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.
I’ll see you there!
Fredrika