Guest Blog: Bike-Packing Across Scandinavia at 64 (Days 25 and 26)

Day 25: train to Bodo, Norway (.5 miles, 586.5 total miles)

1 July 2024: Monday 

Around 5 am, I am awake in the cramped sliver of hotel living space. Since my train doesn’t leave until almost 11 pm, and the late checkout is at 2 pm, I have nine hours to kill. 

But the additional hours are oddly relaxing. Typically, my anxious nature would increase my stress until I find my seat on the train, but I have learned to tame my anxiety a little better. It’s a good exercise for character growth. 

I make coffee in the room, heating water in my new electric kettle and pouring hot water through a makeshift coffee filter fashioned from the top of a soda bottle. It works surprisingly well. 

Breakfast is included today, so read while I eat tiny croissants that I stuff with bacon and drink orange juice. The rest of the offerings are not worth mentioning. Even my room coffee is better than theirs. 

I read until 9:30 am when I walk over to Bike Brothers and purchase the bike bag that I will need for the train to Sweden from Karel. Although they don’t open until 10 am, he lets me in, makes the sale, and gives me some suggestions about using the bag. Essentially, try not to dismantle too much of the bike. 

My hands are now a wreck. Although I apply cream about ten times a day, they haven’t recovered from the shower two days ago when I washed my clothes and wrung them out and dangled them all over the tiny shower pod and across the room. The itch and burn, spore-like hives have formed on the pads of my palms, between my fingers, and on the tips amid the blisters and scabs. A constant process of hives appearing, bubbling with blisters, bursting to reveal vulnerable flesh, forming scabs, drying and cracking, to permit a fresh wave of hives and blisters that have become a daily routine. Although I haven’t used riding gloves since Friday, the showers, hand laundromats, and handwashing ensure the perpetuity of the disorder.

I have become the master hand washer of clothing, almost perfectly masking the stench of body odor and cycling sweat with cheap laundry pods. One whiff of the air dried laundry and I am certain that all but the closest of passersby will be unaware of just how strong and unpleasant I smell. 

A little before 2pm, I pack Heidi, check out, and roll her into the storage room. As I walk outside, I notice two good bikes with helmets propped in the entryway out of sight of receptionist, vulnerable to theft. How can owners do this to their children?

I walk down to the port and order a Moose Sausage from The Sausage Factory, one of the five food trucks permanently affixed in a semicircle on the place where the streetcars pass every few minutes and throngs of tourists stroll. A woman kneels so that her toddler can take a bite of one end of her foot-long sausage while she bites into the other end. I eat my sausage at the standing table, which I can never get used to. 

Just around the corner of the ornate town hall, I find a coffee cup for my wife at a souvenir shop. The owners are a couple. A tall Norwegian man with a British accent and his Asian wife. He tells me he’s been to Las Vegas. “The only city I ever visited where the pilot wished us good luck after we landed.” He’s probably been using that line on American customers for the last two decades.

One good thing about the hotel is that it has lots of comfortable lobby space. I select a chair in the corner and read, drink coffee, charge my phone, exchange text messages on WhatsApp and Messenger with family and friends, check the news, and read more until I finally finish the second book in the trilogy. But I have had my fill of the Winter World for now. While the narratives are fascinating, they lack a depth of character description and detail, as if the author is rushing through the story to get to the end (although they are 450 pages each).

I find a few more potential reading options and download the samples. I walked up to the 7-Eleven a few blocks away and buy a sausage. For one third the price, it is better than the one at The Sausage Factory. Across the street, I order two chocolate cookies. The man lifts the first one off the display with tongs, but he doesn’t like it for some reason. It is bent and hard. So, he sets it to the side and gives me the two best looking ones.

I leave the shop and head back to the hotel reading something on my phone, but a couple blocks later, I see Bike Brothers. I have made a wrong turn. Since I have time to kill, I don’t stress. I just turn around and head back in the right direction.

When the clock ticks down to about 2 hours before departure, I ride and push Heidi the seven blocks to the Oslo Central Station. Every five minutes, a recorded mechanical female voice on the loud speaker explains first in Norwegian and then in English that some train routes have been cancelled through August due to scheduled construction. Transfer buses have been established to carry passengers to key destinations. Indeed the main Solari board has an entire section dedicated to cancellations and another section for transfer buses. 

My first train was scheduled to leave at 10:56 pm to Trondheim, where I am supposed to wait an hour and then board a train to Bodo (pronounced boda, rhyming with soda). Since I am so early, my trip is not even registering on the Solari board. I need help.

