Alt for Norge Daily Journal: Day 35 - May 27, 2012 (Episode 6)

Today is a short travel day, followed by our first competition. All of this would be done while experiencing some of Norway’s crazy weather!

CJ And I doing our best "Captains". He's much better at it than I.

We got started pretty early and were supposed to take a one hour boat ride to the island Kjerringøy, however, apparently the boat had issues so we took a one hour bus/ferry ride instead. When we got there we hopped on a small boat and headed out to the location of our first competition.

After a choppy, but fun 30 minute ride, we pulled up to a small island that wasn’t much larger than a couple of football fields and didn’t have anything more than a bunch of rocks and some small vegetation. Standing at the top of the island was the film crew and Henriette, ready to inform us of our first team challenge. There would be two phases to this first challenge.

A shot of the cast and crew getting to the top of the island for our introductions.

The first phase would consist of each team running to a small pond and having to pull out five wood blocks (weighted down, but with a ring fixed to the top) using some basic fishing rods. Each wood block would have two words printed on it and once all five blocks were fished out, they would have to be put on a board in proper order, spelling out a Norwegian phrase. Once the words were put in order, each team would have to memorize the phrase, run a short distance and repeat the phrase to Henriette. If we were wrong, we would have to run back to the board and figure out if we had memorized the phrase wrong or simply have the blocks in the wrong order, repeating this process over and over until we were able to say the correct phrase to Henriette. Once completed, we would move on to the second phase.

The second phase was pretty simply: Find 10 hidden seagull eggs hidden in the terrain of the island as fast as possible. Once all 10 eggs were located and confirmed by Henriette, your total time would be up and the fastest team would get the edge in the second team challenge.

Our press photo for this Episode.

We were divided into our two teams. The Blue Team would be Alf, Amy, Johnathan and Austin. The Red Team would be myself, Tara, Jessica, and C.J. The Blue Team would go first and headed over to another section of the island to complete the first phase. Our team would head the other direction. Unfortunately, we were all extremely cold, due to the frigid weather and the incredibly strong wind! Even with several layers on, we were all struggling to get warm. Due to that, we found a small crevice on the island and huddled together, spending our time trying to remember and recite a phrase that Henriette told us during our introductions, which we were assuming would come into play during this challenge. We waited for about an hour and then it was our turn.

Team Red waiting for our turn, but cowering
in a little crevice to hide from the wind and cold!

Our team got prepped by the camera crew and then lined up. At “go”, the four of us ran down to the pond, each grabbing a fishing pole and aiming to “catch” these wooden blocks which were each about a foot or two under the water. We spread out and fortunately, I was able to snag my first one pretty quickly, so I moved onto the next one. Again, I caught the second one pretty quickly and threw it onto the ground, next to the first block. I then asked if anyone needed help, which C.J. responded that he did. I ran up and started to fish for his wood (ha!). About that time, Tara caught hers and found that Jessica needed help, so she moved over to help her. At that point we had three of our five blocks, so C.J. and Jessica started trying to piece them together while Tara and I kept fishing. Then things got harder, as rain started to fall, making it really hard to see remaining blocks in the water. Thankfully, I caught our fourth block. I handed it to C.J. and Jessica and headed over to where Tara was. It looked like she was struggling, so I asked if she needed help, which she said yes to. I immediately got started, but really struggled. The wind and rain were making it virtually impossible to see the block, so I had to blindly fish around the area, hoping to catch something. At one point, we were so frustrated, Tara started trying to fish too, but only ended up snagging my line. Instead of spending time untangling them, I threw mine down and grabbed Jessica’s fishing rod. Again, I was struggling and so frustrated, that I just started pushing and pulling my hook past where I though the block was. Unbelievably, I somehow set my hook in the wood itself and not the ring on top, so I carefully pulled it up and out. Having all five blocks, we took off to put our sentence on the sign.

We placed our five blocks on the board, using our collective thoughts on what order they should be in. C.J., our memory guy, quickly memorized the phrase and then we all ran to Henriette to have him repeat it to her. Unfortunately, we were wrong. We ran back to the board, he re-memorized it, ran back, and got it wrong again. This time, we swapped two of our blocks, memorized the change, C.J. repeated it to Henriette, who then replied we were correct. We ran off and our time stopped. (Because of the setup, we needed to film the challenges two phases separately, which is why the time has stopped for now.)

Using my downtime to explore the island.

After a break, we went to start the second half of our contest, finding those 10 seagull eggs. However, this cold rain that started falling during our first portion of the challenge had slowly gotten worse and worse. Along with that, the wind was getting stronger and stronger. The film crew got together and a short time later came to us to let us know that we couldn’t continue filming in this weather. We were calling it quits for the day. However, there was a problem with that. Our boat that brought us out there had returned to Kjerringøy. We would have an hour or so before the boat could get back, take part of the film crew back with the equipment, and then return to pick us up. With that, I decided to spend that hour exploring the island. There wasn’t a lot of space to explore, but what was there was a ton of fun and the movement kept me warm. I love it when they allow us to explore during downtime!

The crew packing it up for the day. The weather was crazy!!

Eventually, the boat came and picked us up. We went back and were filmed discovering our accommodations. We would be staying in local fisherman’s cabins, with the girls in one and the guys in the other. What we thought would be pretty run down shanties, ended up being pretty nice and spacious cabins. Very surprising! Also, we discovered that there were cooked seagull eggs and some beer on our table. The girls joined us and we all celebrated while enjoying our eggs. Once the crew had enough film, we broke for the day and went to a late dinner. However, while eating dinner, apparently the directors had an idea. Since we hadn’t done all of our filming that day, he asked if we would be willing to do one more scene. We agreed.

Standing outside under the midnight sun!!

It was pretty basic and just involved the eight of us hanging out outside one of our cabins swapping stories of the day. The only catch to all of this was that it was midnight and due to how far north we were (Kjerringøy is actually above the Arctic Circle), it was still sunny out! Amazing! Then, things got pretty crazy! Somehow, the conversation turned to Tara challenging Jessica to jump into the sea! Without hesitation, Jessica took off for the pier and jumped in! In fact, it was so inspiring that Austin, Tara and I followed suit! Unlike Jessica, the three of us stripped down to our undergarments, lined up at the edge and did a back flip in. It was insanely cold!! I can’t believe it, I just jumped into the Norwegian Sea! You’ll have to check out Kjerringøy on a map to see just how far up we were! Good times and great memories!

I know it's hard to tell based on the muscles, but that's me on the left, not the
one in the middle! This is right before jumping in waters above the Arctic
Circle! Incredibly cold, but really refreshing!

That was about it for the day. The crew was very worried about us getting warm again, so they hurried us back inside and gave us all towels to get warm. After some hanging out, we all retired to bed. We knew that we needed to get some sleep, since we’d have to double up on filming tomorrow to make up for the weather today.

Day 35 Over!