Preconception of Iceland

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.

A (not very dramatic) confession!

I think it’s time to admit it:

I am a bicycling nut.

In fact, it’s time to go beyond that, and admit that my very life – in the form of my health – depends on bicycling.

For the past week I’ve been suffering, because a support strut broke on the seat of my recumbent:

It's aluminum, so it cracked all the way across instantly. Steel would have cracked and bent slowly. This increased risk is the price we pay for lighter frames.

With no immediate replacement, I’ve been forced – FORCED I tell you – to ride my “upright” bicycle again. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the upright. It’s an old Bridgestone frame customized into a good touring bike, and I’ve taken it on many rides including a brief tour of Tasmania:

… But it’s not my recumbent. It’s not that speedy, panoramic experience I’ve grown used to, where every joint is perfectly at ease. And that little difference is making me cycle a little less. And with that, I suffer. Wailing; gnashing of teeth, et cetera!

Words to live by??

My mood is more down. My work goes slower. My sleep is more restless. My appetite no longer matches my exercise level, so I’m gaining weight. It’s all going just a little bit crap, because I can’t hop on my favorite bike. That’s a pretty big deal. And it’s a state of things that I should recognize.

So, fine. I’m a bicycling nut. Even though I don’t own any lycra clothing.

Onward!!

Valoria II: Seats and fitting

I ride my recumbent a lot, and I ride it wrong.

When I’m not doing tight maneuvers, I rest my arms way up on the handlebars. That means I position the handlebars way closer than normal.

To get the same setup on my new bike, I had to get a longer steering riser tube. After much discussion with Zach, we concluded that the easiest thing to do was ask Bacchetta to send us a riser tube meant for their Bella long-wheelbase bike. That worked beautifully except it was too long. So, it was time for another crude do-it-yourself adventure:

Marking how much I need to saw off.

This is a pipe cutting tool. You stick it on a pipe and spin it around. Pretty smart design!

Bacchetta’s handlebars are now really wide, like most other recumbent designs. It’s like steering a plow. Does this mean I have to get used to them?

Nah. I can just swap handlebars.

New bike in front, old bike in back. The alignment is almost the same. Now to swap the handlebars...

New bike, old handlebars. To keep the new shifters and brakes I had to swap them between bars, which meant removing the bar grips. They are very sticky. I'm still struggling with the one on the right!

Bacchetta’s seats no longer include the eyelets for directly attaching an under-seat rack. Does this mean I have to give mine up?

Nah. I can just swap seats and keep using my old one.

New version of recurve seat on the left, old seat on the right. Note the attachment point on the old seat for an under-seat rack.

Look at that crusty old thing! But it’s so comfortable…

The bolts connecting the support struts to the seat of a Bacchetta recumbent, after 20 years of use.

Top set: 20 years old. Bottom set: brand-new.

While I’m moving parts around, I might as well replace that worn out seat clamp on the old bike with a nice new one…

20-year-old seat clamp on the left, brand new seat clamp on the right. The design has evolved!

I can’t transfer the stickers from my old frame, but I can put equivalents on the new one:

Chococat in the lead!

Doin’ a lot of work on this bike… Things are starting to get messy!

You know what? I’m putting my arms on the same bars, and putting my butt on the same seat, so I’m basically riding the same bike. This bike isn’t “Valoria II”, it’s still just “Valoria”, but fancier.

That’s cool.

NZ Day 25: A last day of riding

Fun fact: New Zealand has more cute roadside ponds per capita than any place else in the southern hemisphere.

New Zealand is awash in cute roadside ponds!

(Note: Today’s Fun Fact has not been peer-reviewed.)

We slept in late, and checked out of the Plateau Lodge even later. The 12-mile mountain hike we did yesterday was probably slowing us down. What a surprise!

Nevertheless, we were in good spirits. It was all downhill to Taurmaranui and the weather was fantastic. Plus I was all stocked up on dark chocolate:

Roadside chocolate break!

In the photo you can see the New Zealand flag attached to the bike. It was part of my fabulous plan to boost our visibility to drivers, but in retrospect it was mostly a nuisance. If it was smaller I could have attached it to a pole like recumbent riders usually do. Oh well… Wisdom for the next trip.

Knowing how much we obsessed about weight, it’s odd that I didn’t just discard the flag somewhere along the way. But on the other hand, when you’re visiting a country, you shouldn’t throw their flag in the trash – that’s just rude!

There's the mountain we hiked near two days ago - Mt Ngauruhoe - free of clouds for the first time in a week.

