Autumn cycling - Avedøreværket
Well, today as usual I came home to a lot of comments, and I will answer them after this post!
I am not really that fond of exercise, I do find it boring and non-rewarding. For me endorphins just don't cut it compared to sex and art. So in order to get out, I go on adventures.
For a while I have been cycling the southern mainland of the Copenhagen suburbs. Often I have passed Freedom Station at the place called, The Freedom. I know that you might say Liberty in English and that would be more fitting for a place. But in Danish we do not have two words for this same thing and freedom is more concrete and less latinised loftiness. Also freedom and frihed is the same word.
Well, from The Freedom I have cycled the Kalvebod motorway bridge and from there you can see one of the largest powerplants in the Copenhagen area: Avedøreværket.
Lately I have felt an urge to go down there, on the large diked area called Avedøre Holme, to see this wonder. So this morning I set out on this quest.
The Avedøre Power Plant is one of the most effective combined heat and power station in the world. So far so good. It provides electricity and the very effective Danish district heating called fjernvarme. Everybody should have such a thing.
But before the trees grow into heaven we should remember one thing. Denmark is a flat realm of islands created by the ice age glaciers - so called terminal moraine. We do not have any mountains or waterfalls like our Scandinavian brethren in Sweden and Norway, and therefore we have to burn things to keep warm and online. Eating pork does not solve the problem of logging on to the internet. The Avedøre Plant is a coal, oil and gas burning plant. We have windmills all over the place, but security of supply demands that we can have light and Netflix also when there is no wind.
Denmark is famous for being a clean energy frontrunner. You will easily be able to find images of big bearded Danish hipster cyclists like myself if you search the internet... actually you will be able to find ten times as many beautiful, sexy, elegantly dressed Copenhagen bicycle girls! That is how humanity works. But traditionally we Danes are a importers of oil and coal, the blackest of black evils.
There have been a lot of work done to make this at least a bit more co2-neutral. These days we burn a lot of biomass in plants like the Avedøreværket. It is mainly the fast growing willow tree and straw from farming that is used. I have read that in certain places around the world, governors have encouraged uncontrolled logging, but in Denmark we have rules and calculations governing everything. It is really complex calculations - I checked it recently, and I am sure that it is co2 neutral. But of course it would be better if we had cold fusion!
You might have seen images of the Avedøre Plant in the internet funny section (second only to pornography) as the energy company used to be called DONG ENERGY. I always found it very fitting that the wild and uncontrollable act of creating energy and the enormous potent power plants had a name that suggested phallic masculinity. But sadly the people in the PR section finally realised that DONG might sound a bit funny to an Englishman.
Well, that was one extremely long post. I biked about 33 kilometres and it took about 2 hours. Then I had some coffee and a small talk with my wife in the centre, and then home to Nørrebro. My hood.
Yep, you can't beat Dong Energy
It was called Dong for many years and then in 2002 they added the ENERGY.
Danes have been laughing at this for years, but on the other hand, we also have had this fine brand of salt liquorice since 1971.
:-D Oh my!
Even in our little town we used to have a Ha Long Dong Chinese Restaurant ;-)
This Australian lottery called slikpik, simply mean fellatio in Danish :) The longer you stay in the game!
The word "spunk" is for me very much linked with Astrid Lindgren and Pippi Longstockings. I've at least three times (with some years in between) wanted to use the word in a blog posting or comment, googled it and decided not to use it :)
http://www.spunk.org/name.html
Actually the liquorice name was inspired by the Pippi book. I just read that on the company webpage.
Wow. We have the same in Oslo - "north of Sinsenkrysset" basically means "the rest of Norway", as in "anything Oslo people doesn't care or know about".
Localhistoriewiki:
This crossroad really was kind of borderland before, until the 50s, the farmland really started here. Then they started building lots of residential apartment buildings on the farmland as well as metro lines serving the new suburban areas.
I was well aware that we were living "north of Sinsenkrysset" in my childhood, in the arctic northern Norway (Tromsø). Now we've become an Oslo family, but ironically we're still living north of Sinsen!
That is really funny! I never heard of the Oslo saying, but it is obviously the same thing. Actually, now I think of it it is even closer for the real way of saying it is : "Vest for Valby Bakke." Exactly the same as North of Sinsenkrysset.
Here is an example of its use from a newspaper. It refer simply to the rest of Denmark.
Now the Copenhagen suburbs cover all of the land west of Valby, but we still do not entirely call the place Copenhagen. Vestegnen is the word we use and it has a lot of the old Copenhagener snobbery in it :) Their football club is Brøndby IF and in Copenhagen main we have FCK. The worst hooligans in Denmark living 10 kilometres from each other and always in eternal battle.
That looks like an awesome ride! So much cool stuff to see, and it looks like safe routes for the most part as well. We've been developing some bike lanes over here in Victoria BC Canada -- and we had an expert consultant from Copenhagen come over and talk to us about some of the things that have been learned from the impressive cycling infrastructure over there.
Great photos too! Thanks for sharing!
This post has been resteemed to the front page of EXHAUST -- a new Steem frontend for runners, cyclists, and hikers!
OO the frontpage! Cool!
I would say that the whole trip was safe routes. The whole Copenhagen metropolitan area is really nice and safe with bike lanes everywhere. It is great to follow the fight for better cycling infrastructure in North America. I have some contacts on Diaspora who reports back from Ottawa and the US.
The glory of the frontpage! Hahaha. Nothing too special -- just try to find a user-submitted article to share once a day (which is trickier than I had thought it would be).
There's definitely a growing movement that is pushing for "all ages and abilities" cycling infrastructure. About time if you ask me -- tired of almost getting run over by big trucks. Exciting times!
If you end up going for some more bike rides, feel free to use Exhaust to create a post :). Exhaust is set as a 20% beneficiary, but all liquid rewards get redistributed to used depending on distance ran/biked/hiked. You can learn a bit more about the project if you take a look at the FAQ (bottom of the page).
Cheers!
I made quite a few such posts in the spring, so yes, I will be glad to help out with Exhaust.