The Good

Actually made it to Trondheim. Got the preemptive Sunday shopping done. Found an adequate hotel room down by the railway station. The ferry crossing went painless as well. Pretty cool that the Rorvik-Lund connection runs all night so no need to hurry to be there in time for the last crossing.

Not that many tourers on the road today, just two couples going north. Everybody else probably already fled Norway for one of those warmer countries in the south.

The Bad

The most climbing heavy day so far with more than 2000 m of elevation gain over 140 km. Probably an artifact of that long, almost completely straight road I followed south from Afjord. It would appear that Statens Vegvesen adhere to a similar school of road construction as their British analogue in that they prefer to build in a direct line between two points regardless of any hills that may lie in between. No switchbacks, just a series of 10 % climbs followed by equally steep descents.

Went through a short panic situation near Afjord today when I noticed the phone wasn't charging despite being plugged into the dynamo hub. At the same time it suffered some kind of internal issue and wouldn't operate properly. For a moment I feared it might be dying on me. Which would have meant the end of this blog series and perhaps even my trip. False alarm on that end, luckily, as the phone was fine again after a reboot -- leave it to Google to make a Linux system behave as erratically as Windows -- and the charging problem turned out to be a malfunctioning USB connector that was thoroughly corroded from those days of rain. Phew. I'm going to have to email Busch & Mueller again about USB-C cables for the USB-Werk, with one of those it wouldn't have happened.

The Ugly

If the weather gods appeared complacent yesterday, sending only headwind but keeping it dry otherwise, today they unleashed their full spectrum of annoyances again. More than the incessant wind and rain it's the temperatures that are killing me. The Garmin showed below eight degrees at times. I mean come on, it's supposed to be summer! According to the proprietor of the campsite where I spent the night this weather isn't normal for this time of the year. As I'm getting ever closer to the real mountains I'm hoping for the weather to normalize soon.

Also since it's a Sunday tomorrow it ultimately won't be possible to shop for replacements of my knife and the cycling cap. It's messed up passing through an actual city for the first time in days without being able to take advantage of it.

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