Friday was officially the second day of summer, which meant it was 42 degrees F in Trondheim, with periods of heavy rain and high winds. I spent the day hiking with some friends, protected from the elements by several layers of wool and a full Gore-Tex outer layer. I was completely comfortable in these conditions, […]

So when we left off – Gavin and I had spent four days bicycling around the Netherlands with my college roommate Susan, and this resulted in me re-aggravating a persistent neck injury, and (as we later learned) Susan nearly tearing her ACL. Susan was returning with us to spend a week in Norway, where we’d […]

Gavin and I have a rule for traveling that if you don’t know how something is going to go, you don’t do it for more than three days. The theory is this: you can always do the day you arrive. You can always do one full day. And you can always do the last day. […]

In much of Europe, there is the sense that patriotism is a bit unseemly.  Patriotism is a small step to nationalism, and nationalism hasn’t historically gone well in Europe.  This feeling has not made its way to Norway: Norwegians are really, really proud of what they’ve built, and while they’ll be polite about it, they’re […]