 From the foggy shores of Vestmannaeyger, it is with great regret that I telegraph home news of a casualty in our midst. Though fighting valiantly to remain a fully formed member of this expedition, Team Member Three, Last Name Marmot, First Name Orange, has succumbed to wind-induced injuries and will no longer be capable of fulfilling its assigned tent duties without immediate and improvised intervention by Team Members One and Two. To ward off further injury until it can be retired safely to US shores, Team Member Three has been treated with a combination of extra staking mechanisms, a laundry line, and strategically placed duct tape. Though Team Members One and Two are both trained in the worn-out-gear healing arts, they worry that their skills may be outmatched, leaving Team Member One vulnerable to the gale-force winds and horizontal rain that this unseasonably awful Icelandic summer has produced thus far. We fear for the worst - With nothing else to be done, Team Member One is expected to succumb to its grave injuries. Its final adventure is at hand. Stop.
A view from the medical ward - Severe internal injuries caused by a sea storm that raged all night and eventually flattened Team Member One's bone structure into a pancake that wetly folded over the top of Team Members Two and Three.
 For the record, our Marmot was built to stand strong. It's a Marmot, for pity's sake. Sea storms boiled up in the netherworld by Nordic gods with rage issues, though, proved sodden and deadly, even for a Marmot. Up all night, using hands and feet to hold up the remains of our wind battered tent, it crossed our minds to inhabit a nearby thatch roof hut instead...but then everything we owned would have blown away. Braving the elements, we patched up our little guy as best we could and were able to ride out the rest of the storm in the improvised mess, but our gear is largely soaked now and the tent is really in shambles. So, we're leaving tonight to try our luck at the mainland again. Bad weather is expected to follow. I am not in the proper frame of mind to recommend cycling Iceland today, so I'll speak of other things.
Above, you can see the steep narrowness of the trail we followed for puffin hunting. This is also the cliff that sea winds blow over to create a reverse vacuum that murders your high-end outdoor gear and makes you look like an idiot...in case you were wondering.
Sheep, as far as I can tell, are the only members of the Trail Construction Corps in Iceland. Being sure-footed and lacking soundness of mind, sheep do not make the best park rangers, but they do scream very loudly, usually unprovoked, and this adds excitement to any walk. Also, they are precious and look/walk/sound/think just like Zoe, which makes me want to go home.
I am going to quickly round off our time in Vestmannaeyger and share next steps, as we have to get going and pack up our soggy stuff to catch the ferry. I can't think of anything clever to say, anyway, as my brain is muddled by sleeplessness and scenes from "The Perfect Storm", with cutaways from "Castaway." So...
Best part? We held a puffin. A two-year-old, sleepy, silky baby puffin. Almost makes up for the storm.
Vestmannaeyger hosts a tiny, rather dilapidated aquarium attached to the fire station. A single room houses eight tanks filled with the most hideous, ill-formed sea life we have ever seen, representing the rich aquatic history of Iceland. These were the most disgusting animals we have ever seen - gray, gelatinous fish with pointy teeth, all glopped together in a pile of gigantic, rotty fish mess; flat somethings with two eyes of the top of their sand colored heads and mouths that gaped open sideways, revealing internal bone structures; black, spiny crabs the size of my bicycle clawing at lumps of dead squid. It was like M. Night Shyamalan became the director of Sea World. Our skin crawled.
But then we held the baby puffin and everything was alright.
Sensing my recent visit underneath the surface of the River Styx (mixing mythologies, I know), my little friend jovially nipped at my fingers and blinked his eyes contentedly while I stroked his velvety feathers, clearly trying to make me feel better for having just witnessed the many countenances of Satan in person. It was a much affirming reintroduction to the glorious aspects of nature, which we had briefly forgotten existed (we forgot again around 2:30 am when the ocean tried to swallow us up, but tea is bringing us around again).
With that...there isn't much more to say. We are tired and vaguely downtrodden, so we are going to pack up and try for Seljalandsfoss, another waterfall that Christopher tells me differs from the other waterfalls we have seen and will see. It will be a short cycle from the ferry port if we estimated correctly and the weather is on our side (both tenuous, at best). After the light has cooperated enough to suit Christopher's undeniable genius (even I can't be sarcastic about that), we will cycle on to Skogar, a town whose one building is a gas station, to see Skogarfoss. In case you haven't gathered, 'foss' is Icelandic for 'waterfall'. Then, we'll haul on to Vik.
