Today was a long day in the saddle. It was about 900km from Hamburg to a friend's vacation home just outside of Koppom, Sweden.
To save some time, I took the ferry from Puttgarden, Germany to Rødby, Denmark, then traveled over the bridge into Malmö, Sweden. From there, it was lots of highway and secondaries to get up to Koppom. I think the ferry was about €27, plus €4 "handling charge" for buying the ticket at the dock.
Contrary to what I'd been told about harsh speed enforcement in Sweden, it was pretty smooth sailing. I'm told that in general, there are no speed cameras on the highways, but while there are some on the country roads, they're irrelevant to motorcyclists since they only take photos of the front of the vehicles.
The roads as you approach Koppom for an hour or two are really nice, curving through some forested areas. Road surfaces were good to great, and many drivers would pull to the side to let me pass inside their lane.
In talking to my friend, Jorgen, about cars shifting over in a lane to let a bike through, his comment was that while some cars do, other cars are pretty frustrating, and make it the motorcyclists' problem to get around them. It is a funny attitude; since 99.99(5?)% of the drivers in Ontario don't make allowances for motorcycles to get ahead, seeing 1 or more out of 10 cars in other countries being courteous is amazing.
Jorgen gave me some GPS coordinates to find his place. However, his had an extra order in magnitude of accuracy than my GPS would accept, so I wasn't entirely sure when I found his place. He was out on the road at the time, so I was a bit concerned that I was at the wrong place. I did note with some curiosity that the lawn was really trim and clean. Then I saw something moving in the yard.
It was about 25cm tall, moving at a walking pace, and producing an electronic whine. I walked up to it as it ran into a tree. It stopped, backed up, changed direction, then continued whining its way across the yard. It was the roomba equivalent of a lawn mower! Fascinated, I couldn't help but follow it around as it randomly clipped millimeters off the top of the blades of grass, and slowly bumped its way into the back yard, around the sides, and back out front.
Its name is Moonish (or something akin to that but Swedish). Jorgen named it after a harmless guy in his youth that was slightly off-centre and wandered the streets day in and out. It has GSM and GPS and can message Jorgen when something goes wrong, and Jorgen can send it messages from around the world, asking it how its day is going. It docks itself when its batteries are getting low, recharges, then heads out again to keep the grass in line. I can't count the number of times I'd just stand there watching Moonish march the yard.
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