After more than twenty hours of cycling and partying, this year’s Tandem teams reached Lundagård on Saturday afternoon, exhausted but happy.
It was a cloudy, rainy sky that welcomed the twenty-two teams that had participated in the tandem relay from Gothenburg to Lund around 5pm, about three hours later than originally scheduled. The event had kicked off the previous evening at the fountain at Götaplatsen in Gothenburg. Twenty-four hours later, the approximately 1,000 students gathered around yet another fountain; this time the one in front of the white house in Lundagård.
Most of the students were wearing a look of happy exhaustion, not unlike a marathon runner who just crossed the finish line. Others still had the stamina to dance and sing, even though their voices sounded creaky through the megaphones just like everyone else’s.
Why Halland nation took home the prize for best party team for the third year in a row became obvious at this point too: In their dalmatian costumes, they were still very much in the partying zone, celebrating each of their relay teams individually.
Karim Saba, sittningsförmän for Krischan nation and one of his teammates, Vincent Beck, an exchange student from California, described the tandem experience as “fucking awesome but never again”. Karim rode the longest leg of the relay – about 26 km around midnight – and the fatigue of the exercise, and even more the fact of being awake for more than 36 hours, was clearly visible on his face.
Both of them had lost any sense of time during the Tandem. After some problems with their bike – flat tires and malfunctions with the gears – and a few unwanted detours along the route due to some faulty coordination, all Karim wanted was to “shower and sleep” and “maybe order a pizza”.
Blekingska nation won the prize Lilla Bergshackan, while the medicine students, the Corpus Medicum, dressed up as superheroes, were awarded the biggest trophy of the day – the one for coming closest to the previously determined, yet unknown, target time – by Hanna Bengtsson, chief coordinator of the Tandem this year.
Due to the cold weather and restrictions about taking a victory bath in the fountain, however, none of the winner teams ventured into the chilly water to celebrate their triumph. Instead, it was either back to the busses or go home and rest the cold, tired and partied-out limbs.
