Weekend hjemmedreng

Today I have a new set of eyes. And a new memory.

I finally have a camera (!)

It travelled from France, through Belgium, to get here. And now you have pictures from me again. Regularly, I hope.

It's a digital, and designed specifically for technical idiots like me. Here's an example from the weekend:

I thought something was wrong with my bike; the pedals were stiff and it was running slowly, and I remembered Philipp [sic - he spells it like that] saying his landlord had to fix the chain on his bike because it was going slowly. So I asked around. Tristan suggested it might be the brakes, and that I get a "guy to look at it." Which guy, I asked. "Any guy" was the reply. I'll find a female mechanic, I thought.

Anyway, no female mechanics materialised from Friday to Monday, so Tristan was right, it did take a guy to fix my bike; the guy from the shop where I bought it, as things turn out, but a guy nonetheless. And when I parked the Black Diamond outside his shop on Hans Christian Ørsted Vej, Nørrebro, and knocked on the workshop door, he did that thing again with his eyes when someone is trying not to laugh. I've seen it so many times; usually on men after I've just said something, and always on him. The first time was when I took BD for a test drive down the block while the guy from the bikeshop, his little hjemmedreng (Eng. lit. "home boy"), and Claudia watched on. Whoah, he nearly lost it then. The other time was when he found a pin in my tyre. Bloody hysterical.

Anyway, it turns out he almost had good reason for the smirk today: my tyres were flat. That's all. Nothing else wrong with BD. All those times when I thought I was pumping my tyres at the cykkle shops by the road, I was merely blowing hot air into the unforgiving Danish wind. BD had spent most of the weekend in that mortuary of a place, Forum Metro Station, for no good reason at all. Fair enough, it did rain most of the weekend, and I got home after 4 on Saturday and Sunday.

But I'd missed her, and our Sunday morning ride down Gammel Kongevej to the city. It means "Old King's Way", because King Christian IV used to ride down the same street to get to his Summer Palace, which happens to be my "local": Frederiksberg Slot. The military use it now, which I think is very creepy, and very Tea with Mussellini / 28 Days Later, if those two films can possibly be compared. Anyway, Gammel Kongevej takes me all the way to Radusplasden, which is the central city square, and you have to go past 4 cinemas to get there, two of which are arthouse, it needs to be said. Hear that, Sydney? It also has flea markets, fantastic old record stores, organic supermarkets, a bakery from the early 18th Century, a 50's Smorrebrod shop, expensive but nice dress shops, creepy-old-danish-men pubs, and massage parlours...

But thank god there was nothing wrong with BD!

So I rode home over the uneven bitumen paths (they're laying cables under them all at the moment, or something), slowly because of my laptop and books, but easily, thanks to a little help from the Copenhagen hjemmedreng....