Committing to the highlands

It was an exciting morning. On today’s route I would reach an intersection, and if I turned left, I would be heading up towards the highlands. Or I could chicken out, and follow the coast. I still had a few hours to think it over. In the meantime: Breakfast!

Just beyond the bakery I found what looked like a great bike path right next to the road. After about 15 meters it dissolved. What a dirty trick!

I put on my headphones and turned the cranks, enjoying the fresh air and the greenery. The traffic was heavier than usual, but the road was decently wide.

I suppose it’s the increased traffic that makes these signs necessary. (“Munið Bílbeltin” means “remember the seatbelt.”)

My first cycling friend of the day! This well-prepared fellow was heading back towards Selfoss. He passed me as I stood at the fateful intersection, deciding if I was crazy enough to try for the highlands.

Do I dare? Yes I do!

“If things get bad I’ll just turn around,” I told myself. Even though I’ve never done that before when things got bad. Hmmm.

I was suddenly reminded of a cartoon show where a little kid walks up to a door with a sign on it: “DANGER, DO NOT ENTER.” The kid stares at it, then proudly declares, “Hah! This sign can’t stop me, because I can’t read!” and flings the door open…

Perhaps danger lay ahead. For now, the road was easy and the landscape was delightful. Everything had that breezy “just rained on” feel.

It wasn’t long before I encountered more cyclists.

These folks could have told me about the route ahead, but there wasn’t quite enough room on the shoulder for an easy conversation.

I passed by a microscopic settlement – too small to be a town – and noticed a bunch of kids playing on a giant trampoline. I waved and they waved back.

For the next couple of hours I rolled along snapping photos of wildlife and listening to podcasts.

One of the more remarkable things I passed was a sheltered hillside with an actual forest growing on it:

Back home, I could get a shot like this in millions of places, especially if I went north towards Oregon. Here in Iceland, seeing this many trees in one spot is so rare it’s almost unsettling. It feels out of character for the country. That’s tragic of course, because a couple thousand years ago, forests like this were everywhere.

I imagined a whole menagerie of forest animals, enough to populate the island as it was, hemmed in together in this little patch of trees. Foxes, mice, and the occasional polar bear, all of them bouncing around like molecules in hot water, constantly finding an edge where the trees stop and turning around to run back into the darkness. Impatiently waiting for their territory to grow…

Still very much an open question whether that territory will ever grow, or just keep shrinking until the last tree falls over in the shallow soil…

I arrived at Árnes campground in the evening, and paid for two days. I had room in the schedule, and I wanted to make sure I was rested and ready for the ugly roads ahead.

The rain started again just as I stowed my gear. My phone said it would last most of the night. The internet was spotty, and I could only exchange a few delayed text messages with the folks back home. A sign of isolation to come?

Stopping in Selfoss

Today was one of those “rest and repair” days. I did get out for a little while, but mostly I stayed in the hotel doing a thorough tune-up of the bike, while the weird pale daylight spilled through the ground-level window of my sunken room.

I’d been at this high latitude for weeks now, but it still felt strange to see the numbers for sunrise and sunset, right there in my weather app. It looked like some kind of software glitch.

During my outing I passed by the bridge into town, and it was just as clogged with traffic as before. What a serious mixed blessing for the local residents.

The river under the bridge was one of the largest I’d seen in all of Iceland. Dig that tiny island! I wonder how many people have tried to anchor a boat there and climb up. Humans love being on little isolated chunks of land. There’s something cozy about it. Perhaps the whole of Iceland has that advantage, relative to other places…

I’ve seen sweaters shrink in the wash before, but this is ridiculous!

I poked around town a little more and eventually settled in another cafe. I had some research to do: Was it possible to take a detour up into the highlands, and see some of that amazing territory, without going too far out of my way or getting stuck on messy roads that my recumbent couldn’t handle?