During the chocolate break I looked back to the east and saw Mt Ngauruhoe – free of clouds for the first time in a week. The weather wasn’t that clear yesterday when we hiked it. It’s true what the locals say: The mountain makes its own weather system, and it’s only sometimes related to what goes on around it.

Looking to the north I saw what looked like a smaller, flatter version of Ngauruhoe.

I believe that plateau is called Mt Komokoriri. (That's based on a guess from looking at www.topomap.co.nz .)

In the evening I got obsessed and spent an entire hour on the laptop, browsing around topograpic maps trying to identify the plateau. My best guess was that it’s Mt Komokoriri?

Since it was the last day we would be riding cross-country, I decided to do what I did for the first day, and record some video. This time I attached the camera to the front of the recumbent instead of my helmet. “Now it’ll be nice and steady!” I declared. Nope. Every single tiny ridge on the pavement made the camera jitter like crazy. It looked like I was riding a bicycle with square wheels.

Last_day_Ride-1b

About halfway through the ride we stopped to chat with some outdoorsmen walking along the road.

Friends we met while cycling down from National Park, including Mark the photographer.

The guy on the right is Mark Watson, a nature photographer and fellow cycling enthusiast. I barraged him with questions about photography equipment and techniques, which he answered gracefully.

Stopping for photos of a mountain and seeing smoke in the air

Second video:

Checking in: I’d grown quite a beard.

Resting up after an easy day's riding!

I spent a non-trivial amount of vacation time like this, futzing with photos. Fun!

Odd sockets and switches:

This is how you know the hotel was built a while ago!

NZ Day 22: I Can’t Believe We Made It. Canoe?

Ahh, another fine morning on the Whanganui!

After spending a while mopping up the unexpected puddle in the kitchen, Francis made a huge stack of gluten free pancakes. We all gathered around the kitchen table and ate heartily. We weren’t well-rested, but at least we were well-fed!

I had a little time to wander and snap photos, then we hauled gear down the steps to the riverbank. We were the last group out of the campsite again – perhaps because most of the campers ate a cold breakfast, or none.

We had lots of flat rowing, and then an incredibly windy area on top of the flat where we were blown upstream if we didn’t row. We had to row hard, then take breaks in the lee of the rocks on the riverbank, or just drift into the shallow water and plant an oar in the muck. Good thing we had plenty of practice!

We were grateful for every rest break!

And, of course, we enjoyed the lush environment, even in our zombified state. Here’s a video of the walk down from the break area back to the boats:

And another video much farther down the river, when it widened out considerably:

We also hit some awesome rapids – three long ones – and rowed like hell through all of them.

Just after the last one, we saw the boat ramp ahead of us, with the transport van already parked on the connecting road. Houses were scattered across the hillside, complete with power lines and driveways. We were back in the real world. Boo! We drifted over to the ramp and stumbled out, grinning and stretching and yawning, and talked excitedly about the experience.

“Super awesome,” I said. “I only wish it was longer, so we could use our skills now that we’ve developed them. I think it took an entire day for me to learn how to steer the boat without slowing it down.”

“Yeah,” Kerry said, “and the rapids were really stressful at first. It got a lot better when we learned how to communicate.”

I nodded vigorously. “For sure. There were some pretty tense moments. And we couldn’t really pull the canoe over and talk. Most of the time there was no place to pull over!”

Kerry turned to Francis, who was trying ropes down over the trailer. “Do a lot of couples get into arguments in the canoes?”

“Yeah, uh…” He looked across at his manager, standing by the door to the van. “We sometimes call them ‘divorce boats’.”

We laughed pretty hard at that.

The shuttle driver plowed along the steep gravelly roads with obvious impatience, forcing us to grip our seatbelts to avoid smacking into each other, but we still managed to pass around phones and cameras and show off pictures gathered from the trip. Sebastian and I exchanged contact information so we could trade photos later. We also devoured the few remaining snacks from the dry barrels, though I ate lightly to keep my stomach from rebelling. Looking back, Kerry and I agreed that this was the highlight of the trip so far, eclipsing even Hobbiton and the Waiotapu thermal park. New Zealand just keeps impressing us!

Back in National Park, we collected our bicycles from the garage and found that some critters has been investigating them:

Cat prints all over the recumbent seat after storing it in the Adrift NZ garage during the canoe trip!

Then we changed our hotel reservation to a different room, since the smaller one was tiny and had shared bathrooms. Dragged our gear inside and exploded it all over the floors and couches, then did a bunch of laundry, showered, and rode over to the restaurant where we stuffed ourselves.

Good thing we have a day off tomorrow! We would totally fail the Tongariro Crossing in our current state…