I wake up and get up to the fitness center at 7am. It's not as extravagant as the one at Sonderborg, but very nice. I use a step machine while looking out over the city harbor from the 20th floor. I shower in the fitness center, go down and eat breakfast, and go to run the parallel slalom.

I find my way there and amd effusively welcomed by Helmut Protil (email), who is a Vice-President of Club Europa and runs the races, and announces me to the other riders as being from California (He remembers me from last year.) P.O., ( Per Ove -email) who is President of the Swedish clubs and a Vice-President of Cub Europa, comes over invites me to sit at the VIP table for dinner on Friday night.

The short answer is that I won no prizes this time, though I had the second fastest time overall during the day. The course was very complicated. At first, we had only four contestants, so I was guaranteed a prize. But only one of us, not me, could mangage to run it correctly. So the orgnaizer got the permission of the guy who did it right, Janos, to start over.

There has been a long pause and we all try to recruit more riders. I go out to the line judges to ask what my mistake was in an earlier race. I am directed to a beautiful red-haired Swedish woman who speaks excellent English. We talk and she is very nice. Ulrika is interested in running the race but has not brought her gear. I offer mine and it turns out that my helmet is just her size, which we take as a sign she should race.

Helmut and I find another woman, Britt, to race with Ulrika. Britt is also very nice but very reluctant to race. Helmut persuades her and finally we have a total of twelve racers. Now it's more of a contest.

Janos is a Hungarian who has lived in Sweden since the 50's. He is 58 and very fit. He also races a lot and is very good. He is very friendly and buys me coffee and sweets and we sit and talk. Then we are called out to race again. My number is 1 and his is 2. We race again.

This time, I get it right and run fast. We are racing 650 Scarvers". I hate to admit it, but these new technology belt-driven bikes are great for this course. I really don't know if my ST would do as well. They really handle lightly and surely, with great suspension.

The bikes are supposed to be identical but I find the blue one faster and smoother than the brown one. The way it works is that the course is laid out roughly in a figure-eight. Each rider does one loop, then crosses over, and then the other loop. Each loop is a complicated set of right and left turns, some very sharp. The idea is to go as fast as possible without knocking over any cones, which can disqualify you.

You run two laps. Each time there is a winner and your times are marked. After two laps, your times are combined to find the winner of that race. The loser is eliminated. The first lap, I actually beat Janos. The second lap, he beats me. We don't know who the winner is until the scores are tabulated.

I turns out to be Janos. My combined time for the two laps is 100.492 seconds. His is 100.406. He beats me by .086 seconds. And it turns out that we both have the fastest times for the heat. But the way it works, I am out. Just bad luck to race against the fastest guy there.

But I am saved. Almost. There is something called the "lucky loser". A Belgian, Lens, and I are chosen as the two fastest losers and we get to participate in the second heat. I figure I just have to be careful and not knock over any cones. His time was 108.635. I'm 8 seconds faster. And he says he is a sidecar rider.

I run a pretty good lap, starting to scape my foot peg on nearly every right turn, but to my shock, Lens is first across the line. Fine. So I go really fast. I wheelie off the starting line. I am now scraping the right peg on every turn and the left sometimes. I am really flipping the bike from side to side. On one flip, I get the front tire off the ground. My lines are good, and I am tipping some cones with my inside knee. Lens is *still* faster.

On his second lap, he ran an incredible 44.something. No one came close to that. Mine was 47.something. Anything around 50 is good. His combined time was 95.973. Mine was 97.800. Those were the two best times all day. Lens never ran that fast again. His next best time all day was 99.996. And the best time of the number one winner was 98.535. Again, I had the bad luck to race against the fast guy in the heat.

But, it was terrific fun. And racing to the finish at the end made it really feel like racing. I was sorry I wasn't going to win a prize. And neither was Janos. I told him before he raced not to go slow, but I forgot to tell him to be careful. He knocked over two cones and was eliminated. Personally, I felt satisfied that I had done my best and had run a good race, though I would like to have had more time on the track to become smoother.

What was really fun was that Ulrika kept winning her races. She eventually came in to win fourth place, with Lens beating her for third. She wasn't the fastest rider at there with a time of 116.337, but she kept getting faster and fast and her time was quite respectable compared to some of the other times, the slowest of which was 142. I didn't meet the first and second place winners, but several of us enjoyed the friendship and excitement. We all shook hands and Janos and I took pictures and exchanged addresses.

This all ended in mid-afternoon. I went back to the hotel, being careful to observe the 30, 50, and 70kph speed limits in the city. I am told that the Swedish police are quite strict. The fines are big, and if you can't pay on the spot, you go off to jail. Swedes can lose their license for one ticket.

I also stopped for gas. My credit card wouldn't work at these pumps either, because they required a secret code, which is common for European credit cards. But the nice folk inside the store took care of my card manually. At the hotel, I took my pack off into the city to explore. I found a Telia shop and then the location of some wireless connections, which I will try later Friday afternoon. I also got some Swedish Krona with my ATM card so that I could buy small things.

I had coffee in a nice coffee place on the mall, typed some of this report and went back to the hotel. Then back out on the street, walking to the BBQ in the city park. I visited with Janos and Ulrika again, and P.O. and also the Germans. I also met the Chief Editor of the club magazine, to which I subscribe.

I got to talk with P.O. about why BMW AG keeps scheduling the Bikermeetng as a special event that draws people away from the Club Europa meeting. He says that the club is supported by Mobile Tradition, which takes care of the BMW museum and similar antiquities. They do not have much to do with Sales, which sponsors the bikermeeting, and Sales doesn't seem to care about the clubs. At one meeting with a BMW AG executive, he professed not to even know that there was an annual meeting of the clubs and assured everyone that this sort of thing was embarassing and wouldn't happen again. We'll see. I do find it distressing that BMW doesn't see the value of supporting its owners' clubs, as say, Harley Davidson does.

I had a very good time. I mixed some more, drank an awful lot of beer and found my way home again later that night.