Postscript

In the comfortable confines of Helsinki and no longer facing the prospect of packing up and traveling somewhere I've had the opportunity to scan the journal. As anyone who has traveled and kept a journal knows, one sacrifices good grammar, spelling, etc., for the sake of getting thoughts and observations down on paper before they become stale or are lost. Just ask Lewis and Clark. I am indebted to the many libraries that provided a free 15 to 20 minutes of internet time. I felt like I was back in the newspaper business hammering out stories under deadline. Unfortunately, I did not have a rewrite person or a copy editor on the other end to clean things up. Many of these entries were made after I had ridden 50 to 80 miles over bad roads and through storms. I did my best to compose properly, but with the meter running while trying to decipher computer instructions in Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian at various times I wasn't always successful. The keyboards here are different, containing the additional letters, ä, ö and a few Norwegian ones that aren't on this Finnish keyboard I'm currently tapping on. I read a few of the back entries and am slightly embarrassed (but not too much) by obvious errors, the tenses that switch, bad spelling, etc. But because I recorded these impressions as soon as I could I think I've captured the essence of the trip in its naked truth, as well as my state of mind at the time. I really was going mad in North Karelia after being pounded by incessant storms and seeing nothing but forest for weeks, but it's hard to dredge those feeling up now in the comfort of a Helsinki internet cafe nursing a beer, a comfortable hotel room awaiting me a few blocks away. When I return home I will clean them up. But not too much.

And one last thing. I did learn some Finnish. I can probably recognize at least 100 words or so, days of the week, road signs (warning you are entering a military bombing range). I still can only count to one, which is rather limiting. In the time remaining I plan to continue my studies and I hope to be able to count to two by the time I return home.

Return to Helsinki

I caught the intercity train to Helsinki on Thursday. This is allegedly the slow train, but it splits the countryside at about 100 mph. From my window seat I feel like I'm hurdling back through time, seeing areas that took me days to bike through flash by in seconds. The scraggly shrub birch of Lapland is replaced by the giant (they seem giant to me now) birch. It's the spruce that are scraggly now. The land opens into many farms with hay neatly shrink wrapped in white. The bales resemble marshmellows lined up waiting for the roast. We cut through cloudbursts, sunbursts and at last we slow and approach Helsinki. The sun has broken through the clouds. The golden light shines off the Olympic stadium tower, Finlandia Hall and the golden domes of Upenski Cathedral glisten. I gather my stuff and ride to the harbor where I'm greeted by a rainbow framing the bay against a backdrop of tumultous clouds and shafts of sun. And then a strange thing happens. It gets dark. The moon and stars come out, the first time I've seen the night sky.

The ride is over. It's time to go home.

Expedition retreats Rovaniemi

After three days of eating and saunas and laying around the big house I feel like I'm returning to somewhat of a normal state. I do mostly nothing during this period except for an occasional bike excursion and a run to the market.

On Monday I pack up and ride to the the local hotel which doubles as the bus stop. Here, I dissemble the bike once again. I'm getting very good at this. It only takes 30 minutes to get the bike in its case and to dismantle the wagon. The two hour and forty minute bus ride to Rovaniemi covers the same ground I chugged through nearly three weeks ago. It's hard to believe I biked all of this. The reindeer seem to be more numerous, gathering in larger numbers than before.

In Rovaniemi I put the bike together and ride to the camp ground on the banks of the Ounasjoki. I meet a Swedish bike rider, Andreas, who, along with his wife, has biked from the North Cape and plans to continue to Turkey. He's fascinated by my bike, and can't seem to get enough photos of it.

This may be the last night of camping. The temperature at night is now close to freezing. It has been dropping steadily each day. I have also noticed that we now have a real night, with darkness. The sun sets at about 8:30 pm. When I first arrived in Helsinki it set at about 11:30 pm. Each day is noticeably shorter.

In the morning, I am off to the train station to see if I can get to Oulu on the Gulf of Bothnia. I would like to spend two days there before heading back to Helsinki, again, via train.

The last ride

The sun beams through the hut windows. This I didn't expect. I am 40 miles from the village of Sirkka, which is home to the Levi ski resort, host of the coming World Cup ski championships. Each day I seem to have grown more weary, my muscles aching a little more at the end of the day. I have one more ride left in me, and today will be it. When I reach Sirkka I will have completed a grand loop around Lapland.

The route takes me back into the dreaded fells, the high hills in Lapland. But with the sun out they, at first, do not seem as bad as before. The forest here is brimming with reindeer, and they seem to be out in force today to say good-bye. The herd includes an elusive white one that prances like a ghost through the dark woods. By mid-day what had been a nice morning begins to deteriorate. Clouds move swiftly in from the east. To lighten my load I am only carrying a little food. By noon this is gone. I stop the bike and wander into the woods. The forest has a bumper crop of huckleberries, and like a hungry bear I paw through the thickets, eating away.

