I want to go to there
where some destinations don't have a map
As I sit and write this, it’s only Wednesday morning, but I can already say that this week has been a struggle. I returned late last Thursday night from a two-week trip to Norway, and I’m having trouble getting back into the groove. I’m someone who likes his routines, likes where he works, and likes what he does. As a result, being on a vacation can be a struggle for me. By design, vacation days can feel vague, full of meandering and decompressing, and I’m not really that good at meandering and decompressing. At the end of a day, I’m only truly happy if I feel like I accomplished something. Sometimes I’ll get home from a pointless and meandering day at the studio and find some task to do that I’ve been putting off, just to be able to tell myself that the day wasn’t a total waste of time.1
This need to be making and creating means that travel, especially the vacation kind of travel, can be a perfect storm. Everyone around me is happily decompressing and relishing in the long and meandering summer days with no deadlines and nothing to do, and I’m sitting there in the chair in my flip-flops by the pool, losing my damn mind.
This trip to Norway was a planned exception to meandering, aimless vacations. It was built around a four-day journey by bicycle, where we2 were to take our bicycles 250 miles east of Bergen by train, to a small village called Haugastøl, and then ride back again. We had a very clear goal (Bergen). We had maps, and places to sleep, and we had ferry schedules. Each day would present a set of problems to solve, and each night we would (god willing) sit back with a sense of satisfaction that we’d solved them and safely reached our destination.
In planning for the trip, we purposefully left a few things unplanned. For example, we had two days in Bergen to kill before catching the train with our bicycles, and we made a point of leaving these two days wide open. We knew we’d ride our bikes, but had no plans beyond that. On the day of our arrival, as our flight from Copenhagen descended into Bergen, I was taking photos from the airplane window and spotted a lovely little harbor and accompanying village below. Blue water, green trees, boats, hills, and most importantly, quaint little roads, perfect for cycling. I want to go to there, I thought. So, the next morning, as we put our bikes together and discussed our plans for the day, I followed our flight path and located that harbor and village on a map (Hjellestad, pictured above), and I drew up a route to get there.3
We didn’t follow it exactly, of course. We began the ride by circling around Bergen before lining up with the map and heading south. Even then, our route to Hjellestad was meandering. We spotted a lovely mansion on a hill and took a detour for a look. We visited Edward Grieg’s Troldhaugen and his delightful little composing cabin.
When we eventually made it to Hjellestad, we were rewarded with a view of the quiet harbor at evening-time, complete with squawking gulls, people washing boats, and a Norwegian couple living their best van-life, finishing their dinner and reading books as the northern sun began its descent at 7:00 pm.
We’d accomplished something. We’d found a point on a map, drawn a line to get there, and followed it. Along the way, I had a mechanical issue that nearly derailed the entire trip…
We had to find a place to eat in a shopping mall. And there were some unexpected hills along the way. It had taken six hours to ride 18 miles, but we got there. And now we had two hours of light to get back. So, again, we drew a line (GPS is a wonderful thing) and we beelined it back, arriving in Bergen in time for dinner. If only the work I am doing now were so simple and direct.
This past Monday morning, I couldn’t even pick out a destination, let alone the route to get there. Do I begin the revisions my agent suggested for the new stories I’m writing? Should I try to start the elusive first draft of the rhyming book about trucks? Do I work on the artwork for a graphic novel pitch I’m planning? I haven’t cut any paper since I was in London in May, maybe begin a new collage? All of these represent some point that I want to get to, but these goals aren’t defined.4 They’re all sort of foggy and vague, and hidden around unknown corners. More importantly, there is no map. Getting there will only be the result of me doing the work. A creative journey where sometimes turning north is the only way to make my way south.
But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Sit down and get to the business of doing the work, creating the map from scratch. And hopefully, at the end of the day, I can go home, sit on the porch, and know that I accomplished something.
What I did on my summer vacation
I know you’re probably here for the illustrations about writing and the writing about drawing. But I’m about to put the Random in Random Orbit, and the next four editions of this newsletter will be short travelogues of the aforementioned bike ride from Haugastøl to Bergen. It’ll be about a bike ride, but it also won’t be. Also, there will be plenty of photographs and several drawings!
