Svenska Cykelmässan 2019

I’m a bit late on this one, but I would like to write a few words about the Svenska Cykelmässan bicycle fair in Gothenburg on the 15^th through the 17^th of March 2019. Some people has been quite negative, saying that the fair was crap. It wasn’t. In fact, the only crap thing about the fair is that it won’t be held in Gothenburg next year. That is, I think that the fair is every other year in Stockholm and every other year in Gothenburg, but to be honest I’m not really sure. The information on their homepage is that the fair will be held in Stockholm next year, and I think it was held in Stockholm in 2018. So will it be held in Gothenburg in 2021 then? Who knows? Who knows if there even will be a Swedish bicycle fair in 2020?

But this year’s fair was fun. Yeah, you could complain that Campagnolo, Colnago, Pinarello or Cinelli weren’t there with a booth, but the truth is that Sweden is quite a small nation when it comes to cycling. We’re not Denmark or Netherlands, and we’re certainly not Italy. And until we become a bigger bicycling nation we’re going to have smaller fairs than those in, for example, Denmark.

By the way the Svenska Cykelmässan was held on the same weekend as the Copenhagen Bikeshow fair, which seems like an utterly stupid decision. If anyone knows why this was the case I’m all ears!

Anyway the fair was both bigger and better-attended than I had anticipated. True, I went there with extremely low expectations but those expectations were nevertheless surpassed. T and I stayed longer than I had expected, looked at more stuff than I had expected, shopped more than I had expected…

First we checked out the exhibitors’ and vendors’ booths. After about one hour we left, went outside and I passed on T to his mother, then went back inside to listen to a lecture/disussion about cycling friendly cities… and Gothenburg. Emil Törnsten from the organization Svenska Cykelstäder (Swedish Bicycle cities) held a presentation about good examples of bicycle friendly cities around the world. (Sadly, I don’t recall any examples from Sweden.) Malin Månsson from the (municipal) City of Gothenburg presented the work being done by the City of Gothenburg to make it a better city for cyclists. And curated the whole thing the Stalinist consultant-type Lars Strömgren did. No, I don’t know if Lars Strömgren really is a Stalinist consultant-type. He’s the chairman of Cykelfrämjandet (sort of… The Bicycle promoting organization), but it’s what one of my friends called him once, and I think it’s funny. Probably Lars Strömgren is a really nice guy. He did a good job curating the whole thing, anyway.

Lars Strömgren curating

Emil Törnsten showing how one can easily make taking the bicycle the smart choice.

A bad photo of Malin Månsson.

After the seminar I left, went outside, was passed T back and then we went back inside. This time we took our time checking out all the exhibitors’ and vendors’ booths, saw a lot of cool bikes… and honestly some not-so-cool, boring or just plain butt-ugly bikes. Let’s concentrate on the cool bikes, though!

Helkama bicycles are always fun! But what’s with the extremely boring booth?! The woman who worked in the booth was really nice and friendly, and explained to me how the collaboration between Helkama and Merida works, but I was completely bugged out by how boring the booth was.

It could, so easily, be cooler, nicer, better-looking and interesting. Hey Helkama, I’m gonna show you how, just hang on.

T checking out a Lapierre Xelius SL. Damn it was light!

A Lapierre XR 929 Ultimate. Shiny! Gold! Almost a bit obscene, isn’t it? ;) Good-looking, though!

These commuting bags and backpacks by Weathergoods Sweden really impressed me! Stylish, they seemed really well-made, and as a bonus they only use synthetic leather in their products. The only question marks are what the price will be when they start selling and how the colours will fade in sunlight. The blue bag/backpack might get a really nice, vintage look.

This bike from Trek is fun. And actually the slogan isn’t that bad, either.

Commuting gear from Tucano Urbano. Really stylish! Of course, what’s to be expected from an Italian company? When I looked inside one of the garments it was made in China, though… I could easily picture myself commuting to work wearing their stuff, it just would have been even easier hadn’t the stuff been made in China… (Sori!)