Under an information umbrella stands a half dozen train station employees, available to direct, guide, and advise uncertain passengers like me. A young lady tells me my train to Trondheim is on time. At 10:56 pm, it will arrive at Platform 4. 

Heidi and I stroll over to the Platform 4 entrance. The overhead platform sign reads: 10:50 pm train to Trondheim has been cancelled.

Odd. My train indeed goes to Trondheim and is scheduled to leave from Platform 4, but the planned departure time 10:56 pm, not 10:50 pm. 

So I go back to the young woman, and she tells me the same. A train official who is about her age but wearing civilian clothes—probably on his way home—tells me that I should wait until 20 minutes before planned arrive and then find one of the train officials on the platform and ask them. This makes sense.

A veiled, Muslim woman about 25 years old adds, “Yesterday, the same thing happened. They marked it cancelled because of a time change. When it changes by a few minutes, they cancel it and reschedule it for another time.” That also makes sense particularly because the platform sign said the 10:50 train had been cancelled. My train is supposed to be 10:56 both according to the first young woman and according to my paper ticket.

So, I thank them and go look for my comfort food. A sausage. But there is no place to lock Heidi up where I can watch her. The station is thick with passengers milling about. Some of them would love to bike-nap Heidi, I am sure. So I push Heidi up into a 7-Eleven with no doors inside of the station and ask the young Pakistani woman if I can come inside with the bike.

She gives an empathetic nod, and I order a sausage and a Pepsi Max. After I pay, Heidi and I go down the ramp to Platform 4. Heide and I are alone on the platform, with good reason. It is windy and cold down there. But Heidi doesn’t seem to mind. After I finish my third sausage of the day, it is approaching 9:30 pm. I begin thinking that if I am transferred by bus to somewhere around the construction work but not all the way to Trondheim, I have to leave early. Buses usually are slower because they have to deal with stoplights and traffic. 

So we roll back into the main station. This time, all of the information people have gone. Shift change?

I park Heidi by column beside a Somali man speaking on the his phone so I can monitor the Solari board. When the Somali sees me arrive, he continues talking but bends down and picks up his plastic bag of valuables or purchases and walks away without ever missing a beat in his conversation. The way I look and smell, who could blame him.

Indeed the bus transfer section has a statement that I missed before: Buses leave before the schedules train time. 

For the next half an hour, I watch Heidi closely to prevent bike-napping and study the overhead board. While I am not really stressing, I am not looking forward to a confusing bus ride. What a hassle!

Finally, my train to Trondheim appears on the board as departing at 10:56 pm from Platform 4.

So, I head back. This time, however, the platform is about half full. I push Heidi down to Section E, where Car 4 will stop. Car 4 is where Heidi will spend the trip. A young 35-year-old German man pushes his bike near me and checks his phone, like me.

When the train comes, a very nice train official in charge of the cafe car, asks me to wait while she boards and unlocks the door. Two minutes later, she helps me load Heidi. And the German man helps me lift Heidi in the air so that her front tire rests on a thick, steel hook. Then I help him with his. 

I go find my window seat in Car 5, close enough I can check on Heidi from time to time. 

A young Arab man in his 30s takes the aisle seat beside me. He speaks on the phone softly for about 20 minutes. His talking doesn’t bother me, he takes the center armrest. 

Although I am really tired, I can’t sleep. Just like an airplane, my legs and arms and head just can’t find simultaneous comfort. The seat reclines enough, but nerves and blood vessels in my arms and legs seemed to become pinched in just about every position. I cross my arms, I uncross them and lay my hands on my lap, I try one arm on the deep window sill, I peel off my hoodie and bundle it as a pillow, I recross my arms. Nothing works. 

Just before midnight, outside the window, however, I witness magic. The sunset casts a surrealistic light show against the dark mountains, over the long stretches of cold, gloomy water. The light gray sky contrasts the dark purple clouds, dangling from the heavens, as if Nature is painting on the canvas of the universe.

This is Norway!

Day 26: Arrive in Bodo, Norway (1.5 miles, 588 total miles)

2 July 2024: (Tuesday)

In cafe car, a blond woman in her 20s wearing a black tracksuit talks on her phone and writes notes in a notepad. Perhaps she is a university athlete studying for a class, or a physical education instructor preparing her class plan. 

I have given up on sleep in the early hours of the morning. The sun has not arisen so it is well before 3 am. So, I drink coffee and read. I have landed on Recon, by Tarah Benner, a post-apocalyptic novel. It is OK, but not great. 

