Day 22 - Fri 13th June - Oslo - Motala

There was more noise in the hostel overnight then previous nights. When the alarm woke me at 6:15, more beds had been occupied overnight. Fortunately, a loud late arriver who told everyone he was an Icelandic fisherman eventually kept the noise down. As it was the first games in the Brazilian World Cup Soccer, the interest was high with some people watching it on laptops.

The distance to the station was short, but did take 30 mins lugging the bicycle box. Once at the station, I acquired a 20k coin and got a trolley.

Reconfirming the train was late, I had some breakfast at the very clean Oslo central. We waited and waited for the train and it's departure time kept changing. The girl next to me had a bike in a bag and was going to do the same event as me. Being a Swede in Norway she translated the loud speaker status updates.

Two hours late we departed. The message was that the train was late because it was late into Stockholm the previous night and the driver required 8 hrs between turnarounds. This must be his specialist route.

Passing into Norway, my cheap UK 3G sim started working again and I texted Pat at a party and Simon watching his beloved Rabbitohs. Forget the World Cup, any weekly Rabbitoh's wins is much more important then a 4 yearly multi-billion round ball tournament.

At Hallsberg, Sweden we changed trains for Motala. There were lots more cyclists and I spoke to one Swedish newby similar to my age doing the event for the first time and a young guy doing for the 6th time. The later shoes signs of hypothermia last year, so that slowed him down as they put him in the medical tent.

After rego, putting the bike together and storing my bike box indoors, I say down for a nice bowl of pasta.

There are all variety of riders from guy in matching team shirts to old blokes with the bike they must have used in the first event in 1966 and they went anti-clockwise.

Time to go now to watch first riders go at 19:30.