Km ridden:7
Current location: Gävle
Hailstorms ridden through: 1 (ouch)
Well apologies for not having keep this thing up to date. It's not so much that my famous attention span has been wondering, but we've not always had the chance to get online and update, and the times that we did have found us both totally shattered.
So, I think I last left the blog somewhere after our last camping stop. Well after there we rode on to the town of Jönköping. If you're ever in the area and are thinking of checking the town out. Don't. It's dull. Very, very dull. Lots of Churches and classic American cars, but apart from that, pretty much diddly squat of interest.
So after spending the night in a hotel next to a traffic light, which in Sweden either sounds like a pneumatic drill or a machine gun depending on if you can cross or not, we packed up the bikes and headed off to Goteburg (Gothenburg) to see if we can find an Aprilia dealer. You might recall, I still have a charging issue with my bike, and it's hit or miss if it starts again whenever I stop. After going on the Aprilia Forum, I was pointed in the direction a garage. After getting there the mechanic just shook his head. Apparently they don't do anything with Aprilias, and certainly can't get hold of parts for one. Personally, given that there is a bloody great big sign outside with "Aprilia" written all over it, I suspected that he just really wanted to go off and have lunch / nap / wank than deal with us. Then he points us in the direction of Harley Davidson as apparently that should have been an obvious place for us to start (?). Turns out, Harley import most of the bike parts in Sweden and then pass them on to the other dealers. Strange, but then different strokes and all that.
10 minutes later we're at Harley. Long story short, we basically got told to fuck off. They had literally no interest in helping anybody at all. So we decided to just ride on to see Vanessa's friend slightly further northwards. It was odd. Apparently all the mechanics in Sweden are psychic. They all knew that the part I was looking for was not in stock, and is not available in Sweden. This being despite that not once did anybody actually ask me what bike I was riding, or what part I actually wanted.....
So, with me in a somewhat less than pleased mood, we rode for another hour to the picturesqe village/town of Hovenäset to see a friend of Vanessa in their holiday home.
After such a crap morning, we recieved an extremely warm welcome from Lena and her Husband Henrik. Turns out that her parents were also there that day and we had barely only just got there when Henrik handed over two cold beers - which sort of set the tone for the rest of the day really. The hospitality was fantastic. A huge BBQ, lots of flowing drinks managed to really cheer me up.
Being somewhat larger than I should be, the conversation naturally turned to food at some point, and in particular, to seafood, of which Sweden should have lots of. Before you knew it we had all donned life jackets and were heading down to where Lena's Dad kept his boat. A short trip later, we arrived at a little cove and jumped in and started looking for fresh Mussels.
After we got about 30 of the biggest, fattest Mussels I have ever seen, we then all got back in the boat and took the long way back to the harbour trailing a Mackrel line behind us. Sadly it was too dark to actually catch anything, but it was a very relaxing end to the day. We got back to the house where I then cleaned the Mussels, ready for Lena's Dad to make us a very nice soup the next day.
Speaking of the next day, when we woke up and had finished breakfast, we were then taken on a trip to the local town of Smögen. A true seafood paradise, with more expensive sailing vessels than I've seen in a fairly long time.
After a bit of sightseeing it was tiue to head back, gear up and ride on to Karstad. From there on in, there's not too much more to say thats out of the ordinary. We met up with another of Vanessa's friends (Jonas) and stayed with him for the evening. Then we all rode up to Stockholm.
Stockholm itself deserves it's own posting, and as this one has become a little bit long it's time to go to the bar, get another beer in and start on yet another post.
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