Big Sur Booting twice on mid-2014 MacBook Pro with 3rd party SSD

[jdw13]

I recently installed an OWC 480GB Aura Pro X2 SSD into my MacBook Pro (Retna 13-inch, Mid 2014) and have been running latest Catalina on it. I tried to update to Big Sur from System Software Update, but that failed repeatedly so I created a bootable USB stick with the command:
$ sudo ~/Downloads/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/NO\ NAME -- ~/Downloads/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app

After booting from the USB install, I did a reformat of the SSD to APFS before reinstall, which contained Big Sur 11.2.1.
The installation worked and appeared to work except that the MacBook Pro will reboot twice. After a restart I see the following typical scenario:

1. 0 sec - reboot (Screen goes blank, apple on lid off)
2. 45 sec - gong
3. 75 sec - gong
4. 100 sec - loading thermometer appears with software loading
5. 140 sec - login

I did the update from System Software Update to the latest 11.2.2, and this boot behavior remained the same: the machine boots twice but otherwise seems normal.
Other things of note:

1. After the original install from the USB stick, I saw from Disk Utility that the SSD had four volumes (2 system and 2 Data) and I used Disk Utility to remove the bottom System and Data volumes
2. If I try to reinstall the Big Sur from Recovery Mode Boot it refuses because “The Volume cannot be downgraded.” (Perhaps my fault from above)

Any advice?
Is there any way to get the Recovery Mode back so it would work in the future?

I don’t want to revert back to Catalina
MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 - crash panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801faa2d1c): Sleep transition timed out after 180 seconds while calling power state change

 

[jdw13]

Just a follow-up. It seems this 'double gong' long boot happens only upon "Restart." If I power up from a "Shut Down..." then there is only one gong sound and the login prompt appears in less than a minute. I have reported this to Apple, and there is a discussion on Big Sur Apple Communities

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252505791?login=true&page=1

which shows that my mid-2014 MacBook Pro is not the only laptop with this behavior. Behavior is normal now, and since 11.2.2 has appeared on App Store, I would assume that I could reinstall the MacOS if I wanted...