drag kings, folks in togas, a guy in a leather california highway patrol uniform, bears, lesbians dressed like pirates. It was great fun. Afterwards, there was live music and we got some beer.

Lesians love xena. Well, to be fair, everbody loves xena. It was nice having her because lots of folks talked to us. But a big part of the fun of pride is bumping into old friends and exes (or making new exes), but this wasn’t happening for us, so we eventually continued on the tourist route.

We came to a mcdonalds that i suddenly remembered that i had peed at six years prevoius. I decided to repeat the experience. Somebody told me that i was in the wrong toilet. I think that also happened last time. It was funny going from being recognized by lesbians to being wrong-bathroomed. I always have mixed feelings about that in general. But it doesn’t really mean i’ve been taken ffor male, it just means that i’ve been deemed insufficiently girly to enter the holy temple of feminity. That same person wouldn’t likely call me sir in any other context.

Anyway, we finished the tourist circuit and decided to get dinner. Timeout reccommended a place called “Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus.” James Bond + Monty Python = lots of vegetarian options! (I would have assumed the answer to that math problem to be Barbarella, but there was a bit of her in the decor.)

We went back to the hotel to abandon xena and go to the giant lesbian party, but we weren’t sure where it was. The internet yielded no clues and then i fell asleep, so no giant dance party.

This morning, we awoke and went to the train station. As i am writing this, i am on a ferry from denmark to germany. The train drove right onto the boat! Nicole has never been on this sort of ferry before. Xena seems confused. I think it’s great. I am very fond of ferries.

Our baggage is somewhat unmanageable while the bikes are covered, so depending on rules on future trains (some want bikes to be covered), we are in real danger of missing a transfer. Will we be home by the time you read this? Or stranded in Munster? Stay tuned! Same bat blog, same bat channel!

Finally, in closing, i really like copenhagen. Danish bikes are really great (light and with gears!) and the city seems very livable. Denmark is my favorite scandanavian country, with more livable weather and with out crazy high alcohol taxes. I hope i can find an occasion to visit again.

Day 22 – 23

August 22 & 23

Woke up yesterday in Odensee and then started biking east. Alas, we did almost no sightseeing there because we were trying to not end up bikong through christmas or something. Odensee has great bike routes, though. There is a great system of bike paths that form their own grid with underpasses to avoid trafficy roads. It is really a great place to bike.

The countryside east of there was mostly flat, although kind of dull and the weather was not so great. Tourist office books have described fyn as a paradise for bikers. I don’t think that i can agree with that.

One really nice thing was an oak tree on a spiral mound. It looked like an ancient fairy tree, but a plaque dated it as much later. We went up and surveyed the view.

The last city on fyn befe the bridge east is nyborg. It’s pretty and at the bottom of a fjord, so fun to coast in to. We got in around 15:30 and went directly to the tourist office to get the next map. They didn’t have it, but told us to cross the bridge to go to the tourist office in the town on the other side.

The bridge is really long and you can drive across it or take a train, but not bike. Which is fine. Biking on long bridges or on long dijkes sucks anyway. So we went to the train station and dissassembled everything. Then ticket confusion. Then, unexpectedly long train ride. Then reassembly. Then SPRINT from the remote train station to the ceneter of town where at 17:05 the tourist office folks had locked the door, turned off the lights, and gone home 5 minutes earlier. Arg. No map means no housing or camping info.  Fortunately, i had a list of hotels on the eastern island. I asked nicole if she would be willing to go 20 more km to the next town without a map IF we had a hotel reservation.

I started calling hotels and finally found one that both had rooms and took dogs. Yay. 20 more k seemed reasonable, despite it being 18:00 because we’d only gone 30 k so far that day.

We started booking along the route, which was fantastic. It curved north and took us along the coast by some spectacular beaches. It was a mercifully flat coastline. The sky was kind of blue. The sun was setting behind the huge bridge towers. We were riding towards a rainbow, past a newly plowed wheat field.

The sun here has a lovely golden quality, if it manages to get through the clouds. The angle is sharp, i don’t know if i’be ever seen my shadow be less than a meter long, even at noon. So the freshly plowed field was intensely golden on the remaining wheat stalks. And the dark, wet eart underneath was in shadow. With intense, moody clouds and a rainbow. Right by the beach. This more closely conforms to my idea of bikers’ paradise.

Alas, though, the moody clouds and rainbow turned into rain. Which turned into a really heavy downpour, complete with thunder and lightening and sheets of rain of the sort described by bullwar-lyton. It was, indeed, a dark and stormy night.

