20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure: Day 13, Oslo to Kongsvinger
And so it was time to bid farewell to Oslo and begin our push eastward to our final destination: Stockholm, Sweden. I mean, not on this day. Over the next 6 days.
Having gone to bed fairly early and already being packed up, we were able to head out fairly early compared to our previous (and future) cycling days. Actually, looking at Garmin Connect, this was the earliest we ever started a ride: 7:30am. When you have all day to ride, there's not a lot of incentive to start super early. But I think we were both a little anxious about the 6 day journey we were about to begin.
Unfortunately we were leaving Oslo the same way we entered Oslo: In the cold rain.
One thing we had started to catch on to, but which was now driven home for us, was that Oslo is NOT an early city. We had trouble finding things open for "breakfast", because evidently their breakfast usually begins around 10am. We ended up going back to our old reliable bakery for breakfast, simply because it was the only thing we could find that was open. And as we rode through Oslo at 7:30am on a Thursday, there was almost nobody else out.
WHERE IS EVERYONE?!
After a quick breakfast, we began the day's journey in earnest.
It was hilly. We knew we were going to have some climbing coming out of Oslo, but.. it was hilly. And an annoying in-city sort of hilly, where it wasn't stretched out over long distances, but relatively short, steep climbs. We had some hills under our belts from our days in Oslo, but our legs still weren't used to this whole Hill thing again. Fortunately we had a solid bike path leaving Oslo.
Boring video of a long hill-climb, with bonus holding my glasses in front of the camera at the end.
You'll note I have yet to post a single picture. That's because I had yet to take a single picture on this day. It's funny, looking at the media I've compiled, how much my state of mind matches up with how many photos I take. If I'm struggling, I don't want to stop and take photos. I just want to grit my teeth and get through it.
(Fortunately it was complete muscle memory at that point to record a few seconds on the GoPro anytime the scenery changed significantly, or something interesting threatened to happen.)
So it was cold (in the 40s). It was hilly. And it was raining fairly hard. Hard enough that the rain drops would hit Matt's phone, and close his navigation app. Which is.. the only way we knew which way to go. So we'd have to stop so he could start it back up and tell it to route us again. This happened a few times, and one of the times we stopped, I thought, "I have to choose how to react to all of this. We are out here with the intention of having fun, and maybe every single second isn't going to be fun, but we knew that when we started. This is an adventure. And these circumstances, while not ideal, are just part of the adventure."
So I told myself that I was going to start taking pictures again, even if it was cold and rainy.
Fake it 'til you make it, right? This was the only day that was cold/wet enough for me to get out my skull buff.
Of course, that's a great INTENTION, but my phone lived in my pocket, and my pocket (as well as the rest of me) was soaking wet, so in reality, taking pictures meant this:
Which is actually fairly representative.
Once we got out of Oslo and its suburbs, things actually got really pretty, and I wanted to make sure we documented that. I had documented the trip so well so far, I didn't want this day to be a big blank spot in our photo album.
Even though it kinda sucks to stop when it's raining, we stopped for this pretty photo, and I used the driest part of my undermost shirt to wipe the lens first.
I know this countryside was probably even more beautiful when you could.. see it all, but we still enjoyed it as much as we could.
So the rain had slackened off a bit, we had warmed up from riding, and we came into a town. It was about lunchtime, and we needed a break from being wet and cold, so we set about trying to find a place to eat. We tried this little cafe, but it was closed. And the next place was closed. And the next. And it turns out.. it was Ascension Day. As noted in that link, "Schools, businesses, and shops in Norway are closed. Only certain small convenient stores and garden centers are open on Ascension Day." Confirmed.
As we were looking around for something open, we came across a bank, and I noticed it had an ATM. Matt had been wanting to pick up some cash, so we stopped at the bank. I waited out front with the bikes while Matt went in to get money.
And this was the kiss of death for me. I knew it would be, too, and it was dumb of me to get into this situation. I have amazing circulation, and if I'm moving, I can maintain my body temperature with no problem. But if I stop, my body temperature drops quickly and dramatically. And that's what happened here. By the time Matt came back out (which wasn't long!), I was shivering and miserable. I just wanted to be somewhere warm, and I was in a bad mental place because of it, especially knowing that it was unlikely we were gonna find anything that was open.
Matt was incredibly patient and kind, and made me come into the little foyer of the bank where the ATM was, and we hid in there with the door closed to get out of the wind and cold. We took off our gloves and wrung them out. We sluiced some of the water off. But then someone else came in and wanted to use the ATM, so we put our soaked gloves back on and went back out into the rain. Not moving forward was not going to get us to the end.
