First Norway Biking Day

Today would decide whether I could deal with the hills. I was depending on them to kick my metabolism into gear, but I didn’t know if my old-ass knees could handle so much pedaling with such a stupid amount of gear.

But first: A croissant!

I was reluctant to leave the downtown. It had a kind of quiet bustle that felt very Scandinavian, like a calmer version of the seaside town of Santa Cruz back home. But there was exploring to do!

I went for the Eurovelo 1 route, which passed through the city. Immediately there was a problem: The main cycling tunnel under the highway was closed for construction. I had to pedal over a busy bridge instead. Was this a sign of things to come?

On the edge of town I stopped to finish the croissant and the mocha I’d perched in the cupholder. I really like the cupholder. It’s an accessory and also a mission statement about the way I ride: Slowly enough that coffee never gets a chance to slosh out.

Below me I could see some of the construction that had caused me trouble earlier. Looks like a new train tunnel.

The first hill out of town was definitely steep, and there were more right after it. I had been expecting to enter dense forest as soon as the hills began, establishing a clear difference between Norway and the nearly forest-free Iceland coast I pedaled five years ago. Instead it was a patchwork, more like California. Summer in Norway equals winter in California, apparently — at least at sea level.

A few hills later I shot down into Langenes, a seaside town almost too small to have a name. All the properties by the water had this well-integrated look, like the residents had spent years – perhaps generations – thoughtfully building channels and stacking rocks to make use of the sea. I stopped a bunch of times to eat snacks and just look around, taking in the detail and working out the choices people had made over time.

A few kids on bikes rolled by in the opposite direction, and waved hello. A woman walking her dog stopped to mess with her phone, then said hello as she passed. Everyone was in a nice mood.

I found a very weather-beaten kiosk that listed activities for visitors. It came with a map that showed an earlier, mostly accurate version of the Eurovelo 1 route. It was a good sign that the drivers around me would be expecting cyclists. It also reminded me I had many days of hill ahead, before the land would flatten somewhat and become farms for a while.

Along with the kiosk, I found quite a variety of road signs:

I also began to see large amounts of cut firewood, organized in different ways. There were competing standards apparently. I knew Norwegians took their firewood seriously but it was amusing to see this fact playing out right along the side of the road.

It was also a reminder that I was immersed in a culture that had different – and more consistent – standards about the respect of other people’s property. Back in the USA there were similar places, but they were mixed in with places where, if you left a pile of organized firewood out by the side of a public road with no signage, it would soon vanish into the beds of passing pickup trucks.

The takers might even conjure some kind of justification in their heads as they loaded it up, for example, “This must have been stacked here by the county utility after they cut down some tree that was too close to a power line. By grabbing some, I’m being helpful!”

Other things I passed:

Small chunks of farmed land with a single house and barn on them, looking suspiciously well organized, as though the owners were pursuing a lifestyle rather than a business.

Another burned-out property that appeared to be the victim of some heating device gone rogue.

Some very expensive looking boats, and a lot of boathouses built right onto the water. The tides didn’t move much in this region so the gaps could be small.

The combination of boats and manicured land reminded me of super-affluent regions in California. Over there, if you wanted a lifestyle like this, you first needed the land, which would probably cost you five or ten times more than here, and a similar amount in taxes in absolute terms. If you farmed it was very likely you were already wealthy, and farming for the hell of it — for example to make your own toy brand of wine.

There were of course serious farms in California – lots of them – but they tended to be inland, larger, and had a busier, slightly cluttered look, because the owners were constantly planting, repairing, harvesting, digging, fertilizing, et cetera.

Then again, I was probably reading too much into the distinction here, in economic terms. It’s likely that a small, manicured farm here is not just a lifestyle choice but is integrated enough with collective efforts in adjacent farms to make the profit margins worthwhile. It’s also likely I was seeing lots of small farms because there had been a country-wide movement to subdivide large ones, creating “cluster farms” run by individual families. The distribution of land ownership in California had taken a very different route.

(Fun fact: In terms of land area, Norway is only 10% smaller than California!)

After a particularly steep hill, I crossed a high bridge and descended into another small town. It was a long day of riding and I was running low on snacks. Eventually I turned to the bag of brazil nuts I’d carried all the way here from a Sacramento food co-op. Bland, but filling…

In the evening I reached the town of Mandal, and stopped just long enough to buy a massive pile of Thai food. The campground was in a forest on the west side.

This time, if the tent started deflating in the middle of the night, I didn’t have nearby branches for attaching lines. All I could do was hope…

It had been a long day with a lot of hills, but definitely a success. My legs had done well. No stiffness, just a general whole-body feeling of exhaustion, and the Thai food was helping with that.

Onward to the next day!