I can't remember, but I'm guessing that there is a waterfall there. Couldn't tell you why.
I'll leave you with a photo of a lava field, sharp and blackened leftovers of the eruption that pulverized houses and created two extra kilometers of land on Heimaey, our current island, in 1973. You know. To end on a happy note.
For the record, nobody died...and my hair looks really good.
 As this coy little puffer might indicate, Christopher and I are demurely proud of yesterday's successful bird watching adventure. Though arduous, freezing, and vertigo-inducing, we can only look at you askance and suggest that, while we know we are mighty heroes of outdoor exploration, we wouldn't want to put you off by being brazen. We are, after all, a lady and a gentleman, and we know the importance of proper comportment.
False. We, like the puffin above, are only feigning being classy and subtle. We, like a more honest puffin will soon show you, are obnoxiously proud of our hard work yesterday, and I am about to brag about it open-mouthed and shamelessly into your unwilling ear. Because that's who we are. Overly excitable clowns. You know that.
SO LISTEN UP!
It took quite the hike to get up to the puffin colonies. The trail is about as wide as a shoe, and basically goes...up. Straight up the side of the ever-so-steep volcanic cliff, with just more cliff and a grumpy blue ocean on the other side. Mind-numbingly high, severely steep, and generally terror-inducing. So fun.
We followed a precarious sheep trail, shaggy sheep included, to a black, rocky cove, but no puffins yet. Back up we went, knees wobbling, following more narrow, dizzying trails across the lip of the dead volcano until we finally spotted some tiny goobers (i.e. puffins) hopping and a-puffin-ing in the grass beneath us.
Nervously scaling more 'trails' (American park systems would never allow people on those slick, gravelly things, unless there were handrails and a thousand signs depicting a stick figure falling to its genderless death...and even then...but we're no fun), we found a rather more active puffin grouping and Chris disappeared for a very long time, doing very dangerous things for photos (mercifully out of my sight), while I shivered in the sea wind, read Midnight's Children, and spied on the goofy birds popping about.
Puffins are not skilled flyers. You would think the wind would carry their tiny bodies, but they can't even take off if there isn't a cliff to jump from. I know; I watched a little guy stuck behind a boulder, flapping its moth wings frantically, hopping higher and higher, flapping and flapping, never taking off, until it finally found an open ledge to leap/slip off. It took a long time. A comically long time. They are nothing, if not entertaining, and they seem delightfully unaware of this fact. They stand so proud; so proud and so mindless.
Christopher was taking photos of a trio on the rock ledge, creeping closer and closer while they cocked their silly heads and puttered around. Chris was focused on getting right below the three above him; what he didn't notice was a fourth puffin. Also clearly focused, the puffin was very much occupied with sneaking up on Christopher while Christopher tried to sneak up on more puffins. It was like a silent film. Chris would slither a few feet more around the rock, while the subject he was seeking out waddled a few more steps closer to him behind his back. Neither saw the other's face, but both were determined to get closer while remaining unseen. Like farcical spies, puffin and man silently circled while I cursed the iPhone charging back at the tent, leaving me video-less. The only thing missing was a ragtime piano ditty, and something falling onto someone's head. Bird poop would have been ideal.
I will be happy forever for having seen that little display.
 It's been a bit! As it turns out, Iceland has approximately three Wi-Fi hotspots, give or take a random gas station (they actually never have Wi-Fi, unless you have a Vodafone, or know what that is). We last left off at Hveragardi, the charming coastal town that I would have gladly stayed in for the rest of the trip. Chris, of course, had other plans, which included making me go to the above "art" gallery on our last night in Hveragardi and look at underdeveloped water color paintings instead of eating dinner first. You can tell by the way I have my backpack cinched, making me look like a depressed forty-year-old dad who let himself go, that I am not impressed with the situation.
The next day, we packed up our gear, which took disturbingly long, and set off for Selfoss, a mere seven miles away, with the hope of going farther along to a primitive campsite on the road to Hella. Unfortunately, this is when a torrential downpour made its appearance. This is in a rare break from the gray sheets.
The rain refusing to let up, we made camp at the unbelievably pleasant campsite in otherwise uninteresting Selfoss, and payed the whopping $4 to sit in a hot tub and warm our bones. It was a nice evening, which now strikes me as a piece of devil trickery designed to lull us into letting our guard down before the next day's ride to Hella.
