Prologue: June 20th, 2023

At about 8 PM on Tuesday 6/20, some 28 hours after leaving Susan’s house on Monday (35 hours including the time change), we finally arrived at Hostel Vanderhjem outside Honningsvåg.

Getting dropped off at Eppley Airfield by Susan's dad

 

Checking in at Eppley in Omaha cost us about $680 once all the baggage was added. Flying Omaha to Minneapolis went fine, but our flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam was delayed, and we had a tight connection on the other side. Despite the fancy lighting tricks in the cabin and the two pretty dang good meals provided by KLM, we didn’t really sleep, but stayed up watching “The Last of Us” on HBO and fretting about whether we’d make our Oslo flight (and whether our bags would make it with us).

In Amsterdam Susan and I ran through the airport and showed up sweaty at the gate for our flight to Oslo, only to look a little foolish because that flight was also delayed. We had plenty of time. In Oslo we watched with bated breath as our bags rolled out on the carousel; one pannier, two panniers, a backpack… I went to the “Oversized Baggage” section and with great relief saw our 2 giant bike boxes. (Well, they were Trek bike boxes, although Susan’s box did contain a Giant 😉.) However, we ended up one bag short – one of Susan’s panniers didn’t make it to Oslo.

She waited in line at the baggage counter quite patiently, realized she needed to take a ticket to be helped, waited patiently some more, and then patiently worked with the clerk to submit a lost baggage report. We wheeled our still formidable array of luggage out through customs, through the Oslo airport, and upstairs to the departures area to check in for our Norway domestic flight. It was obnoxious but thankfully we found the queue for our airline totally empty. After checking everything in *again* (although for only about $200 this time), and clearing security, I wandered around the Oslo airport searching for a pair of headphones to replace the dear pair that I’d lost during our first flight from Omaha.

Boarding the puddle-jumper to get to Honningsvåg

 

From Oslo it was up to Tromso, and then one more change of planes onto a little, literal “puddle jumper” – a twin turbo-prop that stopped at 4 other small airports before landing at our final destination, Honningsvåg. But lo-and-behold, our remaining 5 bags and 2 big boxes had made it!

It had been 25 hours since our first flight left Omaha. Susan and I were both rather loopy, caught in that liminal air-travel space where you don’t know what time it is or where you are or what you have with you or where you are going but all the scenery is beautiful and everything is strange and exciting and foreign and a low-grade anxiety pulses in the back of your head as you cycle through a 1000 different thoughts, or maybe it’s the same thought 1000 different times.

Landed at the Honningsvåg airport!

 

A couple of very kind young women at the Honningsvåg airport not only called us a taxi, but also offered to take our bike boxes to the hostel (which was quite lucky, because there was no way those boxes were fitting in the taxi). We saw some evidence of others assembling their bikes at the Honningsvåg airport, but that task seemed daunting and implausible in our current state. We checked in, found our room, showered, and promptly did our best to disappear into sleep. Thank goodness the room had heavy, dark orange curtains, because at 9:30 PM the sun was bright and clear. Welcome to northern Norway.