spectacular day today, almost finished with kurt diving face first into the pavement with his hands behind his back stuck in his rain jacket sleeves, going 30km-hour on a 100 lb bike in a significant crosswind. He pulls it off at the last minute by bringing his hands back over his head, still wrapped in 300 dollars worth of mountain hardware goretex, back to the bars to come to a stop. a true hudini move. next time remember the sinched wristlets.
He's champ though, rolling with the 5:45 wake up since i fell asleep at 8 the night before, and didn't really wake up when it started to dump rain because i could hear him puttering around outside making sure everything was tucked away.
we got to the big tunnel before 8am, when all the good people of the world were still far away. 9% grade DOWN under the ocean, absolutely terrifying going that fast in a dark tunnel with SO much
water just waiting to come crashing through the roof. i sort of wanted to take a deep breath but didn't want to go unconscious from the fumes. There were little panic stations every kilometer with a phone and fire extinguisher. Eventually it leveled out and we pedaled merrily along, fancy lights blinking and swerving to avoid the drips. Then it began to climb UP, 10%, for a few km to the very welcome exit. 7 km of fun, all before 8:30.
Made it to Nordkapp 60km later, northernmost point in europe. it was not hot and sunny. It was all uphill on the way there, perfectly reasonable since it's a cliff sitting 307 meters above the sea. While we were inside sending postcards to Grandma, the fog rolled in. The landscape also changed so that we did significant climbing on the return 30km back to town. Great to see Kurt leaning 10-15 degrees into the crosswind, rolling straight forward. Visibility was roughly 20 feet. At one point I heard the dinging of a cowbell that some of the reindeer wear and readied myself for a scene. Insert clever Rudolf joke here.
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