The adventure has begun! I woke up this morning around 0730h to a text from Patrick Dooley, one of my two travel companions and a close friend of mine, reminding me that he and a girlfriend of his would be picking me up from my house in an hour. I had packed all my things the night before, managing to put everything into a single carry-on bag (albeit a fairly large carry-on bag) so there was almost nothing left for me to do to prepare. I was particularly proud of myself that I had managed to stay under the challenging 10kg weight limit while also finding a way to pack a nice suit and dress shoes, in addition to all the cold weather gear I would need for this trip. I took a shower and got dressed in the clothes I had laid out for myself the previous night, and proceeded to enjoy a nice breakfast while watching educational YouTube videos as I waited. It wasn’t much longer until Patrick and Katelin arrived, and after a couple of hugs my bag was already in the car and we were off!
Our next stop was to pick up my other travel companion and close friend Nick Nelissen. Patrick, Nick, and I had all met in the late summer of 2015 as we all transferred from different schools into San Diego State University’s International Security and Conflict Resolution program (abbreviated to ISCOR) as juniors. All three of us were veterans of the U.S. Armed Services and the conflicts the U.S. has participated in since 9/11… Nick was Army Airborne and had done both Iraq and Afghanistan, while Patrick and I are Marines, with Patrick having been to Iraq and myself having deployed to Afghanistan. In addition to the military experiences we have in common, and the fact we’re all of a similar age (significantly older than most of our undergraduate cohort by being in our early 30’s), we also have personalities that mesh well together- and so with a little luck in meeting before classes started, and then helped by taking a few classes together that first semester, we became fast friends. Patrick is extremely gregarious, funny, and great at spurring us into fun new ideas. Nick is extremely practical, observant, and always ready to help out anyone. And myself? Well, you’ll have to keep up with this blog and decide for yourself! We’ve gotten up to some fun semi-local adventures together in the past, notably skiing in Big Bear as a group, and Patrick and I have done Vegas together; but this will be our largest and grandest adventure yet.
After picking up Nick, we were on our way north from San Diego for a two hour drive up to Los Angeles International Airport, our point of departure. Katelin had graciously offered to give the three of us a ride up to L.A. which we gratefully accepted. As we rode, we talked about our plans, joked around, and I tried to get us to learn a handful of Norwegian phrases (since Oslo is our first destination) via Omniglot like: “This gentleman will pay for everything / xxx” with the laws of nature dictating that whoever learned the phrases best stood capable of using these phrases to the consternation of the other two- good motivation for trying hard to learn! We also studied up a bit on Norwegian culture with the help of some impressively specific websites. Interesting tidbits included the Jante Law which expresses radical humility as an admirable trait for Norwegians to espouse.
We got hungry for lunch around the time we were passing through Anaheim, CA so we stopped at Café Misora, which is absolutely a hidden gem. Excellent sushi at great prices (although just spicy California rolls for me, as I really struggle with fish) plus delicious bulgogi sandwiches, plus good service and even some free green tea ice cream for desert! I highly recommend it to anyone passing through the area. Our hunger sated for the time being, we proceeded on to LAX. We made our goodbyes to Katelin, and grabbed our boarding passes- three seats together in the middle aisle near the front of our Boeing 787 as we make the 9,000km journey from Los Angeles to Oslo. We had managed to get our tickets astoundingly inexpensive- only $140 each. This miracle comes at a cost though: we’ll be arriving in Oslo on December 24th, which is the main day Norwegians celebrate Christmas, and so many things will be closed and people will be home with their families- unavailable for us to meet. Thanks to some incredible friends of friends though, we’ve got a list of possible activities to keep us occupied, a list of bars and restaurants that will still be open, and plans to visit with some of these friends of friends while we’re in town! Our point of view is anyone generous enough to visit with some strange American tourists is probably exactly the kind of person we would want to become friends with!
After getting past security we spent some time just relaxing and catching up on social media, and then grabbed pizza inside the International Terminal. Unsurprisingly, while the margherita pizzas were delicious, they were ridiculously over-priced and the service was pretty terrible. Unlike our lunch, I can’t say I recommend eating at LAX- but of course the security procedures hold travelers somewhat hostage. We decided to grab drinks before boarding the plane to celebrate the start of our journey: Black Russians (like a White Russian but with Pepsi instead of milk) for Patrick and myself, and Goose Island IPA for Nick. After toasts of “skol” (Nick’s heritage) and “slainte” (Patrick’s and mine) were made, Nick invented a signature dance move for our trio at Patrick’s prompting, which I promptly named “the freestyle stroke” after the swimming move which it resembles. It hasn’t impressed any chicks yet, but that’s only because it’s just come out of research and development- I’ll provide updates on its success in field testing as it occurs.
We’re over Canada now, headed in the direction of Greenland, and we expect the plane to land in Oslo shortly after 1300h local time. We’ll dive right into exploring, and I can’t wait for it!