The good news is, we had probably been back on the bikes for 5 minutes when we saw a food place that actually looked OPEN. It was a burger and falafel place, not at all what either one of us would have chosen if we'd had the option of choice, but it was enclosed, it was warm, and it had food. We left the bikes out front in the rain and gratefully went inside.
I was so cold, I couldn't even figure out what I wanted to eat, so I just got whatever Matt got, which turned out to be a pita wrap thing. This thing was giant, and it wasn't even the largest size available. Also fries, because fries are comforting, and I needed comfort.
GIANT.
We sat there for a while waiting for our food. Then we ate our food. Then we digested a bit. And it was still pouring rain. So we stalled. And it was still pouring rain. Finally I told Matt I was fine with riding in the rain, because it didn't look like it was going to stop. And he said we should wait, which I liked, because I didn't really want to go back out there, I just didn't want him to feel like he had to wait in order to accommodate my needs. But if HE wanted to wait, well..
So we entertained ourselves.
Fish Fingers.
Eventually more people came into the restaurant. Then MORE people. And there were only 2 tables total in this place, which meant.. we really needed to make room for other paying customers. So even though it was still pouring rain, we went back out there and got back on our bikes.
And it was miserable, but after 10 minutes or so of riding, aided by the relentless hills of Norway, I managed to warm back up and just be a normal, general sort of wet and miserable.
I liked this sign because it showed where we were coming from, and where we were going to.
And then there was the E16.
Looking at a map of our route, we actually spent the majority of our ride after lunch on the E16. And maybe it would have been okay any other day. But this was a holiday. This was the first day of a 4 day holiday weekend for most people. And everyone in town was trying to get out of town to the country to camp or otherwise enjoy their holiday. And they were all taking the E16.
The E16 definitely does not have a bike lane.
Our mapping software, to its credit, tried to get us off the E16 whenever possible. But that actually wasn't always great, because sometimes it would take us through a little city that was completely pointless, and added distance. And sometimes it would just put us on .. the grass.
It told us this was the bike path we should be riding on.
I think this day on the E16 was the unsafest I felt the entire trip. The traffic was thick. And impatient. And going both directions. And it was raining. And we tried to be as visible as we could, but there's only so much we could do. And we just had to get through it as best we could. And we did.
This wasn't the worst of it. This was tame enough that I felt comfortable hitting the record button on the GoPro.
As we got closer to Kongsvinger, the bike path started to make a reappearance sometimes, but usually just enough to get us excited, and then it would disappear again.
This was off one of the bike paths. I may have posted it jokingly implying it was our rustic airbnb for the night.
We encountered precious few rest stops and public toilets in between our major cities, so we usually stopped whenever we saw one.
My face was very dirty, and my glasses very wet.
Matt's clean sleeve and my filthy sleeve. The disadvantage of being the second rider in the rain is that you get very, very dirty from the water kicked up by the first rider. This is why I was still wearing my glasses even though I could barely see through them for the water and dirt. Better on my glasses than in my eyes.
It was definitely a days of ups and downs. Started down. Rallied and reminded myself to take pictures and enjoy. A severe down from the ATM through lunch. Rallied a bit until we got on the E16. Very low through all that terrible traffic. Back up again when the bike path reappeared.
I took this photo around then, and then I don't have another photo again until we got to our airbnb. I just stopped being happy enough to want to take pictures.
After that, things just got hard again. We were starting to get to the outskirts of town. It started raining harder. I completely lost sight of the whole "I choose how I react to all this" positive thinking thing I had going on earlier.
And then I completely misunderstood our route. Matt said we were going to have to go a bit out of the way from our airbnb into actual Kongsvinger, to get food. I thought we were turning way out of the way to get there, and that way out of the way was pretty much all downhill, through some really annoying construction which left no shoulder at all. That meant we'd have the same annoying construction, but back uphill, to get back on track. We'd have to undo everything we were doing then. I was just so done. So ready to be done riding. But every mile we rode into Kongsvinger was another mile of uphill we'd have to backtrack to get to our accommodation. And to make matters worse, nothing was open in Kongsvinger. Everything we passed was closed. Which just meant we had to ride even further.
FINALLY we saw something open, which we hoped was a supermarket, but it was just the convenience store attached to the supermarket. As we'd headed into town, Matt said that I should go in when we got there and get food. In my already-bad headplace, I started panicking that that meant I was going to have to interact with someone who probably didn't speak English. Matt had dealt with most of the service people we'd dealt with so far, waiters and store clerks and whatnot. My anxiety over dealing with people in general combined with my terror over not being able to communicate was just super amplified over being so tired and cold and wet. I'm not sure I said a single word after we turned toward Kongsvinger, I was so out of sorts.
