Have you ever had a day where so many things go wrong that you’re no longer questioning whether your patron deities are playing tricks on you — you know it for a fact?

Mine started last night, right when I was setting up camp and discovered I had forgotten to bring a sleeping mat. But Lexi from 24 hours ago already wrote about that, and she had a naivite to her unspoiled by the wisdom of age. It seems a shame to dishonour that, so I’ll share what she wrote before getting to the rest of the day. Oh, and as a teaser to encourage sticking with it: the title is not as much of a hyperbole as it may seem.

You know, it’s been 15 years or so since I last slept in a tent. I’ve missed it!

Of course, reality rarely looks quite like our dreams and expectations, for all that they may rhyme. When I first realised I had forgotten to bring a sleeping mat, I didn’t think much of it. Sure, it would be a bit less comfortable, but I’d get by for a night. What I had forgotten, is that the main purpose of a sleeping mat isn’t always providing a smooth and soft surface to sleep on — it’s heat insulation.

And so I awoke not two hours later, freezing cold, getting dressed in extra layers in a hurry, and cursing the general concept of thermodynamics.

As you may know, temperature is little more than the average kinetic energy of molecules within a mass jiggling around (unless you want to get into temperature as a high energy, sensory or phenomenological concept, and that’s beyond the scope of this post). Heat, then, is that energy flowing from a hotter body to a colder one. And when that colder one is the ground, it doesn’t even have to be that much colder than you. It is so much more massive that any heat that flows from you is a rounding error to it, and it will keep draining more and more until and unless there is an equilibrium. The best I could do was to layer up, and keep turning every so often through the night, to rotate which parts were exposed to the bottom of the tent.

And yet, my love of camping is rekindled. Getting to wake up to rustling leaves, singing birds, and a sunrise every bit as uniquely beautiful as all that have come before it, is food for the soul. Though I am definitely buying a sleeping mat for tomorrow.

Now, the reason I couldn’t post this sooner, is that I wrote it on paper. Due to heavy rain that hit just as I left Stockholm, my phone was wet and refused to charge. I called the day early after only 25 km, put up my tent even as it was raining, and had to attend a virtual meeting with a phone barely registering any inputs. The nature so far had been beautiful; the busy roads and inconsistent bike paths near Stockholm less so. Doubt was growing as to whether I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Day 2, however, started beautiful. I had a nice breakfast where I got to try my first storm kitchen of my very own, packed down the tent, and got going by 6.30. In the first hour, I already knocked down 15km, and things were looking up! My phone was dead at this point, still refusing to charge due to water in the charging port, but I kept it in my shirt pocket to let it air out, and navigated with the physical maps I had bought and marked with key locations along my route in advance. Be prepared and all that.

Eventually, though, my phone had dried enough that it let me charge it. And that’s where the real problems started.

25 km into day 2, I came upon an unexpected sign for a bike route to the city I was going to pass through, and decided to consult Google maps just to be safe. And despite being on a route it had originally suggested for me (with some minor adjustments), and asking it for a path to a different point on that same route (the city I was hoping to make it to for the day), it told me to bike 1 km back to take a different exit, onto one of two shortcuts. I foolishly sighed and obliged.

Now, at this point it bears mentioning that if these distances sound unimpressive, that’s because I cannot overstate how much harder lugging around 50kg extra weight makes things — including 18 kg just from the bike. With the bike trailer, I feel every minuscule incline, and biking uphill is a genuine struggle. So the prospect of a shortcut was alluring, even if the kilometre of backtracking was not.

Now, one of these shortcuts was marked “less hilly”. It was also shorter. The other was google’s first result, marked “best route”. I meant to take the former, but took a wrong turn and ended up on the latter.

As I do, it starts pouring down.

Then I discover that this is a gravel road, with all the extra rolling resistance that comes with that for an already heavy load.

Then it turns into a washboard of a gravel road.

Then it gets hilly.

Now, at this point, progress is glacial. I am cold, wet, and getting very tired. I decide to bite the bullet and take the next available crossing road to transition over to the other shortcut, which can’t possibly be worse than this, even though the detour will add 10km to the journey.

Then it turns out that the other shortcut is also gravelled.

And it is still. Pouring. Down.

It is hard to get across how miserable this whole detour was. Gravelly, muddy, washboard roads shaking my every muscle for kilometre after kilometre as rain poured into every orfice. I had had the foresight to buy a new raincoat before leaving, but had to take it off for the scorching heat in the brief windows when the rain let up and the sun shone through — only to get soaked again at next rainfall. This all went on for hours, steadily grinding down my patience and sanity as I kept on biking. Knowing that this could all have been avoided if I had stuck with the plan instead of listening to Google Maps did not help. And as a reminder: I was functioning on three hours of sleep.

But I stuck with it. Through gritted teeth and otherwordly stubbornness, I kept on biking along this new gravel path for twenty more kilometres — even as it became twice the washboard the previous one had been. Even as it shook loose a part of my bike so I had to go back, pick it up and remount it in the torrential downpour. Even as it claimed my last bottle of water from the trailer, which I only noticed missing over a kilometre after the hill where I suspect it still rests.

Then at last I get to a paved crossing road again, and by the stars was it tempting. I knew it could take me back to the city I had originally planned on biking through, from which the road would be smooth sailing. But I also knew that taking it would add another 20 km to my journey.

Because that’s the thing — at any given point in this detour, aborting and going back to the sensible roads I had originally planned was always an option. A costly option, involving the certainty of massive amounts of extra distance and biking back on the same awful roads rather than endure the mere potential of the road ahead getting worse still; but an option nonetheless.

But now, like before, I trusted that it couldn’t possibly get that much worse. I only had 8 km left of this cruel and unusual torture, and I had made it this far; surely Google Maps couldn’t make those worse than 30 more kilometres in the rain?

It could.

It really, really could.

A couple kilometres in, it turns out google maps has brought me as far into a military training area as you can possibly get before hitting a barrier — all the other barriers I later saw on a map of the area were around the periphery, but this one was inside the perimeter by a solid margin. There were posters with pictures of various explosive ordinances you must not touch. There were warnings everywhere. And biking back, I saw more warnings still that I had missed in my tired state.

So yeah. I’d say it’s pretty fair to claim that google maps tried to kill me. It certainly felt that way after the last six hours of misery at its behest. So this was the point when I gave in, decided that enough was enough, and bit the bullet — by going back to take the safer, paved road that would lead me not too far from where I first let google take the wheel. Despite its length and google maps’ insistence. I even checked, and their second choice led to a different barrier at the edge of the same military training zone — which is kind of funny in retrospect. But first, I stopped at a roadhouse to dry off and have a hot meal. I’d earned that much.

In the end, after a log stop to dry off and a bit of crying, I did get back on the road. Food helped. Heat helped. And by the stars was it nice to get to chat with my owner for a while, even if my phone was wet enough that half the conversation had to happen in emoji, and even that was a struggle.

So after day 2, I am right outside Eskiltuna, having biked over 100 km yesterday even if a lot of it was detours. And if I could do that even under yesterday’s hellish conditions, then there may be something to this whole adventure after all. This morning, the sun is shining, and forecasts say it should be mostly dry from here on out.

I am taking a slow morning to rest and let all my stuff dry off — even under a tarp, just about everything got at least a little bit wet. But I have high hopes for the rest of the journey, cross my fingers that the worst is behind me, and am excited for things to come.

Progress:

Start of day: Södertälje

End of day: Eskiltuna

Distance biked: 100 km

Total: 130 km

Distance remaining: 450 km

Elapsed: 22%

Mood: Hopeful! ^^

—Lexi