Polarsykling: On the road again

wet. and with custom plastic bag gloves :-)

After having a days rest to recharge, bake, and wait out the worst of the rain, we rode on from Kabelvåg to Sortland. It rained pretty much the entire way, but since it was only our third full day of riding in the rain, we weren't too disappointed. Had an interesting (unprovoked!) conversation with a Norwegian man in the waiting room--that doesn't happen often!

Arriving in Sortland, we met up with Maria, a couch surfing host from Myre, who we were going to stay with. We arranged to meet at the bus station and while we waited, we made lunch and were talking with some Norwegian women who were also on a cycle tour. Maria strolled up and we were figuring out how we would get our things to her house as the Norwegian women watched in amazement.

We always enjoy making food with our hosts and this particular evening was a creative dish that began with the idea of polenta pie, translated to a stir fry, translated to what can best be described as a Minnesota "hot dish" or casserole. The muffins for dessert were a bit more normal...

A white sandy beach, but not much swimming going on here!

The way across Andøya was beautiful, relatively flat and quite windy. This was also our longest day so far and the first century (100 mi) of the trip. We took a ferry across to Gryllefjord and there is a good reason why there are no pictures from that crossing. Namely because we were rather focused on the horizon and on not being forced to use the travel sick bags that were sitting on the table.

Where was this button when we needed it before? It seemed funny that they would go to the work of putting these up on Senja when the bike route on our map actually goes the other way around the island. Also, these tunnels were usually under 2 km long--nothing in comparison to the 4-7 km tunnels we went through!

Posing with our latest sponsors from Real Turmat--Robert and Fredrik. TUSEN TAKK for veldig god mat!

While we were in Tromsø, we stopped in to a company called Dry Tech, which produces Real Turmat. We thought that since we had tried their product and liked it that we would see if they had a company store or any factory seconds on sale. After seeing our rigs, we got samples of a new flavor that just came out as well as a field ration and two other meals! What a deal :-) Even a sticker to put on our panniers!