In short, we had interminable rain and wind again, which was a bit more disconcerting than the day before because we had about 20 miles to ride instead of seven. Cold. Wet. Blustery. Trafficky. But we made it to Hella in relatively good time, which would have been better if we hadn't been charged $40 to stay at a "campsite" that was actually mostly a resort for wealthy Nordic people in dinner jackets. It was clear that our damp, neon presences were marring an otherwise idyllic stay in Icelandic horse country, so we kept our plebeian selves to our tent and left early the next day, stopping only to fraternize with the jolly gardener's sheep dogs. Then I got extremely homesick, so here's a photo of my sheep dogs.
Somewhere on the route either to Hella or to Hvollsvollur seven miles beyond, we also saw Urriga Foss. By Icelandic standards, it's apparently not terribly scenic. By Wyoming standards, though, the misty beast was massive and terrifying and gray. We stopped off to enjoy for some time, during which I was struck by the amount of people who drove up, stopped their cars, got out, took a two second picture of themselves doing peace signs or Vanna White arms in front of the falls, got back in their cars, and then drove away. Two minute interludes, at the most, and I'm pretty sure no one actually stopped and looked at the water in front of them. So odd.
To our credit, we didn't make peace signs or try to display the waterfall as if we had constructed it ourselves as a fourth grade science project. You can also tell how tired I am.
Hvollsvollur is a supply town in the Sundur Valley, in the Volcano Katla Geopark system. It was developed, along with a few other small stops, to support the farmers scattered across the area (in the midst of a volcano's war path, I might add). Though nothing but three gas stations, and probably a school somewhere, Hvollsvollur also has a delightfully Nordic museum devoted to Njal's Saga, Iceland's most cherished epic. For obvious reasons, we had to go.
Written down in the 12th or 13th century, the story lays out the true events surrounding an extremely convoluted clan feud that took place in the lands surrounding Hvollsvollur in the 900's or so. Here is what I gathered from the 30 exhibits attempting to tell the complicated story in a coherent fashion: Gunnar and Njal are great friends and great men, both living in the area of Iceland near today's Hvollsvollur. Gunnar is a strong Viking type, representing the quintessential Icelandic pagan, while Njal is a wise and forgiving lawyer, representing Iceland's upcoming conversion to Christianity at the Althing (Icelandic Parliament) in 1000. (Recall that the story's events take place before 1000, so all representations and pieces of symbolism are evoked by the recorder, who put everything to paper in the 1200's and probably made some stuff up, in my opinion.) Unfortunately, Gunnar and Njal both have temperamental wives, and after Njal's wife offends Gunnar's wife at a dinner party by asking her to move over a bit, the wives begin having each other's slaves killed in Hammurabi-style fits of justice. The husbands keep making monetary retributions to each other until the nonsense finally stops. Sadly, a food shortage begins, and Gunnar's wife sends one of her living slaves to burgle food from another man called Otkell. Gunnar finds out and slaps her a good one, which turns out to be a bad choice because when Otkell comes to kill Gunnar, Gunnar asks his wife for some of her hair to make a bowstring and she says "Nay" because Gunnar slapped her a good one. Thus, Gunnar is dead.
Forgetting about Gunnar's fate and shifting wildly into a new story, Njal's sons go a-Viking (literally a word used in the English display) and meet a man called Kari, who joins them in a-Viking-ing. They a-Viking another ship, and find a young boy aboard. Merciful as ever (despite a-Viking and whatnot), Njal adopts little Hoskuldr as his son and goes home to Iceland, being done with a-Viking-ing for now. Hoskuldr grows up and marries Hildigunnr. Her uncle is Flosi, a leader, and he likes Hoskuldr quite a bit. Now, Njal's sons have grown jealous of Hoskuldr, as he has become a powerful chieftan, so they are urged by some non-important character to exact revenge, which they do quite violently. His widow, Hildigunnr is distraught, as are Njal (at his sons' barbarism, ironically) and Flosi (at the death of his favorite nephew-in-law). Urged on by Hildigunnr, who does some gross things with the blood of her dead husband, Flosi decides to enact revenge on Njal's family.
Peace treaties break down, bloody fighting, including some taking place on slippery ice, ensues, and finally, Flosi's men burn down Njal's house with his family inside of it. According to church lore. Njal, his wife, and his grandson chose to stay inside the house as martyrs, and covering themselves with an ox hide, died in the home. When their bodies were recovered though, it was found that they were utterly intact and preserved, save for the burnt off finger of the grandson, who had poked it through the ox hide (why?). Recall, again, that this all occurs before Iceland adopts Christianity in 1000. Anyway.
