Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [129]
Now, I’ve never sung karaoke. I’ve never wanted to sing karaoke, mainly because I’m a terrible singer. Micah can’t sing either. And neither, I eventually learned, could anyone else on our tour.
But sing we did, and gradually we warmed to the idea of performing for these Norwegians. We passed the microphone back and forth, laughing when it was someone else’s turn to belt out the next set of lyrics. We did this for hours, and it was one of the best evenings (along with Ayers Rock) that we had on the tour. The bar had a large selection of music, including Kenny Rogers’s “Coward of the County,” which made both of us laugh. It had to be an omen, and we belted out that tune at the top of our lungs. We also sang “Greased Lightning” from the movie Grease, doing our best to hide our off-key singing by dancing as exuberantly as we could. We moved like John Travolta, like professionals on Broadway, like we’d been dancing our entire lives, and at the end, the crowd clapped, whistled, and cheered. Later, when we asked one of the members of our tour what they really thought about our performance, there was a short pause before she answered.
“You know those howler monkeys in Guatemala? You looked like them.”
Like I said, all in all, a fabulous night.
Our late night made rising early the following morning difficult. We were tired, and spent the morning at the museum in Tromsø.
There, we were treated to long discourses on jars and bowls.
After the museum, we drove out into the countryside to go dogsledding. There were low-lying hills and trees in every direction; in the distance, the snowcapped peaks were partially hidden by clouds.
It was brisk, and we dressed in snowsuits that we could slip over our clothes. To reach the dogsleds, we had to descend a shallow hill, and were given the option of walking or riding down on an inner tube.
Most of the people walked. Micah and I rode the inner tubes. About fifty times.
We were loaded into the dogsleds in groups of three: Micah and I were joined by Jill, the physician, and as we waited we were introduced to the dogs. They were huskies, but smaller than I’d imagined they would be, maybe fifty pounds or so. And they were friendly; they seemed to enjoy being stroked and licked at our snowsuits in return.
Our driver, a middle-aged woman who’d once placed fifth in the Alaskan Iditarod, had not only trained the dogs, but owned most of the surrounding area. The business of providing dogsled rides enabled her to exercise her dogs daily. And the dogs loved to exercise.
As soon as the driver stepped on, the dogs got antsy and started barking; I suppose I expected her to yell “Mush!” but instead—and in a tone no louder than ordinary conversation—she simply said something that sounded like “Het.” The dogs started pulling and the sled took off, dogs trotting ahead and looking around.
There are a few things about dogsledding you should know. First, the sled is slow, extremely bumpy, and hard on the rear end. Second, you’re seated in such a way to make you feel every bit of the ride. And finally, saying that you went dogsledding in Norway with a team that once competed in the Iditarod is more fun than the sledding itself.
But hey, we did it. And took lots of pictures,