In the last 10 miles I am vaguely aware that there will be no more big rides with a load. I've done my 2,200 miles. I've accomplished what I set out to do. But it seems as if the cascade of events, the nonstop stimulus of adventures, has worn my brain out. When I ride now I cannot sustain a thought for long; not even a decent day dream about how nice it would to roll back into Helsinki or to sleep in my own bed and not worry about moving every day. My thoughts are scattered fragments, and these are followed by blankness. It is as if my brain is too tired to function. I see the asphalt and trees. I hear only the distant rustle of pine boughs. As Tommy observed yesterday the birds are gone and so are their songs. The tips of the birch have turned yellow. The purple fireweed blossoms are now withered brown seed stalks, the pinks and blues of the lupine are only a memory. Only the hearty yarrow is still in bloom. Every day it gets colder.

When I finally crawl into Sirkka, I know I have done it, but I cannot feel it. The long journey has sucked the emotion away from my body.

I need to rest.

I rent an entire house;, four bedrooms, sauna, fireplace, big kitchen and enough room to rummage around for a few days. It is over. After returning from the store with food and a couple of cans of Karjala beer, I unlock the key to my home for the next three nights and try to put in perspective what has just happened.

Still Cycling South

The morning is dismal, with rain dripping from an endless gray sky. With the cold it is difficult to rip myself away from the warm log Sämi cabin. The 15 miles to Enontekio is painfully slow across an endless plateau in the chilly rain. At last the town comes, a smattering of sad buildings and end-of-season cabins that looked like they have seen better times. But there is one thing here that cheers my soul. A gas station, and that means warm coffee and donuts. I know I can get five miles out of a good donut. It also gives me a break to slip on my head warmer, winter cycling gloves and another layer under my parka; it's that cold. A few miles outside of Enontekio, heading west toward the Swedish border I am overtaken by two young Finnish men on bicycles. They are on a two week outing. Tommy, a chemistry student, speaks very good English. We cycle side-by-side, talking away for the next 10 miles while his buddy keeps a sharp lookout for cars. The conversation is like a energizing tonic. I hardly notice the miles that go by, or the hills. Tommy is curious about my bike. He thinks I am probably the first person ever to ride from bottom to the top of Finland, plus continue on to what he refers to as the North Sea, on a folding bike.

"If you stay here another few weeks you will see snow," he tells me. "Winter is coming. The birds are gone and the reindeer moss is no longer by the side of the road."

Tommy tells me he's off to Mexico City in a few months to continue his studies in Spanish. We part at the road junction. Tommy and his friend head north, up the left arm of Finland, while I turn south to Muonio, following the E8 which hugs the border with Sweden. I have now crossed Finland from east to west, as well as from north to south. By 6 pm I reach Muonio, having covered 65 miles. I rent a "hut" close to town. At 17 Euros it is a bargain. Shortly after I tuck in for dinner, the sky darkens and the rain falls. It continues all night.

Where are your reindeer?

In the morning, I am up at 6 am, quickly break camp and ride to a lonely spot of road where I was told I could catch the bus to the Sami town of Kautokeino. Once again, I dissemble the bike and wagon, then wait at this lonely outpost. I am joined by a young Norwegian man, also with a bike (not dissembled), who comfirms that I'm at the correct spot. At last a mini-bus pulls up. Three other Norwegian men and their bikes are already stuffed into the passenger compartment. If I had not taken my bike apart there would have been no room for me. The bus drives through a beautiful forested valley of tall Norwegian spruce and birch.

In the middle of the forest the driver stops the bus. We wait. She turns to me and explains in broken English that we are waiting for a Sämi woman, who will meet us at this spot. With all the bikes crammed into the aisle of the bus there is only one seat left.

"She will sit next to you," declares the driver. "You better hope she doesn't have a reindeer with her."

The woman does not have a reindeer. We are off again, climbing into a narrow canyon. The Alta River tumbles through a series of cataracts. I am reminded of the North Cascades. At the top of the canyon we emerge onto a broad plain that resembles Eastern Montana, a big grassy expanse with herds of reindeer scattered about and low mountains on the horizion. We let the cyclists off, and then the three of us continue to Kautokenio. The two women babble on.

"We are talking in Sämi," the driver tells me. "She was my neighbor when I lived in Kuatokenio. She has many reindeer. I drive a bus so I don't have reindeer."

I ask, "Does she know where your reindeer are?" The woman translates the English into Sämi.

"They are at the coast," she says via the driver.

