Trond’s bicycle

Trond’s bicycle gives him a freedom and range he says he could not have done without, but its importance extends beyond transportation: it carries him through the changed landscape of late summer 1948 and into a repeated ritual of waiting for his father. Carefully rebuilt and kept almost noiseless, the old bicycle connects a practical gift from his father to an expectation that the journeys cannot fulfill.

Origin and Inheritance

Trond’s father gave him the bicycle the year before, at a time when a new one could not be found anywhere in the country. He had owned it for years, but it had spent long periods in the basement because he was rarely at home and no longer needed it. He explained that the times had changed and that he had new plans, with no place for the bicycle among them. The gift thus passed on an object associated with his father’s earlier life just as that life seemed to be moving elsewhere.

Trond Sander was glad to have it and took responsibility for its upkeep. He had taken the bicycle apart several times and reassembled it as his father had shown him. The maintenance joined practical skill to remembered instruction: the bicycle was not merely handed over, but became something Trond could understand and care for through what his father had taught him.

Care and Mechanical Detail

The bicycle was washed, polished, and oiled at every joint and cogwheel. Its chain moved smoothly from the crank and pedals to the hub of the back wheel and around again inside the brightly polished chain guard. Trond describes it as running without a sound, both as he coasted down the hill from home and as he turned in beside Østbane Station. The precision of this account makes the machine’s quiet operation part of its character: it is a familiar, dependable object whose movement Trond has learned to maintain himself.

That care also made the bicycle a source of practical independence. It gave Trond Sander the ability to travel farther than he otherwise could, and its easy coasting and efficient pedaling shaped how he experienced the route. The bicycle’s value lay at once in its reach, its condition, and the hands-on knowledge involved in keeping it running.

The Journey to Østbane Station

In the almost white sunlight at the end of August, Trond rode in grey shorts and an open shirt, past Bekkelaget and onward toward the station. The railway and fjord ran to the left, while the steep, rocky Ekeberg ridge rose on the right. Gulls cried above the route; the railway sleepers smelled of creosote, and salt water carried its raw scent through the warm air. Sometimes Trond pedaled at full speed against the heat; sometimes he sailed along dry-skinned under the sun and heard himself singing. The bicycle enabled the journey, but its steady motion also brought him into close contact with a landscape that was familiar yet, after his departure from the cabin by the river, felt altered.

He rode down Nielsenbakken, passed Ljan Station, and followed Mosseveien for the seven kilometres into central Oslo. At Østbane Station he parked in a cycle rack, went through the tall doors from the sharp sunlight into the dim, dust-filled concourse, and studied the arrivals board. The bicycle delivered him to the place where his attention turned from the road to the trains.

Repeated Waiting and the Journey’s End

During the late summer of 1948, Trond made the ride many times to wait for the train from Elverum. He was often too early. He would ask a uniformed conductor in detail about each arriving train coming by way of Elverum, although the conductor knew him from earlier visits and could only point to the signs Trond had already checked. Each time, the ride itself filled him with tension and expectation, almost happiness; each time, his father did not arrive.

When the long-awaited rain came, the bicycle continued to carry him to Oslo almost every other day. Trond wore a sou’wester, oilskins, and Wellingtons, and water splashed out from either side of the wheels as he rode through the rain. The bicycle remained capable of the journey, but the familiar road and its buildings seemed to offer him nothing. Then Trond stopped going: first for a day, then for the next two. The account places the end of this repeated ride alongside a larger inward change, describing the feeling as if a curtain had fallen and everything had become different. The bicycle does not resolve the absence that has drawn him to the station; it marks the route along which expectation is sustained, repeated, and finally interrupted.