Finnish Curve Cowboys

We arrived to Stockholm, Sweden at 07:00 Saturday morning and we decided to tune Jouko’s Icom bike-to-bike phone before starting the 570 km trip to Helsingborg Sweden.

The morning was fine weatherwise and we were trying to obey the Swedish speed limit of 110 km/h. We succeeded in this most of the time and the times that we did not succeed, there were luckily no LEOs in sight (or in the bushes with their radars..)
We stopped for gas and some snack. I moved my bike from the pump to the front of the restaurant and was wondering why Jouko is driving his bike back to the pumps. After while he came and handed me my gloves which I had left on the top of my RKA luggage rack bag tied on the rear seat and not on the rack. Nice that he again took care of my falling gear…
In the afternoon we got some rain and we had to put the rain gear on top of the BMW Venting Machine gear that we have. The rain gear also provides wind protection when the weather gets colder.
We arrived to Helsingborg harbor and bought tickets for the ferry to Helsingør Denmark. The weather on the Danish side was dryer and we started our 200 km trip to the next ferry in Rødby Denmark which would take us to the German side over the (Baltic) sea to the town of Puttgarden.
We had booked a "biker friendly" hotel in the little town of Oldenburg im Holstein just some 30 km south from the Puttgarden harbor. It was already 20:00 Saturday evening and we had covered 840 km. This was a good exercise, especially for my back. When riding on the highway I did all kind of exercise on the saddle. I used my electric height adjuster to raise it all the way up and this relieved my knee angle. I used my highway handle and just kept my hands in my lap which must have looked funny /scary / cool to the cars I passed on the motorway. Every time we stopped I tried to find a place to hang from my arms and thus give some stretching to my lower back.
The owner of the hotel was a biker himself and as we telling him our plans for the next day (Sunday) he was a bit concerned as the combination August – Sunday – German Autobahn can mean big problems. He was just returning from Belgium previous Sunday and it was a nightmare with "Staus". (A German term meaning a fully packed autobahn moving at walking speed if even that fast.)
So...our first waypoint was to get to a small town called Lindlar where we had a meeting with Tom Russell and Hartmut Bleeker, the two other Europeans headed for the CCR. Their flight was due already Sunday evening so they would have to leave around 15:00 to Frankfurt Airport. The reason for our visit was to pick up the new BMW Air Flow 2 riding boots for Jouko. Those were not available in Finland and we had no time to get them ordered and delivered to our dealer any more.
We went to bed around 23:00 and fell asleep with no problems. And I remebered to do my back excercise.