I have this vision of reindeer basking in the sand at a luxury hotel at the coast. Then I remember what Hammerfest was like. The image dissipates.

There is more I want to ask, but the language barrier makes this difficult.

The bus driver lets the woman off at her house.

"What will you do in Kautokeino?

"I will put together my bike, then I might continue to Hetta in Finland or stay in Kautokeino. Right now I really would just rather take a nap. Do you have to drive back to Alta today?"

"Yes, but first I will go back to visit my friend. She has invited me over for coffee and fish. Besides, I still need to collect her fare."

The driver asks where I want to be let off. I wanted to tell her Helsinki, but settle for a block of buildings that constitute the village center. The driver bids me good-bye and I am left in a dusty parking lot with my two bags. I begin building the bike. This is truly the most Sämi of the villages I have visited, way off the tourist path. Indeed, I am next to the tourist office, which contains almost no tourist information. The sun is out, and for the first time in weeks I am actually warm. The Sämi go about their business while I assemble the bike. A man walks by in the traditional Sämi tunic. The village has the laconic feeling of a Navajo or Mexican village. No one seems to be in a big hurry. Everyone stops and greets another. The woman from the tourist office without tourist information, sits in a chair outside the building and watches me put my bike together piece by piece. At last the bike and wagon are assembled. I buy some food at the local store. I really would like to spend the night here, but it's only 1 pm. A hand written sign on the office of the local campground announces it is closed until 6 pm. Would-be customers are directed to a nearby blue house. I find the house and knock on the door. No one is home and it seems as if no one will be home for a very long time. The sun is out, a rarity in these parts, I decide to use the afternoon to make a dash back to Finland.

It has been awhile since I've cycled and my muscles cry out in protest. I slowly make my way across a treeless plateau. Storm clouds scuttle in from the north. Shortly before crossing the border back into Finland, at the 34 mile mark, I reach the 2,000th mile of my trip. A mile further is the tiny Sämi settlement of Tunturikeskus. I rent cabin that is built of thick, sturdy logs in the traditional Sämi style. While I am inside the office/cafe/reindeer shop, a man is eyeing my bike curiously. He asks where I've been and where I'm from.

"I am Sämi," he tells me by way of introduction.

"Do you have reindeer?"

"Oh yes, I have many reindeer."

"Where are they?" I am not so sure why I am so suddenly interested in knowing where everyone's reindeeer are. But it seems to be a good conversation starter in these parts. The Sämi seem eager to tell me whether they own reindeer. Besides, I have not seen any reindeer since I resumed pedalling. They were so abundant in their big herds yesterday. I wonder where they have gone.

"They are over there," he says, motioning to some vague place in the great fathomless plateau I've been slowly pedaling across. I look "over there" and see nothing. I realize "over there" might be a hundred miles away.

The storm hits during the night, but I am snug in my log house.

Escape from Hammerfest

I follow the Expedition orders to retreat south using any available land transportation means available, whether it be by pedaling or riding a reindeer. Actually, it is by bus, which in Norwegian Finmark requires a bit of scrambling. The reader board on the front of bus bound for Alta simply says "bus." Fortunately, it seems most Norwegians speak some English. Through inquiries I get on the right bus.

The road from Hammerfest is precarious to say the least. It cling to the sides of steep barren mountains. A single paved lane is cut into the side. The roadside falls off into a bottomless fjord. For the first time, I see reindeer in big herds munching away at the moss and grass, the only thing that seems to grow in this climate. Through a tunnel that seems a million miles long and over a narrow bridge with no room for a bike, the bus moves slowly away from the freezing winds of the most northern city in the world. To cycle this route would have been suicide. After an hour, we turn away from the fjord and ascend a high maintain valley bisected by a tumbling river fed by gushing tributaries from higher reaches. Storm clouds obscure the higher peaks and veils of rain cloak the upper valleys from which these tributaries originate. Occasionally, the mists part revealing spots of last year's snow clinging to the mountains.

We descend into another fjord and there is Alta basking in the afternoon sun against a backdrop of snow-flecked mountains. The alpine forest has also returned, meaning the climate is less severe here. Indeed, it is much warmer in Alta.

I get off at the city center. I assemble the bike and ride about 6 miles to the site of ancient rock carvings for which Alta is famous. The stone carvings dating from 2,000 to 6,000 years ago depict reindeer and bear hunts, as well as a figure on skiis.

Because it is warmer here, I camp next to the Alta River. For the next few days I will follow the path of G. Acerbi, the Italian traveler, who, in 1799, was one of the first Europeans to visit these parts. Acerbi was always complaining of mosquitoes, something I can relate to. But the cold has killed off the pests. They will bother me no more.