Norwegian Summer 2026 – Day 18: Oslo to Madison

The 4am alarm seemed like plenty of runway when we set it the night before. Famous last words, right? I honestly can’t remember if we were smart enough to shower the night before, but by 4:30 we were out the door and walking to the airport with everything in tow. The elevator lifted us to the arrivals floor and it was a shock to the system. Busy, busy, busy. Which makes sense when you think about it; everyone on a 6:30 flight is standing right there with you at 4:30.

We walked the length of the airport to check the bikes at the oversize luggage depot, and pretty much nailed the 23kg limit on both, again, even with some small changes to the packing plan. Then it was back into line to check our one normal bag, and this is where the trouble started. That bag was an extra ($100), which meant no automated check-in for us, which meant the human line. The human line was not moving. Fifteen minutes went by, then thirty, and we’d advanced a few feet. By 5:15 there were still a dozen groups ahead of us, all of them on our flight, all of us doing the same nervous math. It got bad enough that I turned to Liz with my final instructions:

“You just go, get on the plane and get home. Better one of us makes it. Save yourself!”

An hour of extra stress total, they opened some new kiosks, the line lurched forward, we checked the bag as fast as humanly possible and bolted for security. Hurry up and wait! We cleared security with time to spare, arrived at the gate, and learned boarding was delayed an hour. Cue the sad trombone. All that stress for nothing, which I suppose is the whole flying experience in one sentence.

One genuinely good thing: to save overhead bin space they were offering to check bags through to final destinations for free, so we consolidated everything we actually needed into one duffle and sent another bag through to Madison at no charge. That made hauling ourselves through Amsterdam and Minneapolis a good bit less cumbersome.

Then came boarding. Liz scanned through fine ahead of me. I scanned my pass and got a big red X. Tried three times. Then a voice from the desk called out my full legal name, “Timothy Sandee!”, asking if I was traveling with anyone. Turns out Liz had scanned my boarding pass, not hers. Easy fix, I just used hers instead, but at this point my adrenaline reserves were TAPPED. OUT.

We’ll yada-yada most of the flights themselves. On the way to Amsterdam, we got a great parting view of Norway including areas I could identify specifically as places we biked through in our last 4-5 days. Let’s call it “Airplane Orienteering” (or something)!

Amsterdam was fine and dandy, and a very nice change of pace from Paris CDG a few weeks ago!

I did get a beautiful view of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior as we crossed back into American airspace. It was surreal to see them all in one shot, in real life, not on Google Earth or a map. I could trace a lot of journeys from my youth through those islands from up there. In the foreground was the north shore of Minnesota.

We landed in Minneapolis and ran the immigration gauntlet, which meant collecting all our bags, bikes included, to go through customs. One problem: no bikes! The carousel emptied out and nothing arrived on the oversize belt. A staff person finally told us that if they weren’t out by now, they weren’t coming today, and to file a claim when we got home. I eventually convinced her to scan the baggage tags, and she was able to tell us the bikes were on a flight to Detroit. Headed in the right direction, at least, more or less.

Honestly, this turned out to be a relief. No more worrying about wrestling two big bike bags home; that officially became a tomorrow problem. We breezed through customs and then had several hours to just sit in the Minneapolis airport.

By this point we were getting seriously sleepy and the day goes foggy. We boarded our tiny little 2×2 jet to Madison and faded in and out of consciousness the whole way. We arrived on schedule and went straight to the Delta baggage desk, where a nice-enough clerk figured out the bikes should land around 11pm and offered to let us come pick them up then. I pushed back a bit and she agreed to have them delivered them to the house “some time this weekend,” which was fine by me!

We grabbed a normal ride-share home, whose driver, due to technical mistake on his part, tried to deliver us to South St in Middleton rather than South Hill Dr in Madison. I was almost too tired to care, but we got things pointed the right way after adding one last bonus ten minutes to our trip, and fell out of the car into the warm, wet, face-licking embrace of Jules and Maya. They seemed fully aware of how long we’d been gone; there was a bit more squealing and butt-wagging than the standard greeting. On fumes, we unpacked for an hour, then slept hard until 3am sharp, when our bodies insisted it was time to wake up (10am Norway time). 😂

As we were outside reconnecting with Emily from across the street, on a beautiful Saturday morning, a minivan pulled up with our bikes/bags intact. Our journey completed successfully!