Let’s talk about tools
I spent an entire issue of Random Orbit writing about the drawing tools I needed to take to Norway with me. To follow up on that, it all worked just fine. I didn’t do as much drawing as I’d liked, but the notebook I took fit perfectly in the bike bag, and the pens were perfect. Here’s a drawing I made sitting at our favorite coffee shop, Godt Brød, in Bergen, the morning after we arrived. More of this to come.
What I didn’t write about was bike tools, and one particular tool came in very handy on this trip. In fact, it saved the trip. No exaggeration. That same morning, less than one kilometer into our meandering around Bergen, before heading south to Hjellestad, I began to ride up the first hill we saw and felt my pedal give way with a terrible crunching noise. I’ve been riding bikes long enough to know that terrible crunching noises are bad. I knew the problem was with the rear hub, and I knew that no one, I mean no one, carries around a lockring tool to remove a cassette and a hub for examination and repair. No one except Mike. I often poke fun at Mike for his penchant for weird esoteric mechanical things,5 and had I not had this issue, I’d have poked fun for this: he was carrying a Unior portable lockring tool. I won’t get into the how and why this thing saved the day. If you know anything about bikes, you know. But OMG.
Bicycle and illustration analogies: the Thornock edition
Christopher Thornock just posted a lovely piece about the creative process, and compared it to breaking in his new Brooks saddle. Go read it.
For the record, my beloved-and-fits-my-butt-perfectly Brooks Swift has about 10,000 miles on it. My creative journey, about ten times that.
Passport please
Another thing that almost derailed the trip was the fact that I left my passport on the airplane in Copenhagen, before arriving in Bergen. Mike and Kris tell me that I handled the affair with panache and incredible calm. But it could have been a really big problem. It took some work to first find my passport, then to have it sent to me. In our list of hilarious quotes from the trip, my phone call that began with “hello, Copenhagen Airport Police?” made the cut. In the end, my passport had been carried back to Keflavik airport in Iceland, and the lost-and-found service there mailed it to our Airbnb in Bergen. There was a period where I was just crossing fingers and hoping that it arrived, and arrived in time for our flight home. But this was during the four-day bike ride, and the bike-riding distraction was welcome.
Come and see my slide show
As you might guess, I took a lot of photos. One of the reasons I’ll be writing more about this trip is just to show off the photographs. I still use Flickr to post my pictures and have been for twenty years (if you know of a better platform, please comment!). I’ll be putting them here.
Nothing to do with Norway at all
Contemporary Collage magazine is publishing a very large, very nice book full of the work of seventy international collage artists, including this guy. They’re funding this thing through a Kickstarter, and I’d like it very much if you went and ordered a copy.
Thank you, all 1000+ of you, for reading.
Sometime during my ride in the middle of Norway, the 1000th person subscribed to Random Orbit. I’m sort of amazed. I don’t always write about what I should write about, and I don’t publish on a regular schedule, so I really appreciate you signing up and sticking around on this journey.
This hilariously gets into some existential issues around aging, I think, but let’s not go down that path right now.
“We” being my good friends Mike and Kristian. We’ve known each other, camped together, raised our kids together, and have ridden bikes a lot of silly miles together over many years.
If you’re into this sort of thing, I use Ride with GPS. There are a few apps and sites for mapping and route-creating, and I suspect any of them will get you where you want to go, but I really like RwGPS.
I do have two projects that are well underway and fairly well-defined, but in each, the art director or editor I am working with are on their own vacations. Ah, August in kid’s publishing.
When I first met Mike, in 2004, he was in the middle of finding a motor for and repairing a food-grinder he’d trashpicked. It made some delicious nut-butter. Later, at the beginning of the pandemic, he appeared on my porch, safely socially-distanced, with a nice little espresso machine that he’d rebuilt and carried on his bike to my house because he didn’t want Sacha and me to be stuck with our french press during lock-down. It makes a delicious latte.
No cats in Norway?
Sounds like a great and beautiful trip Brian. Except for the passport part but that worked out too.
"Do I begin the revisions my agent suggested for the new stories I’m writing? Should I try to start the elusive first draft of the rhyming book about trucks? Do I work on the artwork for a graphic novel pitch I’m planning? I haven’t cut any paper since I was in London in May, maybe begin a new collage?"
Well, You could map your time, give each of those an hour or two slot each day and rotate among them. But you know that already.