Biking to the Arctic Circle | Ep. 4 | Estonia 🇪🇪

This time you guys get to watch the bike break down in Estonia!

Good morning everybody. Everything outside is super wet from the rain. Luckily, I brought in most of the stuff, so all of our stuff should be dry. My inflatable bed kept deflating through the night, so I have to wake up and blow more air into it. The last sleeping mat I had didn’t do this because it was expensive and it was good. This one was cheap. I think I spent like $17 on this and I regret it. Okay. I have an idea for how to keep a sleeping bag dry. I’m going to take the sleeping bag and the mat and all that stuff. I’m going to wrap it up in the tent and I’m going to wrap that up in the rainfly because I know that that is waterproof and if that is acting as like a shell around everything, it’ll probably keep the water out. There we go. Now, even if it rains, the sleeping bag should stay dry. Okay, let’s go check it out. We got to go down a little forest path. Follow this way for 0.28 miles. It’s early. It’s early in the morning, so I’m more uh willing to take these crazy [ __ ] routes that they’re sending me on. Come on. Of course it’s super muddy. Um, we’re just going to walk it. Oh yeah, I’m already sinking in the mud. God, if I end up having to backtrack after I get through this whole [ __ ] forest. I see beach sand. Whoa. Okay, so I’m not sure if I need to tell you guys this or if you just like instinctively understand, but this is not a route. It literally just wants me to like ride up here. This is not a [ __ ] route. The sand is pretty well compact though. So, this isn’t too bad, actually. Okay. I actually do not recommend this. It might look good on video, but the sand is constantly trying to shift under your bike and slip. Like, this is very hard to keep the bike going and balanced. I will say this is one of the few times that having these really big tires is useful. If these were regular bike tires, I would just be sinking into the sand. You know what? That wasn’t so bad. I’m glad we did that. That was Ah. Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, we’re just walking the sand. When it gets like this, your bike just sinks. Come on. Onto the bridge. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cool experience. We got a ride on the beach. We are about to cross into Estonia. [Music] Oh, wait. No, we’re in Estonia. And I just didn’t even notice. I found another grocery store. This one’s called Coupe. I just like visiting the different grocery stores in different countries and seeing what’s different. We should also see if we can’t get something to eat. Here we go. Pretty sure this is breakfast food. I don’t know what these things are. They look like kind of hot pockets. We’ll get one of them. Oh, apparently the Coke it does the like specific for that country. Ilia. I’ve never heard that name before, but that might be a popular Estonian name. This was €5. That’s like €7. Holy [ __ ] Estonia is expensive. I am legitimately shocked. I thought these were supposed to be like ex-s Soviet countries that are like Eastern and No, this is like France prices. This is like what you would get if you went to like London. We are in a small ass town and they are charging Paris pricing. Okay, well, let’s figure out what this thing is to figure out why it was so damn expensive. It’s a [ __ ] hot dog. I bought a [ __ ] hot dog. Okay, I am getting absolutely wrecked because the water on the road is it’s coming up like right through here. Like I am [ __ ] soaked and it’s not even raining. So, I’m going to take some electrical tape and I’m going to cover this up so that water can’t [ __ ] splash me anymore. It still runs up there and then you end up running into it face first. But this is where most of the water is splashing me at from. There we go. I should be a lot drier now. Yeah. See, the water is still splashing up in front of me, but that’s not quite as bad. Oh, but wait a minute. That means that water is splashing my laptop. Yeah, that mean Oh my god. Yep. My laptop bag is just soaked. [ __ ] hell. God, not having mud guards is tragic. I wonder if there’s something I can like put on the front of my basket so that when the water splashes up, it doesn’t get inside of it. I’m considering just wrapping electrical tape around it, but I don’t think I have enough. And the electrical tape wouldn’t stick on it for very long. Anyway, what I can do is I can turn the laptop around so that at least it’s on the back. Wait a minute. I have a rain cover. I typically put it on this, but I don’t think that’s that important. Like, there’s nothing actually that important in here. Let me show you. I have a can of tuna fish. Fine if it gets wet. I have a bag of bread that’s wrapped up. I have some sodas. And I have this Japanese ramen. All of this is fine if it gets wet. I was able to find an apartment online for 40 bucks and it has a washing machine. That’s really important because there’s the the the smell of mildew in my sleeping bag is really rough. It made sleeping hard. Now I figured out how to keep my sleeping bag dry. I just need to wash it now. Heat. [Applause] [Applause] Heat. Now turn right on the street. Nope. Not risking it. [Applause] [Music] Your route is 0.38 miles ahead of you. The town that we are in right now is called Paru. Paru Estonia. I found an IKEA. I don’t really need home furnishings, though. Let’s go walk around IKEA. Oh, and they have the kiosk, so I don’t even need to figure out how to speak Estonian. I