When we found the convenience store, I didn't say anything, just parked my bike and death marched in. It was basically what you'd expect from a tiny convenience store that is the only thing open, and so has been completely wiped out of basic foodstuffs. I did 3 (tiny) loops around the store before finding stuff that we could make sandwiches out of. I got sandwich stuff, Pringles, cookies, and some convenience store pastries for breakfast the next morning.
Fortunately the guy at the front DID speak English, and I managed to pay without incident. Also fortunately, we managed to shove all the food into our already-pretty-loaded panniers. And even MORE fortunately, we only went a little bit up the road the way we'd come before Matt turned off on a dirt road to the right. We didn't have to ride back the 10 miles I was anticipating. It was like.. 2 miles. I had just completely misunderstood where we were and where we were going.
Of course, that dirt road went straight uphill, and I was so tired and clumsy at that point, I couldn't deal with riding on a crappy dirt road straight uphill, so I got off and walked.
So that was my state of mind after a very long, very cold, very wet day of being miserable and anxious.
I didn't take a single photo for the last ~20 miles. I didn't even hit the record button on the GoPro. THAT's how out of it I was.
Then, as we wheeled our bikes down the lane, we saw our little house for the night.
And it was surrounded by ALPACAS!
All misery was forgotten.
Oh, hello, new friends!
That's our house right there. Behind those alpacas.
So cute! So moist!
In addition to the alpacas, there was the sweetest little puppy ever:
That is Focus.
And that is an alpaca.
Well, needless to say, the day got better at that point. We put together a dinner from my convenience store spoils.
Then we did some laundry, because our clothes were FILTHY. Our airbnb only had a washer, but our host was kind enough to let us come over and use the dryer in the main house.
Which meant we got to see FOCUS again.
Visited the alpacas s'more.
They're just SO CUTE. And improbable.
Then Matt started us a fire to warm up, and we ate dessert while looking at alpacas out our window.
I mean.. looking at cats out our window.
It should be noted, that cat picture was taken at 9:30pm. The rain had finally stopped (I mean, how can it rain when there's so much alpaca joy?), the sun had come out a bit, and it stays light ridiculously late.
And so, after a miserable day with a wonderful end, we went to sleep with the sun still shining outside, and all the alpacas having headed off to bed in their alpaca cave.
Total miles for day 13: 63.99 miles.
Having gone to bed fairly early and already being packed up, we were able to head out fairly early compared to our previous (and future) cycling days. Actually, looking at Garmin Connect, this was the earliest we ever started a ride: 7:30am. When you have all day to ride, there's not a lot of incentive to start super early. But I think we were both a little anxious about the 6 day journey we were about to begin.
Unfortunately we were leaving Oslo the same way we entered Oslo: In the cold rain.
One thing we had started to catch on to, but which was now driven home for us, was that Oslo is NOT an early city. We had trouble finding things open for "breakfast", because evidently their breakfast usually begins around 10am. We ended up going back to our old reliable bakery for breakfast, simply because it was the only thing we could find that was open. And as we rode through Oslo at 7:30am on a Thursday, there was almost nobody else out.
Click to viewWHERE IS EVERYONE?!
After a quick breakfast, we began the day's journey in earnest.
It was hilly. We knew we were going to have some climbing coming out of Oslo, but.. it was hilly. And an annoying in-city sort of hilly, where it wasn't stretched out over long distances, but relatively short, steep climbs. We had some hills under our belts from our days in Oslo, but our legs still weren't used to this whole Hill thing again. Fortunately we had a solid bike path leaving Oslo.
Boring video of a long hill-climb, with bonus holding my glasses in front of the camera at the end.
You'll note I have yet to post a single picture. That's because I had yet to take a single picture on this day. It's funny, looking at the media I've compiled, how much my state of mind matches up with how many photos I take. If I'm struggling, I don't want to stop and take photos. I just want to grit my teeth and get through it.
(Fortunately it was complete muscle memory at that point to record a few seconds on the GoPro anytime the scenery changed significantly, or something interesting threatened to happen.)
So it was cold (in the 40s). It was hilly. And it was raining fairly hard. Hard enough that the rain drops would hit Matt's phone, and close his navigation app. Which is.. the only way we knew which way to go. So we'd have to stop so he could start it back up and tell it to route us again. This happened a few times, and one of the times we stopped, I thought, "I have to choose how to react to all of this. We are out here with the intention of having fun, and maybe every single second isn't going to be fun, but we knew that when we started. This is an adventure. And these circumstances, while not ideal, are just part of the adventure."
