 Hey, y'all Yupa and welcome to my big Swedish adventure I'm riding the length of Sweden from north to south in the previous episode The Sun finally came out and it made all the difference in the world so glorious and My new friend bike touring Mikael showed up. Let's go have some fun More on good morning Take this out It is so sunny. It's like a Colorado morning except I'm not excited for all these guys waiting for me Look at them all they're just hanging out under my rain fly But I think I'm getting the hang of this time zone. I think I Woke up today full brightness like it is right now and I was like, oh, it's like seven or eight in the morning I'd go outside look at my watch and it was three But then I went back to bed and oh slept a few more hours Now that is a forecast that makes me happy That was my first tense shake of the trip Good morning, Mickey. Well on all drama day. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the goat The latter part of the night anyway. Yeah, it's always kind of difficult in the beginning Especially when you're out and you've been cycling for 10 hours It's no problem getting to sleep at the first night when you're not. Yeah, it's hosted by That's true. Well, we'll change that tonight. Yeah, hopefully I'm gonna celebrate the morning sunshine with a little shave Is it always buggy all summer like this? No, like Ryan Calculated this perfectly so so mid-summer when he arrived here is kind of peak mosquito season Good for me. Yeah, if you come here in say August, they're like during the day. There aren't any mosquitoes and Sort of maybe 10% of what you have not right now in the evening. So wow Sweden is best In August late summer. Oh man. Oh, yeah, you know what it's time for What do you eat in the morning? I mainly just eat porridge and Boring stuff like that. Oh, that is boring. Come on man. I'll save the chocolate for later in the day This isn't chocolate. This is this is health food, man peanut butter and hazelnut You're missing out ma'am. Mm-hmm Have a yes, I have a grins grütt avra grins grütt oatmeal So Mike here his name is not really Mike. It's Mickey That's how you say it in Swedish, but we were just talking we both graduated from high school the same year in Sweden 1998 Should we sing the graduation song? Who comes to dance dance league league at all. There's a graduation song that everybody sings in Swedish I want to know the first line. I think Ryan's better It's probably one of the songs he has memorized since that's true. I definitely have My Swedish sister Sophia made sure that I learned that Here's another Swedish vocabulary word for you migga That is mosquito. That's how you say it and many mosquitoes is migor And this is his bug juice the stuff work well. Yeah, hopefully Thank you super soft Swedish grass and a picnic table and a cute little town park We've got Mike checking out some maps. He knows this area. This is his backyard, right? Sort of anyway. Yeah Yeah All right, my friend here we go No crash ease no flat ease no whammy no whammy It feels like a Colorado morning out here blue skies sun warmth and It's by far my earliest start of the trip Just before 8 a.m. Which isn't that early, but I've been going to sleep late Look that we found right off the side of the road It's one of Santa's reindeer Hey, buddy When the rain are shaking that it's not like they have like Spassums are just what they just want to get off all the midges from from their body. Oh, yeah, they hate the bugs too I get it We are riding along a nice calm country road Not much traffic and we're just chatting and getting to know each other Mikkel here is a Ice hockey ref in the winter How'd you get into that? Yeah, I was playing ice hockey until I Entered high school and then I realized I was too bad at it. So I kind of started rafting and I'm I'm usually People boo at me on this on the in this dance. I'm probably as bad as a ref as I was a hockey player Good morning reindeer. I can't believe it. This is the first time in my life. I've ever ridden behind a herd of reindeer Now go on get back to Santa. He's waiting for you Wow, that was pretty special man That does that happen a lot here? Sometimes but like sometimes you don't you see maybe one or two reindeer, but That's quite Uncommon you get a hundred on the road like that. Yeah I am absolutely in love with the look of Swedish summer houses the red with the white trim and there's a reason for that, right? Yeah like back in the day pain cost a lot of money and We have a lot of copper in the ground here in Sweden. So when the mining companies had Their mining operations. They got a lot of rest products So they used the rest products to make this raid red paint called follow red fairy and you can see this all over Sweden so basically back in the 70s or 80s Maybe 80% of all the houses were painted like this in Sweden now. It's a bit less, but still Every other house is red in Sweden. It's the classic look. Yeah. Yeah, I love it And so it's just a byproduct of the the mining operation, huh? Yeah Yeah, I just told Ryan and that You could probably get one of those houses for about the $10,000 or so the real is cheap around here in is that the only thing that's cheap in Sweden $10,000 for a Swedish summer house. I'll take one But I guess then you have to live in the middle of nowhere and you're far away from everything and they're pretty simple And a lot of times they don't have plumbing, right? Yeah No services around or you get you have to be a car dependent. That's the bad thing. Yeah Mikkel is Taking me to a little shelter here along the river and There's shelters like this all over Sweden Pretty cool So this is a simple Swedish shelter. How does this system work? Yeah, these shelters are Mainly provided by the Swedish state or the municipality around here So often you can find free firewood to use They they restock these shelters a couple of times each summer so and There's no fee