Preconception of Iceland

July 6, 2019 by Filed under Amused Tagged with ,

Before I did any research on Iceland, and well before I actually visited the country, I wrote down what I thought I knew about the place. So, think of this description as a snapshot of what some random West-coast American might think about Iceland from hearsay and pop culture. (Of course, actually going there will change this picture dramatically.)

Iceland is a big ice-covered chunk of rock way up north, populated by a collection of pale-skinned people all crammed into one large city, close to some killer geothermal pools that are probably very relaxing to sit in. The population is so small they have to be careful who they date, but they’ve mostly solved this problem with detailed bookkeeping.

Having nothing to exploit on their rock in terms of natural resources and not much of a tourism draw, but consistently bearing the best skin color, hair color, and height for social navigation, they have naturally turned to banking and finance as the means to stay at first-world levels of comfort. From a sideways perspective this isn’t too far from the plundering behavior of their ancestors, just white collar instead of blue collar.

Nobody does any crime because Iceland is too cold, but people struggle with depression a lot.  This ironically makes Icelanders a very interesting and engaging people to talk to.  This is also probably why they spawned Björk.  Occasionally their snow-covered rock explodes a little, dumping hot ash into the air and blocking the sun, and there is some fatalistic worry over this but soon everyone goes back to ignoring it.

Icelanders probably throw really cool parties.  And hey, don’t hate them because they’re beautiful and smart.  Do business with them instead.  You’ll live longer.

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Seeing Things Clearly

July 6, 2019 by Filed under Curious Tagged with ,

I have an obsession with clarity, or at least with a kind of clarity.  I think about how much of my world is constructed in shorthand and stereotypes, and I want to fill in those gaps.  I want to try, at least, even though it’s probably like patching a leaky roof with sponges.

If I look too closely, the number of gaps in my knowledge becomes overwhelming.  It feels like even basic communication between people about simple ideas is impossible, and we’re all stumbling around alone in a permanent fog.  But that’s not so!  We manage to connect with one another, with imperfect language and limited time, and carve out a common experience — a place where that permanent fog is not so thick.

And we do it in such an improbable way:  By flapping our mouth parts!  And wiggling our fingers on keys!  Somehow it gets the job done.  Dialogue is amazing.

Of course, dialogue also takes time, and our lives are full of concerns.  We have to budget the dialogue, so the connections we invest in are useful.  It makes perfect sense to work hard to clearly see the people in our immediate neighborhood, in our families, at our workplaces, et cetera.  They matter to us and affect us.  But if everyone is solving that equation the same way, that means we probably all have common gaps in our knowledge — common blind spots, filled in with handy assumptions that no one bothers to question.  Those gaps are limits, like a moat around a castle, or the walls around a housing community.

That leads to the reason I’m writing this:  Long range travel is an opportunity to challenge my stereotypes, and fill in gaps that I might not notice when confined to my own community.  I want to know just how much I am failing to see things clearly; perhaps how much my whole community is failing.  I expect it’s a lot.

A Map Of The Gaps

To do this right, I need to document what my outlook is before I make a big journey, even before all the research I will inevitably do as I’m planning it, since that’s research I probably wouldn’t do otherwise.

First, the basic landscape:  I’m not dumb; I don’t think people in China walk upside down, or that everyone in France wears a beret.  Actually I think I’m pretty enlightened about what people are like elsewhere in the world.  But … of course I think that, right?  How would I know otherwise?

I’m going to make descriptions by country, since that’s the main way I compartmentalize the wider world.  I’ll go in roughly the order I might be traveling.

Perhaps these descriptions will sound eerily familiar, even like the whole truth, if you’re a person with demographics similar to mine. Or even better:  You can probably make a good guess at my time, location, appearance, age, gender, and so on just by pondering what things I’m ignorant of and comparing them to your own.

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Iceland packing: The laundry

July 2, 2019 by Filed under Advice Tagged with

Contents of my laundry sacks, for my own reference:

The white sack: All the shirts I’m not currently wearing.

The red sack: Off-bike clothing. Pants with a belt, swimsuit, bucket hat.

The yellow sack: Long-sleeve wool undershirt, cotton long-johns, sleep mask, earplugs, LED candle.

The orange sack: Underwear, socks.

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Iceland gear and packing

July 1, 2019 by Filed under Advice, Tech Tagged with

For my own reference, here is the overwhelming amount of gear I packed for my Iceland tour, and how I arranged it.

