Sueco Guatemalteco

At the moment I am in Sweden and trying to ride through the autumn and winter: It’s late November and it’s closing in on December; winter cycling is here.  Every cyclist and every place in the world have different views on winter and winter riding. When is it winter, how cold, damp and dark it must be to be called winter etcetera etcetera. I can almost get offended when people from warmer places talking about winter riding in sun and 12 ° (54F) but I guess people living in northern Scandinavia, Canada, Russia are thinking the same about me. I will ramble on and discuss a bit about how I tackle riding in the winter months of southern Sweden, which I am doing now, with clothing, gear, training, nutrition and so on. I don’t ride if it’s under 5° (40F), mostly because there is a chance of ice on the roads but also because I have problems keeping my hands and feet warm. I hope I can get over this in the future by getting a gravel bike or mountain bike and ride slower in the woods. R

In my first ever blog post I told you about the overall “plot” of this blog. I think it’s in order to tell you a little bit about the background story. I will try to keep it short, so I don’t lose you on the way: In January 2017 I moved to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I brought a suitcase of clothes and my road bike. I had been cycling since the summer of 2016 and started to see some glimpses of my fitness from my teen years when I played football and floorball. Anyway, I started to ride on the roads around the city of Quetzaltenango and realized quickly that the infrastructure hasn’t really come that far as in the south of Sweden. But on my second or third ride I met another road cyclist who happened to speak English and I had made my first Guatemalan friend, a cycling friend. He showed me some awesome climbs, among others the “famous” climb up to the “cumbre Alaska”, peak Alaska. I have been told it’s called Alaska because its always cold up there at just above 3000 meters ov

Yet another cycling blog, or is it? Well, yes, in a way it’s exactly like that but with a slightly different angle. I think, I am not totally sure and honestly, I am a beginner at this, writing a blog for everyone to read. It’s a bit daunting since I am not 100% confident in myself but what can go wrong here. For starters, English is not my native tongue and I wouldn’t consider myself as fluent in the language, so expect some errors on a regular basis. My native language is Swedish, and Sweden is the country I was born and raised. This blog will not be so much about Sweden but the cycling in Guatemala where I moved a couple of years ago to be with my girlfriend, sorry, fiancé (still getting used to that). In Guatemala I got in touch with the cycling community quickly and this is the story about how I navigate on the Guatemalan cycling scene with all cultural clashes, beautiful Guatemalan climbs, drunk drivers and everything that comes with trying to stay with the Guatemalan elite