Lyngdal

Fjord water is salty water; it makes sense when you think about it, but the fact disappeared from my mind when I was thirsty. So now I have to clean out the salty water from my water filter. I eventually did manage to find water in the form of Coke and Fanta. And I had a big pizza to soak it all up. Running out of water on a sunny day is no fun! Had quite a few mechanical issues today as well, brakes rubbing, axle getting misaligned under force etc. I suppose during my last repair job I didn’t tighten the axle enough. Managed to fix all of them somewhere. Then a welder walked by asking me whose kit was heavier, I said “Definitely yours!”. I am now seriously taking my friend’s advice on keeping bike weight in check, but also by now I have a pretty good idea what is useless. Maybe tomorrow I’ll drop by the post office.

The comfort of the Airbnb was enough to make me stay one night longer in Mandal. Staying one more night wasn’t a problem by itself, but I didn’t want to have to strip myself off of the cosy house the second day, when it would be much harder. Cute little towns have a way of pulling you in.

Slept very long today. Very late to start the bike ride today as well. I spent quite a bit of time trying to decide out whether I should take a bus to Stavanger (again), only to realise these bus route don’t have bike spots, so I have to ride my way there. Another Nordkapp-er I met in Denmark is also on his way to Stavanger from Oslo. Maybe this way I’ll meet him in Stavanger as well. But one development route-wise is that I will be taking a ferry from Stavanger to Bergen.

Maybe I’ll stay in Lyngdal one more day, bask in the Sun and sleep a little longer.

At some point due to the uphill gradient, right after a girl shouted at me “Go go go!” from a car window, I had to get off my bike and walk. Funny enough, that was also when I snapped back into reality. I became aware of where I was. Somewhere that’s neither reachable by public transport nor anyone has any need to be there. I am quite literally walking through a landscape that’s just there, with a tiny slice of infrastructure, the road.

Lyngdal, Norway