Day 18: Falun to Kopparberg | 120km

9 June 2026

During this trip, I spend a lot of time on my own, lost in my thoughts, often far from anything but endless forests. In the few encounters I’ve had so far, the first question is almost always the same: why?

Naturally, I spend a lot of time pondering it. I’ve mentioned before that there are many reasons for this journey, but the answers keep shifting.

When I’m pedaling up a steep mountain with violent wind in my face and rain seeping through my jacket, my shoes soaked and my stomach empty, it’s hard to think of a single good reason for any of it. Yet I still feel it’s worth pursuing. Most of the time, I don’t think about the bigger picture. Each day, I just pedal on, stop for food, and look for a place to camp.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for years, or some version of it, but I always put it off because there was always a good reason. Now that I’m on the journey, looking back to when it was just a dream, I think I was just negotiating with comfort, testing my willingness to give it up for a while. Inconvenience and discomfort were probably the biggest hurdles.

Typing this from a tent, I can say for sure that while some pictures on social media might look nice, a comfortable bed is a lot better. But uncomfortable things are still worth doing if only to put some perspective on the comforts we so often take for granted. I’ll stop before this turns into a self-help monologue, which would be the worst possible ending for a note from my bikepacking journey across Europe. Perhaps you’ll see a post from me on LinkedIn about what Bikepacking across Europe taught me about B2B sales some day.