A heavy man in his 40s and his girlfriend about the same age sit between the woman in the tracksuit and me. The couple drink coffee, joke, and occasionally laugh with the young woman. The man constructs a paper plane and announces he will send it in flight in my direction. His partner hops to her feet and steps into the narrow aisle to receive it, but once in the air, the aircraft strays off target and nearly hits me. They couple laughs with embarrassment, excuse their error, and move closer to the center of the car for the next flight. 

Meanwhile, a man in his thirties sits in a booth diagonal from me and huddles over his coffee with a foot of dark brown hair dangling over his face while he stares out the window. I wonder if he always keeps combing his hair to cover his eyes or if he is particularly disheveled this morning.

The four of us are the dregs of Midnight Train from Oslo to Trondheim while the rest of the world sleeps.

Back at my seat, I notice that the people in the front rows have gone. These are premium seats that face each other. The Arab knows that. He has already taken up the accommodation on the left of the aisle stretching his legs out on the seat across from him. 

With a little more space to myself, I experiment with my feet, arms, and head, trying endless combinations of positions while hoping one will allow me a little sleep. But it is no use. I copy the Arab’s actions and squat in the remaining set of premium face-to-face seats, prop my feet on the seat across, and nod off.

Maybe 15 minutes later, I am awaken by the blond woman in the track suit who has sat down opposite me just one seat over. She has a large, heavy duffle bag, backpack, and three notebooks. As I move my feet to give her more room, she insists I keep my feet resting in the seat. She is mumbling in Norwegian and I incoherently grunt some sounds in English, but we communicate.

In this position, I am able to glean another 45 minutes of light sleep over the next couple of hours. The woman is still meticulously combing through an academic article or chapter from a textbook on her phone while jotting the occasional note. I try some different combinations, but by 5 am, I know I am defeated: Sleep is not in the cards for now, so I go to the cafe car to grab a cup of coffee.

“Is it a refill?” A different woman asks. The first woman must have gotten off the train somewhere. 

“Yes,” I say. She waves me off.

As I sip my coffee, I stare outside. Drizzle sprinkles the train window. The sun is up properly now. The train slices through miles of picturesque landscape. Each vista more enchanting than the last.

A sole pony stands on a green hillside at the edge of a farm. Rivers wandering through Forests of Scots pine and Norway Spruce and thin strips of birch. Clouds of fog drift over a tranquil valley here. A tiny network of roads woven through dozens of hillside farms and homes there. 

At Trondheim, I meander back to Car 4 to rejoin with Heidi. The German is already there. A Norwegian woman in her 70s has joined us. I help the German lower his bike to the platform. The Norwegian woman wants no help from young whippersnappers like the German or me. She hops down first to leave her saddle bags, then comes back to the car as the train attendant helps her lower the bike to the platform. The German helps me lower my bike. 

We get in line at the elevator, go down to the tunnel at Level 1, cross the tunnel, and ride the elevator back to Level 1. The tiny station is filled with passengers. I lean Heidi against a ticket machine portraying a printer paper with a sign reading “I Ustand” (Out of Order is written in English below). 

The German is trying to call his family to video chat with them. He watches Heidi while I go to the toalett and then buy a coffee and a pastry.  

When I get back, the Norwegian lady has arrived. Both the lady and the German go for coffee. In the back of the station, a new young cyclist arrives. I want to wave him over to our group where we can watch his bike but he doesn’t see me. 

The German will ride his bike up to the northern most tip in Norway, he says. He has been averaging about 85 or 90 miles per day over 5 or 6 hours, until now. With the hills, he says he knows it will be slower going. That is double what I ride. 

Like me, he only started riding in 2020. 

The Norwegian lady and I head back to Platform 4, where our train is due to arrive soon. She will also go to Bodo, where she will ride her electric bike five days north. The other young man is Italian. His English is poor and my Italian is worse, so we don’t communicate much. I learn that he is 29 and will turn 30 tomorrow. 

The train surprises us with a last minute change to Platform 3, but that is right behind us, so we roll over there in about 30 seconds. Once we have secured our bikes, I go off to my seat, this time in Car 3.

I settle down for a 10-hour ride, hoping I can sleep better on this leg.

A Spanish couple and their two teenage kids sit in the premium seats, this time two rows in front of me. 

I do doze a little, wrestling a 15-minute span here, and 10 minutes there. After a while, I give up and head to the Cafe car. 

