I went North

[Hovmod_imp]

Thank you for all those kind words, I'll try to break down the trip for those who are interested.

My father was from Vadsø, and so as a kid I used to spend every other summer up north. Alternate summers were spent in Telemark, another beautiful area to go for a ride (and probably a more likely place to go if you visit Norway to ride a bike). I never loved the car rides to any of those places, because to get to the family cabin in Tana took *days* in our 1967 SAAB Station Wagon, and my mother thought about 2 cm was a sufficient window crack to let the cigarette smoke out. I loved the cabin and all our people up there, I loved fishing and hiking and the feasts on reindeer and salmon, but the car ride was murder and the mosquitoes and I never became friends, either. I no longer have a lot of people up there, but I imagined that if I went to some of the old places and said my name, I would be welcomed (and I was right).

So when my GF said that I should pack the tent and go for a ride, I immediately thought that I could give it a shot.

There are basically three options when you go to Finnmark from anywhere south of Saltfjellet:
The ultra scenic coastal route, the main road (E6) through Norway, or what we just refer to as "Sweden and Finland", which is any route that cuts through those two to get the job done. The roads in Sweden and Finland were traditionally much better than ours, probably because they are straight lines through forest (like the TCH in Newfoundland) while ours have to deal with the very things that make them interesting: mountains, fjords, coasts, islands, etc.
I *really* wanted to get up there, so I went for a mashup of options two and three for the way up, leaving the ultra scenic to the return home.

Keep in mind, even the shortest option with the straightest roads comes to 1,500 km. Norway is not a very large country, but it's really really tall.


Day one, E6.
Trondheim - Storjord (587 km)

The only deviation from E6 was that I took the old road over the Korgen mountain instead of the tunnel. The highest point on that bit was also the last spot for *many, many days* where I needed to put on more clothes.

E6 has many highly rideable stretches, but almost invariably there are "better" alternatives, again if you're not in a hurry, and it's starting to fill up with camper vans. Good day, perhaps not great, and now I was done with E6 for a while.

Slept in an old hotel in Storjord.


Pic 4 is also from Storjord.

Access to a lovely pathway through well tended old forests was across this thing, which I'm not gonna lie freaked me out a bit when it started resonating with my steps, particularly on the way back.



Day Two: Sweden.
Storjord - Karesuando (654 km)

At breakfast, an elderly Swedish man who had retired from a job that required driving all over Northern Sweden and Norway recommended a decommissioned road into Sweden, so I snuck past a gate and took the old road through Junkerdalsura (The 'Junker valley scree') instead of the "new" tunnel. The road was great (albeit kinda short), but since it's no longer maintained, I had to keep watch for fallen rocks. Once I met the tunnel exit, I was now on the 77 heading towards Sweden, and I sent some kind thoughts to the old guy. This worked for me - beautiful nature in sixth gear. Picture 9 above is from this stretch, towards Arjeplog. I stopped there for gas and coffee, and in addition to the lovely scenery got a taste of the theme for the ride: Heat and Horseflies. Many of the towns on this route are familiar names for any Scandinavian, of course, but only those of us with a history of going to Finnmark in the summers have ever been to places like Arvidsjaur, Kåbdalis, Jokkmokk, Gällivare, or Karesuando. All of those had higher temps and more horseflies than normal, it was HOT (sorry, Nachodaddy) and the second I stopped the bike was swarmed by those damn things. I noticed that they really like the heat coming off the bike, though, so I learned to get off the bike and take a few steps away before removing helmet, gloves, and leather.
Ate a perfectly delicious smoked salmon salad across from the old cinema in Jokkmokk, but the relentless, evil, carnivorous insects made it a quick stop. I was starting to become worried about the rest of the trip, but things got better.



A year or two ago, a Norwegian prog rock band called Jordsjø released an album with a song called "Skumring i Karesuando" (dusk in Karesuando). A great song, in my opinion, and as it became clear that I was indeed going to make it to Karesuando for the night, that song was on repeat in my head. In particular, the part from around the 30 second mark.





