Cycling Norway - Day 2

We left our hotel in the vans, as we had to take an­oth­er tun­nel to get safely off our is­land. The tun­nel went down, down, down at 10% be­low the sea, then up, up, up. Amaz­ing. And ap­par­ently an in­cred­ibly ex­pens­ive toll.

Right after the tun­nel, we boarded the bikes and star­ted rid­ing on the high­way that would be­come the (famed?) At­lantic Ocean Road, a stun­ning feat of en­gin­eer­ing link­ing little bits of land along the Nor­way coast.

Today’s land­scape was dis­tinctly rock­i­er and more coastal than day one… it could al­most have been in Cape Cod or some of the Cali­for­ni­an coast (ex­cept for the high­way it­self, which felt dis­tantly dif­fer­ent).

It was an easy ride.. al­most a re­cov­ery ride, mostly thanks to Dan and Mark who con­tin­ued to pull the double paceline along the high­way, mak­ing it ap­pear ef­fort­less.

It’s worth re­mark­ing on this double paceline thing, which was com­mon through­out the en­tire week. In the States, we rarely ride in a double-wide line, and usu­ally only when we know there’s no traffic. Here, the de­fault was to ride two-wide. Every­one seemed very com­fort­able with it, mak­ing me won­der if this is a Euro or Brit­ish stand­ard thing. It feels much more ag­gress­ive on the road, as it forces cars to go around… but that said, the line is much short­er and easi­er to pass.

To­ward the end of the day, we ar­rived at a good climb. Mark and Dan left me in the dust, as I wanted to save all my climb­ing en­ergy for day three. And, also, be­cause they would have any­way. We all re­grouped at the top of the climb, then then the three of us flew down­hill, through pretty tough cross­winds, ro­tat­ing 10-second pulls to max­im­ize speed, all the way in­to our des­tin­a­tion town, Molde. That down­hill was tough work.

Molde was big­ger than I ex­pec­ted. It’s clearly a cruise ship des­tin­a­tion port, com­plete with a seem­ingly un­used con­fer­ence room and an overly-mo­d­ernesque-look­ing hotel.

After clean­ing up, I met Dan and Mark to wander the town. We found a place that served lattes. Yes!