(This is how happy you get when you can have a free Guerciotti catalogue.)

Guerciotti… Damn! I’m really content with my Helkama Kuningaskulkuri, it’s everything I want in a road bike and it suits me perfectly. But these Guerciotti bikes...

Guerciotti Record is their retro model. It’s steel and it comes in a variety of cool colours.

But their limited edition Made in Milano “Milan red”, closest to the camera here, is something extra! Beautiful! (And Campagnolo components! Well, in the Guerciotti catalogue, at least.)

http://www.guerciotti.it/en/

Café Kask wasn’t as Italian as it should be, I couldn’t even get an espresso. (We all know that Kask is an Italian manufacturer of helmets, right?)

Fredrika Ek and her Mr Bike. Taken from Fredrika Ek's instagram account. Hope that's OK!

Should have taken a photo of Fredrika Ek’s booth too… It might have been the smallest booth in the whole fair. Fredrika Ek decided, a bit on a whim, it seems, to ride her bike from Sundsvall, Sweden to China, Australia, South America Africa and then back. (Well, she must have flew parts of the way.) She was super nice, showed some photos of herself riding around the world and sold her book. I bought a copy, which she happily signed. Truly inspirational!

Lastly some films of MTB Freestyle Show. These guys are extremely talented!

Early winter day

Winter has arrived. At least up here in the North I think it’s safe to say that winter is here now. The temperature these last days has been around -10º. (C - Celsius. Of course. Celsius really is the only sensible unit of measure when it comes to temperature. If you insist on using another unit, I only have one thing to say to you: Change.) It has even snowed. 

To be honest I haven’t been out riding much anyway. First I was a little fed up with cycling, after having ridden the Kalmar Grand Prix race (at a personal record average speed, I might add) my butt was sore.

Yeah, I ride in a Giro d'Italia 2016 la maglia rosa without being Vincenzo Nibali. So sue me. 

And I had ridden quite much up to that race too, I was the first one to sign up to the race which meant that I was given the Number 1. And riding with #1 on my bike and on my back and do really bad just wasn’t an option. Not to mention going DNF or DFL… So I had been training really hard, including a bunch of 100+ km rides. (Miles? If you mean real miles, i e 10 kilometres, we can talk miles. If not, then no,) My longest ride – also a personal record – was 150,81 km, from Växjö to Kalmar. That was a really great ride, by the way. Instead of choosing what might have been the fastest way between Växjö and Kalmar I opted for the smaller roads, less travelled, calmer and so much more interesting. I hope that I can do it again next summer, and if you have the opportunity to do it I highly recommend it.

I concentrated on riding... and finding my way! So I didn't really take that many photos. For some reason, which I won't examine, the few photos I took were mostly of derelict houses.

Kronobergstrampen is a 350 km cycling route through the Kronoberg county, Sweden. However, it's hard to find much information about it, so I don't know how organised this cycling route really is.

Endless roads and dark forests in the Kalmar county, Sweden.

The Sankt Sigfrids kyrka church in Sankt Sigfrid, Kalmar county. I didn't go in, but the exterior is quite nice!

But after Kalmar Grand Prix my butt was sore and I was a little fed up with cycling, so I needed a pause from it. When I was up for riding again the weather was crap. After that I got ill. And then autumn came, with slippery leaves covering the roads.

And now it’s winter. Which means a couple of things. Firstly it means taking my road bicycle apart and meticulously cleaning every part. I won’t bore you with details about how I clean my bike, let me just say that it is as clean as I can possibly get it. (Without unwelding the tubes.) The second thing is continuing to saw through the stuck seat tube in a Kona Lava Lamp, that will eventually hopefully be my winter commuting bike. I really don’t get that many opportunities to take out the bike and the saw and go at it, but I haven’t given up! Actually it’s a matter of prestige now, I am hell bent on getting that seat tube out of the frame.

Actually this must be the ugliest f**king bike I have ever came across. So it's perfect as a winter commuting bike, since winter commuter bikes are (meant to be) routinely mistreated.

