You know how people do the most ridiculous things?
Like spending a lifetime halfway to a heart attack – sprinting a self-constructed soul-imploding rat race with the end purpose of ‘affording’ the time and space to stand still and breathe?
Electing Donald Trump for president.
Or why not giving 1042 days riding a bicycle around the world, aiming to explore the most beautiful, exotic and least accessible corners of the planet – only to come home and realize you were already there?
Not really. But yeah.
What I want to say is that the Swedish winter wonderland I’ve come home to is literally out of the world I thought I knew.
I imagined arriving here would mean I’d have all the mental time and space in the world for self therapeutic writing sessions on here. Reality is turning out to be quite the opposite.
I’m so(ooo!) looking forward to actually sitting down to tap out those true thoughts and feelings on here. And I’m quite convinced I will once things slow down up here.
Just at at this moment though I won’t. At this moment in life I’m busy. Busy journeying my home turf. Busy spending every waken hour with the people I love most in life. And OH so busy playing in the snow.
Never would I have guessed this would be the time for me to say this, but I can’t not. I’m falling head over heels with this world – perhaps now more than ever. And I’d lie to you if I tried denying that I quite enjoy doing so with other than SPD’s on my feet.
Wish you a great week. Let’s do ourselves a favor and spend it outside.
Those 1000 days around the world – & what they where really all about.
The fundraiser is still up. And will be – until we reach that million.
Human injustice didn’t go away when I crossed that imaginary finish line. Little Fredrika is Guinea is just one girl. Soon to be 6 months old. About to grow up to become a young girl in a country where she and her friends run a 97% risk of female genital mutilation.
Let’s do this because it’s right. Or if nothing else – let’s do it for her.
One week. A little more even. Whatever you imagine coming home after 3 years of solo riding a bike around the world to be like – you’re right. It’s everything, in mass.
My head is stuffed with just as much cotton today as it was when I checked in with you last week. That’s alright though as I don’t have much hurry in figuring everything out. More than a lot of things have happened this past week. Though rather than giving you an objective log on what – I thought I’d briefly share with you, just one of those unfinished thoughts I’ve carried through it.
Every other week our local newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning publishes a brief chronicle of mine. This is a quick translation of the one from the other day:
‘I have all I own hanging from my racks, and wherever I pitch my tent for the night I have my home.’
I don’t know how many times, or even in how many languages, I’ve listened to myself trying to explain this simple truth. The one of how home isn’t defined by address registrations or too-much-stuff in cupboards, but by something deep inside one’s gut. And how thanks to the overwhelming warmth and acts of humanity I’ve had the privilege to meet wherever my front wheel has taken me these past years – that small flame has always been kept alive inside me. I’m not even saying this metaphorically. During 1042 days and nights I peddled my steel bicycle to some of the most forgotten corners of our planet, and over and over again – I got to arrive at home.
Then came last Saturday. And it sure is a funny one, this thing with definitions. Because while every syllable of the past sentences have been my truth, they’ve never really been true. It wasn’t until then and there – turning that last corner onto my hometown square Stora Torget, welcomed by what seemed like every familiar face I’ve ever met – that unrestrained punch in the diaphragm told me I was fully and truly Home.
Home to me – still isn’t about framed pictures on the walls or perfectly sat down armchairs. It really is about that stroke of light living in one’s chest. The light that through the kindness of a never-ending line of people from all over the world, not once had to fade in mine. The same light that at that magical moment last Saturday, instantly ignited into a full blown and completely uncontrollable forrest fire.
I rode around the world. Now at last – I am Home. And I so want to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you for heading out the door to welcome me here. We were given -15°C that day, still life had never seemed warmer. I’m in Sundsvall, Sweden. Inside my chest the wildfire dances freely with the beat of my heart – and I’m once again blessed to feel like the happiest girl on Earth. Because I’m Home.
At the very same moment so many of us sharing this – and every other – town aren’t. For 3 years time I’ve made way up, down, through and around the world and have always been given a warm embrace in which to land safely. I’ve been given unconditional friendship from people who’se language I don’t understand. I’ve received bowls of rice from people who’d rather welcome a stranger than go to bed without hunger. I’ve been taken in for the night, regardless of whether or not that calls for someone’s grandmother to sleep top and tail with me to give room for us all.
I’ve never needed any of this.
Still people with a bare minimum have given me everything. More than anything, they’ve given essential oxygen to that little flame in my chest – all the way home. Which currently happens to be a place where people are arriving in desperate and vital need of help. And however we wish to put it, fact remains – we have it all. Never has an equation seemed more obvious.
