Cycling Norway - the highlights

A few thoughts about this trip on my way home…

  • This was a great trip. So happy I went on this - it ex­ceeded all my ex­pect­a­tions. I got to ex­plore Nor­way a little, had a great time with won­der­ful bunch of cyc­lists, and ex­per­i­enced fant­ast­ic cyc­ling chal­lenges.
  • This was my third trip with La Fu­ga. They did great… fant­ast­ic route plan­ning, great ho­tels, solved every prob­lem, help­ful in every way. Rich was a pro­fes­sion­al and me­tic­u­lous pro­gram lead­er, John was a thought­ful and en­ter­tain­ing help­er, and Joel was king of the road, al­ways be­ing where he was most needed. I wouldn’t change any­thing about how they led and handled this part of the trip. (A nat­ive Nor­we­gi­an who could fill in his­tor­ic­al con­text might be nice, but that’s bey­ond what I was count­ing on.)
  • Hav­ing done this, I don’t think I will ride Nor­way again. For me, if there’s an­oth­er big bike ad­ven­ture, it will be back in­to the deep moun­tains, aim­ing for fam­ous passes I haven’t yet climbed.
  • Would I go back to Nor­way? Ab­so­lutely, ideally with Michele, aim­ing to spend more time dig­ging in­to more his­tor­ic­al and cul­tur­al con­text, maybe do some hik­ing, and paraglid­ing.

High points

  • My vis­it with friends in Oslo be­fore the ride star­ted.
  • A great group of riders … go­ing in­to this, I wasn’t sure what to ex­pect. Every­one was great to ride with on the road and fas­cin­at­ing to get to know just a bit over our shared meals. I have a feel­ing I will see sev­er­al of them again and I look for­ward to it.
  • The Wows. So many. Fjords, wa­ter­falls, vis­tas, high val­leys, snow fields, moun­tains…
  • Ex­cel­lent weath­er the en­tire trip. We got lucky.
  • The windy, spec­tac­u­lar Troll­sti­gen.
  • The cold, clear climb up Dals­nibba on the last day.
  • The wicked fast bumpy des­cent from Stryn Som­mer­ski down to the fjord be­low.
  • The del­ic­ate bridges of the At­lantic Ocean Road (day 2).
  • My bike work­ing really, really well (des­pite the snafu in build­ing it). Disk brakes rule.
  • Real­iz­ing and re-learn­ing how much I en­joy these trips.
  • Get­ting a little taste of Nor­way… the slip­pery lan­guage, the non­des­cript ar­chi­tec­ture, the in­sanely long sum­mer days…

Pictures from this trip…

… are mostly from my cam­er­as, but also from the riders and guides on the trip. We all shared pic­tures, so my thanks to them for the many great pic­tures I bor­rowed to in­clude in these posts.