The misery...

The third thing is the most important: To get my son’s Christmas present (he doesn’t know English yet, so it’s safe to write this) – a Specialized Hot Rock 24” mountain bike pristine and flawless. Since it’s a second hand bike I have some work to do, for example the pedals are totally crap, but basically it’s a good bike so it’s totally doable. A good clean (no, not really like the one I do on my road bike) and some new parts will do the trick. The parts arrived in a big box last week. It’s nice to do something for someone else, even if it’s for my son.

It doesn't look like much now, but I hope a good cleaning and some new components will change that!

The new component came in this small, handy box!

But besides the above I don’t expect much bicycle-related to be going on this winter. You can always wish for more bicycles (n+1, anyone?), bicycle parts and bicycle clothing but I can honestly say that I don’t really need anything. All my projects – the above mentioned, a mountain bike and two road bikes that I will fix and then sell – will require some new parts but… I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. So if I get this blog more up and running, meaning that I will update more regularly (yeah, fat chance) I suppose I will focus on other aspects of cycling. And since it’s winter it’s not really bicycle race season either…

Yeah, there are some races in January through April, like Tour Down Under in January, Tour de Taiwan and Volta a Catalunya in March, to name but a few but I am always eagerly waiting for spring, summer and the grand tours. (Yeah, well, last year I boycotted Giro d’Italia, due to the race having the opening stage plus two more stages in Israel. And Israel occupies Palestine, as you might be aware. But that was last year.)

2019 might be a good bicycle racing year. Giro d’Italia 2019 is concentrated around Northern Italy, Tour de France will have its departure in Brussels, go through the Eastern and Southern parts of France before finishing in Paris on the 28^th of July and Vuelta España… Well, I honestly don’t know if Vuelta España has been presented yet. It would be kind of typically Spanish to not have presented, nor even decided on the route yet.

And I have signed up (and paid) for my two usual races, the Göteborgsgirot 140 km race and the Kalmar Grand Prix Open 130 km race. I don’t think I was the first one to sign up to the Kalmar race, so this year I won’t have the same pressure on me to do at least OK, but I will of course try to do as good a race as I possibly can. With a little luck I might even be able to have a go at the Växjö-Kalmar ride, or even ride from Göteborg to Kalmar. We’ll see. 

But here and now I finish,so ride safe!

P.S. What a coincidence! After I had posted this text I saw on instagram that Vuelta España actually presented the route, yesterday. They will concentrate on the Northern and Southern parts of Spain, and of course, on Madrid.

Postgirot Open programme 1983

Will I be able to not be political this time, writing about memorabilia from the old (now discontinued) Swedish staging bicycle race Postgirot Open, or will I continue to rant about the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the racist party Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden democrats) or the general evils of capitalism? Well, I am still of course sternly opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the apartheid politics against the Palestinians practised by the Israeli state, and I am looking for the best activist way to work against it. I still feel that there is a better alternative to unchecked, unrestricted capitalism. But it has only been a week since the Swedish elections (municipal, county council and parliamentary), the final result and mandate distribution between the parties was just finished today and now the process of finding and forming a government begins. I would love to see a Socialist government but that's not happening, and that's not just due to the Liberal, market economy hegemony today. So the big question is just how much influence/political power the Sweden democrats will have on the parliament, due to their pivotal position. Will they have ministerial posts, in an ultra right government? There are, I feel, both advantages and disadvantages with that. In a shorter perspective it would, of course, be a disastrous disadvantage having a racist, anti-immigration and anti-women's right party having ministerial posts, one could just imagine the decisions being made by such a government (even though the decisions are formally taken by the Swedish parliament) and the outcome of ministry investigations. In a longer perspective it would mean that the Sweden democrats would finally have to take responsibility for impopular decisions, and it would be harder for them to keep playing the victim role that they are playing now, claiming that they are "anti-establishment". That would naturally be a big advantage.

