Figure 8 On A Bike

View from the train

We woke up at Ben's mom's. She had made us a welcome home basket complete with Nebraska themed t-shirts which meant we had something clean to wear! Which was great as our travel clothes reeked. We enjoyed delicious waffles for breakfast with Greg and Sue and then borrowed their car to head to my parents'. My dad was home with the littles and between hugs and conversation and entertaining children we managed to do a load of laundry, add our luggage to the our hoard in the basement and locate some respectable looking clothes for Easter the next day. On Sunday we made it to Easter service with Ben's mom and Greg and Jacob. We were offered coffee at the entrance, and my raised Catholic self was very confused and said "no, thank you" and thinking 'that's allowed!?!'. We probably could have used the coffee as we were still fighting jet lag. After the service, the family converged at Greg and Sue's and we got to see most of Ben's family. T...

It was time for us to say goodbye to Peak GuestHouse. We ended up being there for a month! Which was maybe a little too long to stay in a guesthouse. We said goodbye to Aysel and took one last transfer with Ocan to drop off Hong-Yen at the airport. After dropping Hong-Yen off, Ocan pulls into a roundabout to leave the airport area and immediately gets hit by a motorcyclist. This occured across the street from the police station so first responders got to the man quick. The motorcyclist left in an ambulance and we were directed to the police station. Ben and I stayed out of the way while Ocan went in and out of the police station with various papers from the van. Finally, he was released and he drops us off at the bus station. Our vague feelings of unsafety while driving in Türkiye were justified. We bought our bus tickets for Çıralı , a sea side beach town with climbing access. The bus ride was a beautiful ride down the coast. The bus dropped us off on the side of the highwa...

Hello dear Figure 8 Readers! My name is Hong-Yen, and I’ll be this week’s guest blogger. Saturday, Nov 25 Daily journal entry - No sleeping in. Breakfast and second coffee. Shuttle to the airport. What should have been a short flight turned into a long day of delays due to weather. We finally get to the guesthouse at 9PM after a long and somewhat perilous drive in the storm.   Our last second coffee at the airport

Views of Antalya and the surrounding peaks from the top of a climb As our plane entered the skies above Türkiye, Susan and I craned our necks to catch glimpses of the mountains that began to appear below. "Wow, look at those peaks." "Is that snow?" "I don't think so, it can't be snow, it's too warm still..." "Then what is it?" "Rock, I guess?" "Really? That can't be rock, there's so much of it." "Maybe it's a mine? I think I see a road leading up there..."

The morning after Storm Agnes, we had a lovely breakfast in the guesthouse. I stayed in their nice bathrobe as long as I could, but eventually we had to bike to the ferry in Ardrossan . We got our tickets and Ben did that thing he does where it is REALLY close to time to board (to my anxious brain it is very close, in reality there is just enough time, and in Ben's brain he has like all the time in the world) and he disappears to go to the bathroom. He barely showed up in time for us to board before the cars. PHEW. The ferry has a LOT of signs about not being mean to staff. We had seen a truck the day before with a sign angrily criticizing the ferry company. We chatted with some folks, I guess the ferry had been really unreliable recently and hasn't been updated in forever and people had been upset as it is the only way on or off the island so when it gets canceled it is very disruptive. *fingers crossed we don't get stuck on an island again On the boat towards Arran...

Waking up in Aberdeen we enjoyed the hotel breakfast for the second time (since that was our dinner), re-organized all our bags after the flight, and got on the bikes probably a little late, as if it was just another day with nothing new. Of course a lot of things *were* different; the culture shock started right away as we had to continually remind ourselves to ride on the left side of the road, adding extra confusion as we tried to interpret intermittent bike lanes and signs directing us on and off the sidewalk. We had a bunch of errands to do and supplies to get in order to be properly situated in a new country (it's hard to cook on the far end when you can't fly with stove gas or a lighter, and Norwegian climbing guidebooks aren't much help in Scotland). Any sense of "same-old same-old" definitely shattered when we arrived at the Asda (supermarket) and had to dodge waves of uniformed adolescents rolling through the snack and take-away sections, since a nearby...

With about a week remaining on our visa for Norway, we had time for one last excursion but also needed a real plan about how to escape to the UK from the Schengen zone. Storm Hans over the summer had washed away some of the rail bridges to Oslo, so managing to catch trains farther south wasn't looking good (not to even mention the number of different trains we'd need to get from Oslo to the UK). We'd really wanted to check out some of the southern Norwegian mountains, in the Romsdal area, and discovered that Widerøe (now our favorite airline) ran a flight from Molde to Aberdeen, in Scotland. Perfect! We definitely had some apprehension about disassembling and packing the bikes ourselves and then flying with them, but it sounded much more palatable than taking 6 different trains. As for how to get ourselves and the bikes all the way south to Molde (without having to pedal)... there's a boat! Boats are our favorite because there's no fuss (well, sometimes my seasick...

