Guest Blog: Bike-packing Across Scandinavia (Days 23 and 24)

Day 23: Oslo, Norway (1 mile, 586 total miles)

29 June 2024 (Saturday)

According to one customer review, Bike Brothers is the best bicycle repair shop in Oslo. At 9:35 am, I am sitting on their steps, nearly half an hour before they open. The way I figure it, even if they are swamped today, they will take a look at Heidi since I am there waiting for them to open. 

A tall man in his 40s walked past me while I waited. I greeted him and he returned the greeting with a smile. 

Karel is the next person to arrive. In his late 30s or early 40s, he is one of the shop owners. About six foot tall. Black, messy hair and short black beard. He is a people person.

“Back tire?” he asked me, apparently confusing me with a customer who has called in.

“No, I didn’t call.”

“Oh ok,” he said as he unlocked the door, then holds it open as I push Heidi through. 

“I hear you are the best bike repair shop in Oslo,” I said. 

He smiles. “Where did you hear that?”

“A review I read.”

I explain that I have ridden about 800 or 900 kilometers and would like them to check her chain, replace it if necessary, and check her gears. They don’t seem to be changing the same as before.

“It should be ready by about 12 o’clock,” he said.

About a half a block away, I see the same man in his 40s that I saw earlier. He is resting on a stack of long IKEA boxes, sticking out of the hatch of his car. I walk past. Stop. And go back. 

“Do you need help?” I asked him.

He looks up at me from his resting position. It is clear he is catching his breath. 

After a short pause, he said, “I would love some help.”

When he stands, I realized he is about 6’3”. 

The big man’s name is Fred Archer, an economist and engineer working for Norway’s largest oil company: Equinor.

These boxes weigh around 100 pounds and are about 8 foot long, 18 inches wide. 

“Book shelves?” I asked while carrying the first from the car to the lobby of his apartment building. We stack it beside the one he has carried by himself.

“No, for hanging clothes.” They are wardrobes. 

After we’ve finished carrying the next four, he asked me. “Do you think you could help me carry the others to the apartment? We can use the elevator.”

“Of course,” I responded, albeit without much enthusiasm. 

The first box barely fits into the tiny elevator, but we make it into his apartment that smells and looks of remodeling: Fresh paint and drop cloths. We laid the box on the floor in one of the bedrooms beside two other boxes that he managed to get up by himself. 

While we carry the rest, Fred explained that he moves into the apartment in the next two weeks, so he has a lot of work to do. He also talks about the Norwegian economy based on a healthy relationship between the working population, government, and private sector. 

“So even if you work at McDonalds, you can save money to take a vacation to the United States.” His implication is one I have heard again and again. The middle class is large, the gap between the wealthy and impoverished is smaller than the US because taxes and government spending is intentional and harmonized, a workers out of pocket costs for health care, transportation, food, and other necessities is much less than other countries. Bernie Sanders has been pushing for these types of reforms in the US for a long time. But it is not going to happen in my lifetime.

These datapoints nourish other observations I have about quality of life, happiness index, universal health care, more conscious social protection programs, balanced budget, annual surplus, no national deficit, strong private sector, public security, culture of exercise, focus on renewable energy, and many other factors and measurements.

Regarding longevity, out of 237 countries, Sweden is 16th place and Norway 18th with a lifespan of nearly 84 years. Finland ranked 33 with nearly 83 years, Denmark 41 at just over 82 years, United States at 62nd place with just under 80 years of age. 

Without assigning any judgement, I ask myself, if four years more of longevity, increased happiness, and greater security are worth a reformed society. A society where the house we worked all our lives for cannot be taken away from us when we retire and get sick just to pay health care costs? A government that allows inheritance to flow freely to our children without taxation? At the very least, are there important lessons that the US can learn from these countries? 

Fred asked about my trip, and I explained that I hope to buy a ticket for Bodo above the Arctic Circle. 

Fred said, “I used to live in Bodo… It is the northern most city with an airfield… Not to provoke the Russians,” the Norwegian government decided not to construct an airbase any further north. Half of the city, he said, “was military base… and the other” he struggles for the word “civilian.” 

During WWII, Fred explained, “The Germans bombed all of the homes but saved the church and the brewery… the things most important to them.”

He also encouraged me to visit “Kjerringoy… it is a beautiful… This one place on the rocks where the sea comes in and there is this—I don’t know the word in English—maelstrom,” the powerful churning whirlpool in the sea.

This is Fred’s second language, and yet he knows the word maelstrom. This is my native language, and I only know maelstrom in the context of violent turmoil. 

After I bid Fred farewell, I head down to the train station, which is more than a mile away. 

A couple blocks away, I noticed a man in his 60s walking two schnauzers. One barked at me.

“She’s protective,” I tell him.

“No, she’s autistic,” Yan said. “She has a hard time communicating. So this is the only way she knows.”

“I didn’t realize that dogs could be autistic,” I said.