Remember Kari? No? Well, go back and read again. Kari had married one of Njal's daughters and it was his now-nine-fingered son who had died, so Kari, of course, must exact revenge on Flosi. Kari travels about the world, going as far as Rome to receive absolution from the Pope for all the a-Viking-ing he does (again, all before Iceland adopts Christianity in 1000). Flosi does the same. Kari, after receiving absolution, sees one of the arsonists in a market in Britain, and chops the guy's head off mid-sentence. So much for Heaven.
Eventually, Kari and Flosi both go back to Iceland. They meet at the Althing, money and pleasantries are exchanged, some criminal charges laid down, and suddenly Kari and Flosi have both forgiven each other and their clan feud is abruptly done. The end. Praise God.  Simple as that. According to the display, Iceland's epics are the first written stories to use the literary technique of using characters' words and actions to express their identities, rather than describing them outright. A contemporary of this tradition and devoted student of the Icelandic sagas was Ernest Hemingway (the best author ever to grace this planet).
That being said...Njal's Saga is still incredibly long and painfully confusing. These people were the Borgias of the Viking world, but with maybe even more death and more complex relationships with God.
 And somehow, all of this brings me to today. We are at Vestmannaeyger, the Westann Islands in English. From Hvollsvollur, we escaped the world of melodramatic Vikings and cycled into farm country, passing paddock after paddock of green grass, churlish ponies, and the intoxicating forms of uncannily Zoe-like sheep. The map showed name after many-lettered name; we assumed they were little communities, but we found them to actually be the names of the various farms we passed, there being nothing else in the area to identify how far you had gone or where to turn on the map. The road was nearly flat the entire way and the farm animals were enough to occupy us for hours of happy-go-lucky cycling to the harbor that would transport us to an otherworldly group of volcanic, chilly islands.
This was the ride we made up in our heads to make ourselves feel better for the way things actually went. To give yourself an accurate picture, imagine everything I described above...and then add a 40 mile an hour headwind that stayed with us. The whole day. Every minute. A 40 mile an hour headwind. It took us close to seven hours to complete the 25 or so miles to the ferry. Seven hours to ride 25ish miles. Geese waddle faster. It was excruciating. There's nothing else to be said for it. Our legs were, and still are, dead and we made the last ferry by sheer dumb luck and a half-witted race to the finish that left both of us rather delirious.
Here is the view from the ferry, along with some smokers. Vestmannaeyer is a group of islands that have been created, and recreated, by volcanic eruptions, and other such terrifying occurrences of seismic activity. Our present campsite sits in the crater of a blown out volcano. Jagged, finger-like cliffs stretch up around us on three sides; white seabirds have taken up residence on rock shelves and ledges, and they sail about high above us, screeching interminably while they hunt and guard their nests.
But we are here for the puffins. Ridiculous caricature of sea fowl, hybridization of the macaroni penguin and the toucan, these idiotic little creatures are utterly adorable and painfully unassuming. The traditional methods for puffin hunting, used by the islanders for generations, include snatching them out of the sky with a long pole-and-net system and swinging between the cliffs from great heights and plucking them out of their of their little puffin nests. These are not smart birds.
You can essentially approach them, rather like the Adelie penguins of Antarctica. The Adelie penguins have an excuse for their brazen friendliness, though. They live in Antarctica. No one is there, particularly to hunt them. Puffin, meanwhile, has been eaten on Vestmannaeyger, as well as on mainland Iceland, since the place was colonized by Vikings. They should know better by now, especially when people are netting them like giant butterflies. These are not smart birds.
Oh, but they're sweet. Painfully sweet. They are the sheep of the bird world, and I can't wait to get my hands on...I mean, see one. So, today, we puffin hunt (but not like traditional Icelanders).
I owe you more stories, especially Camp Warden Foxtail. We have been so far between Internet access spots that I couldn't begin to put everything down without having to sit inside for an entire day, and we all know that just isn't going to happen. Perhaps more tonight, though. We plan to bed down here for three or four days, and get some laundry done, which is crucial for my sanity. Until then, a horse picture from Chris.