None of us has the power to do everything, but I say we all have a damn responsibility to do something. If nothing else because when we’re furthest from Home, a few single molecules of oxygen given to that little flame in one’s chest is the CPR of the soul.
And we’re not fckn people leaving breathless friends on the ground.
I’m overwhelmed beyond words and today is not one for writing blogs. I just wanted to stop in to say Hi and THANK YOU to each and every one of you made yesterday the most magical thing a girl could ever dream of. Actually I want to thank every single one of you for the years of love and never-ending support through all this. None of this would have happened without you.
Though let’s save all that for later. Today (too) is for celebrating.
The finish line is crossed but this ride is far from over. Those +1000 days ago this privileged Swedish girl’s dream was to ride her bicycle around the world. Today, it is to give that same ride true and eternal meaning. The first part is handled. With the second – I still need your help.
Please celebrate with me today. Please help me make this thing count. Please – consider leaving a donation to the ActionAid fundraiser. Because this is saving lives. And because less fortunate girls & women have dreams too – and every single one of us deserve a safe and just life in which we’re given a fighting chance to live them.
Yesterday we raised bizarre +50 000 SEK on the spot. The biggest thank you today is to all of you who made that happen. To reach that million we still have miles to go. For fckn sure though – is that we’ll do it.
Because we’re the lucky few who can. And because we still share a world where that means we absolutely must. I say let’s start this Sunday by pulling our weight.
My head is spinning. And now I’m off for another hug from my Mom.
I’ll see you back here in a week.
Fredrika
P.S.
To everyone with photos / videos from yesterday: please send them! To fredrika@thebikeramble.com. I want also the crappy stuff :-) WeTransfer.com is an easy way to share files.
(all finish line photos from this post: Jenny Toresson @ St.nu)
Around the world in 1000 days. That was the oh so bizarre dream that I – soon to be 3 years ago – peddled out of my hometown to realise. The round-the-world part really wasn’t all that important. Neither were the 1000 days. The fantasy I turned real was the one about absolute and endless freedom.
The idea of carrying everything I own on a pair of steel racks and pedal my way through life in whatever speed I fancy. Experience the wonders of nature and the very core of of people in a pace so slow that I – fully and truly – got to become part of them. Wake up only when soft morning light through the tent canvas tells me it’s time. Eat because I’m hungry, not because a man-made clock tells me it’s time. Pedal until my legs don’t have another stroke left in them.
Or stop long before that, simply because the clearing I’m rolling pass is too beautiful to not become my home for the night. To gain the power of putting life on pause at its very prettiest, and have it continue playing only when my gut tells me it’s time.
It was never about the round-the-world. Neither the 1000 days. Still the fact that the ride I headed out for got framed into such an endless oasis of time and space was my one key to that never-ending and boundless freedom I was after. I pushed those pedals out of Sweden, straight into eternity – without a single notion of land in sight. And boy – did the dream come true.
Up until now. Dazed I look around me in the Stockholm café in which I just woke up from this thousand-year beauty sleep. Surrounded by stern faces, each lit up by the laptop screen to which their unnaturally bent necks are invisibly chained to. Push notifications are playing on beat with the café doors that are letting the endless stream of stressed and well dressed pair of feet in and out on their way between meetings and deadlines.
For a barely noticeable moment I close my eyes and wake back up in the vacuum-like silence of the Tibetan plateau. With deep breaths I take in the calm of eternity. Squint my eyes to try and distinguinsh heaven from Earth behind the never-ending and yurt dotted grasslands. Only to snap up and whiplash back to reality a micro second later, as the calendar app I’ve just downloaded to my phone is screaming from my pocket. Seemingly to remind me of that radio interview I’m told I can’t be late to if so my life depended on it. But more than anything as if to tell me that life suddenly has shrunken into something to short to live.
To throw myself into this adventure was the most intimidating thing I’ve ever done. Once. To try and land on my feet here on the opposite side of forever, is more terrifying than anything I could ever imagine.
In less than a week’s time – on Saturday the 13th of January at 13.00 this journey’s last pedal strokes will be taken as I’m crossing the finish line on Stora Torget in Sundsvall. What will be waiting on the other side I still don’t know, and honestly I don’t yet care. For now all I want is to celebrate.
The dream of freedom that became this eternal bike ride, have now ended up being the longest bicycle expedition in Swedish history. You’re more than welcome to join the celebrations at the finish line – it’d honestly mean the world to me to have you there with me. Take a friend by the hand – and please come.
Stora Torget – Sundsvall, Sweden. Saturday the 13th of January at 13.00.
Now let’s make this a party. Event info is found on This link.