“Me either. Not until she was diagnosed… In the UK. I lived 20 years in the UK.” He went on to explain that autism in dogs is rarely diagnosed. Dogs are often abandoned because their owners give up up on them. They think that their behavior is bad. 

“In Norway, the doctors tell me to” he opens his fist as if discarding a piece of rubbish “to leave her… The British doctors give me” medicine to calm her.

“She is the sweetest dog,” he said.

A large woman walks past us nursing an infant on the go. 

Yan smiled. “That is a first… Norwegian freedom (for you.)”

 By now, I was at least a half a mile off course. It is hard to concentrate on Google Maps while walking and talking to a man about his autistic dog. So I excuse myself and get back on the right track.

Closer to the train station, I walked through a park, where a handful of demonstrators have staged a demonstration. Their protest signs remain and one man is playing Norwegian protest music, I suppose, but there is a lull in the demonstration on this Saturday morning.

At the train station, I stand in line for about 15 minutes before a customer service representative can help me. I buy tickets for Heidi and me from Oslo to Bodo and back. Sunday is booked, so I buy for Monday night. They tell me that they cannot sell me tickets to Stockholm with Heidi. I have to buy them online directly from the SJ.SE. I have the app, so I figure that I will figure it out later. 

I walk back to Bike Brothers, pay Karel $100 for the new chain and service, and ride Heidi back to the hotel. In the lobby, I decided pay for another night, since I know my train doesn’t leave until Monday night. I am bracing for the $175/night but by booking directly with them, the cost is only $85/night including breakfast. This is the first evidence that I have found that Booking.com and Orbitz are taking advantage of travelers. I need to be more thorough when booking in the future. Precisely what Tim told me in Denmark. 

With Heidi parked safely in the room, I go back outside and walk about a mile round trip to the supermarket. I get turkey, salami, cheddar cheese, bread, potato salad, bean salad, and yogurt for lunch and supper. I get a few other things, like napkins, coffee, and Coke Zero. Even at that, the total is $38. 

By the time I get back to the room, it is nearly 1pm and I have walked four miles. Blisters are forming on my feet. 

My two fingers on the right hand are still partially number. The rash on both hands are worse. I eat, start the new book, and nap. I wake up at 3 pm. I continue reading.

I am genuinely grateful for the break. While I love my riding trips, as difficult as they are, I also enjoy my down time. Finally, I have found a series of books that I am interested in. I haven’t streamed TV for, what, four nights? 

My body needs the rest. My legs are always sore, which I don’t mind much. The fingers on the right hand are a bit of a nuisance, though. And I am exhausted. After I eat again, I lay back down and read. 

By 6:30 pm, I cannot keep my eyes open. I succumb to a heavy, warm cloud of sleep. 

Day 24: Oslo, Norway (rest day)

30 June 2024 (Sunday) 

After nearly 10 hours of sleep, I awake to a swollen right hand. The rash is back in full swing, similar to the condition in Vietnam 18 months ago. However, the partial numbness in the two fingers of the right hand and the swelling are additional complications. 

To make matters worse, I have to wash a few clothes by hand, and when I am done my hands are washed of all natural oils. The detergent has also irritated them. Blisters form on the padded flesh below the last three fingers. And the blisters rupture. 

Throughout the day, I apply cream constantly to both hands, and I incessantly open and close the right hand in an effort to regain feeling in those fingers. Both measures help some. 

For some unknown reason, I have been thinking about John. When I worked in construction right out of high school, John was my supervisor. He was in his late 30s or early 40s. Born in Paducah, Kentucky, he carried a pronounced accent. He was thin and wiry, a bit shorter than me, but had an internal source of energy and optimism that was contagious. 

John called me and the rest of his close counterparts, Babe. “Thanks, Babe… Can you hand me that wrench, Babe?” 

I had a previous supervisor, whom I trusted and respected, who hated John. He told me, “He will get you killed” because his is so reckless and irresponsible on the job.

In construction, particularly working on heights, no one can afford to be irresponsible. 

So, before I even met John, I also disliked him. 

But soon after I was assigned to John’s supervision, I began to appreciate certain qualities. Most of all, he taught me, there is a solution to every problem.

“If there’s a will, there’s a way, Babe,” he once told me while installing fire protection sprinklers in a factory in Tennessee. 

I was also attracted to his optimism. He was highly intelligent although not particularly well-educated. So, the can-do attitude matched with the optimism, allowed him to find solutions that others might miss.

Once, I drove to his house on Saturday, where he helped me construct a waterbed frame, saving me several hundred dollars. I grew to like John a lot. Trust him.

However, he did have a bent toward carelessness. He had a multi-million dollar lawsuit against a tool manufacturer (ladders, I think) because he had fallen and broken both ankles many years earlier. 

In Tennessee, he allowed another co-worker to climb on top of a moveable overhead lifting beam the width of a warehouse. The other man pulled the controls up with him and rode the beam up and down the building installing steel pipe. 

In Atlantic City, we worked on the Golden Nugget Casino as it was being constructed in single digit weather. There were no walls on the construction at that time, and we were working on the third floor. So the ocean wind whipped non-stop across steel and concrete frame of the building to chill us to the bone. We would work for 45 minutes, then come back to the tiny construction trailer and warm up for 15 minutes. 