 A soggy hello from Hveragardi, Iceland, approximately 30 miles from Reykjavik (to give you no perspective for where we are). People. It's wet. This rain thing is very strange for Chris and me. At first, we assumed that the angels were crying or something, because that's what the checkout lady at the Smith's in Green River says happens, but this is apparently rain.
Rain gets everywhere. Everywhere.
We are cold. When we got in at Keflavik International Airport and snagged a cab to Reykjavik, the kind driver explained that, in Iceland, it does not rain up and down (indicated by a vertical karate chop), but side to side (indicated by a horizontal karate chop). This apparently correlates with the sea "breezes" and their whimsical rotations from north to south, east to west. The man then said that he thought cyclists were masochists. Quote. An accurate assessment, I would say, particularly after our first day.
We left the very next day for Hveragardi, bolstered by the general lack of trouble we had constructing the bikes, despite them being in 30000000000 pieces from the plane. Our work was aided by a chat with a man from Toronto (pronounced with fewer syllables than we expected) called Henry, who explained that the hiking was unmatched in Iceland and that people called him O'Henry as a kid, which is apparently a Canadian chocolate bar. Bikes built, we set off, gear in tow and grinning like monkeys.
It was five miles before I begged Chris to check my bike, at which point we discovered I'd been cycling uphill with the rear right brake deployed the entire time.
After Chris lauded me for keeping up with him without losing pace or my temper, we headed to an Icelandic pharmacy to repair my rapidly degrading knees. It was after another 15 miles that I found that the pharmacist/doctor/man had given me two codeine and a massive Ibuprofen, with more narcotics to spare (apparently they don't have a meth problem in Iceland). With me quickly dissolving into nonsensical dreaming, we pulled off at a gas station in no-man's-land to have a cup of tea and enjoy their interior decorating, which consisted entirely of soccer scarves from every team on the planet, even Tottenham of North London, which I thought was generous. We thought we might keep on, but fog stopped us mere miles later, and we pulled off at a scaffolding enshrining two totaled cars and a cross that reminded us to buckle up or drive sober or phone free in Icelandic. Basically, extremely comforting in the fog in a foreign country. (It was at this point that we adopted our cycling club name - Team WTF) We stopped in a lava field and I slept off the codeine (deceptively called Parkodin in Icelandic) for fifteen hours.
The fog obscures much of the backdrop, but the general ambiance helps me understand why elves and trolls are thought to be real here.
Bolstered by unexpected druggings, we rode the next ten miles to Hveragardi, an unbearably charming town of a thousand at the base of Lord of the Rings type mountains. A fast downhill on the way into town, as well as later scanning of a topo map, indicated the nature of the climb we had from Reykjavik, ever complicated by riding with a brake on. Christopher's dad, an avid cyclist, would be horrified by my elementary mistake (but I like to think impressed at the strength of the tree trunks I have for legs).
Hveragardi is the sight of much geothermal activity, with earthquakes more than occasionally changing the landscape to reveal newer and greater vents. Though beautiful and unbelievably neighborly, the town also intermittently smells like hideous gas (sulphuric in nature) and poo (caused by the abundance of geothermally heated greenhouses, and thus a widespread need for quality, Icelandic pony fertilizer). Add the fact that the sun never sets, and children safely roam the streets with dogs and bicycles at 11:00 at night, and you have a veritable wonderland of the lovely and the strange. See?
Here we have Christopher's delightful rendering of what I believe is a tributary of the River Varma, which runs through Hveragardi and produces the small-ish, yet impressive waterfall in the photo of us from above. He took this photo at about 1:00 in the morning, which gives you a sense of the perma-twilight state of an Icelandic summer. This piece of river is far above town, though, along a rather strenuous hike we took up and into the mountains in an attempt to access what is called on our map a "hot river."
The walk from town to the car park alone was a bit long, winding us through geothermically active fields and past farms grazing the cartoonishly majestic Icelandic horses, and when we arrived, I was delighted to note that the sheep truck that had passed us much earlier was now depositing its brood to graze in the mountains. Much bleating and hopping ensued. While the new sheep adjusted to the existing herd, we began to tackle what proved a steep, satisfying hike through the pages of The Hobbit until we reached a small stream visibly steaming and dotted with people up to their chins in flowing water, roasting like macaques in various hot pools. Even a dog had joined his family in the pleasantries, and was happily cooking with his people while his dog brother paced nervously on the shore.