for using these places you it's just based on a first come first serve principle Basically, wow, and you couldn't you sleep under here if you wanted to yeah, but then you have to Fight the mosquitoes. Yeah So they usually have a shelter from the the rain and then you can build a fire maybe fire pit picnic tables Yeah, and they even have Even have like small huts as well in some places and how many are these are there in Sweden? I don't think anyone knows how many there are but there's a site called map camp while there's something That lists most of these but they only list about 20 percent or so so you're gonna stumble upon These kind of shelters so there's thousands probably probably tens of thousands tens of thousands. Wow, that's so cool I love Sweden taking care of their people So with the Aleman threat and you can camp here right you can stay wherever you want pretty much in Sweden Yeah, pretty much if you stay about a hundred meters away from the nearest house You're you're pretty fine and if you only stay for one night, but a cyclist were basically moving on each day So it's perfect for us in that way. Yeah, and these are all free because of the high Swedish taxes, right? The thing in Sweden has always been that the government when I inspire people to get out in the nature And that's why they've built things like these Just to make it a little bit more comfortable. Yeah and easy. All right. Goodbye Swedish shelter. Thank you We are off into the woods into the school again. That means woods We are back on dirt roads on the divide route right now the euro divide We're gonna follow this for a bit and just just have ourselves a lovely day, right? Yeah, the weather's great and Perfect riding conditions not too We'll do that again I almost crashed so what do we have in front of us? Yeah, we have about Five or ten kilometers before we reach the dam over here that we're gonna follow For the next ten kilometers or so so it should be pretty smooth sailing ahead of us here and perfect weather. Yeah It's probably like 70 degrees This would be a nice cool spring day in Boulder Today is one of those days. We just got to keep stopping because it's so beautiful. We a glada We are happy. Those were some of the most painful drone shots. I've ever gotten you want to know why? Horseflies They are on us like crazy out here. You might see them flying after us. They can actually Follow you at pretty high speed. How do you deal with horseflies? The trick is to not stop that often But another interesting thing about the horseflies is that they don't sting you instead They take a small piece of your skin with them the one they they go away. So it's really painful Yeah, it's not very fun, but I hope those drone shots were worth it so today I'm having a Pain that I've never had and it's something that most of my cycling friends have had and that's knee pain And I've luckily never had that but today my right knee hurts really bad And I think it's because I'm using SPD clip-in pedals Which I haven't used in well over a year I've been using more the platform style pedals Because most of my riding is technical and I'm on and off my bike constantly But I thought okay Sweden this is gonna be a lot of smooth gravel. I Want to crank and I don't know maybe my Futs just stuck in a position. It doesn't like And I've been trying to mess with some things changing the cleats changing the cleat position We'll see here. It is my friends my first black bean Swedish burrito And check it out. We found this awesome shelter right next to a creek Just in time for lunch and there's a trick. I'm learning about eating anything on the roads Or in the woods in Sweden you kind of like eat take a bite and you dance around a little bit because it's either Mosquitoes or horse flies on you and you got to keep moving at all times It's kind of fun. You do the lunch dance snack man What did you make for lunch? I think I have some Pasta carbonara or something pasta carbonara that is fancy Magical Swedish River water And what I use to filter is a sterile pen you just dip it in For about 45 seconds to a minute and the light just kind of Zaps all of the potential bacteria So I don't get Swedish Diarrhea and some of the shelters even have an outhouse, which is pretty cool You know, it's it's basic, but it does the job. It's a composting toilet in there What we in Sweden say after after Lunch that's the expression for when you're feeling a bit tired after Yeah So as we're riding along this road I can hear a lot of noise on my right-hand side and Mika said there's some big rapids in this river and he is right. This is amazing Look at that and of course there's a cozy spot to have a picnic in grill Right next to this beauty It's really cool to see stuff like this because when I lived down south in Sweden I never saw rivers with rapids like this Nope, not at all. This reminds me a little bit of like, Colorado. So what's the name of this river? Where's all the water coming from? Yeah, the water is mainly coming off the mountains here and the river is called the Vindel River and that's one of the four Unaffected rivers here in Sweden. Oh, so no dams exactly This river is basically wide all the way down to the coast So we're at another rest stop here looking at a map where you live, but it's close, huh? Yeah, I live right Here by the coast in a town called Skellefteå So I mean yesterday. I just took the bus up almost all the way up to Arvids Yeah, we stayed here in a little village called Abortresk and today we've been making our way Through these roads down and we're now About here along the Vindel River and we're aiming to go to Liksle later on this evening Right on and this word here Tresk means swamp, right? Yeah, and there's a lot of these Tresk There's so much swamp Tresk. I have a random question I just thought of before I came here people warned me about bears Yeah, is that something to be scared of here? that's a