Since starting my job as a Grundskola teacher, I have lost much of the free time that I enjoyed (and sometimes resented) during my long year of unemployment. I still have free time these days when school lets out, but it’s not good for much.
The first few days of school, I brought my Kindle with me to work, thinking I would read on my sporadic breaks throughout the day - fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there. Hilarious. Instead, I have accidentally developed a meditation practice wherein I slouch back in my office chair, legs and arms splayed out in exhaustion, stare at a random point on the wall, and space the fuck out for a few minutes. Then I get back to grading papers or whatever.
When I leave school at the end of the day, I walk to the bus stop imagining all the fun things I can do before my 9:30pm bedtime. I can take an everything shower! I can make spaghetti for dinner! I can go pick out new yarn for my fall knitting project! I can make a cup of tea and sip it on the balcony! While I read!
No, I can do none of those things. By the time I’m done dragging my feet from the bus stop to my apartment, I am a zen master. I sit and I stare.
Almost every day, I tell myself that when I get home, I will change out of my work clothes and go for a bike ride. It is what I long for most! Austin and I spent the summer cycling. We had a list of destinations we frequented: Björnön, several beaches on the Mälaren, the Vallby open-air museum, Anundshög, friends’ apartments, parks, etc. For all of these destinations, we had a long way and a short way, depending on how ambitious we were feeling. Most of these destinations are no more than an hour there and back. No serious long-distance cycling. But, over the summer, we started choosing the longer rides just for the fun of it.
Growing up in an American metro area like Baton Rouge dominated by car traffic, I only ever rode my bike in my neighborhood subdivision, blazing a trail around cul-de-sacs marked with SLOW: KIDS AT PLAY signs. I knew people who cycled on the roads - a.k.a. insane people with a death wish. I found their nonchalance incredible.
Cycling is not such a big deal in Sweden, not like the massive deal it used to be to me. For most Swedes, cycling on extensive bike paths around cities is just another form of transportation in addition to cars, trains, busses, scooters, and ferries. For some, it is also a very fun form or transportation, and a preferred form of exercise. This is what cycling has become for me over the last year, though not without its difficulties.
Part One: Anxiety
I haven’t always loved cycling. In fact, in the last year I had two panic attacks while riding my bike here in Västerås. The first was last fall. I fell on Vasagatan, a busy street in Västerås, in front of about twenty passersby. Even worse, no one stopped to help me up. Austin doubled back to me quickly, but I was horribly embarrassed and also offended no one seemed to care. I guess a normal person would feel a little embarrassed but get over it quickly. I did not. I rode home with an elevated heart rate, my face flushed, crying. When I got home I cried even more and paced the living room.
I have generalized anxiety disorder. My anxiety sometimes leads me to blow things out of proportion, to catastrophize. A bump or wobbly moment on my bike can make me scared for my life. So when I fell last fall, I feared I would never recover. But, I knew the only solution was to keep riding.
A few weeks later, Austin and I rode our bikes to a friends’ house in an unfamiliar neighborhood. We kept having to stop to check the map, doubling back multiple times. It was also a very hilly neighborhood, so I became exasperated every time we didn’t have enough steam to make it to the top of a hill. Once at the top, too, I’d have to walk down because I was afraid of flying down too fast and out of control. After a while of this, I was not only exhausted, but we were running late. I had another panic attack and had to sit down on the curb for a few minutes to calm down.
The first obstacle in overcoming any mental illness like anxiety is believing that you will get better. If you don’t look up, you just continue to spiral further and further down. I have to do this all the time living with GAD in Sweden, constantly coping with culture shock and social anxiety. Something as simple as checking out at the grocery store used to feel scary, but I would brave through it by telling myself that one day Sweden's grocery stores would feel totally normal to me. One day, checking out at Hemköp would be like breezing through Trader Joe's. And now, not only do I sail through the register at Hemköp and ICA, I'm a goddamn member at Coop. I get a newsletter in the mail and a monthly rebate.
For months, my husband Austin would patiently wait for me every time we left our apartment on our bikes. He would watch with kind eyes as I nervously danced around, monitoring all the passing pedestrians and cars for the right moment to hop on. I would often have a few false starts, too. I would get going and then a car would turn onto the block, a parent with a stroller would walk by, and I would stop and retreat onto the sidewalk. Austin would smile at me as I recited my unofficial mantra: I’ll get used to it.
Basically, I treated every bike ride as session in exposure therapy. I kept riding, I got used to it, and I’m mostly over it. I have grown to love it.
That’s pretty much it. I kept telling myself it would get better, I had support and understanding in the form of my husband who cycled with me through the panic attacks, and eventually I got to the point where after a long day, what I want most is to go for a ride. I will happily turn a five minute ride to the grocery store into a thirty minute loop just to swing by the wharf. Breezing down the street with the wind in my hair (jk - I always wear a helmet) feels amazing. Like, wow. Like a bird. Like, a cliché.