Mapping things out carefully day-by-day, using Google Street View to inspect the roads when possible, and closely following the official Iceland bicycling map, I put together a plan:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4:

Day 5:

Day 6:

I wasn’t very happy about the pricey hotel stay at the Highland Center, but it was obvious why they could charge so much: It’s the last facility with hot water, or rooms, or a restaurant before a long, rough road to the Landmannalaugar campground.

Beyond that hotel, I was also a bit worried about the roads. Gravel on hard-packed ground would be fine. Loose gravel with some depth to it, or patches of sand, or dirt softened by rainfall could force me to walk the bike for miles, and that would be annoying. Also the river crossings were an exciting unknown: Would I have to hold my bike up over my head and pick my way across loose stones in a fast current? Or would I just be shoving the bike across creek beds, with the water barely splashing halfway up the waterproof bags on my seat?

We shall see!

I made screenshots of my itinerary on the phone for easy reference, then rode back to the hotel. Time to start that bicycle tune-up.

As I worked on the bicycle I put the movie “Jungle Cruise” on in the background. A bit of brainless action to help the process along. Staring at the bike, I couldn’t help thinking about my relationship to it, and to travel in general.

Riding a bike doesn’t use the full range of movement that a human body can do. It’s actually pretty restrictive, especially on a recumbent. I could get the same exercise sitting at home on a stationary bike, and in that situation, whenever I stop pedaling I’d have my entire house around me, including a giant comfy bed and a pantry full of snacks. What else am I really getting, out here in the world, that’s worth the trouble and the expense?

Do I actually stop and touch the environment I’m pedaling through?  Yes, but sometimes not for hours. Is the air better out here than at home? Usually yes, but sometimes not, because of truck fumes and grit. The sun can be intense and the rain can be chilling, and indoors I’m safe from both. If my interaction with the world is primarily visual, couldn’t I get the same thing by planting the stationery bike in front of a television set? There are readymade products that do exactly this, complete with a fake 3D view of a fantasy world, or a processed recording of a real trail in some exotic place that crawls along at the same speed I pedal.

With that available, how does my desire to bike tour make any sense at all?

I guess there’s just something way down in my hind-brain that settles itself when I’m traveling, that doesn’t settle when the travel is simulated. Driving has this effect, but bicycling has it much more. I think it has to do with the idea of reducing my existence to a container – something smaller and more portable than everyday life allows – with my body at the center of it. It draws me back into my body.

The effect isn’t absolute. I still carry all my obsessions and interests, and I often feed them along the way with audiobooks. Also, I’ve been a computer programmer for so many years that you could pick me up and drop me in the middle of the Mongolian steppe, and I’d be standing there thinking CLC, REP #$30, LDA $00, ADC #$75, PLX, … “Oh, what a nice view.” … STA $2000,X, INX, BNE $2014 …. “Wow, the wind is amazing.”

That makes traveling for the memories a bit slippery.  Now that I’m middle-aged, a lot of the stuff that’s fixed in my brain is outdated engineering specs. Sometimes I have to knock my senses about pretty consistently to crowd the new memories in.

But that’s it, really: The idea of reducing my physical existence to something smaller, and then moving it. Call it a nomadic instinct. There’s something important about the movement itself; the fact that you’re never in the same place for too long. A feeling of safety or security in that.

Headed East

Time to leave civilization for the rugged frontier of slightly less civilization!

For almost a week I’d been staying at Birgir’s AirBnB place on the north side of town. We had pretty different schedules, but when we did collide we always had fun conversations.

Since it was my last day I had to pack all my gear on the bike, but before I did I asked if he wanted to give it a test ride, since he’d never tried a recumbent.  It wasn’t adjusted for his height (Icelanders are such tall people!) but he bent his legs awkwardly and managed to go 50 meters, then turn around without help. He said it was pretty cool but not his kind of ride: Not aggressive enough!

I rode to my habitual coffee shop and enjoyed the mocha for the last time, and assembled my final set of visa paperwork. I had a decision to make: Should I go to the print shop in town today, or try and find one later so I’m not hauling a stack of paper across the country? My plan was to submit the papers at a government office in Egilsstaðir, near the ferry terminal. Could I rely on a city that size having at least one printer I could use? Probably.

