Let the record state that Fred Felman will be sleeping in a tent tonight. Even as I write this, under the fading 11pm sun, he is busy arranging his nylon nest. Yes, we are camping. In the woods. With wild beasts for our neighbors. In Finland, of all places. We arrived in Turku this morning on a big beautiful ship operated by the Viking Line. There was only one other cyclist aboard, a maniac German from Hamburg who had ridden to Nordcapp --the northernmost point of Europe---and was now on his way home. He told us he'd been on the road since May and had had only one day of bad weather.
I found myself envying his pedaling through the night under the midnight sun and breathing the incomparably pure air. Looking at us and our quixotic machines, he said we were carrying way too much stuff (I personally consider our backgammon board and various beauty products a necessity, thank you very much), and assumed we'd be sharing a cabin with him, explaining that Viking Line usually matches people up by similar interests, etc. We nodded our heads in a conciliatory way, for there was no arguing with this man, though we knew for a fact that we would not be his bunkmates for the night.
Since we booked passage at the last minute, the only cabins available were the \"luxury\" ones on the top deck, which we figured were still cheaper than a night's stay in Stockholm. And bike brats are always up for a little dose of princessdom... In some ways the trip really started for me today, since Finland is the first country I hadn't been to before; I was penetrating virgin territory, an explorer. It looked and felt pretty much as I expected it would --a Soviet-flavored version of Scandinavia\-- as I roused myself to consciousness on the vast central square of Turku with a cup of coffee and a large sugary object that resembled a donut.
The Soviet no-nonsense aesthetic was definitely present in the utilitarian architecture, but it all looked clean and prosperous like Sweden. The people strode about with confidence and purpose in the early morning rush hour. Nearly everyone we saw was scantily clad, in tank tops, miniskirts, and the like, even though it was freezing outside. I wondered if they knew something that we didn't. \--And they did as a matter of fact, for today's weather was as close to sublime as we've encountered all summer long. We decided to deviate wildly from our course and pedal westwards --back towards Sweden---to a group of islands called Aland (with a little circle over the \"a\"), but we weren't really sure which route to follow.
Throwing caution to the wind, I let Fred decide. Our only restriction, after all, is that we have to be in Helsinki by Friday night to meet up with Olivier, which opens us up to a plethora of possibilities. Fred made his decision in a very logical way: He gauged the direction and speed of the wind and pronounced that we should head towards the Southwest. And soon we were on our way towards what is known as the Finnish Archipelago, consisting of over 12,000 islands. We were delighted to find excellent bike paths running alongside the highways, indicating that we were still in a civilized country.
The path we took led us through the town of Kaarina (home of gay pornographer Tom of Finland, we learned later from a straight girl in Turku), and shortly thereafter we were cruising through golden meadows hemmed in by pristine forests and ocean inlets. We had to pump up some seriously steep grades, too, something which our legs were no longer used to. Just as I was thinking that Finland was a cycling paradise, our fantastic bike path came to an abrupt end, forcing us to share the road with the aggressive Finnish drivers. But after the first ferry crossing (traversing the archipelago requires taking many ferries, which adds to the appeal), we learned that if we waited for all the cars to exit before us, we'd have the road to ourselves for twenty minutes, until the next ferry's cargo of cars caught up with us.
Twenty k and a couple of ferries later, we arrived at our first village, called Nagu. We stopped here for an elegant dockside lunch, setting us back a small fortune but almost worth it. Our waitress informed us that the tourist season was practically over, since Finnish schoolchildren resume their studies next week. A little beyond Nagu, we turned off from the main road onto a side road that quickly disintegrated to a sandy track. But the mellow scenery and total lack of motorized traffic made us push onwards rather than turn back. Shortly after the reappearance of blacktop, my front tire exploded, sounding like a bomb.
In a way I was happy, because I'd finally be able to put to use the spare tire I've been lugging along for so many months. It couldn't have happened in a better place either: on a deserted road alongside a picturesque meadow. Changing the blown-out tire was almost a pleasure. Another ferry took us to a larger island called Korpoo, where we planned to catch a longer-haul boat to Aland. But when we got to the docks a young, well-mannered schoolgirl informed us that it had just left, and that the only one tomorrow leaves at six-thirty in the morning.
Forget that, I thought, and hastily put together a Plan B. We would jump on the next ferry that came, and see where it took us. I liked the spontaneity of the idea, and consider us lucky for Kismet to have brought us to Houtskar (pronounced \"Hoht-chorr\"), a group of postcardesque islands covered with little but wilderness. It was on this ferry that we met young Pepy (short for Petri), his wife Anne and his dog Minnie. Pepy had spent a couple of years being a pilot in Missouri, and now the three of them were on their way to meet up with Pepy's sister Piia for a few days of camping and canoeing.
Piia, it turns out, is married to a kooky hippyesque Canadian called Torbin, whom she met while touring with a musical group called \"Up with People.\" We met up with their whole gang when we finally reached the primitive campsite on the northernmost tip of this island group, twenty-odd kilometers and two more ferries from where we first disembarked into the beautiful universe of Houtskar. Fred had his heart on sleeping in the \"cottage village\" that was marked on my map, but no such thing matieralized. Nor was there a restaurant, unless you counted the nasty pub we had stopped at several hilly kilometers and one ferry ride back.
We figured we'd subsist on some of the snacks we had acquired over the course of the day, but Piia volunteered to drive us back to the \"pub,\" where the young couple introduced us to one of the staples of popular Finnish cuisine, a meat pie soaked in grease and stuffed with rice and sausage --disgusting! Torbin, apparently thrilled to be talking with native English speakers, told us his amazing life story. Born to a draft dodger from Texas and a Danish mom, Torbin grew up in the wilderness of British Columbia, where he dreams to return some day if only Piia could get a work visa.
When we returned to the campsite, another cyclist had appeared, a German called Richard. As I write this, the whole crowd is noisily grilling sausages on the beach and laughing at Pepy's crude jokes. I suppose I'll join them, even though I'd rather just crawl into my sleeping bag and call it a night, letting myself dream of where tomorrow's ferries will take us in this magical archipelago.