Chris settled in front of a small waterfall like a fishing grizzly, and we didn't move again until it became absolutely necessary (as in, when the light changed ever so slightly at 12:30 in the morning, and Christopher's photography instincts kicked in). In a word - bliss. What a lovely way to heal our bodies before we hit the road again.
Which we do tomorrow. Despite rainy conditions that we can't seem to shake, we'll be going anywhere from 10 to 35 miles. We may land in Hella, providing us with Internet and proper camping. Or perhaps we'll take a primitive campsite beyond Selfoss and break the riding up. We'll go with the wind. Iceland will tell us what to do (by cooperating or soaking us to the core).
She's a Viking, this place. A life force if ever there was one.
Stories and vignettes to follow. I've take copious, rain-spotted notes. Teasers? Camp Warden Foxtail. The American Woman, as Interpreted by British Teens in a Bathroom. United Nations School Something of New York Something, or How a Bus of Teens from the Inner City Disrupts the Peace of Grown Adults Paying Their Own Way to Travel.
Good stuff ahead. Stay tuned.
 So, instead of updating our blog or focusing all of our excess energies on preparing for this cycling trip to Iceland (which I swear is still going down)...we bought a house.
It went like this. We took the dogs for a walk in Green River. We saw a green house from heaven. We called our liason for a showing, which took place after supper that same night. We then put in an offer. Some ADHD magic took place over the next week, and we moved into our first home about a month after finding it, paying a solid $136 in closing fees, to boot.
That's everybody's home buying experience, right? ...I just listened to NPR. Apparently nobody in America comes out ahead after buying a house... We, meanwhile, are paying half of what we paid in rent and are out....well...nothing.
I don't know how these things happen to us. Meet Carolina Jubilee. She's an utter delight. Notice the massive cliff/hill in the background. Just one of our many scenic views (seriously...everywhere you turn is national park quality Red Desert river country, sans the tour buses and regulations). Shelby very much enjoys chasing the deer that are peacefully grazing our property straight up the side of that cliff. We'll have to do something about that...
Anyway, it was the last day of school yesterday, which, for my part, entails slapping a smile on my weather beaten face and pretending that a kindergarten graduation/after party is simply another part of my effortless teaching job. Teaching kindergarten is like inhabiting Amy Vanderbilt's body, manners and personality in tact, but with a much wider variety of job descriptions - nurse, riot police, therapist, stereotypical 1950's housemaid, janitor - all of which must be completed with grace and a smile. I was very much ready for sixth grade (and a Xanax) by the end of yesterday's hard earned festivities. I carried that attitude home, and was convinced that the next day (today) would be a simple act of saying happy goodbyes and turning in my keys.
Consequently, I was very much surprised when my intentionally humorous farewell speech about Irish exits and swallowing your emotions to bolster pre-existing ulcers turned into a garbled mess of tears and utterly honest expressions of love and appreciation for my awesome coworkers.
I was that girl. Uh huh. I'd rather not go into details. So much for Irish exits. Teaching has melted my cold Gaelic heart...ulcers still intact...  Which somehow brings me back to Iceland. Folks, this thing is happening. The panniers are packed. The cycles are outfitted, mine with a fine set of aero bars that were the talk of the REI bike shop of Salt Lake City. "Aero bars on a touring bike?" "Well, isn't that something!" "That's out of the box thinking, there!"
We're gone on Tuesday. I don't know what else to say about the matter. Iceland isn't exactly Destination Numero Uno, which makes it a bit challenging to research. A colleague told me that she reads a story with her fourth graders about the baby pufflings in Iceland. She said that their first flight is supposed to land them in the sea. Unfortunately, the lights of Reykjavik reflecting off the ocean confuse the little puffling puffs, and many crash land in the city streets. There is a happy ending, though. The 100% literate Icelandic children are allowed to flood the streets, scoop up the pufflings, and release them back off the cliffs to live happy, multicolored, fish-eating puffin lives.
I have yet to confirm the validity of this story, but I hope with the entirety of my being that there really is a time of year where 100% literate Icelandic children race around saving baby pufflings from doom. I kind of need this to be true on a very guttural level.
I mean, really. Children. That can READ. Saving PUFFINS. What more could I ask of this world? Come back soon to read. Please. I promise greater fidelity to this little enterprise, and perhaps a few more details on what two teachers with bikes my actually do...besides bike...on a partially frozen island with no night time hours. This will hold you over until then. With an athlete like me, what could possibly go wrong?
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