Failing to plan is planning to fail.
I’ve always understood that on some level but I never felt that I did anything that required advanced planning. Nothing to plan for means you can’t fail at planning. I think I expected the ride out of Bergen to be like most things in my life where I’ve succeeded: there’s one main road, someone points me down it, then I get there. I can work hard and be competitive if I know where I’m going.
When I came back from Asia I realized that I had been following the road that I was pointed down. This wasn’t a bad thing; everyone who was pointing me was well intentioned and wanted to set me up for success. That success came easily. I did well in school, I got a good respectable job, I was successfully weaned from my parents financially by the time I legally became an adult. I deviated from this road in Asia and realized I needed to find my own way but instead I just started going down the first road I saw.
Riding out of Bergen I was generally able to follow the signs for bike route 1. I followed them all the way to the first ferry crossing. After that I kept going as I wished, taking what appeared to be the main road that would get me closer to Trondheim. Each time I looked at the map I knew where I needed to go, yet each time I plotted a route I came up with something completely different from what I had before. One route would be shorter but have some insane climbs through the snowy mountains, one route would be long and circuitous. I know there’s an official bike route through this area but I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t orient myself or determine where I actually needed to go to make it out of the fjord maze.
Going down the first path I found was easy. There was good money and enough flexibility that I could do nearly whatever I wanted to do when I wasn’t working. It was a beautiful road that lead me into San Francisco and bike racing and bay swimming. Although I kept getting a bad feeling the farther down this path I went, I kept at it. Just as you don’t bother to see if you made a wrong turn while you’re gleefully riding down a long descent even if you have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going the wrong way, I never bothered to stop and start my hike back up the hill and out of the tech industry.
I began to feel lost. Not dangerously so, I had no trouble knowing where I was and how to find food, shelter, and water, but I struggled to set a course for myself. I couldn’t find a way out that didn’t seem to pose a major logistical challenge. I rode up and down, alongside fjords and through rolling farms. I saw the dorsal fin of a porpoise break the surface as the sunset cast the water purple, I watched a mother duck swim with a gaggle of ducklings that were so small I thought that they were acorns. I listened to the high pitched cries of the baby lambs, comforted only by the deep bah of their mothers. I loved where I was but where was I going? Each night I’d set up camp and struggle to sleep. I kept wondering where I should go, how I should get there.
I finished my ride one day in a relatively large town where I stopped for a dinner of chocolate milk and smoked salmon. Here I learned that a bus went straight to Trondheim. From Trondheim I could take a train to Bodø where I could ferry to the Lofoton Islands. I could also ride the scenic highway from Trondheim and get there in about ten days. I needed to hit reset on this trip so I boarded the bus.
I didn’t want to spend every day on the bike riding around yet another fjord only to not have enough time to leisurely sauna and sun by a lake somewhere inland. I stopped to think what I really wanted to do: ride my bike all day and intimately see the flattest road through the western fjords in Norway or take the scenic bus, see the mountains that are all but inaccessible to a touring cyclist, and ride through the islands and then off into the forests of Lapland?
I often chastise myself for being a runner. Things get hard and I just turn to find a new path. I don’t stop to think where it’s going, just that anywhere is better than where I am. I’m often teased that I always run to the beach. I think after a lifetime of doing this I need to embrace it. No one says I can’t live a life at the beach. As the white clouds of dandelions are replaced by white clouds of rain the farther north I go I feel more alive. This land seems so much more dynamic when it is filled with water. The constant drizzle doesn’t seem to faze anyone. Life here is surrounded by the cold deep waters of the fjords.
The road that leads to the cold deep water is certainly not the path for most. Despite the road being a very popular tourist road I still see very few people traveling. I can tell when the ferry docks because there will be ten cars that pass by in close proximity and then nothing but an odd tractor for another hour and change. Despite the challenges presented by this cold rainy world, I am on the right road for once, with a clear goal to ride to Nordkapp, for no other reason than it’s there and I can. I will have to suffer in the cold and wet and get over my reluctance to solve problems with money by renting a warm dry room when it’s the safest and easiest option. This still may not be the right road for me long term but at least I’ve intentionally put myself onto this path.