Midnight sun cancels "dusk" as a phenomenon, so here's a picture of the late evening sun in Karesuando, the northernmost town in Sweden:



They know where they are in the world:



Fewer horseflies (but more mosquitoes) than anywhere else in Sweden, good news for someone who needs to fit all of this on a CB1100 in almost 30C...



OK, that's day two, and the last of Sweden for now.
Stay tuned for day three, 'A Pilgrimage to my Childhood'.

[Hovmod_imp]

Day Three: A Pilgrimage to my Childhood
Karesuando - Laksjokha (420 km)

Back in the day, as they say, crossing the Könkämä river, which in its entirety forms the physical border between Sweden and Finland, was one of the more exciting bits of the family car rides, because there was no bridge then. Instead, they had a floating contraption that fit a few cars at a time, on which we had to pull ourselves across using a wire. On the other side of what IS now a bridge, the village on the Finnish side is called Kaaresuvanto, and most of the inhabitants on both sides see the two villages as one. Most of the locals don't primarily identify as Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian anyway, the whole of Lappland ignores borders and is home to a large number of the Sami people.



Once I cross into Finland, I have a choice between the road across Finnmarksvidda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnmarksvidda) or to go east and cross into Norway at Tana Bru. I went for the first option, which would include a good stretch of vidde (plateau), and the two largest (mostly) Sami towns in Norway, Kautokeino and Karasjok.

Finnmarksvidda is ENORMOUS, and a lot of it looks like this:


I always loved going there, and riding my CB1100 into Kautokeino made me quite emotional. My ancestry is not Sami, although my grandmother could speak some, but this is my father's land and I felt I was approaching my spiritual *home*.

This is me, tired, slightly emotional, hot (that's still a wool sweater under the leather), pretending to be a badass on a throne of used tires in Kautokeino.


Stopped for a bite in Karasjok, where I once again meet the E6. The cabin my father built together with his brother, sister, and parents, is now so close I can smell it. I'm not *quite* there, but I'm going to make it, and my plan (which, again, wasn't a 'plan' until just now) was coming together.

I stopped in Sirma for gas and some supplies, and rode the last few kms to where the river Laksjokha runs into the majestic Tana river - the amazing spot where they built our cabin.

I pulled up next to the cabin, which we sold about ten years ago when my uncle lost his mind to dementia. There's nobody home, but it's in use. There are bikes, crocs, outboard motors and all the paraphernalia of those long, narrow Tana river boats. Ashes in the fire pit. I park, get out of my leather, and go down to the river. Normally, I'd never bathe in the Tana river except as part of a sauna ritual, but this isn't normal. It's 30 degrees. I've just come 1,500 km to get here. I submerged myself and cooled off. As I'm having a coffee, this time prepared on my Primus and not from a gas station, the owners come home. I say my name, and I'm welcomed home in a veritable explosion of mutual recognition. This is the girl from the farm a stone's throw over, and I won't claim we hung out *a lot*, but we hung out as kids. We named all our people: How's Kalle? Magnus? How about your father? Yours? It was just wonderful, and I am so happy that she and her husband were the ones to take over the cabin. They've modernised and moved in, and I approve.

Parked here for the night.


This is where I sat with my coffee when they came home. To the left you can just make out where Laksjokha joins Tana. Halfway across the river is an island where reindeer love to go to get away from the mosquitoes, and all the land on the other side of the river is Finland.



