The long last day of the trip.

A trip like this cannot be complete without one truly crazy day, and for us it would be the last day.  We were camping 5km outside of Birkeland and we had planned to catch a 4:30pm ferry from Kristiansand, Norway to Hirtshals, Denmark.  It was only 35km to Kristiansand, so we took our time.  Brad did some fishing and I was trying to dry out my clothes.  As I set my soaking wet shoes out on some rocks near the shore of our campsite, Brad was casting for Trout when he dropped his new iPhone in the river.  He pulled it out and quickly shut it off.

We knew we were cutting it a little close when we left at 2:00pm, but still, we only have to travel 35 km.  As we began we would face some of the hardest terrain and definitely the hardest wind of the trip.  While climbing some of the mountains along the way, the wind could nearly stop us.

We arrived in Kristiansand with about 30 minutes to load onto the ferry, however, the port was not the easiest to find.  There was no street signs to guide us and when we did finally find our way, there was a festival going on in the city that we had to travel around.  At one point in the city Brad and I became separated and we took two different paths to the port.  While he was riding he needed to hop something in the road and when he landed both his tires landed in a tram track in the middle of the street.  It violently threw him to the ground (and a mud puddle) and as he picked himself up, he roughed up some bushes in frustration and stood up to see the ferry float away.  After missing our 4:30pm ferry we would have to wait for a 8:15pm ferry instead.

This would change our plan a little bit as we planned on arriving in Denmark around 7:00pm and riding for 2 or 3 hours, now we would arrive at around 10:30pm.  As we discussed our options we checked the weather report to find out that we would be facing a 35km/hr headwind throughout the next day in Denmark.  So with 70km to go to our destination of Aalborg, Denmark we set out to finish the trip that night.  We rode through the night with calm winds and with no hurry to get to the train station and after arriving in Aalborg around 5:00am we began our train trip back home to Münster.  It would be a very long day with us taking 7 trains and 15 long hours to travel but we had completed our 1550km adventure.

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