typical question for me living in Sweden and and Like I told Ryan I have never seen a bear like out in nature during my whole life and in Sweden we have about 3,000 brown bears and if you compare that to Canada, I think they have over 300,000 so there are really not that many bears here in Sweden and and most hopefully are pretty friendly Yeah, they're like super kind Swedish bears. They invite you in for some honey kind of like this guy named Winnie the Pooh Right the rain's gone the sun is out. We're riding in the town to get some food and check it out Do you see this this is a veggie burger and I'm so excited to eat it and I got a bucket of fries a milkshake Mike's got a burger fries milkshake. We are happy. Cheers, buddy. Cheers. Skål Skål is how you say cheers in Swedish Food tastes so good after a long ride. We went like 95 miles Here's something you don't see at every fast food restaurant a milk machine you just feel right on up You know what I like about camping and grass You can go bare feet. It's nice and soft. Oh, man. Could it get any better? The answer is no the sun just broke out of the clouds. I just took a shower. I'm feeling good This campground is great. I would equate this campground to something we have in the United States called KOA They have cabins. They have RV spots. They have all sorts of fun activities and mini golf and stuff for the kids And I'm just really thankful that they have grass. I love camping on grass because it's so soft You barely need your air mattress. So here we are having our little campfire talk around the non-existent campfire, which is Aok some of the best conversations happen at camp and we've been getting to know each other all day That's what you do on a bike tour It's one of the great things you just ride side-by-side and chat and he was telling me about how He doesn't drive all that often which is great because I never do and you ride your bike to work Long distances and all sorts of stuff right, yeah Usually take take my bike to work from like the beginning of March until October. That's kind of the Warm period up where I live where we don't have these crazy winter temperatures So I have about 17 kilometers or 10 miles to work each way But I have a pretty nice commute to work most most of the stretch to work is on Cycle paths, so I don't have to go on these Larger roads or no no like traffic lights. Good my whole commute. How did you get inspired to ride a bike? Yeah, basically been doing it all my life. I I grew up taking my bike to school and and I never owned a car until I was maybe 30 or so So I've been basically cycling all throughout my life. And what about bike adventures? How long have you been bike touring? sort of like 10 years, but the first year or so I only went on more organized tours with like a Company that a guy that yeah, what do you love most about it? yes getting out in nature and and and just Getting away away from from all the Bus around town and so on and what's the goal with your YouTube channel? I? Don't know. Yes, maybe showcasing this part of Europe that few people Ever get to visit kind of different than than say Germany and France and so on we have a People always think that it's gonna even countries are pretty expensive to go to and we do have High prices on on food and so on but but often now we're staying in a campground But I mean we can might as well just stay out in the forest for free So your bike tour here don't have to be that expensive if you yeah And what's your favorite American hockey team? It's the Colorado Avalanche I have to say the Avalanche In the late 90s. We had path to false baddie Peter Forsberg Fogpa national hero here in Sweden. He helped us win a Stanley Cup So when I was in exchange to actually, that's right Yeah, that's right. So when I was an exchange student here I was so excited because I had been following Peter Forsberg and now we're in the land of Hockey players and you're a hockey ref in your spare time, right? Yeah And you ever we have a full-time job you have a family you have kids yeah, and you find time for riding your bike How do you do that? Yeah, I have a pretty understanding wife, I guess and and my I Have three kids and two of them are are kind of grown up by now So so that gives me more time to go out on these adventures And how many weeks of vacation a year do you get we get about five or six? Depending on different circumstances But usually during the summer we get four four weeks off and then I take maybe a week in the in the fall and go Go to a more warmer country than Sweden is in the fall Right on man. Oh, it's fun. What a great day we had huh? Yeah, so much fun out there And it's been great to have a local tour guide. I mean it doesn't get any better than this Okay, let's fall asleep. No, that's not gonna happen because it's so bright. I'm just gonna sit here and talk some more Hello there and thank you for making it to the very end of this video you get a high five I am here to say hey, thank you for watching my videos But also if my videos bring value to your life if you love them with all your heart and soul Or even just a little bit of your heart and soul, please consider joining my patreon You will help keep this channel alive, but you will also get stuff You will get early release videos with no ads, which is very cool And I sometimes do zoom calls with my patrons You will have direct access to me through patreon to ask me any question you want and like I said You're keeping this channel alive and also. Hey, I wrote a book. It's called the long way home It's about my very first adventure from Honduras to Colorado and it talks a lot about how it Inspired me to live an interesting life to say the least my mom loves it. So maybe you'll love it, too I will link all this down below, but more than anything. Thank you so much for watching my videos You are awesome now. It's time for you to get off that couch and get out there