After what felt like a hectic time heading south from Torghatten, Nature gave us the perfect excuse to chill out for a bit at Flatanger - 2 days of solid-to-patchy rain. Flatanger is known for having, literally, the most difficult rock climb in the world, and most of the climbing there is centered around Hanshallaren, a cave carved out from remarkably sound and solid granite. The elite-level climbers still had plenty to stay busy with, since the hardest routes keep you out of the rain by climbing upside-down all around the cave, but anything we could even think of attempting was pretty well drenched. The amenities at the campground were basic, though; we had a nice, dimly-lit but mostly-clean barn to hang out in, stocked with worn surplus recliners and a tired Ikea sectional that *probably* didn't have any mice living in it, and even though it was equipped with a whopping 3 power outlets the lack of internet access meant we couldn't be terribly useful in there. So we biked ba...

From Sandnessjøen we started with mostly flat and good weather biking. We stopped at a really old church (Alstahaug church, built in 1150) and looked inside at the deep walls designed to keep out the cold and tried to remember Christian symbolism as we stared at the art behind the altar. From the church, I sped down the road fleeing allergies as Norwegians cleaned out their barns. I felt mighty proud of myself for catching up and passing the e-bike tour group. I got to the next ferry in Tjøtta and it looked about ready to leave but the worker told me they were waiting 10 minutes. Ben just made it, literally biking onto the ferry right before they closed the ramp. So satisfying! We rode on, past a sculpture landscape art installation that was a little underwhelming, but also impressive for the work that must have gone into it once you thought about it. A little too much to interpret in this artwork

Still climbin' Typically, when you climb a big ol' mountain in the US, you get an "alpine start", meaning stupid early in the morning, so to climb Vågakallen we set our alarms for 4 AM and hit the trail by 6 (which is still far too late to be a "true" alpine start). Well, that's not a good way to do things in Norway. The trail was absolutely SOAKED from the nighttime dew, and it wasn't long before we were dripping as well. And, despite the clear forecast, the peak itself was obscured in an impenetrable blanket of sea fog. Even though we'd done most of the approach, it was about 9 AM and the fog showed no signs of lifting, so we were discouraged and turned back. Several other groups passed us heading up and seemed determined to wait out the fog. Pretty lighting in the early morning on the approach to Vågakallen

The climbing episode! Now just a few kilometers outside Henningsvær , we'd set up the tent near the Gandalf Wall crag at a free climber's camping area. Besides the unbeatable price and proximity to some of Lofoten's most well-trafficked routes (and the wild blueberries that were all just ripening), it's also a popular spot because of the unlimited free water! Some enterprising climbers "tapped" the water pipe into Henningsvær, so now gallons of fresh water just flow out onto the rocks. Either it's not that much in the grand scheme or this part of Norway just has that much water to spare. Collecting a little free water at the campsite

It was finally time to reach the fabled Lofoten archipelago, a promised-land of world-class climbing! Waking up at Trollskåla, the first step was to bike to Melbu and snatch some groceries before we caught the next ferry. The morning was gray and groggy (and the ocean smelled like sulfur?) and my allergies had finally also made it across the Atlantic. I was cranky at Susan in the grocery store, trying not to scratch my eyes out, so she gave me an antihistamine and sent me to a bakery for pastries and coffee. We were in much better moods getting on the boat. A nice guy from Finland gave us some stickers and told us how he bikes about 150 - 200 km a day and has done this route 3 times now. Nice... will you take some of our bags? Views just after getting off the ferry

July 9th started off on Senja with a slow morning and a slow uphill. We happened to see Bent driving in (he is easy to spot in a conspicuous neon green zombie apocalypse SUV) as we slowly pedaled back up the tunnel. After the tunnel there was still more hill, we made it up a pretty long hill and at the top we talked to some other bike packers from Switzerland who were battling the same flies we'd fought the other day. They looked like they had been doing this for a while and were very friendly. There was a lovely ride downhill with views of Segla Mountain and then another tunnel. Views of the other side of Segla mountain

We left Tromsø slowly. Definitely were delaying some goodbyes with a long breakfast and more rounds of tea and coffee. Some readers may know that Ben and I tried to rid ourselves of caffeine addiction before we went on this trip. That is out the window at this point. Cristobal is far too good at caffeine preparation between being Chilean and thus maté, being married to a Welsh woman and thus tea, and living in Norway and thus coffee. Leaving Tromsø we had to tackle the big hill to get to the other side of the city...I had to push. My excuse was I saw another guy pushing his bike...so I do what the Norwegians do. We made it out of town without any extra stops and head on our way. The Eurovelo 1 route had some construction on it so we detoured along the coast. We weren't too upset by this change as it removed a lot of elevation gain. We also got to check out some ancient petroglyphs which was pretty neat. Susan coming up the bridge out of Tromsø

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

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!