15-Feb-2010 -- "Just a Perfect Day!"

On Friday I got a call telling me I had to go to a plant in Northern Norway on Monday morning. When I checked the maps I realized that the road I had to take south from Bodø airport would pass within 5-6 km of a confluence, and the weather forecast was for beautiful weather as well.

This morning I flew from Oslo to Bodø, the airport where the U2 spy plane shot down May 1 1960 was supposed to land after overflying Soviet territory, picked up my rental car and plugged in my Nokia cell phone: A week ago they made all international maps freely available to their gps-enabled phones, so on this trip I didn't need to bring my trusted Garmin Quest.

I followed E80 to the RV17 exit, leading towards Saltstraumen, the famous tide water run. My last visit to this area was 42 years ago, a long time before the current bridge was put up, saving at least an hour for people driving south towards Sandnessjøen.

About an hour later I got to Oterstranda and the exit towards the confluence. As noted by visitor #2, the road tunnel has a warning sign indicating a road junction inside the the tunnel itself. After talking to some local people, I believe this exit (which is normally covered by a gate) leads into a military installation.

I got to the end of the road, changed into winter-time jogging gear (including wet-proof socks, woolen underwear and a Gore-Tex anorak) and started running. With 15-30 cm snow on the ground and high tide, I had to back-track a few places along the shoreline to avoid being forced into the sea.

I spent a total of 42 minutes on the visit, including 4 minutes at the point. The total distance covered was 3.5 km.

Afterwards I got back to RV17 and drove on to the plant with IT trouble, arriving exactly as planned. We discussed the crashes they have had and implemented a few ideas in order to try to troubleshoot them. Tomorrow we'll see if we got some results!