The work involved leaning two 20-foot extention ladders against steel columns and carrying a 200-pound pipe on our shoulders—he at one end and I on the other—step by step until we reached the top of the ladder. From there, we would balance ourselves and the pipe while attaching hangers, or harnesses, to I-beams. It was cold, dangerous work. I insisted that we rent one or two arial platform lifts to lift the pipe. We could stand in the buckets and safely lift the pipes to the required height, and then attach them to the beams. 

But John was in too much of a hurry for that. And he didn’t want to appeal to home office in Indianapolis for the additional equipment and costs. Plus, it had been my idea, and his ego wouldn’t allow him to succumb to the idea.

My 20-year old ego wouldn’t allow me to succumb to the idea that we were already working in horribly cold conditions and to add the additional danger of climbing those ladders and risk a fall. 

So, I nagged and pouted. And he became indignant and bossy. Finally, until one day, we had a bad argument. He called the office to report that he could no longer work with me, so I was recalled to Indianapolis. 

I was frustrated with the situation and embarrassed at my immaturity. But equally defiant, refusing to admit my mistake.

About six months later, I received a call from a friend. He explained that John was working in Indianapolis on a job where he was using a bucket lift to install pipes. He threw a bundle of hangers over his should, climbed 15 foot to the bucket, but he had forgotten to insert safety pins in the bucket, so when he grabbed the top rail, the bucket bounced. John lost his footing and fell backward. The back of his head struck a two-inch piece of rebar sticking out of the concrete. He died immediately.

I was extremely saddened by the tragedy. I also realized for the first time that I loved John. He was a real friend. Our fight was like that of good friends. Another realization struck me: Had I not stood up for my own safety in New Jersey, I could have been with him on this job in Indianapolis. Perhaps I would have been the one who died. Or, maybe I could have saved him somehow. Convinced him to be more careful. But none of that mattered now. It was all too late.

But at 20 years old, what did I know? I was just a dumb, know-it-all kid. True, I was a very talented, hardworking and intelligent youth, but I was equally immature, stubborn, and defiant. I thought I had the world figured out, had unlocked its essential codes for advancement in a world just begging to be tamed. I had little patience for the opinions of others. At least until tragedy or horror struck, something jolting enough to reconnect me with sobering reality. 

In other words, I learned most lessons the hard way. 

In Oslo, it is Sunday. Around 11:30 am, I left the room. I walked past along the University of Oslo campus, National Theatre, and Norwegian Parliament. Although it was only about 60 degrees, hundreds of local and international tourists milled about, tugging suitcases on wheels, toting backpacks, pushing strollers, snapping photos, or laughing and smiling. An old man sat on a street corner in the shade and played an accordion. A thin, fit mother playfully shoved her teenage son—who was at least six inches taller—knocking him off balance as they walked and joked. I recognized Spanish, English, French, Arabic, and a host of Scandinavian languages. 

I ate at McDonalds and purchased an extra sandwich for supper. I walked to the Joker, a convenience store, that had bad ratings because of poor customer service because many outlets were closed today. I bought a few things for the room. The teller was friendly enough. 

Since arriving in Norway, I’ve noticed that about 1/3 of all pedestrians are carrying on conversations on their phones as they walk. I would guess that in the US that number drops to about 10 percent, but for some reason, it appears that as soon as locals walk outside, they take advantage of that trek to engage someone in a conversation: Spouse, child, lover, aunt, parent. 

I read and read and read. I worked in an hour nap as a special treat to myself. By 8:50 pm or so, I had almost finished the second book in the Winter World series. I am quite pleased with the downtime. 

Starting tomorrow, I will be on a train for nearly 20 hours on the way to Bodo, above the Arctic Circle, where the sun never sets at this time of the year. I rented an apartment there for three days, planning to do some riding from that point. Try to get one midnight ride in.

Then, I ride back to Oslo and on to Stockholm, although I have some obstacles to overcome. One, is I have to break my bike down and store it in a bike bag in order to take it onto the train in Sweden. That means I have to buy a bike bag on Monday.

On the SJ.SE application, I found that indeed I can’t take Heidi in one piece, but if I dismantle her, pack her in a bike bag, then I can take her as luggage. I bought the ticket from Oslo to Stockholm on the app, allowing me about a 5 hour layover in Oslo. 

All in all, if everything goes smoothly, my trip will look like this:

• Friday (July 5): depart Bodo at 12:27 pm
•                           arrive Trondheim at 22:13 
•                         depart Trondheim at 23:17
• Saturday (July 6): arrive Oslo at 06:50 am
•                                     depart Oslo at 11:58 am
•                             arrive Goteborg at 15:45
•                           depart Goteborg at 16:24 
•                           arrive Stockholm at 19:30 pm

This is a lot of switching and changing, and very little sleep. And it will be stressful. But also fun. Hopefully, I can relax a little and read.