am getting a full meal with three additional chicken wings, and it is the same price we paid earlier at the grocery store today. Crazy. So, at least Hezburg doesn’t have Estonian inflation. Yeah. Check it out. McDonald’s does not give you chicken wings. Pretty cool. I just got a notification from my bank. I was able to get a refund for that uh [ __ ] hotel room that didn’t exist the other day. I had to call them like three [ __ ] times, but I did get the refund. No. Okay. Uh, what’s your name again? Ano? Ano? Nice to meet you. This He’s been riding his bike for like 10 weeks now. He came from [ __ ] Africa and he’s going all the way up into Finland. We’re actually possibly going to be passing each other as we go. Here’s my homestead sleeping it. I only have this like BV bag. It’s like like have a hood so it’s like okay to go like wet and like if it’s raining like yes that last night. Uh, here’s my kitchen and a bit of food. There’s like mainly like clotting and there’s like uh tools and electronics. I don’t really need anything much like a camping chair would be nice at part sometimes as it’s really like at some point there is not even like a rock to sit on this like hydration vest. Bought it in Spain as I was carrying only this like canvas bag and I got so annoyed of it. But there’s like maybe like groceries maybe. No, he recognized me because he recognized the bike. He saw this yesterday. We’ve been going on like the same route to get here. He recognized this and he saw me. He’s like, “Wait a minute. You’re the guy on that bike. I was almost giving it to you, but it did. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Uh, that’s super cool. That is one of my favorite things about doing this is meeting the other people that are bike packing. He is not going as far north as we are, so we’ll only get a ride with him for like a couple of days at most. But seriously, it would be so cool to just like set up camp with him and go ride with it. It’s obviously much easier for me than for him because he’s actually using his legs for [ __ ] But still, it’d be super cool. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am trying something different today. I am only using the bike by pedaling. I am not using the throttle at all. And I have also cut my speed in half. I’m curious if doing this will double my distance. So far, we’ve been getting about 60 miles per charge, 65, 60, whatever. I’m curious if doing it this way will double that to like 120. Hotels are getting so expensive that I need to get there as fast as possible. The fewer days this takes, the cheaper it’ll be. Pretty sure all of that is wheat. Found another one of those stores here. Get some food. Co-op consum. I wonder if co-op means it’s a co-op and like everybody owns it or if that’s just the name of the brand. Hey, I found some pretzels. That’s cool. I can’t really see through these to know what they are. This looks like a cinnamon roll. It is probably going to keep raining. Am I that YouTuber? Yes. Um, yes. I’m actually filming right now. I’m on my way up to Finland. Oh, cool. Um, sorry. Whenever people recognize me, I just I just film it. Hey. Hey. Yes. Uh, I’m Nate. Nice to meet you. How How do you like Estonia? It is way more expensive than I thought it would be. I paid like €12 for this [ __ ] Yes. Very developed. Like everything is very expensive and the taxes are very high. We were in the grocery store. He was uh he was uh helping me with the with the selfch checkout thing. And we walk out and he comes back. He’s like, “Wait a minute. Are you that YouTuber?” Let’s try our cinnamon roll. That is not a cinnamon roll. You can’t see it, but that’s It’s not even cinnamon. I think it’s a cheese roll. We’ve made it 40 miles already and we have 60 miles left to go. Oh. My entire bottom half hurts. The seat is not very comfortable. Actually, I think that might be the first person somebody recognized me from YouTube instead of Tik Tok. Like, normally people are like, “Oh, you’re that guy from Tik Tok.” But no, he came up to me specifically asking if I was the guy from YouTube. That’s pretty cool. Yep, it’s raining again. Okay, I stopped under a bush to hide from the rain. Look at this thing that I found. Is that a bee or a fly? It is absolutely [ __ ] massive. But I don’t actually care. Looking at the rain. Uh it looks like it’s going to rain for the next like 4 hours. I just need to accept that it’s going to be a rough day. Ah, we’re going to take a break for a sec. The cars are driving by so fast that they’re splashing all the stuff into my face. I’m going to wait for it to stop raining and maybe dry off. Luckily, their bus stops have roofs on them so we can avoid the rain in here. I have sand in my mouth. [Music] We have officially entered Talin, the capital of Estonia. Okay, this is where we’re staying tonight. It’s a capsule hostel. I noticed there’s not like a place for me to put my bike. That guy, they chained their bike to the railing. That’s not a good sign. You guys might remember the last time I had a bike and I stayed in a hostel. I woke up the next morning and the bike was gone. So hopefully that doesn’t happen this time. This place should have selfch checkckin. I have a reservation. Yes. Okay, I’ve got a receipt. Okay, that’s kind of dope. Okay, now let’s go figure out what to do with this bike. What to do? What to do? What to do? Let me see if there’s like a bike lock somewhere nearby. On the other side of the building, there are these railings. I’m not sure