Next, I rode up the peninsula to the hardware store and bought two batteries for my speed and cadence sensors.  The clerk thought I’d purchased different batteries at the store a day ago, and apologized for “the trouble” of me supposedly having to come back because I bought the wrong ones.  Did I have a doppelgänger wandering around? It was too late for me to correct him; I’d already paid and was on my way out.

And that was my last piece of business in Reykjavík. I went north again, winding along the upper edge of the city towards highway 1. So far I was on the same route I’d taken two years ago, but that would change.

I stopped at a fast food gas station joint and did some tourist watching.  The olympics was on the TV.  I got a “Memphis” burger, which turned out to be a cut-rate fast-food style burger with barbecue sauce added.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad! And it checked the protein and calorie boxes.

I was able to use good bike paths almost all the way out of the city. Geese and rabbits lingered in the parkland on either side.

So many rabbits! I guess that’s the thing about rabbits: Where there’s a few, there are soon many.

The weather was glorious. For a while the path followed a riverbank. I stopped at an intersection and discovered a free water fountain, and a collection of bike tools hanging from wires. How thoughtful!

The path ended at the highway. I passed fields full of horses, and people on horseback. The highway was legal for bicyclists but I didn’t like the noise, so I tried to escape onto a parallel road for a while, which suddenly turned into dirt and loose rock. Whoops!

Along that road I was passed by a large group of young women riding horses. There was no place for me to pull aside because the bushes were quite thick, so I just stopped. They went about 200 meters ahead, then shuffled to a halt where the road got even worse, and chatted for a while in a low cloud of dust. Slowly the whole group turned around, and soon they passed me again going the other way.  I stopped and waited again as they went, just in case some of the horses were nervous. Many of the women waved and nodded or said hello, always in English. It was obvious I was a crazy tourist.

When I went ahead I saw just how uneven the road was.  Passable for a horse but not very fun for a packed-together group. I cycled along with a leg out for balance, wiggling around the largest rocks. Soon I found the main road again.

It went up and up for hours, following a pipeline on the side of the road. What was in there? Hot water maybe?

I paused many times, and ate a bunch of leftover fish.  The wind pushed down on me and I ranted out loud to the sheep that since I was saving money on hotels I could spend extra money on fish.

The going got steep and wiggly, but I wasn’t bothered. I listened to lots of Goon Show and podcasts.

At the 1300-foot mark it finally peaked, and I wiggled around through a couple of high valleys.

Just before the road pitched downhill, I stopped and ate a few more snacks. My destination was a campsite called the Úlfljótsvatn Scout And Adventure Centre. I was worried because it was getting late and I’d never been able to confirm that walk-up camping was available. Perhaps I could sneak in at the edge of a group?

The descent to lake Úlfljótsvatn was monstrous.  I was very glad I didn’t need to climb it.  The road was striped with tire marks, some of them moving alarmingly around the road.  People overcorrecting, or lane-wandering, or perhaps being surprised by sheep.

I passed a hot spring with a sign warning about the extreme temperature. The water was weirdly inviting, but I decided there was no time for another stop.

Eventually the hour grew so late that it got dark. I found the camp and wandered from one building to the next, hoping to find an official who could tell me where to put myself. No luck. I did see a mowed field near a long stand of trees with campers gathered on it, so I rolled the bike over to the fringe of the crowd, pretending like I knew what I was doing, and quietly set up my tent.

I was almost done moving things around inside the tent, when some older guy with a daughter waved a flashlight at me and went “Weeeooo weeeoo, it’s the police! Haa ha ha ha hahahaa!”

I scowled at him.  Then I picked up my tent and moved it further away.  No one likes to be messed with at night, and this guy looked like the kind who would do it.

I wiggled into my sleeping bag and poked at maps for a while on my phone. In about an hour the camp grew quiet, as the last of the revelers turned in. A decent end to a solid day of riding.