My plan, which now is a real plan, is to take my backpack (which I brought for this purpose only) and walk a few kms up the tributary Laksjokha to a magical spot where I have many memories, including catching my first salmon and my first solo night in a tent. I thanked my friends for their hospitality and started walking. It's still hot, and the mosquitoes are (thankfully) lazy. Those annoying little black flies not so much, and although nowhere near the mayhem in Sweden, there are gadflies. Didn't make so much as a dent in my elation. I get to the right spot, where the river calms down a bit after some rapids, a place where there used to be so much salmon. There's not anymore, because of us humans. Overfishing and climate change is so much more devastating in extreme climates, and this is the arctic frontier right here.
This is bad for everybody and everything in the longer and larger perspective, but it didn't really affect my day. I wasn't going to fish, and tbh no fishing means no people at this prime fishing spot. I pitched my tent and sat myself down in one of my most sacred places, and had long conversations in my mind with my ancestors and... Nah. It was less spiritual than that, it was just little old me and a bunch of bugs and birds in nature. Which is very much good enough. I felt at peace, lucky to have had this in my life at all, let alone enough to make it one of "my" places on this planet, and I spent the night there, listening to all the noises nature makes. The calm white noise of the rapids above, the weird gulps and blubbs made by the slow water making eddies and vortices behind rocks, birds I can't identify demanding to get laid NOW, and a bunch of unidentified sounds and noises. Me and the arctic, separated only by a dome of mosquito net.

Go ahead, find a better spot to rest after three days of sixth gear:


(NSFW, depending on your W )


This concludes day three, and now I'm faced with the task of picking a route home.

[GoldOxide_imp]

These are nice, comforting, and well-written share points Hovmod.

[Hovmod_imp]

Day four: I can see Russia from my house!
Tana - Lakselv (542 km)

A fifteen minute ride along the river from the cabin you'll find Tana Bru, the main town in Tana. It means Tana Bridge. There's a bridge. If you want to go to Finland, you cross this bridge. If you want to go to Vadsø, the city my father watched the Germans destroy when he was thirteen, you cross this river. If you want to go to Russia, you cross this bridge. I didn't know what I wanted, and the heat almost made it hard to think. But I started to get an idea, and after a couple of confirming phone calls, it was a plan: I'm going to Kirkenes.
My girlfriend, who I've been with for nine years and plan to hold on to forever, also has a history in Finnmark. More than me in many ways, because her mother married and moved to Neiden, so she lived there for a few years as a child/teenager. My mother-in-law died many years ago, but this guy, my GF's step-dad, is a journalist in Kirkenes. I have never met him, and I took the road to Kirkenes. These are the first (or last?) 140 kms of E6, which runs all the way to Rome (as roads do), and it was *peak* motorcycling - long, sweeping curves through a changing, somewhat alien landscape. I have yet to scrape my foot pegs, but I must have been close here. Wow. What a road. If I lived up here, I would go out at night and paint red and white stripes on the inside of the curves, Joe Bar style, just to claim it for us. Picture 2 in the first post is from this stretch.

If you're like Pdedse and occasionally look at the map as you're reading, you have seen that I am now not only far north, I have also gone significantly eastward. As you may know, Norway borders Russia, and outside of Kirkenes you can take the road to Murmansk, Russia's northernmost city. It's right there, and unlike that notorious claim about Wasilla you may recall, you *can* actually see Russia from up here, it's right there across the Jacobselv river. Even now, with all the military restrictions caused by Putin's aggression and whatnot, Russian citizens have special rights to travel to Kirkenes and the surrounding area for trade and "brotherhood", and likewise for Norwegians in Russia.
I didn't mention the war, but this is exotic for me as well.



Stepdad-in-law welcomed me to his house and treated me to a couple of salmon sandwiches, we talked about the people we both are related to through falling in love with two amazing women, and I'm glad I did. Faces to names, and I'm off again. 282 kms for a bite of salmon and a coffee, but those roads! *sigh*

My next task is to get home, maximising time on coastal roads.

Everybody has heard of Ifjordfjellet (Ifjord Mountain), where they have made a road across from Varanger and eastern Finnmark to the north coast, a road that you all need to go ride. If this bit of twisting, winding, made for motorcycle riding asphalt hadn't been three days away, I would go here once a week.





(see where the road vanishes in the far away over there? Oh yes!)




After passing the highest point of the road, where the descent begins, I suddenly got consumed with a panicky sense of having to get out of my clothes, so I stopped and undressed like a maniac. If you saw a naked man swatting horseflies on Ifjordfjellet last week, it was probably me.

I slept here. Lakselv. I'll talk about Lakselv in the tale of day five, later.