To be perfectly honest I don't know what would be the right choice, or decision. I really don't want the Sweden democrats to have any political power or influence at all, but I would like the people who have voted for the Sweden democrats to see what kind of a right wing party they are, and to feel the effects of the Sweden democrats' Conservative politics on their own lives. (Sadly, it would be on everyone else's life too.) The thing is that the people who vote for the Sweden democrats are not all the racist, anti-feminist, pickup truckdriving, moose hunting rednecks that they are sometimes being portreyed as. They are tired and scared of the societal development, whether they see it or not they are being affected by the Liberal, market economy hegemony and either they are looking for simple solutions (pretty much like anyone else) or they wish to protest against the state of things, and sadly choose to do it this way. I think that many of them would quite easily discover who is to blame for all the things going wrong in our society, are they simply given a chance. They just need to see the facts. (And maybe some of them needs a hug too.)

OK, so obviously I'm not able to not be political this time either. Again, I  apologise to all you who end up here when you do a search on "Postgirot Open" and get a crapload of politics every time.

If you can't bear my political ranting and just want to see the memorabilia, the real blog post starts here:

We're going back to 1983. A really cool thing I found after I have posted the last three posts is a guide/pewspaper from the 1983 edition of the race. In addition to illustrated descriptions of all the eight stages, there is a summing-up description of the entire race, an illustration of the jerseys of all the teams as well as the leader jerseys, a description of professional bicycle racing and racers, a "declaration of love" to the road bicycle and some very 1980's ads. Oh, and some cool photos of, among others, Laurent Fignon and Tommy Prim. (To be honest, those two are the only ones I recognise.) I didn't have access to a scanner when I took the photos of the spreads, but I do now, so if anything catches your attention and you want to have a closer look, just let me know and I'll try to arrange it.

This is the cover of the guide/newspaper. The painting illustration is the same one as on the postcards from the same year.

The first spread. On the top left photo I recognise Laurent Fignon, with his signature headband. On the right page we see the CEO of the Postgiro Swedish postal giro. His editorial is quite bland and his fashion sense is, or at least was, questionable. Even if this was the 1980's!

To the left a summing-up description of the race, to the right an illustration of the jerseys. Note that besides the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, British and Swiss teams there was also a Czechoslovakian team and a Soviet team. The three professional teams were Bianchi Piaggio, Alfa Lum and Termolan Galli. Then there are the classification jerseys: yellow for the overall leader, green for the best sprinter, the points jersey is purple and the best amateur (non professional) wore a white jersey.

The first stages were held on the 15th of June. The prologue stage was a 3,3 kilometres long time trial and the first official stage was 101,8 kilometres, running from Gothenburg to the city of Borås.

A description of the second stage to the left, 189,4 kilometres from Borås to Skövde. And the above mentioned description of professional bicycle racing and racers ("The bicycle phantoms") to the right.

The continuation of The Bicycle Phantoms artice to the left. And to the right the third stage. 163,8 kilometres from Skövde to Huskvarna. We don't have any mountain ranges like the Alps or the Pyrenées in Sweden, but the Jönköping/Huskvarna region is definitely rolling.

 

 The fourth stage, 202,7 kilometres from Jönköping to Västervik. On the left page there are two ads, one from Fiat cars, and one from the PKBanken bank. PKBanken was a sponsor of Postgirot Open.

The fifth stage, 145,5 kilometres from Västervik to Norrköping. On the right page four bosses for Postgirot (the postal giro) are discussing why they are running the bicycle race.

A declaration of love to the road bicycle and the sixth stage, from Norrköping to Kumla. 135,9 kilometres.

The seventh stage was from Örebro to Västerås, and was 134,4 kilometres long.

The eighth, and final, stage was from Västerås to Stockholm and was 166,5 kilometres long.

An application form for getting your own Postgirot postal giro account to the left, and two photos to the right. The bottom right photo must be of Tommy Prim. Note the banana helmet!

The back page boasts yet another ad for the Postgirot postal giro.

That's it for today. Now I'm going to make mushroom cannelloni with tomato sauce. Ciao! Ride safe!