Figure 8 On A Bike

Waiting for us in Tromsø were our friends Ellie and Cristobal. Ellie is actually from Wales in the UK, but Susan met her while they were both teaching English in Punta Arenas, Chile; Ellie met her husband Cristobal there as well, and somehow they've now moved about as far away from the southern tip of Chile as you can get on a globe. They were out working when we arrived but left us a key to get in and an adorable welcome message, which worked out really well because it gave us time to clean up a little. When you haven't seen someone for 7 years you probably don't want your smell to be the first thing they notice! Life's too short for bad maps

Back on the bus! This one from Alta was little bit busier but bikes still fit! We got off in Storslett to bike a big hill. That one was tough, but we were rewarded with our first view of the Lyngen alps. This view made me need to sing some hymns. I’ve sung Catherine McAuley’s Suscipe more times on this trip than I have since being at Mercy. We managed to find a campsite with this view. Got Ben to take a creek bath with me. It was cold so it was more of a creek squeak. Which was fine as we needed to be quick to hide from the bugs. Nice views during the bus ride to Storslett

We needed to leave Honningsvåg … But first shopping! We couldn't keep going on cold dinners and no caffeine in the mornings. So to the Intersport to replace as much of the missing items as we could. Managed to get almost the same style stove, some fuel for it, 2 pots, and the most important a pannier to put it all in. Picked up some lighters at the COOP and got made fun of for asking for a receipt – hey man if the airline is maybe going to pay for this that’s a coffee some day! Then back to the hotel to pack everything up and with a little bit more cursing from Ben off we went south for a 50 kilometer day. All loaded up, and Susan with an even number of bags!

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” - Philip Dick Camping at Nordkapp, we got our first experience of sleeping outdoors with the midnight sun. All those pesky, dark rain clouds had decided to leave, so at 3 AM it was bright and hot and we both woke up and sat around for a while. I ate a few cookies so that my body could keep making quadracep muscles. After a few more hours of fitful “rest”, we finally called it and got up to make breakfast and break camp. Our breakfast pastries were quite good, but the sugar-free lemon tea tasted like poison (we couldn’t brew our own due to the missing stove). Grocery shopping in a new country is always a guessing game; you win some and lose some. Nordkapp All the same, I was feeling much better than the previous day, so we went back to the visitor center and posed for a photo with the monument at this edge of the world. From Cabo Froward to Nordkapp, and many places in between, Susan and I’s time toge...

Well… that’s not quite right. The sun is always up in Honningsvåg, but the amount of actual sunshine varies quite a bit. We woke up at the hostel to a rich blue sky dotted with a few clouds. Since we paid for breakfast, Susan got the chance to try out all the tubes of food goo (her favorite was the “one with a fish on it”), and then we lugged our boxes outside to see if we could manage to assemble the bikes. Assembling the bikes outside the hostel