[Gone in 60]

Wow, what a fantastic journey. Could do without the bugs, but a fantastic journey.

[pdedse]

Outstanding photos, Hovmod, and very enjoyable to read the raison d'etre of this trip. What a special opportunity to revist the past, make connetions with people from long ago. You have wonderful story-telling skills to accompany the photos. Nicely done.

Day Three: A Pilgrimage to my Childhood
Karesuando - Laksjokha (420 km)

Back in the day, as they say, crossing the Könkämä river, which in its entirety forms the physical border between Sweden and Finland, was one of the more exciting bits of the family car rides, because there was no bridge then. Instead, they had a floating contraption that fit a few cars at a time, on which we had to pull ourselves across using a wire. On the other side of what IS now a bridge, the village on the Finnish side is called Kaaresuvanto, and most of the inhabitants on both sides see the two villages as one. Most of the locals don't primarily identify as Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian anyway, the whole of Lappland ignores borders and is home to a large number of the Sami people.



Once I cross into Finland, I have a choice between the road across Finnmarksvidda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnmarksvidda) or to go east and cross into Norway at Tana Bru. I went for the first option, which would include a good stretch of vidde (plateau), and the two largest (mostly) Sami towns in Norway, Kautokeino and Karasjok.

Finnmarksvidda is ENORMOUS, and a lot of it looks like this:


I always loved going there, and riding my CB1100 into Kautokeino made me quite emotional. My ancestry is not Sami, although my grandmother could speak some, but this is my father's land and I felt I was approaching my spiritual *home*.

This is me, tired, slightly emotional, hot (that's still a wool sweater under the leather), pretending to be a badass on a throne of used tires in Kautokeino.


Stopped for a bite in Karasjok, where I once again meet the E6. The cabin my father built together with his brother, sister, and parents, is now so close I can smell it. I'm not *quite* there, but I'm going to make it, and my plan (which, again, wasn't a 'plan' until just now) was coming together.

I stopped in Sirma for gas and some supplies, and rode the last few kms to where the river Laksjokha runs into the majestic Tana river - the amazing spot where they built our cabin.

I pulled up next to the cabin, which we sold about ten years ago when my uncle lost his mind to dementia. There's nobody home, but it's in use. There are bikes, crocs, outboard motors and all the paraphernalia of those long, narrow Tana river boats. Ashes in the fire pit. I park, get out of my leather, and go down to the river. Normally, I'd never bathe in the Tana river except as part of a sauna ritual, but this isn't normal. It's 30 degrees. I've just come 1,500 km to get here. I submerged myself and cooled off. As I'm having a coffee, this time prepared on my Primus and not from a gas station, the owners come home. I say my name, and I'm welcomed home in a veritable explosion of mutual recognition. This is the girl from the farm a stone's throw over, and I won't claim we hung out *a lot*, but we hung out as kids. We named all our people: How's Kalle? Magnus? How about your father? Yours? It was just wonderful, and I am so happy that she and her husband were the ones to take over the cabin. They've modernised and moved in, and I approve.

Parked here for the night.


This is where I sat with my coffee when they came home. To the left you can just make out where Laksjokha joins Tana. Halfway across the river is an island where reindeer love to go to get away from the mosquitoes, and all the land on the other side of the river is Finland.



My plan, which now is a real plan, is to take my backpack (which I brought for this purpose only) and walk a few kms up the tributary Laksjokha to a magical spot where I have many memories, including catching my first salmon and my first solo night in a tent. I thanked my friends for their hospitality and started walking. It's still hot, and the mosquitoes are (thankfully) lazy. Those annoying little black flies not so much, and although nowhere near the mayhem in Sweden, there are gadflies. Didn't make so much as a dent in my elation. I get to the right spot, where the river calms down a bit after some rapids, a place where there used to be so much salmon. There's not anymore, because of us humans. Overfishing and climate change is so much more devastating in extreme climates, and this is the arctic frontier right here.
This is bad for everybody and everything in the longer and larger perspective, but it didn't really affect my day. I wasn't going to fish, and tbh no fishing means no people at this prime fishing spot. I pitched my tent and sat myself down in one of my most sacred places, and had long conversations in my mind with my ancestors and... Nah. It was less spiritual than that, it was just little old me and a bunch of bugs and birds in nature. Which is very much good enough. I felt at peace, lucky to have had this in my life at all, let alone enough to make it one of "my" places on this planet, and I spent the night there, listening to all the noises nature makes. The calm white noise of the rapids above, the weird gulps and blubbs made by the slow water making eddies and vortices behind rocks, birds I can't identify demanding to get laid NOW, and a bunch of unidentified sounds and noises. Me and the arctic, separated only by a dome of mosquito net.