This is what everything looks like packed onto the bike:

Here are the bags without the bicycle:

In the back: Two Ortlieb sport packer plus bags, each with an add-on net pocket and an add-on large roll-top pocket.

In the middle: Two ortlieb recumbent bags. The one on the left has three net bags attached to its underside in a row. The one on the right has a net bag, and then two small roll-top bags attached below, since it hangs over the drivetrain of the bike.

In the foreground: A Kelty Redwing backpack. On the loaded bike, this is placed sideways on top of the recumbent bags, where it fits nicely behind the seat, and is held down with two bungee cords.

This is all the gear that’s held in the Kelty backpack and the recumbent bags, or in the add-on bags attached to the recumbent bags.

The sleeping bag, with an inflatable insert and an extra liner included, is kept inside the large cotton sack which is then stuffed into the right-side recumbent bag and takes up all the space. The blue bag of rain gear goes into the net bag on that side, along with the raincoat, and the small add-on bags that hang over the drivetrain carry the bicycle lock and the drone.

The recumbent bag on the left side of the bike carries the tent, the stakes, and the pump. Suspended in the net bags beneath it are the blue sack with hiking shoes inside, and the red sack with pants, swimsuit, and other off-bike clothing. The net bag on the rear carries the big wool sweater. The yellow sack of sleeping gear and the other bags go into the backpack.

All this stuff goes into the sport packer bags, along with the laptop and the camera which are not pictured.

This is the charging gear for both the drone and the laptop, with a Y-connector so that they can both be run from one power cord with one international adapter. Between the two charging bricks, six USB devices can be charged at the same time.

These are the portable speakers, adapted to attach to the handlebars of the bike. There’s also an old iPod mini in here, for playing bedtime music. An iPod shuffle is not suitable for this purpose since it has no ability to stop playing! It will always repeat the current playlist forever or until it runs out of power! How silly. Not that it matters, since all iPods have been discontinued and will soon die out, and we will all be locked into digital subscription services and completely abandon the whole idea of controlling what we listen to without it being mediated from one minute to the next by a jealous corporate overlord in the sky.

This is a kit of spare music hardware. None of it is essential; it’s just here to give me options, or in case something breaks. Spare headphones, a spare microphone wire, airpods, a bluetooth transmitter, et cetera.

These are camera accessories. A macro attachment (not very useful but very lightweight, so might as well bring it), a wireless camera control that pairs with an iPhone app, an external IR focus-assist lamp, a tripod collar, and a smaller tripod for the iPhone.

Camera and drone charging stuff, plus an extra cable.

Lens and laptop cleaning cloths, plus a set of spare blades for the drone.

A collection of media cards, holding music, audiobooks, photo archives, and other stuff that’s non-essential and can be deleted as necessary to make room for photos. All formated APFS with encryption on, for the heck of it.

Micro-USB charging cables, a camera card reader, an add-on hub for the laptop, and various small adapters to extend the utility of the micro-USB cables.

A boom microphone for calling up friends and for video conferencing in strange places. The strangest place I’ve used this so far is by the side of the road next to a geothermal power plant in the middle of Iceland. The boom snaps into place on the side of my headphones, using a small stick-on magnet. It works with the laptop and the iPhone lightning adapter, and it sounds far better than anything else I’ve tried.

The travel toolkit. This is kept in the bag under the seat, along with a small tire pump and an emergency spoke repair wire.

The kit contains everything I need to disassemble the bike and put it back together, including removing the pedals and seat. I can repair chain, fix a flat, replace broken cables, patch wires, adjust brakes and shifters, and also prepare food and trim my nails and mustache. Each of these tools has had a lot of thought put into it.

The rest of the space on the bike is occupied by myself, two large water sacks, and whatever food I happen to be carrying at the time.

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Sticking around

June 25, 2019 by Filed under Inspiration Tagged with

“Much in the universe baffled me, yet I knew I could pry the answers out of books if I lived & studied longer. Geology, for example. Just how did these ancient sediments & stratifications get crystallised & upheaved into granite peaks? Geography — just what would Scott & Shackleton & Borchgrevink find in the great white antarctic on their next expeditions … which I could – if I wished – live to see described? … As I contemplated an exit without further knowledge I became uncomfortably conscious of what I didn’t know. Tantalising gaps existed everywhere. … What of the vast gulfs of space outside all familiar lands?”

H.P. Lovecraft, describing why he decided not to commit suicide as a young man.
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