if they want me chaining my bike to them, though. It’s a little far away, but this seems like kind of out of the way. That will have to do. I’m going to bring everything in. That way, if the bike does get stolen, it’s just the bike getting stolen. Look at how dirty this is from all the stuff splashing on it. I carry around disposable rags just for situations like this. I’m probably going to have to charge these batteries in my bed because that’s where I have access to an outlet for so long. So, I don’t want them making my bed just filthy. Okay, let’s take this in the hostel and then go lock the bike up. I don’t hear anybody else in the hostel, so it’s possible we’re the only people there right now. Damn, that place is right in front of a restaurant. They probably don’t want a bike locked up there. Okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to put the bike right here, and I’m just going to lock the wheel to itself so that nobody can like ride off with it. They still could bring a truck up here and like load it in the back of a truck. And this isn’t like downtown part of the city, so it doesn’t get the same kind of foot traffic and there’s not the same kind of like poverty. Here’s hoping she’s still here tomorrow. Looks like the lockers are operated by the card, too. This place is really swanky. Batteries are charging, and I didn’t even need to bring them into the bed with me. Dope. Okay, there are actually not any grocery stores nearby. Okay, we’re just going to walk around and see what we find. I think I found a sports stadium. Home of the Estonian Football Museum coming in autumn 2025. So when you guys come here, if you guys are over here, there might be a soccer museum. Did this guy use bedliner to paint his truck? Woof. [Applause] That does not look good, my dude. Here we go. Anatolia restaurant. Anatalia is a place in Turkey, which means this is a Turkish restaurant. Uh, table for one. Thank you so much. I’m here for one thing in particular, believe so. Can is this the the mutton, the peel off? No. Thank you so much. If you guys have been watching my channel for a while, you’ll know this is not what I came in here expecting to be eating. But it’s basically meat and rice, so that’s fine. $23. See, I don’t understand why these bikes don’t get stolen. They’ve got a battery that’s valuable. Like, they’ve got valuable components here. Why is it that companies don’t need to worry about people messing with their bikes, but individual people have their bikes stolen all the time? Like if you’re going to steal a bike, steal it from a company that has insurance. Oh, good morning everybody. That capsule is great. I’ve got to stay in capsule host more often. They’ve got its own fan and lights and TV and [Music] [Applause] just coming out here to make sure the bike’s still there. Hey, it is cool. Oh, my tire is flat though. Like very flat. I’m curious if I ran over something or That’s That’s going to put a stall on our trip. I have one spare inner tube, but I would much rather figure out why it’s flat first. So, we’re going to inflate it and then we’re going to see if we can’t hear where the sound is coming out from. Okay, we got it semi-inflated. Now, we just need to see if we can’t find like a nail in here or something. I don’t have any of that slime in these tires where there’s nothing that will patch it. Regretfully, getting an inner tube for this bike is going to be even harder than it’s been for past bikes because these tires are even larger. The ones we had before were 4 in across. These ones are 5 in. I looked on Amazon. I cannot find extra inner tubes for this bike at all. So, I don’t even know. I have one spare inner tube for this that came with the bike, and if that one pops, game over. Okay. Okay. Yeah, even just walking the bike down the sidewalk, it’s already losing air. There’s something wrong with tire. I’m not sure if there’s a nail in there or if something ripped somehow. I think it was fine last night. I’m confused. You would think if there was something causing it to lose air this fast, it would be readily apparent, but I have no [ __ ] clue where the hole is. Like, I’m not kidding. I have looked through every inch of this tire. We only have one spare. So, I guess what we need to do is we need to take this wheel off, take the shell off, see if we can’t figure out what punctured the inner tube here, but put the spare on and then maybe keep going. I don’t know. I’m considering if we should wait and like order another tube online, but I honestly could not find another one of these because I know that this and Helsinki, the town right on the other side of the bay from us, are the only two major cities left. As soon as we leave Helsinki, we have no access to like bike shops or anything like that. If we don’t find another spare tire, then that means that the entire ride up to the top of the continent, we will just be hoping that we don’t get a puncture. Let’s go head to a bike shop and see what our options are. I rode over this yesterday. It’s possible that I just like cut my tire and I don’t have like a nail in it. It’s possible I just rode over some glass and sliced it. Luckily, there’s a bike shop like right here. Let’s see what we can find. Okay, we got a tire patch kit and we got some sealant. They don’t have the brand that I like, so we’re just going to hope that this stuff works. God damn it. The bike keeps falling over because the tire isn’t inflated to keep it balanced. This looks like it’s probably a good