Go ahead, find a better spot to rest after three days of sixth gear:


(NSFW, depending on your W )


This concludes day three, and now I'm faced with the task of picking a route home.

I think this shot could be used in advertisement for leather jackets, a brand of cigarrettes, tires or gasoline...heck, for the complete Norway tourism industry!


edit: caption for tourism poster: "Norway...don't even THINK of visiting!" (you know, reverse pschology thing). Sell this photo Hovmod...you'll be famous beyond the confines of this forum.

[Hovmod_imp]

Day Five: Not the North Cape.
Lakselv - Lyngen (581 km)

When I was 24 years old, my dad said that he had always had this idea that it must be a nice hike from Levajok in the Tana valley to Lakselv. I never asked why, I have those kinds of ideas all the time. Did I want to do it? Sure. So one day, back in the late 1900s, my father and I got a ride from the cabin to Levajok, where we met one of the gold diggers up there. There's been attempts at serious gold digging up there, but this guy was part of a group of intensely enthusiastic gold diggers using the ultra modern contraption called Long Wave Radio to look for gold. A seam of heavy metal underground would interfere with the signal that normally travels fairly unchanged through earth, and they had gotten some promising readings lately, and were on the cusp of a Klondike style bonanza. Just you wait. Did we want to buy a share of his claim, perhaps? No? Clearly our loss. Once in a lifetime, this. Anyway, I think some people found some gold, but nobody has ever found anything worth more than what they spent looking, afaik.
The walk to Lakselv took three sleeps, the first of which in a Gamme, a traditional Sami hut made mostly from peat. We made a huge mistake and lit a fire in the oven inside, which led to a truly torturous night with a choice of staying in the sauna hot gamme or face the mosquitoes outside. My dad said that on days like that, you measure the density of mosquitoes by counting seconds from opening a pack of butter until you can't see any butter for mozzies, and this was a six second day. Anyway, we kinda slept there one night and two more nights in a tent. We fished and ate the catch, and we talked about everything and nothing.
I stopped in Levajok on day three, and on the morning of day five I woke up in Lakselv, so the memories of our hike back then really came alive.

Up at the crack of dawn, I now had to decide whether to go to the cape or not, and as I said in the first post, I did not. I went to Havøysund, and I am happy I did. The road, the nature, the delightfully vibrant town, the history and the mere insanity of all this being at 71 degrees north was fantastic. I haven't mentioned all the other tourists much, because I have taken to heart the saying that "you aren't stuck in traffic. You ARE traffic.". I'm a tourist, too. But now that Nordkapp is within spitting distance, they are absolutely everywhere. The camper vans. The white, slow, using more than their fair share of EVERYTHING camper vans filled with people who are scared of the edge of the road and that believe that it's perfectly fine to stop right there on the road if there's a spectacular view (there is!) or a reindeer (yup, lots of those) to photograph, are all on their way to Nordkapp. So are all the buses, all the bicycle riders on once-in-a-lifetime pedal propelled trips, and so are all the every gadget included BMW GS's in the world. In delicious contrast, the spectacular road to Havøysund, in every aspect superior to the road to Nordkapp, was practically empty. I made another right choice!

