My long travel day to the Tour de France started with the typical lug of bags to the train station just outside of Denver, Colorado. I thought I had a nifty solution for connecting the Two Wheel Gear pannier duffel to my Orucase B2-R to expedite the process. My solution wasn’t very nifty and the bags toppled together several times before I admitted failure and carried the duffel separately.
If that was the worst of my woes for the day, that would be one excellent travel day. As it turned out, I made it to Copenhagen with little trouble aside from a hellish stop at customs at Heathrow. Once I arrived at baggage claim in Copenhagen, the rest of the process should have been easy — assuming my bags showed up.
That was touch and go. At baggage claim, my flight was listed under carousel six. I stood there with the rest of the people on my flight, waiting…for an hour. Then our flight disappeared from the screen above the carousel.
“Did our carousel change?” A gentleman next to me asked.
That gentleman, as it turned out, was Phil Liggett. For the next few minutes I fought a smile as I had my baggage debacle narrated in real time like it was a Tour de France stage.
Phil was very gregarious and our bags finally showed up. Win-win. Unlike Liggett, however, my time at the airport was far from over. I had to build my bike to get myself into town.
Tour de France lands at a unique airport
Copenhagen really has thought of everything when it comes to bike commuting. The courtyard outside the terminal is downright pleasant. I pulled my bike and bags out there and built up my Merlin Extralight in the late day sunshine. And once the bag was unpacked, it took me all of twenty paces to walk to the storage lockers in the parking garage. The Orucase will live there for the week until I need it for departure.
I can’t recall exactly how many times I’ve flown with the Orucase B2-R now. Each time I get nervous that I will be unpacking a destroyed bike. And each time I’m proven wrong. The most damage so far has been to my ego when I pull the bike out and realize what I left sitting on the bench at home. This time it was a three-way Allen key. I’m going to forgive myself for that small transgression.
After I got my bike built, I put on my helmet and hopped on the bike path. I never had to touch a surface street once I left the airport terminal. To this American, the presence of a bike path right out of the terminal was quite incredible. But stepping back, it’s such a simple solution that it’s almost shameful this isn’t done everywhere.
Once I started rolling toward Copenhagen proper from the airport, I immediately realized how easy it was for everyone else on a bike to spot the tourist.
Overdressed
It didn’t take long for me to feel like I was wearing a prom dress in a pizza place. My titanium bike, clipless pedals, even the fact that I was wearing a helmet made me feel vastly over-biked. I had expected to cover miles the way I do at home in the U.S.: fighting for space on roads, going fast to get out of traffic as quickly as possible. None of that reflects what riding is in Copenhagen.
The dress code? Casual. The pace? Whatever you want it to be. The bikes? Upright, comfortable, inexpensive. Helmets need not apply, though a few folks were wearing them.
The other incredible thing about bike traffic in Copenhagen is that it’s much higher volume than the car traffic. As such, there’s a lot of infrastructure to support that volume. Stop lights dedicated to the bike lanes, raised curbs between car traffic and bikes, and much more dot the landscape. It took awhile to adjust to the notion of stoplights for bikes; it was actually annoying. But with the volume of bike commuters, it makes sense. I got less annoyed with it, though I did become a bit nervous about breaking those rules — considering I didn’t yet know all of them.
Titanium level problems
When I arrived at my AirBnB, it became painfully clear that in just a short time I had already made several planning mistakes. The first was bringing a high-end titanium road bike. People park their bikes right on the sidewalk or in parking spaces on the road. Most aren’t locked. There wasn’t a chance I was leaving my bike outside, overnight. So I lugged it up four flights to my apartment.
“Oh, yes, that would get stolen in minutes,” my host said.
As I type this, I am sitting in the Tour de France press room. My titanium Merlin road bike is locked to a post about fifty feet to my left. I asked if it was okay to lock it here inside, which gives me a lot more peace of mind. But later today I’ll be zipping around Copenhagen, seeking out team buses and riders. I don’t love the idea of locking my bike outside, especially during the Tour de France. Sticky fingers abound.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative. I will probably ride the Merlin back to my AirBnB and leave it in my room. Instead, I will take any one of the hundreds of bikeshare bikes dotting the city. There are countless options and they’re all easy to use. And I’ll feel a whole lot better about parking those outside of shops and hotels. I’ll save the Merlin for the big ride to the start of Stage 2, but otherwise, I think I’ll change out of the prom dress and into some blue jeans. Bikeshare seems like the way to go. I’ll let you know how it goes in episode 3.
