With three days left of our Iceland adventure, I'll open with a quote from The Reykjavik Grapevine, Iceland's unpleasantly hip, urban beat, English language newspaper. The piece refers to an electronica song by Pluseinn, a band that I can only hope sounds nothing like the dissonant, garbled squawking that emanates from various Reykjavik alleyways.
"The words say, "Take it easy now," but the tone says, "F#@%, what a boring summer of bad weather we're having." Not every electro jam has to be a feel-good hit and this new three minute tune from Pluseinn...is way more suited for sitting in the coffee shop, staring at the window, and sulking at the clouds than for chugging Crabbie's and throwing your hands in the air like you just don't care. And that's great, you know, because when July is this cold and wet, we need an anthem for commiseration..."
Not knowing what Crabbie's is/are, I can confirm that we haven't had the opportunity to chug any, but the relationship between Crabbie's and "throwing your hands in the air like you just don't care" reveals enough for me to be able to also confirm that we have not enjoyed a day of summer revelry that would be appropriate for July in Iceland, let alone anywhere else on the planet. I can also say, without any shadow of a doubt, that it is absolutely exhausting to spend six weeks in a land where the sun never sets, while never actually seeing this sun make a much anticipated appearance. By our calculations, Chris and I cycled about 500 miles...in the wind and the rain. Chris and I have swum in various rivers, hot pots, and outdoor public pools...in the wind and the rain. Chris and I have slept outside every day for six weeks...in the wind and the rain.
And the ultimate irony is that the sun never really set.
This rather typical I'm-on-vacation-in-a-city photo shows Reykjavik on the nicest day of the summer. Note the faint glimmer around the 98% cloud cover. They say that's sunlight. Another significant detail in this picture is the water spray of the fountain only being blown slightly to the left, as opposed to its usual trajectory, which I can only presume looks like a fire hose spraying horizontally in whatever direction the wind decides it'll take. Shortly after this photo was taken, the rain started again.
Iceland is not all rain and wind, though...or so Christopher tells me. There are also hot dogs, and in both Reykjavik and Ayureyri, we saw big red boxes, rather like London's phone booths, where you could deposit your name and address for Santa and his Yule Lads (not a hilariously effeminate holiday boy band with curiously placed fur linings, as I hoped, but actually just an Icelandic cultural tradition) to write you back at Christmastime. Which is fun. Certainly in keeping with the generally Christmasy vibe that Akureyri boasts year round.
As I babble on without introduction, you may notice the twelve day hole in my saga from us leaving Egilsstadir and us arriving in Reykjavik. You map junkies might even know that Egilsstadir is on the opposite end of the country from Reykjavik, which poses a high school math style question about distance, time, and varying speeds relative to acceleration, dead time, and so on.
The Icelandic saga answer to any issue of time/space clarity is to ignore it completely and continue on with the story from the present day, regardless of time elapsed and amount of Viking-induced deaths of main characters, which is tempting for me to emulate in my present state of mind. I strongly suspect that I am suffering from a Vitamin D deficiency that is making focus an extreme act of mental acrobatics; when complicated by pre-existing ADHD, it is a chore for me to do anything besides cycle, run, or swim laps to burn off sheer restless energy. Christopher claims that my self diagnosing is a bit melodramatic, and that perhaps we're both just a little bored after six weeks in the same country. I just have to look at my Arctic tern head scar to know that Chris doesn't take my medical experience seriously enough, especially when he says there is no scar to look at. I know my truth.
To cope with my disinterest in mental acrobatics, I took up physical acrobatics in Akureyri, to alarming photographic - though perhaps not actual - success. Using my ADHD counselor's sage advice, I will now "gain my interest with something stimulating" and then "make a list of what needs to get done" to make this much belated story hour happen. I'll do my best, folks. Just keep in mind that I am working from a land without sun. It does things to people...strange, skin whitening things... SO, here is me learning to juggle, both one- and two-handed, in Akureyri, followed by a list of things we need to talk about, followed by my death from trying to pay attention and get this story told.
The Icelandic saga answer to any issue of time/space clarity is to ignore it completely and continue on with the story from the present day, regardless of time elapsed and amount of Viking-induced deaths of main characters, which is tempting for me to emulate in my present state of mind. I strongly suspect that I am suffering from a Vitamin D deficiency that is making focus an extreme act of mental acrobatics; when complicated by pre-existing ADHD, it is a chore for me to do anything besides cycle, run, or swim laps to burn off sheer restless energy. Christopher claims that my self diagnosing is a bit melodramatic, and that perhaps we're both just a little bored after six weeks in the same country. I just have to look at my Arctic tern head scar to know that Chris doesn't take my medical experience seriously enough, especially when he says there is no scar to look at. I know my truth.
To cope with my disinterest in mental acrobatics, I took up physical acrobatics in Akureyri, to alarming photographic - though perhaps not actual - success. Using my ADHD counselor's sage advice, I will now "gain my interest with something stimulating" and then "make a list of what needs to get done" to make this much belated story hour happen. I'll do my best, folks. Just keep in mind that I am working from a land without sun. It does things to people...strange, skin whitening things... SO, here is me learning to juggle, both one- and two-handed, in Akureyri, followed by a list of things we need to talk about, followed by my death from trying to pay attention and get this story told.
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Clearly, I am an unbelievable success. Clearly. Christopher can juggle every way imaginable while riding a unicycle, slack-lining, doing magic tricks, and trying to figure out why I order everything from right to left except words and can't understand day/month/year mathematical relationships. I am not the prodigy in this relationship.
List of Things We Need To Talk About:
1. Hengifoss and the Wyrm Monster
2. Cycling 500 Miles, thus Completing a Coast-to-Coast Tour of Iceland
3. To Bus or Not to Bus - How We Got to Reykjavik
4. Godafoss, Akureyri, and the Humpbacks of Husavik
5. Hveravellir - Why the Highlands Would Have Been a Better Prison Land than Australia
6. Gullfoss, Geysir, and Grody Smells
7. Back to Where We Started, or Why Couldn't I Smell That in the Highland?
So, seven posts. I have seven stories to tell you, just in time for this café to close, sending us out for a bleak cycle back to the campsite in the, you guessed it, wind and rain. To hold you over until new WiFi is found - which could be in an hour, or a day, or back at my dad's house with our dogs in our lap - here are some outrageously fine, fine art photos by Christopher. So it's fair.
I'm marrying above my station.
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