Even for the northern bits of Finnmark, Havøysund is exotic. I got there early, the screen shot from my weather app says that it was 10 AM when I looked for the temperature. 24 degrees at 10, and it rose quickly to over 30. I was in one of the northernmost clumps of people on the planet, it was high summer, and again I had that feeling that this ride is for the books! I stayed a couple of hours, then I did something I never do: I rode slowly and stopped often for pictures!

Here are some shots from Havøysund and the road leading from it back to what in this context constitutes 'the world as we know it':





















TBC...

[Hovmod_imp]

Day Five continued:

Back in Olderfjord, where the roads to Havøysund, Nordkapp, and outtahere meet, there was a truck stoppy cafeteria with twenty-plus motorcycles lined up and all the riders in various states of undress having a meal or just a rest, and I was clearly ready for a burger myself.

This is a pretty damn good burger for anywhere. An unexpected treat for this remote spot.


Had a chat with a guy on a W800, and pushed on. I have a destination for this day as well, a couple we know lives in a farm house in Lyngen, an area with lots of fjords and mountains. I know that this sounds like every curve on every road in every ride report I write, but Lyngen is above and beyond almost anything, anywhere. The thing about fjords is that they *are* the ocean, right? The mountains surrounding fjords rise from sea level, right before your eyes. They're not the peaks on a high altitude plateau, they're peaks FROM SCRATCH. And the ones in Lyngen always give me a sense of being darker, harder, more indifferent to those puny humans trying to eke out a living on a stripe of arable land between the icy waters and the sheer walls of rock. The extreme sports people have discovered Lyngen, particularly the big mountain freestyle skiers, and every year several skiers lose their lives in Lyngen, trying to outsmart those indifferent rocks I talked about *in the winter*. So it goes.

Do you see what I mean?


Getting to Lyngen from Olderfjord starts (in this case - there are alternatives!) with another of those bits of E6 that are really super fun to ride. Lots of curves where you can stay in the same gear for miles. Then, after Skaidi, you hit Sennalandet. A somewhat elevated road across another mountain pass, that is designed to withstand the relentless winter storms and stay open all year. Notorious for the speeds they sometimes catch people doing, it's also (like so much on this trip) insanely beautiful. This time, however, on day five, the onslaught of wind made it something of a challenge to savour the landscapes. I was busy staying on my side of the road. Normally, the CB doesn't make me wish it were something else with more fairings and screens and maybe a roof and a heater unless I *really* break the speed limits, but crossing Sennalandet I had to turn my upper body into the wind to decrease severe buffeting, and I felt like I was hanging on to the Honda for my life more than I was driving it. And still. It was amazing.

No pics, because I wanted to get it over with. Push on, Hovmod, push on.

After Sennalandet you soon get to Alta, one of if not the largest cities in Finnmark. I had no interest in stopping, so I got gas and didn't take my break until I had left town. But I needed a break. My bespoke ear plugs were starting to take their toll, and particularly the left one, for some reason, was beginning to be a true nightmare to get out of my sore ear canal. My stomach was acting up, too, do you get that on long rides? I'm starting to think about what I'm going to do when I get home, but home is still Very. Far. Away.

The stretch from Alta to Lyngen? Hm. Traffic, roadworks, wind, not great. But as soon as I got on a ferry and could catch some fresh air (haha) I felt good again. Here's what some of Lyngen looks like from a ferry on a fjord:





The couple I visited are lovely people in lovely scenery, they grow lovely herbs and vegetables in a lovely, unlikely place, and they have pretty much everything they need, but the talks tended to merge on one of only a few common threads: Climate/environment vs economic needs, tourists, or general frustration with the people surrounding them. They were both from small places up north, and they had both lived most of their adult lives in larger cities: Tromsø, Trondheim, Oslo, Berlin. And many of the things that are very normal in cities are still - uh - controversial in Lyngen. So they feel a bit isolated, and it's the lack of people they have anything in common with, not that they're in a house you have to take ferries and drive through gorges to get to. Not the Lyngen Alps. It's the Lyngen minds. I have nothing to add, except I felt very welcome, I had a delightful evening in gorgeous scenery, good conversations, good food, it was a wonderful visit. I sympathise with their situation, and I also think that we need people willing and able to challenge the rusty mindset of ways of living that CLEARLY aren't sustainable. But I understand it is not always a welcome task to be those people.