So I told myself that I was going to start taking pictures again, even if it was cold and rainy.
Fake it 'til you make it, right? This was the only day that was cold/wet enough for me to get out my skull buff.
Of course, that's a great INTENTION, but my phone lived in my pocket, and my pocket (as well as the rest of me) was soaking wet, so in reality, taking pictures meant this:
Which is actually fairly representative.
Once we got out of Oslo and its suburbs, things actually got really pretty, and I wanted to make sure we documented that. I had documented the trip so well so far, I didn't want this day to be a big blank spot in our photo album.
Even though it kinda sucks to stop when it's raining, we stopped for this pretty photo, and I used the driest part of my undermost shirt to wipe the lens first.
I know this countryside was probably even more beautiful when you could.. see it all, but we still enjoyed it as much as we could.
So the rain had slackened off a bit, we had warmed up from riding, and we came into a town. It was about lunchtime, and we needed a break from being wet and cold, so we set about trying to find a place to eat. We tried this little cafe, but it was closed. And the next place was closed. And the next. And it turns out.. it was Ascension Day. As noted in that link, "Schools, businesses, and shops in Norway are closed. Only certain small convenient stores and garden centers are open on Ascension Day." Confirmed.
As we were looking around for something open, we came across a bank, and I noticed it had an ATM. Matt had been wanting to pick up some cash, so we stopped at the bank. I waited out front with the bikes while Matt went in to get money.
And this was the kiss of death for me. I knew it would be, too, and it was dumb of me to get into this situation. I have amazing circulation, and if I'm moving, I can maintain my body temperature with no problem. But if I stop, my body temperature drops quickly and dramatically. And that's what happened here. By the time Matt came back out (which wasn't long!), I was shivering and miserable. I just wanted to be somewhere warm, and I was in a bad mental place because of it, especially knowing that it was unlikely we were gonna find anything that was open.
Matt was incredibly patient and kind, and made me come into the little foyer of the bank where the ATM was, and we hid in there with the door closed to get out of the wind and cold. We took off our gloves and wrung them out. We sluiced some of the water off. But then someone else came in and wanted to use the ATM, so we put our soaked gloves back on and went back out into the rain. Not moving forward was not going to get us to the end.
The good news is, we had probably been back on the bikes for 5 minutes when we saw a food place that actually looked OPEN. It was a burger and falafel place, not at all what either one of us would have chosen if we'd had the option of choice, but it was enclosed, it was warm, and it had food. We left the bikes out front in the rain and gratefully went inside.
I was so cold, I couldn't even figure out what I wanted to eat, so I just got whatever Matt got, which turned out to be a pita wrap thing. This thing was giant, and it wasn't even the largest size available. Also fries, because fries are comforting, and I needed comfort.
GIANT.
We sat there for a while waiting for our food. Then we ate our food. Then we digested a bit. And it was still pouring rain. So we stalled. And it was still pouring rain. Finally I told Matt I was fine with riding in the rain, because it didn't look like it was going to stop. And he said we should wait, which I liked, because I didn't really want to go back out there, I just didn't want him to feel like he had to wait in order to accommodate my needs. But if HE wanted to wait, well..
So we entertained ourselves.
Fish Fingers.
Eventually more people came into the restaurant. Then MORE people. And there were only 2 tables total in this place, which meant.. we really needed to make room for other paying customers. So even though it was still pouring rain, we went back out there and got back on our bikes.
And it was miserable, but after 10 minutes or so of riding, aided by the relentless hills of Norway, I managed to warm back up and just be a normal, general sort of wet and miserable.
I liked this sign because it showed where we were coming from, and where we were going to.
And then there was the E16.
Looking at a map of our route, we actually spent the majority of our ride after lunch on the E16. And maybe it would have been okay any other day. But this was a holiday. This was the first day of a 4 day holiday weekend for most people. And everyone in town was trying to get out of town to the country to camp or otherwise enjoy their holiday. And they were all taking the E16.
The E16 definitely does not have a bike lane.
Our mapping software, to its credit, tried to get us off the E16 whenever possible. But that actually wasn't always great, because sometimes it would take us through a little city that was completely pointless, and added distance. And sometimes it would just put us on .. the grass.
It told us this was the bike path we should be riding on.
I think this day on the E16 was the unsafest I felt the entire trip. The traffic was thick. And impatient. And going both directions. And it was raining. And we tried to be as visible as we could, but there's only so much we could do. And we just had to get through it as best we could. And we did.
This wasn't the worst of it. This was tame enough that I felt comfortable hitting the record button on the GoPro.