In general, the signposts for national bike routes in denmark are excellent, but still, i can miss them or maybe it was absent, but a wrong turn was made. I was staring at a tiny non-detailed map as the rain slowly but steadily increased and the temperature dropped. Nicole started to cry.

I found a route to town and we rejoined the 6. Our booked hotel was far south of the city center. It turned out to be one of those highway hotel sort of things. We were staying at a truck stop.

Imagine an american truckstop with a clean, decent, cafeteria-style restaurant and an overpriced chain motel. Now imagine the neon signs are in danish. And the chairs are sort of scandinavian-modern looking in thier design. And the restaurant has a nice terrace with umbrellas. Add some slot machines. Now you’re picturing it.

The rain was around it’s peak when we arrived. I grazed at the salad bar. I felt odd for having biked to a truck stop motel to sleep. I kept having those weird, oh-that’s-right,-i’m-in-europe flashes.

This morning, we biked to the tourist office in the town. But they were sold out of maps. And the sole book store only had maps for another specific route. Truthfully, the signs from last night had been much more spotty than usual. If the whole island was like that, we would spend a lot of time very lost. Even my gps didn’t have adequately detailed maps.

Rather than bike the whole day to other tourist office of just taking regular roads when we lost our way or employing any other non-mechanized solution- we rode the train the last 100k to copenhagen.

So we got in two days earlier than otherwise.

Which actually sucks because there aren’t many hotel rooms free over the weekend. The tourist office here said that the cheapest they could get me for one night was a 4 star. It’s fancy.

The lobby has real paintings in it. Of danish scenery and the royal family. The rest of the hotel just has the same 3 prints over and over and over again. One is of some women singng around a piano. One is a girl combing her hair. One is a scene in copenhagen. They are in my room. They are in the hallway. They are in the stairwell. They are everywhere.

I think a star should be removed for crimes against art and decorating. Who do i contact?

We got dinner and then looked at an outdoor exhibition about design. Somebody in croatia has made the portable wind turbine that i was dreaming of. The way to charge my cell overnight while camping. Hopefully, i can contact the creators and get one.

Came back to the hotel and searched an official bed and breakfast website. Why no advanced search? My online booking for tommorrow night seems dubious at best. Maybe we’ll have to camp again.

Ok, so i’m bummed that we didn’t bike the whole way, but the last few days have been sub-optimal and i’m excited to be finally here. Nicole wants to get a viking tatoo. Maybe i will too. i need sleeves if i do more bass gigging in san francisco ever again.

Day 20 & 21

Well, let me say that 4 star hotels are nice if you can affjord it. We lingered a bit and got a late start. Also, the breakfast was suck. Super bitter coffee and a soft boiled egg followed by a steep fjord ascent is not the best way to start your day. My stomach was unhappy.

The route 6 out of kolding is not so great. The start of it is pretty and goes on residential streets, so if you need to let your dog walk uphill *cough* or push your bike up the hill, you can.

I’ve been letting y’all believe that i’m Mr. Sporty McToughGuy, but, alas, i’ve pushed my bike uphill now and again.

Anyway, the 6 is not a route out of the fjord, but instead along it. This means really steep ups and downs. Also, it’s along the margin of a busy national road. So i have a moment, as i speed downhill, of realization: I’m on a tiny bike, going really fast down a really busy twisty road with cars less than a meter from me and the road is wet and if i wipe out, i’m dead. Lots of squeezing of the handbreaks.

Of course, there were also uphills. Really steep uphills on the same busy street with no safe way to make poor xena walk it. It was slow going and unrelenting for 20k. Maybe when they say that denmark is flat, they mean on average. My trip started and ended at sea level, so really, i didn’t climb at all.

We crossed to the Isle of Fyn. Those of you with your maps in front of you will note that this island lies between the jutland peninsula (the part attached to germany) and the island which has copenhagen. We came to the town of middlefart and got some food and stocked up on supplies. Xena, for example has a new leash on life. Her old leash got dropped in the woods on saturday. However, as i was shopping for muesli bars and dog leashes, i began to feel more and more ill. I came out of the store and sat at a table with my head down. If i had to bike anymore, i was going to vomit. Nicole got me a mocha wich kind of revived me. We went slowly to the tourist office, where exhaustion lead me to be kind of rude, alas. No hotels in middlefart take dogs. We had to backtrack, uphill to camp. The hills weren’t steep, but to keep my lunch, i pushed my bike.

