this trip. . . . it is dildos, page 9

page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4 - page 5 -

page 6 - page 7 - page 8 - page 9 -page 10

I also got these giant-ass panorama photos i took. from like 180 to 360 degrees. . .too big to fit on this here page. click on them to see the whole thing.

bergen lake -bergen lake 2 -bergen city -bergen top mountain -cliff -cliff two -iceland desert -flem cliff -glacier -iceberg -iceberg two -moss -moss two -myrdal lake -myrdal valley --myrdal valley 2 -myrdal valley 3 -narrow fjjord -rockwall -rosenthal mountain -sondal glacier -waterfall -waterfall 2 -waterfall 3 -

WEDNESDAY

Get up. It is totally raining! Decide to catch up on internet and laundry at the local tourist information shop, which oddly has both! I put my clothes in the washer, come back an hour later. It is still not done! I try to mess with the machine, but that just made it start over again. The tour-info-lady (poodle perm, jacket with patch reading “foxy”) tells me that sometimes it takes 2 hours just to wash. Plus an hour to dry. During this time I am stuck in my huge parka and Bermuda shorts and nothing else, looking like a flasher. I can’t go nowhere looking like that so I sit in my car and eat cold soup in the rain. Yaya vacation!

Finally get dressed, and then go on a 10 mph ride behind a tanker truck on a one-lane road, all the way to Sondal, where there is bike rental. As you can imagine my mental state was not too good to begin with at this point, so I was utterly unprepared for the following brain-buggery. See, I have reserved a room in a cabin at “Sondal campground.”

I ask directions at the general store, which is by a bridge, but as soon as I get outside I realize the directions make no sense. I cross the bridge and stop at the first building, a little restaurant, where a guy tells me go back past the bridge.

No sooner do I cross the bridge than I am back in the parking lot of the general store!

This time I leave my car parked and WALK back, and find a sign by the bridge leading to a tiny trail which leads to the campground. I enter. . . there is no staff there! At all! It is impossible to check in.

I ask a random camper lady, who points me to a big red house in the hills, and says the owners live there. I get back in my car for the 5 th time in 10 minutes and drive to the house, which turns out to be an empty barn.

At the edge of hysteria I drive back to the little cafe and ask if THEY have rooms. They do. At this point all I want is a safe, quiet place to get drunk.

I go back to the general store for the third time, only to find out that they have closed 10 minutes ago, while I was at the empty barn.

The punchline? The restaurant guy, mr. Karl, says THERE IS NO BIKE RENTAL IN SONDAL. The whole thing was a total charade. Plus as I walk past the rent-a-car I see that somehow I have destroyed the rear blinker.

I sleep…. have all kinds of dreams ? zappa in a wheelchair, fjords, 60-year-old gay guy vinyl costume party. . . but no dreams of Japan.

THURSDAY

Non-rainy. I hike to the glacier (Sondal’s claim to tourist fame) for 4 hours, and took these photos:

I come back early to go on a bike ride?Karl (a German ex-hippy who moved to Norway and calls tobacco cigarettes “joints.” (“do you think we are crazy here? We are!!”)) has generously agreed to loan me HIS bike (“What? No problem! ! I never use it! Take it ! I have ein car! I have a driving license!”) but it turns out he has three bikes ? the one with no brakes, the one with a punctured tire , and the new beautiful one with no air in the tires. Luckily, Karl has provided me with a pump. The pump nozzle does not fit the tires. I go back up to complain, but as luck would have it, the lunch rush is just now starting, so I have to wait like 90 minutes before Karl can come look at the bike. He insists that holding the pump nozzle at this exact angle and applying 300 pounds of force is enough to wedge air into the tire, just enough to go like 5 kph on a straightaway. I thank him and take off on the bike. It immediately starts to rain.

this dude got soaked too:

I wait forlornly by the side of the road and the rain slows down eventually to a mist. I start biking again but around the next corner is a very very gentle upward slope, which slows the bike down to like 1 kph. Whimpering, I turn around and bike as fast as I can to the general store, this time catching it 10 minutes BEFORE closing time, and get a six pack of beer. You can imagine how desperate I was for booze if I buy something as weak as beer.

