Biking Norway | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Valhalla on Wheels

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine, April 2005

Page:

The Hard Way
Valhalla on Wheels
Two guys, ten days, 500 miles by bike through gorgeous Norway. The only rule? No suffering.

By Mark Jenkins


	(Illustration by Guy Billout)

ROLLING THROUGH A MAJESTIC fjord along a sun-splashed bike path—that's the way we were supposed to begin our ten-day tour of Norway. Cobalt ocean, azure sky, and soaring granite walls, the two of us boldly pedaling forth inside this picture postcard.

Ah, well. It was pelting cold rain when we bounced our bikes off the train at a remote station in southern Norway. We'd intended to take the bus down to the coastal village of Flekkefjord, but a baby-Thor stroller filled the storage compartment. My partner, Harald the Fairhair, wanted to cram our bicycles inside, but the bus driver shook his head, closed the doors, and drove off.

The map told us Flekkefjord was only about ten miles away. We climbed into rain suits, threw our light panniers over our lean Specialized touring bikes, snapped ladies' shower caps (courtesy of Harald's wife) onto our helmets, and wobbled innocently onto a deserted two-lane highway called E-39.

Soon traffic was zooming by, headlights yellow smears in the miasmic downpour. There was no shoulder, merely a slick white line beside a drop-off into forested oblivion. By then we'd realized that E-39 is the autobahn of southwestern Norway. The rain was so dark and heavy, I was certain the motorists couldn't see us. I feared for Harald.

Harald the Fairhair—a nom de guerre I bestowed on him in homage to the first king of Norway, a ninth-century Viking longhair—was a friend in publishing, a large, good-humored, deskbound man. Harald could elucidate the subtexts in Pynchon or Roth and was an aficionado of detective novels. Ex–New Yorker, cynical optimist, audiophile, he was a cycling enthusiast but was forthright about his physical reality. "I'm built like a fuckin' Shetland pony." Which he was. Broad shoulders, stout legs, huge heart.

I'd been trying to get him on an adventure for years and finally forced the issue by buying plane tickets. Norway was his idea—"someplace civilized yet still connected to nature." (Harald was of pure Norwegian stock: mayonnaise skin, wispy blond hair, all four of his grandparents having unaccountably emigrated from this perfect little country.) But he'd agreed only under one condition:

"No Jenkins sufferfest. I mean it, Mark."

Harald was familiar with my unique ability to turn even the most innocuous outing into an epic.

"And no camping. This is a vacation, not an expedition. You do understand the difference?"

So here we were, hour one, wearing women's shower caps in public and defying death by riding bikes on a perilous mountain highway in a sheeting downpour. And that was before the tunnels.

The first one was short but dark—and so terrifying that we pulled off to the side immediately afterwards.

"This is just the kind of thing my wife said you'd get me into!" Harald shouted. "If I die, which appears extremely likely, she will track you down and kill you, you know this."

Around the next bend we slid unwillingly into another tunnel—long, and black as blindness. Tractor-trailers were roaring by inches from our mortal bodies. This time it occurred to me that we could become roadkill.

Beyond the tunnel I stopped along the guardrail and waited in the torrential rain. Ahead, I could just make out the maw of the next dreaded tunnel. It took exceptional sangfroid, not to mention bicycling technique, to hold your line in the slick subterranean darkness. I peered nervously behind me.

Out of the hole Harald came as if blasted from a cannon, shoulder to shoulder with a barreling semi, his wet brakes squealing as he closed in on me.

"All right. All right! I've had quite enough!" He was apoplectic, his red face steaming. "This is deeply insane! It's like a very bad acid trip!"

Page:

Outside columnist MARK JENKINS's latest book is The Hard Way.

•	Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift!

•	Give the gift of Outside Magazine!

•	Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more.