Part Two: Crime
At my high school, Baton Rouge High, the Dean of Students Mr. Moore gave the student body an impassioned speech at the beginning of every school year, which always began with the same incredible hook: There are thieves among us. Mr. Moore’s message was this: You think you can trust your classmates? Guess again. Lock your shit up.
I wish I had taken his advice.
Crime that is astonishingly common in my hometown - theft, burglary, murder, etc - is practically non-existent in Sweden. And yet, in the last year, my husband and I have had not one, but two bikes stolen right from under our naïve American noses. We have learned the hard way that Swedes might not lock their apartment doors on the way out to work, but you're a fucking chump if you don't triple lock your bike here. Austin and I have always locked up our bikes, but we are chumps nonetheless. Our bikes were stolen nonetheless.
Bike theft is so common here that Austin and I hardly get sympathy when we tell Swedes that we have had our bikes stolen. The first bike stolen was a brand-new Monarch city bike that Austin bought when we first moved to Västerås in August 2023. He was recovering from a running injury and struggling in a walk-centric ecosystem, so the bike was a necessity for him. We went to a bike shop in the city center and forked over 8000 SEK with child-like stupidity. We had no Swedish identity numbers, no insurance, no brains apparently. About six weeks later, that beautiful bike was stolen. In broad day-light. Locked up to a bike rack just under our apartment’s first-floor window. In our sleepy, family neighborhood. Just behind the university where Austin works. While we ate cinnamon buns for fika. :)
We simply had no idea. We expected that because Sweden is generally such a safe place where people leave their cellphones or laptops on café tables while they run to the restroom, a standard bike lock was all we needed to keep our brand-new, very expensive bike safe. It seemed like a good investment at the time. In fact, we were planning on getting a second one to match! Chumps!
We found out the hard way that bike theft is so common here, most people only buy the cheapest, shittiest, second-hand bikes they can get knowing that it will probably get stolen anyway. The second bike Austin bought cost about 750 SEK at a used bike shop in town, Bobby's. I also bought a bike that day for about 1500 SEK - quite the splurge, but I wanted gears. Since then, Austin and I bought a third bike, again for around 1500 SEK to have for guests visiting this summer. We put it to use in May when my cousin Hannah came to visit. And then it, too, was stolen. In broad day light. Locked up to a bike rack. At the Västerås train station. On a busy Saturday.
Being the victim of theft fucks with you. It makes you feel stupid, pathetic, impotent. Am I so naïve? Am I really so vulnerable?
If I am, I am only to the extent that every one else is. I am a normal person, one of many millions who parked my bike in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a desperate person took it for desperate reasons. It hurts, yes, it's annoying, yes, and it's not right. I curse the thief who took our bikes, I shake my fists at the sky!
I have learned to give myself a bit of a break, cherish my bike while I still have it, and know that it will one day leave me, possibly against my will. In the meantime, some advice on preventing bike theft:
Thieves don’t necessarily target the fancies, newest, most expensive bike on the rack. They target the most vulnerable bike. So, you need to aggressively safeguard even the shittiest bike.
If you ever have the option to bring your bike inside, do it. Always store your bike inside your apartment, or if you live in Sweden, in your building’s bike room. Lock it in there, too. Carry it upstairs if you have to.
If you must leave it outside, use multiple (ideally three) locks with different locking mechanisms to secure your bike:
Lock both the front and back wheels to the bike frame. This can be done with a U-lock (please do not bother with cable chains) or a built-in permanent wheel-lock that you install directly to the frame. By locking both wheels, you make it impossible for a would-be thief to easily wheel or ride away, assuming they can remove your bike from the frame:
Lock the frame to the rack. This is tricky with a standard U-lock, but it can be done. I suppose a hefty chain will also do the trick, but I have not yet made the investment.
This piece of advice is pretty fucked up, but here it goes: park your triple-locked bike next to easy prey. Remember tip #1: thieves target the most vulnerable bike. So if a thief walks by a rack, all your U-locks will deflect a thief’s attention to the bike owned by a chump who used a cable chain, or only locked the back wheel, etc.
Finally, get home insurance and make sure it covers bikes. Austin and I use Hedvig, which has its pros and cons, but it’s only 150 SEK/month and covers basically all of our belongings. Our deductible is 750 SEK for any claim of theft or burglary, which isn’t great value if your bike is only with 1500 SEK. But hey, if you want to splurge on an 8000 SEK bike you’ll be safe.
On an almost daily basis, Austin and I marvel at the fact that we are living in a random country that neither of us felt any interest in or affinity for before Austin got his job here. How did we get here? What are we doing?
Walking on a frozen lake, raving at a stranger’s 50th birthday party, listening to experimental flute music in a witch’s tower, eating reindeer, chasing the Northern Lights: a lot of unexpected experiences and life lessons have presented themselves to us here. So, now, add to the list: cycling.
I think I’ll go for a ride.
Photo credit: Austin Alexander Franklin, PhD