From the window, I witness fjord after fjord, moss-roofed cabins, hills blanketed with pine and spruce forests, verdant valleys covered with carpets of trees, fern, moss, and grass. As we approach the Arctic Circle, the population density decreases. I see fewer homes and barns and roads. Gorges of black rock facilitate the flow of rivers and streams. Lakes become more abundant. Tree ridges rise above tree ridges, escaping into the afternoon fog, reminiscent of Colorado. 

Hills streaked with tiny glaciers or wide swaths of snow have endured the nonstop summer daylight. Norway is home to more than 1600 glaciers. 

The occasional field is dotted with white round bails of hay. The occasional blacktop road sports the occasional car. 

The natural treasures give way to commerce, small buildings, homes, and streets as we enter small cities. 

I finish the book, but that is the last of Tarah Benner I will read. The book has its moments, but is it all about romance, emotional gut punches, predictable fear and violence for the sake of violence. The characters are one dimensional. I need to find something more sophisticated for the way back. My trip will be twice as long.

Bodo can’t come soon enough. I am fed up with the train by the time we get there. The Spanish family seems to talk incessantly. Vale, vale, vale… The blond haired lady beside me in her 50s is escorting her parents who are at least in their 70s, who sit directly in front of us. They are not problematic in any way. I just feel crowded. I stink and my clothes stink. The food is pretty bad on this train. And I can’t find a good book.

Marvin Gray’s novels are much better!

In Car 4, four more bikes have joined since we boarded. All have blocked me in. So, I help the Italian get his bike down first. The Norwegian lady lets me help her this time. I help the others. At least one is an American in his late 40s. 

I am the last to get my bike off the hook. The Italian has waited for me. He helps me get Heidi to the platform. We can’t communicate much, but he seems like a really good kid. 

Because I get turned around, I end up riding almost 2 miles to the apartment, when it should have just been over 1 mile. It is cold and windy, and my jacket is at the bottom of my under-the-seat bag. So I ride on awkwardly straddling my bulky bike bag, constantly balancing and shifting it back onto the center bar. I mounted it here for the train ride, not to cycle with. 

Amanda meets me at the dormitory-like apartment building five stories high that is constructed from concrete. 

“Are you going to take the bike inside?” she asks. “They will just take it.”

I love for Heidi to stay in the same room with me, so this is music to my ears. At the door, Amanda unlocks the studio apartment door and hands me the key and bids her farewell.  Not a nosy landlord. I like it.

I also like the apartment. No oven and no coffee maker or hot water kettle, but I still have mine. It has already paid for itself. 

Immediately, I head off for the nearby mall. They have these really interesting malls here that start in one block, cross over the street, move down a different block. They are not always rectangular or perpendicular either. So, I wander past one supermarket up the moving walkway to the second floor, cross down some hallways, down another moving walkway, around some corners and find a second supermarket. I buy several things I need, including laundry pods and sausage and head back to the apartment. It is already past 7pm.

Hundreds of people are flowing into the Nordslandshallen (Nordslands Hall, or the provincial convention center.) I ask a couple why and they say Bryan Adams is performing. That news cuts me like a knife.

I put almost all of my clothes in the washing machine and turn it on. I have the long sweat pants, but no shirt left. But I am not going out and no one is coming over, so I shower. 

Amanda writes me a message. “Hey. Forgot to put sheets for the couch, can my husband bring that?”

I first think about a shirt. I really would like to have a shirt on when he comes. But the only thing I can think of is my coat. But that would be even more awkward than being topless when he arrives.

No sooner do I answer, Yes, than a knock on the door erupts. 

Her husband hands me the sheet and pillow case for the sofa-trundle bed, and I ask him to help me with the WiFi code. He is a nice man, also in his 20s. He connects me. 

As soon as he is out the door, I put sausages in the skillet and remove my clothes from the washing machine. There is no dryer, but there is a clothes rack. It takes up most of the bathroom when fully extended, but it works. 

When everything is laid out, I noticed I am missing a black shirt. Then I remember: I put it in the bag where I carry my battery. Sure enough, there it is. Typical Craig.

I stream The Boys while I eat my sausages with Scandinavian potatoes salad. Not bad. Better than anything I got on the train. 

By 9:30 pm, I can no longer keep my eyes open. I haven’t slept more than three hours in the past 40. 

AirBnB Studio Apartment: Hålogalandsgata 128, Bodø, Nordland 8008, Norway ($95/night)