Out of respect for my friends, you can only see pictures with my back to them and their house, but all of these are from their back yard:







In the morning when I got up, I got breakfast and coffee, a few more horsefly bites, an hour or two of good talks, and I left with a feeling of equal parts dread and hope.

And it is now day six. Push on.
I really appreciate the replies I get, and of course we got a good laugh from Pdedse's post!

Stay tuned for the last three days.

[GoldOxide_imp]

Love good road food opportunities. Burger-powered Hovmod - love it.

[Hovmod_imp]

Day Six: Senja!
Lyngen - Senja (168 km)

Yes, the ride on day six was a short one, and I was TOTALLY OK with that.
I have friends on Senja, one of Norways largest islands. I had never been there, and I was very much looking forward to staying the afternoon and night with them.

The ride was, relatively speaking, uneventful until I got to Finnsnes, a town connected to Senja with a very tall bridge. I stopped for gas, and had an incident:







Here's what happened. I parked next to the pumps, close enough to stay seated while I did my business. I thought the pump felt different, and looked up to verify that it was really pumping slowly. Visualize it: I'm still in full gear, helmet (and ear plugs) and all, and I'm pumping a highly flammable liquid into a large tank sitting more or less as an extension to my testicles, while looking up to my left to see the numbers flipping over slower than normal. I had already filled the tank earlier in the day, the gauge still showed three bars of fuel, so when the pump claimed I was taking eight, nine, TEN litres of gas, I got confused. But not for very long, because I wasn't wearing a nose plug, and my olfactory system was trying to signal my brain. It kind of smells like gas here, man! I look down, and of course gasoline is overflowing. Everywhere. I'm pumping gas into my lap, it flows over the entire tank, and its flowing down onto (almost) red hot exhaust pipes, of which the CB has a lot, just so that we can imagine we're riding a UJM... The pump nozzle had failed to shut off when it encountered the gasoline already in the tank, and I had failed to notice because a whole bunch of reasons, including ear plugs and leather pants.

I got the side stand out, tossed the pump, and I think I literally flew off the bike and into the gas station, where I fairly calmly told the guy behind the counter that there's an incident outside right now that probably takes priority over the burger you're preparing. To his credit, this did not require repetition or clarification, and seconds later the ground was strewn with some form of gasoline soaker-upper and he was hosing down the CB.

I thanked them for their help, they closed the faulty pump, and I left. Through the town and across the bridge, where I stopped to check my phone for instructions. Failing to decipher the address of my destination, I realised I left my glasses at the station, so I had to go back. They were right there on the ground, nobody had run them over or nothing. Lucky! No fireball between my legs, no loss of eye sight, I'm good.

Done with drama, I got to my friend's house, where I am again very welcome. Both of them have a long history of working in the restaurant business, and one of my proudest moments was last year when I made them a bouillabaisse and they liked it!
We ate very good food and we went for a very nice walk with their two young huskies, it was such a treat!
Senja is large enough to be a small scale version of everything surrounding it. The western side is one of the most storm thrashed places in Norway, and the middle part is a lovely plateau with cloud berries and little fishing waters and from there you see Lyngen style mountains everywhere.

Look at their stove. Just... LOOK!




Walking huskies is not like walking other dogs.


Yup, those mountains in the distance are on the same island.


An electrical storm had made toothpicks of a telephone pole the day before I came, this was just a couple of minutes from their house:


This is what the entire visit felt like for me, except I'm not on a leash.


Every day six has to come to an end, and my hosts both had work the next day, plus I am now looking to gain as many kilometres as I can on day seven, because day eight is going to be a treat!

Lessons learned on day six:
-Never again sit on the vehicle as you are fuelling it.
-Don't get huskies unless you really mean it.

Day seven, even though it goes through the world famous Lofoten, is only for transportation, and I have a feeling the long ride will be a short post.