Rearranging my schedule

Today instead of continuing north like I planned, I turned the bike south and went back into Haugesund, and set up in a café.

I’d agreed to start the new job in less than a month, and I needed time at home to deal with the jetlag and make some repairs. So I had between two and three weeks left in Europe. How much time did that give me in Norway? What should I do with the bicycle and all the gear? The box for transporting it on a plane was still in Amsterdam. How would I get the box and the bike in the same place, and then get it on a plane?

I sipped a decent mocha and ate a sandwich, watching kids play on the weird jungle-gym art installation outside. What if I put the bike in storage, somewhere in Norway, so I didn’t have to fetch the box? I wouldn’t need to take the bike apart either, which would save me an entire day. How much further could I ride in the remaining time?

Travel logistics is not something I decided to get good at when I started bike touring. But it turns out that putting together a plan from a hundred disconnected types of transport, with enough flexibility to deal with delays and bad weather, is often required. You’re not just moving yourself; if it was just that, you could pick a destination and take a ride-share to an airport and cover any distance. What makes it hard is, you’re also responsible for a rather large object festooned with lots of your possessions.

Should you:

• Take a ferry?
• Take a train? (Do they carry bikes?)
• Take the bike partially apart and shove it into the luggage compartments of a cross-country bus?
• Take a plane, and try and find a packing box locally that can carry your bike?
• Rent a small van and chuck the bike inside?
• Rent a U-Haul-style box truck from a moving service and chuck the bike inside?
• Rent a pickup truck from a home improvement store and chuck the bike in the back?
• Ask a hotel or some local business to store your bike or luggage?
• Mail your camping gear home, and rely on hotels, hostels, and AirBnB?
• Call up a local friend or co-worker, and ask for aid?
• Call up a non-local friend, and ask them to ship something for you?
• Ask them to join you, and to bring the empty airline box with them?

I have done all of these things, on different trips over the years. Part of what’s hard is narrowing the options down, but the real problem is finding a chain of things – riding, buses, trains, etc – that moves you over some large distance that, for some reason, you just don’t have the time to cycle any more.

I spent a couple of hours dragging lines around on maps, feeling out the transport options. While I did that I noticed another bike tourist had spotted my bike, and decided there was safety in numbers, and parked his bike nearby and wandered away to find food.

I eventually learned some key things:

• There’s a ferry from Leirvik to Bergen (Skyss 2080 route) https://reise.skyss.no/
• There’s a ferry from Bergen up to Sogndal (890 route) https://booking.norled.no/
• The train from Trondheim to Oslo passes close to the other side of the mountain pass I was planning to cycle

By using these, I could bypass over a month of riding, and still get to do three major things:

• Check out the city of Bergen.
• Tour the ancient stave church in Ornes.
• Ride over the mountain pass next to Jotunheimen National Park.

I set to work building a chain of campground, hotel, and AirBnB reservations, plus ferry and train tickets, that got me from Haugesund to Oslo via the mountain pass, and also divided the days into rideable chunks of distance and elevation. Just as it was taking shape, I saw two people walk up to my bike outside and start talking and pointing at it. I decided to go pack my leftovers into a bike bag, giving me an excuse to say hello.

Turns out they were two German tourists. One of them was proficient in English enough to mostly understand what I was saying, and to respond she spoke German into her phone and read the translation out loud to me a few seconds later. They asked questions about the bike and my route through Norway, and wished me good fortune on my trip. Nice people! I handed them one of my silly tour cards and we took a group photo.

On my way back inside I chuckled at how much less warm clothing I was wearing. Was I used to the Norwegian weather already? Was my metabolism cranking? Who knows. The locals seem to run a spectrum between just as bundled as these Germans, and running around in shirts and jeans. (Those are mostly young people.) I see a lot of people my age wearing what I think of as “hiking pants”, but also folks in jeans and even some of those ass-hugging stretchy yoga pants, though always paired with more layers above the waist.

There are also lots of little kids running around in child-sized “hiking pants” and jackets. I guess these are rain pants? Snow pants?  Something I don’t know enough about, being a spoiled Californian!

I finished building the itinerary as far as Oslo. From there I had another decision to make, and I couldn’t decide yet: Do I put the bike in storage, and promise myself to return to Norway in the future? Or do I transport the bike on another string of boats and trains all the way to Amsterdam, pack it up, and fly it home so I can use it there?

The additional transport, plus the baggage fees that I’d need for the bike and gear, were something beyond $1000. Then there was the cost of bringing that stuff back, if I toured in Europe again. Some quick searching showed I could rent a tiny storage unit in Oslo for an entire year, for about half that much. Hmmm.

The café was closing, so I went riding in search of fish and chips. All the pictures on the menus looked uninspiring: Pre-shaped hunks with bread crumbs on them, instead of batter. I turned my nose up at them and bought some thai food, then chomped it while watching my daily Escaflowne episode back at the hotel. I had booked two days, giving me another day to plan, and then it would be time to hit the road with a much stricter schedule…