The flight from LA toLondon seems interminable, especially if you’re used to the routine. Take off,a drink, dinner, try to sleep, a bleary-eyed breakfast an hour out of Heathrow,then jet lag to stagger creation. Sometimes the aftermath is almost surrealist.I remember landing years ago early one summer morning, renting a car, thendriving some two hours later down a narrow country land on a gorgeous June morning. The transition was so bizarre, so extreme, that I burst out laughing at the sheer joy of life. They say that travel wears thin with age and I tendto agree, having had a surfeit of business travel over the past year. But thereare magical moments and I hope this trip will have plenty of them.

A rare journey thisone, devoted to entirely to pleasure. Three days in England in Aldeburgh,Suffolk, on the East Coast, seeing friends and (trying) to overcome jet lag.Tomorrow will bring the pleasure of a highly technical conversation aboutweather helm in a Caledonia Yawl with a yacht designer friend and dinner withsome old African acquaintances of more years ago then I care to remember. Thenon to Oslo, and the highlight—5 ½ days bicycling in Norway’s Lofoten Islands,north of the Arctic Circle.

Why the LofotenIslands, people have asked? I’m tempted to respond with the classic “becausethey are there,” but the real reason I want to see them is because of cod. Someyears ago, I traveled extensively for my book Fish on Friday, but the one place I couldn’t get to was theLofotens. They were just too far off the beaten track and my research budgetwas limited. For centuries, the islands were a mainstay of the medieval codtrade. The Norse ate dried Lofoten cod on their journeys to Iceland andbeyond—the beef jerky of the day. The islanders caught thousands of fish fromopen boats in mid-winter and dried them on wooden racks in the cold spring sunand wind. They still catch cod and sell it abroad, even the fish heads, whichare delicacy in Nigeria. So there’s lots of cod racks to see, even if most ofthe drying is finished for this year. When I learned that Backroads, the Berkeley-basedbike touring company, run two trips a year to the islands, I grabbed at thechance to go.

So here I am inmid-Atlantic, wishing the flight was over, but excited that the adventure hasbegun. Only 1 hour 55 minutes to go until that most ghastly ofexperiences—Heathrow airport at 7.15am!