The twists and turns coming down out of the Trollstigen 1st-gear 180-degree hairpins were like skiing. A series of challenging but often fast curves down into a huge gorge filled with water. This was the Geiranger Fjord. At the bottom there was a fork in the road and one led onto a ferry about to close its gate. Remembering the advice of one old codger who said never pass up a chance to see where a ferry will take you, I pulled onto the deck and handed over my credit card. Thirty minutes later, I was on the other side of the fjord climbing an equally challenging road out. It took me through the town of Geiranger, which appeared to be a sort of tourist group  magnet. The place was swarming with busloads of aging oriental people doing about the same thing I was doing— traveling on scary roads and photographing beautiful scenery unlike anything any of us have at home. 

Let me put this into perspective: when I was 16 and first started riding motorbikes, my favorite stretch of road was the Bear Mountain Parkway in Westchester County, NY. It is cut into the side of a rock face that drops down to the Hudson River below and has the bluffs of Bear Mountain State Park on the other side. It’s narrow, twisty, dramatic, and a lot of fun. The entire stretch of road takes maybe 15 minutes. In Michigan, everyone eventually rides the “Tunnel of Trees” on the northwestern shore of the Lower Peninsula. It too is narrow and twisty and up on a bluff at times. It lasts about 30 minutes. Riding the western fjords of Norway is similar only you have to downshift into first gear frequently to make the turns, there are sheep wandering about in unexpected places, and so far, it has lasted three weeks with no sign of letting up. Combine the Pacific Coast Highway with LA’s Mullholand Drive and with the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia, sprinkle in the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the last 70 miles to Key West, and then add miles of curved, inclined tunnels and you have Norway. It is nothing like the photos in National Geographic. It’s better!

My goal for this day was to complete somewhat of a circle ending up back at the ocean at a city named Alesund. After my last gas stop of the day (I will never forget it was an Esso station in a place called Styrn), I realized I could not find my phone. All of my pictures, my “computer” for keeping this journal, and my downloaded maps of Scandinavia for finding my way out of cities where the street plan resembles a mishap involving a bowl of spaghetti. The drizzle turned to real rain. You rarely see the police in Norway— they do everything with video surveillance. So I rode around Alesund until I located the police station and then found my way to the hostel. The dormitory room was in the basement and resembled a dungeon. I decided to splurge and buy not one, but two beers at the Kiwi 7-23, my preferred food store I’ve decided. I used my InReach satellite tracker to text my wife Carol the news and made plans to double back to the Esso station, although a call there provided no good news. Sweet Carol got right on the case and using the “Find My iPhone” app texted me back that the missing phone was at #44 Parkgata, a hostel in Alesund! Since I had gone through every pocket and all of my gear, I could not make any sense of this. Cracking my second beer and sharing my dismay with a Belgian who was in Norway to do a trek, he suggested he might call my number and perhaps we would hear it ring.  Since I am typing this into my phone, you can surmise that this strategy worked swimmingly.

All tragic stories should have an edifying moral. I have come to depend on routine more than memory to keep some semblance of order in my life. The phone lives in the left chest pocket of my Aerostitch jacket. I know this “experimentally”  (as Quakers are fond of saying) since I left the zipper open going through Canadian customs last year and lost my very first iPhone. So the moral of the story is “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Zipped. The pocket of my rain jacket is not where my phone lives. I NEVER put anything in the pockets of my rain jacket. I don’t know how the phone got there. I suspect the lady who sold me the pastry at the Esso station, but it would be unkind to make such an accusation. Maybe it was one of those Norse gods.

A few pictures below to provide much-needed eye candy….