Went to sleep early. I think i might have eaten bad ice cream. We had stopped for ice cream the day before and i had one that was so good, that i wanted to describe it to you. But now, when i think of it, i feel really queasy. So no description. Think of something else!

Ok, so woke up the morning of august 21st at a campground in middlefart. Dedicated readers will recall that i was supposed to be leaving copenhagen today to return home. Didn’t count on fjords or downpours or the sustained difficulty of biking in “flat” denmark.

I felt ok this morning, so we carried on to odensee, denmark’s third largest city. (What is number 2?) This was 50-something k over “undulating” country side. Mostly not worth the effort, but nice views in the afternoon and coming in to odensee was actually pretty nice. i’s a very bike-friendly city.

However, no day is without it’s wrong turns and so right before getting to odensee we followed confusing signage on to a horse trail. It’s the first time i’ve gotten a bike stuck in mud so deep that i couldn’t just push it out. Came in to the hotel covered in mud.

Nicole had the brilliant idea of calling the tourist office at 16:00, so when we rolled in two hours later, we already had a hotel reservation. She’s smart.

The rest of Fyn looks flat on the map, so tomorrow we’ll get a map of the other island to discover whether we should just ride the train in or keep biking.

We’re so close, i just want to bike, but not if i feel fjord sick again. And as it was pouring rain this afternoon and i was pedalling up an undulating hill, this began to seem suspiciously like work and not a lazy holiday. Also, we’re behind schedule. So, we’ll see.

And if you ever decide to cycle here, get more than 3 gears!

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.

Day 18 for real

Heh, i dated my last update from the future. Oops. I should lie and say that i crossed the international dateline, but the truth is that i was writing while waiting for my first cup of coffee.

So right now really is the evening of the 18th.  All my clothes are clean! Yay.  We stayed in the town for lunch and then biked back to the viking route.

Nicole actually read the ‘biking in denmark’ book that came with our great new map. It d a section about what kind of bike to use. Shockingly, foldy-fiets aren’t reccomended. (That, btw is expat dutch-english for folding bike). However, grandma bikes are fine because denmark is so flat, it explained.

Mayne i have an usual perspective, having biked up 2 fjprds in 2 days. . . There are a lot of words i could pick: beautiful, wind-y, challenging.  But flat? Flat compared to what?

After biking up the fjord, with xena trotting alongside, we resumed our treck on what nicole tells me is an old military road. I don’t know exactly what this distinction means. We wemt over the third and final stone bridge. Also, we passed graves from 3000bce. There were sheep grazing on them. What else do you do with ancient graves? It’s better than building a hotel on them.

We also saw an ancient stone with runes carved on it. Vikings did the carving. Did vikings have their own alphabet? These folks were really smart. They had docks and boats and runes. But their reputation with anglophones is of hairy guys in pointy, horned hats. The hats didn’t have horns, actually. I want plastic horns to put on my bike helmet.

The campground guy tonight saw the shield attached to the dog trailer and asked if we were vikings. Yes! It’s so nice to be understood. I did not purchase a small viking-type horn that i recently saw. I have a tendency to acquire odd souvenirs like that.

Danish cycle routes are exceedingly well marked. I have a map of our current route, but i don’t really need it. The tourist offices also give away small free maps of the national routes which list kros and campgrounds. The routes are also really nice. The military road is more dirt than i would like, but the routes are really picturesque and relatively direct while taking you past all the important artifacts.

Nicole’s morale is again high. Between you and me, i’m kind of surprised that she wanted to camp this evening. The campground is really nice. I’m typing this inside their heated kitched that has a fridge and dishsoap and whatnot. It cost half as much as a hotel room, which is surprising. But the reason i’m nervous is because it’s cold out. I wanted to buy some fleece today after lunch, but all the shops were closing right then. Strange so early.

Speaking of early, it’s now time for me to do today’s laundry.

Day 18 continued

August 18 (typed on the morning of the 19th)

When last i wrote, i was wet and cold in a cafe on a fjord.  We got a room in the town and slept a lot. Now, all of everything we’ve got that’s fabric and not on our bodies is at the laundrymat.  At the end, we hope for clean dry everything. Before washing, everything smelled like wet dog. We washed the dog, so she smells ok, but we weren’t smelling so good.

I bought a bike map at the tourist office. It has hotels and campgrounds listed. I don’t know how accurate it is. The tourist office guy said it was ok. It doesn’t list the phantom lodging from our first night in denmark, so i have high hopes.

Nicole’s moral is low. I think having dry stuff will help. Water resistance is only so good against a biblical-seeming downpour.