I go back to the glacier trail (suddenly sunny now that I am off the cursed bike) and find a spot by the river’s edge, out of sight of what I call the Happy Family Fun People (another horrible thing about vacations). I play music, drink can after can, gaze at the shifting patterns of white water on the river, and actually smile and laugh. Somehow I even manage to get drunk, a first for beer and me.

Come back, nap. Wake up at 11 pm. There is no table in my room and Karl locks up the dining room at 10 pm, so just like yesterday I eat cold soup cross-legged in front of my bed, using the mattress as a table, and wedging my knees underneath the bed frame. Vacation time!

FRIDAY

Sunny as hell!

I say an oddly awkward goodbye to nice old Karl. for some reason I am so ashamed of myself that I answer all of his small-talk questions with complete lies. What am I supposed to say? “Sorry I hate your town and had a miserable time, dude! It is not your fault! I'm fighting with my Special Person, and I am spending like 200 bucks a day in Europe to have a shitty time, plus my visa situation is bad, my finger is sprained, I can’t get real booze and I traveled like 200 km for a nonexistent bicycle.”

Drive back to, Rosenthal. They DO have a bike rental, run by a dude named Lars. I go to the shop and say hi. Lars says, hi, ok, and then abruptly leaves the store ? locking me inside!! What the eff??? He comes back maybe 7 minutes later and gets me an awesome looking bike and tells me where there is a good trial. I am out of there fast, biking past the next town, enjoying the sunshine and green grass, stoked at this sudden turn of good luck. After 10 km, I am going up a modest hill and the bike flips out. I look down and find that the left pedal came off! I try to screw it back in but the threads are stripped clean off. In fact, the friggin pavement is littered with individual stripped threads, looking like Colossus’ toenail clippings. With eerie calmness I sit down right there and eat lunch. Then I walk the bike back to town the whole way. Lars is apologetic and offers to get a new bike, and even drive me back to the trail where I broke down. I am like, no. no,no,no. Christ no. if the pedal don’t break, something else will. My eyes. My head. My ass. This is just beyond cursed.

here is something that took my mind off it:

cow brassieres.

as if that were not a fucked enough concept, they are fishnet.

Instead, I try hiking up the local mountain. They say it is a brutal hike ? good! I want to be so tired I can’t think. The trail is no namby-pamby baby zigzag. It is straight up a more-than-45 degree angle slop the whole way. I get to the top of the first mountain *(there are two) and decide to call it a day. Drink the last half beer of the sixpack (preserved, warm and flat, in a squeeze bottle) and just check the nature. Go downhill, where I am suddenly passed by a grandfather scampering down the slope like a . mountain goat or a mountain elk, or some unholy elk/goat hybrid. . .at any rate the dude was fast. Get a good dinner (spicy herb chicken, funky looking gray cat, no baby) and study Japanese.

here's the mountain from below. . .

and from above.

All the old ladies in the tv room of the hotel are looking at me hard when I walk past. I guess they were having a kind of awesome conversation about vaginas and I was cramping their style.

Lady one: you have a vagina too? That is so bitchen! Does it make sense to you?

Lady two: ja! I have it totally figured out by now.

Lady one: I really want to pick mine up and throw it at a movie or sports famous person!

Lady two: me too! We owe them that much.

Lady one: what comes out of yours?

Lady two: what DOESN’T come out of it? Blood, hymens, pee. . .

Lady one: babies, herpes. . .

Lady two: placentas, cats. . .

Lady one: wow! How many placentas?

Lady two: let’s see. . .oh crap it’s that guy again! Let’s ignore him till he leaves.

Lady one: he is cramping our style.

this trip. . . . it is dildos, page 9

page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4 - page 5 -

page 6 - page 7 - page 8 - page 9 -page 10

I also got these giant-ass panorama photos i took. from like 180 to 360 degrees. . .too big to fit on this here page. click on them to see the whole thing.

bergen lake -bergen lake 2 -bergen city -bergen top mountain -cliff -cliff two -iceland desert -flem cliff -glacier -iceberg -iceberg two -moss -moss two -myrdal lake -myrdal valley --myrdal valley 2 -myrdal valley 3 -narrow fjjord -rockwall -rosenthal mountain -sondal glacier -waterfall -waterfall 2 -waterfall 3 -

they'll probably be shrunk to fit your window, but you can zoom in to get the full effect.

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