As we got closer to Kongsvinger, the bike path started to make a reappearance sometimes, but usually just enough to get us excited, and then it would disappear again.
This was off one of the bike paths. I may have posted it jokingly implying it was our rustic airbnb for the night.
We encountered precious few rest stops and public toilets in between our major cities, so we usually stopped whenever we saw one.
My face was very dirty, and my glasses very wet.
Matt's clean sleeve and my filthy sleeve. The disadvantage of being the second rider in the rain is that you get very, very dirty from the water kicked up by the first rider. This is why I was still wearing my glasses even though I could barely see through them for the water and dirt. Better on my glasses than in my eyes.
It was definitely a days of ups and downs. Started down. Rallied and reminded myself to take pictures and enjoy. A severe down from the ATM through lunch. Rallied a bit until we got on the E16. Very low through all that terrible traffic. Back up again when the bike path reappeared.
I took this photo around then, and then I don't have another photo again until we got to our airbnb. I just stopped being happy enough to want to take pictures.
After that, things just got hard again. We were starting to get to the outskirts of town. It started raining harder. I completely lost sight of the whole "I choose how I react to all this" positive thinking thing I had going on earlier.
And then I completely misunderstood our route. Matt said we were going to have to go a bit out of the way from our airbnb into actual Kongsvinger, to get food. I thought we were turning way out of the way to get there, and that way out of the way was pretty much all downhill, through some really annoying construction which left no shoulder at all. That meant we'd have the same annoying construction, but back uphill, to get back on track. We'd have to undo everything we were doing then. I was just so done. So ready to be done riding. But every mile we rode into Kongsvinger was another mile of uphill we'd have to backtrack to get to our accommodation. And to make matters worse, nothing was open in Kongsvinger. Everything we passed was closed. Which just meant we had to ride even further.
FINALLY we saw something open, which we hoped was a supermarket, but it was just the convenience store attached to the supermarket. As we'd headed into town, Matt said that I should go in when we got there and get food. In my already-bad headplace, I started panicking that that meant I was going to have to interact with someone who probably didn't speak English. Matt had dealt with most of the service people we'd dealt with so far, waiters and store clerks and whatnot. My anxiety over dealing with people in general combined with my terror over not being able to communicate was just super amplified over being so tired and cold and wet. I'm not sure I said a single word after we turned toward Kongsvinger, I was so out of sorts.
When we found the convenience store, I didn't say anything, just parked my bike and death marched in. It was basically what you'd expect from a tiny convenience store that is the only thing open, and so has been completely wiped out of basic foodstuffs. I did 3 (tiny) loops around the store before finding stuff that we could make sandwiches out of. I got sandwich stuff, Pringles, cookies, and some convenience store pastries for breakfast the next morning.
Fortunately the guy at the front DID speak English, and I managed to pay without incident. Also fortunately, we managed to shove all the food into our already-pretty-loaded panniers. And even MORE fortunately, we only went a little bit up the road the way we'd come before Matt turned off on a dirt road to the right. We didn't have to ride back the 10 miles I was anticipating. It was like.. 2 miles. I had just completely misunderstood where we were and where we were going.
Of course, that dirt road went straight uphill, and I was so tired and clumsy at that point, I couldn't deal with riding on a crappy dirt road straight uphill, so I got off and walked.
So that was my state of mind after a very long, very cold, very wet day of being miserable and anxious.
I didn't take a single photo for the last ~20 miles. I didn't even hit the record button on the GoPro. THAT's how out of it I was.
Then, as we wheeled our bikes down the lane, we saw our little house for the night.
And it was surrounded by ALPACAS!
All misery was forgotten.
Oh, hello, new friends!
That's our house right there. Behind those alpacas.
So cute! So moist!
In addition to the alpacas, there was the sweetest little puppy ever:
That is Focus.
And that is an alpaca.
Well, needless to say, the day got better at that point. We put together a dinner from my convenience store spoils.
Then we did some laundry, because our clothes were FILTHY. Our airbnb only had a washer, but our host was kind enough to let us come over and use the dryer in the main house.
Which meant we got to see FOCUS again.
Visited the alpacas s'more.
They're just SO CUTE. And improbable.
Then Matt started us a fire to warm up, and we ate dessert while looking at alpacas out our window.
I mean.. looking at cats out our window.
It should be noted, that cat picture was taken at 9:30pm. The rain had finally stopped (I mean, how can it rain when there's so much alpaca joy?), the sun had come out a bit, and it stays light ridiculously late.
And so, after a miserable day with a wonderful end, we went to sleep with the sun still shining outside, and all the alpacas having headed off to bed in their alpaca cave.
Total miles for day 13: 63.99 miles.