Expeditions / Trips Cape 2 Cape Diary / Updates Waiting for better days
Sunday, 02 May 2010 23:01 Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 10:20
We arrived at Ingeborg's house, close to Lillehammer, early in the afternoon from Oslo. Ingeborg owns a wooden house with a beautiful view of Mjøsa, Norway's largest lake (the photo of the lake is the view from her living room window). The lake was almost completely frozen when we arrived, with only some sections around the edges that had started to melt.
Ingeborg lives with her younger sister Andrea and they were both very friendly and welcoming. We ended up staying at their place for an entire week, for two reasons. Number one of course, because we really liked it there. Secondly, we were once again at a loss with what to do with the weather. Our plan was to continue northward in Norway, but the weather forecasts kept looking very unpleasant in that direction. The North Cape, our final destination, lies north east from Lillehammer, so finally we decided it would be the smartest to go east into Sweden first and then north along the Baltic ocean, where the weather seemed to be much better.
We didn't do too much there except go down to the lake and break the ice with sticks (it was a good way to vent our frustrations about the weather) and visit the giant ski jump in Lillehammer. The jump was used in the Winter Olympics in 1994, which was hosted by Norway. It is a bit scary to stand at the top of the ski jump and imagine going down there with a speed of 120km/h and fly through the air for a 100m (the record jump for that site is 139m).
We had some delicious meals, Ingeborg cooked for us twice, Mexican tacos and also Indian food. Her parents also invited us along to eat pizza with them at their house. Her mother told us about a bike rally on the first of May that starts in Hammar and is apprently a very big thing for bikers around here to celebrate the start of spring and the "biking season". That Sunday morning we joined the rally, together with almost 1000 other bikers on all kinds of motorbikes. As the weather started getting rainier, wetter and colder, we started wondering why on earth we thought it was a good idea? We do long distance biking almost every day and riding around in the rain with frozen feet and hands is no longer our idea of a fun day out.
Another thing we managed to do while in Lillehammer, is sort out Yuki's loose steering problem. We took him to a bike shop where they tightened the steering wheel bolt. Apparently it was very loose. We asked the guy there if he didn't think we would need a new bolt (after so many kilometers), but he said it was still fine.
It was so nice and comfortable staying with Ingeborg and Andrea, we were little sad to leave. They told us a lot about Norweigian culture (the photo of the girl with the teapot is Andrea wearing her traditional dress, the bunad) and many other interesting things about Norway. Also, we spent a lot of time with their two cats, they were really cute! It almost felt like our home for a week.
Tags
| Comments |
|