enough spot. Turn the bike upside down. We take the outer shell off. With the outer shell off, we have access to the inner tube and we can really inspect it to figure out where it’s popped. Thanks to the good oldfashioned saliva method, I found a hole. Is it the only hole? I don’t know. The way these patch kits work, the first thing you do is you take sandpaper to rough up the area so that the glue will adhere to the inner tube. Well, then we’re going to take some of the adhesive, also called rubber cement. We’re going to stick it on the area. You can see that it’s bubbling up. I’m going to wait to use this stuff later because I don’t actually have a good way to get it in the tire. I’ve tried that before where you just like squeeze it in and everything goes wrong. I’m going to save this until we’re like out in the middle of nowhere and a tire pops and I need this. So, um, we’re just going to stick to patches for right now. Getting the shell back on is proving to be a real [ __ ] though. Okay, now we just blow it up and test it. All we can do now is wait and see if it holds air. If it does, then the patch worked. If it didn’t, then we might need to use a spare tire. And uh, really hope that patch works. I’m glad that this happened here rather than like 2 days from now. We’ll come back in a few hours. If it hasn’t tipped over, then that means it probably worked. We did miss the boat, though, so we’re not going to be riding with that guy. It’s kind of tragic. Okay, 24 hours later, she has not tipped over. The tire is still inflated. I think that works. Also, I just want to say I am impressed with Estonia. This bike has been sitting here for like 48 hours behind a hostel just out in the middle of nowhere and nobody has even touched it. Really impressed with you guys. Okay, now we just hop on a boat and head to Finland. Okay, one of these boats is us. I have no idea which one. We’re looking for something called Viking Lines. I found a building. Let’s see if it is what we’re looking for. I paid 30 bucks for the ferry and it’ll take like 3 hours to get from here to Finland. Here we go. Selfcheckin update. Because we have a bicycle, we actually need to go to the vehicle check-in, which is functionally the same as if we had a car. So, we need to go through the same process that people with a car go through. [Music] Oh, that’s a cool car. Hello. This is the QR code and passport. You have to go to line four. Line four. Yeah. I am confused. And we actually might need to just like wait in line because I don’t think the vehicle part is open yet. I think that’s our boat and it just docked. So, I’m just going to sit here and read. We might be ready to go. [Music] Boat. Boat. Boat. Boat. Boat. [Music] I’m just going to follow these guys. They probably know what they’re doing. I’m taking the laptop with me, but I’ll leave everything else on the bike. I think he thought that mine was a motorcycle because we’re surrounded by other people with motorcycles. I don’t know if we’re allowed to like board the ship proper yet. So, I’m just going to sit down and read. The boat is moving. So, we’ll be there in like 3 hours. Okay, I see little islands in the distance over there. So, I think that means that we’re getting close. And the music stopped. Let’s go get the bike. [Applause] Welcome to Finland, everyone. Okay, this is where I expect all the expensive stuff to really start. And just like that, we are almost out of Helsinki. Okay, this is where it wants me to go. I’ve been having a pretty good day so far, so I’m going to trust it. Whoa. Whoa. Follow this way for 300 ft. Come on. Big rocks. Come on. There we go. Okay, I think this is where we’re staying tonight. It was 40 bucks and it is a shared room. Okay, it says we’re looking for a Buddha vase. I don’t see anything that looks like Buddha. Is that Buddha? Maybe that’s Buddha. Okay, it says that this is a shared room. Yeah. Really hoping we don’t have like a Frank and Charlie situation here. Okay. I think I’m understanding the shared room thing a little bit. So, I think my room is right here, but then there’s also like a bathroom here that people are able to come in and use maybe because the sauna is right here. Apparently, sauna are really popular in Finland. The sauna is right here. And I think that that means that people need to come through my room in order to access the sauna. Maybe if we’re really lucky, nobody else will be here today. That’s Maybe we’ll have the entire place to Ourel and the whole shared room thing just won’t matter. We are going to go get some groceries cuz I need dinner for tonight and then breakfast for tomorrow. We get to try our first Finnish grocery store. Oh, the grocery store is like right there. It’s called Aleppa. That sounds like the place in Syria. Or maybe it’s Afghanistan. I’m libertarian. I don’t know. Aleppa. Let’s see how egregious the prices are. Okay, I’m not even focusing. They They’ve just got weird food. Hey, but they have sandwiches. I think it’s a Maybe it’s just bread. No. Yeah, they got a sandwich. Oof. 245 for a Coke. Yeah, that’s that’s pretty rough. I’m actually That’s too I’m not actually going to get one. I am honestly surprised this was not as bad as Norway. I got cereal for breakfast tomorrow and I really hope the stuff I got was milk, but I don’t see anything like 1% or 2% on it, so I’m not sure. Okay, we are almost there. We’ve got about 10 days left. We’re more than halfway through the trip. So, I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.