Iceland 2021 Page 8
Tending To Romance
August 22, 2021 Filed Under Introspection
With lots of downtime in Höfn, one of the things I did was try to settle the romantic dilemma I’d blundered into a few weeks back. I was out of the highlands and there was no barrier to talking with my new friend, but I struggled with whether I should.
Eventually I wrote her a series of messages:
“So, I’ve been thinking. Lots of space and time to think, out on this weird island. It was fun doing that Zoom meeting with you. Intriguing to connect the face and movement with the thoughts and dialogue before. But I it’s no substitute for a face-to-face meeting.”
“Our physical distance is probably not going to change any time soon. If I was back home, I’d be putting together some kind of invitation for a picnic with you in a sunny park, because you’re very worth exploring. Someone as nifty as you deserves full attention. But I’m not there, I’m here, enacting a travel plan whose wheels I set in motion well before I knew you existed.”
“So, a real chemistry-testing date would be a long time coming. And if you’re newly dating, like I’ve been before, you might be feeling what I often do, which is a sense of overwhelming choice. There are so many different kinds of people! Personalities to bounce off, fun activities to try that your ex didn’t like, and so on! I imagine you could fill your dance card from 9:00am to midnight every day and still never get the whole variety. And given that … it doesn’t make sense to focus on someone so far away. One only has so much energy for these things.”
“I’m not saying I don’t enjoy corresponding with you – I very much do – but being limited to correspondence for such a long time might eventually get more frustrating than fun, and create weird expectations. I don’t want our connection to suffer that fate, but there aren’t any good choices. I think the only choice I have is to suggest that we pause things until I get back. I’m not declaring it quite yet, but the idea has been rolling around in my head for a few days.”
“How do you feel about all this?”
Ten minutes later I got a reply:
“That sounds right to me. I really like messaging with you but I am also actually trying to explore new possibilities right now. And we can’t progress beyond messaging so it makes sense to step back while that’s the case. I’m open to being pen pals in the meantime. I’m interested in your ongoing travels!”
And that’s the way it settled. I knew that stepping back meant drifting away from her, but it was the healthier choice. And better to make it deliberately than just let things fade into nervous silence on one end or the other.
Onward To The Settlement
September 1, 2021 Filed Under Curious
I woke up at the Höfn campground for the last time. It was late morning. Last night I’d stayed up way too late in the common area doing work, trying to get ahead of things.
I stepped out of my tent, washed my face, and pedaled straight across town to the post office. No need to consult a map — I’d been there several times, nervously asking the one postal clerk about the package.
The post office: My touring salvation.
Finally the tire arrives!
When he plopped it onto the counter I was kind of surprised. After so many delays I had grown used to thinking the package didn’t actually exist, and I was just chasing an illusion in a bureaucracy. I chatted with him about how long it had been stuck in customs, and how hard it was to get answers.
“Oh, I know what you mean. They are a mess. They really need to do something about it. People come in here a lot, thinking we are the customs office, and yell at us because they can’t get their package. I have to tell them I don’t know anything. When we do try to help, we contact customs and we get no answer.”
So even Iceland’s own government-run post office can’t reach the customs agency. I suspected that they were doing that gross trick that many badly run businesses do, and deliberately obscuring all the methods used to contact them so they are shielded from people’s complaints. In the back of my head I suddenly saw a parallel with the last US president, and how his response to the bad COVID testing numbers coming out of his administration was to try and halt the testing itself. No numbers, no problem; right?
After a few more commiserating words with the clerk, I thanked him again and walked out with my package.
My one slap-bracelet has seen better days.
I tore it open on a sunny patch of lawn right next to the post office, and set about swapping the tire. As I did so I laughed at how accustomed I’d grown to the casual ways of small-town Iceland. The clerk had not asked me for any kind of identification. I just told him my name, and he walked into the back and brought me a box. I no longer noticed this kind of stuff.
And I knew, without a doubt, that I could take my luggage and bike apart and spread it around on this lawn right next to the post office parking lot for half an hour, and no one would harass me or even be particularly surprised. As long as I cleaned up my mess, no harm done. Many small towns in America would send me a local cop in about 30 minutes, cruising by to make sure I wasn’t some drug-addled hobo planning to break into a car, or rip parts off the equipment around the building, or defecate in a bush.
Actually, I had been depending on the good grace of Iceland since I woke up: I’d ridden across town, away from my tent, leaving two bags full of extremely expensive gear tucked inside it. I thought for a good while but I couldn’t come up with any other example of a place I’d been where I felt comfortable enough to do that. Anywhere else, and I’d have packed up every item, leaving behind only a flat square of grass. Even if I felt I could trust the locals, I wouldn’t want to trust my fellow tourists.
(… Especially if I was at a hostel. In the past, young bohemian travelers living their “best life” at a hostel have taken an extremely flexible view of the borders between their property, public property, and my property. If it’s not nailed down then it must be for communal use; and if they can pry it up, then it wasn’t nailed down. Heeey, maaan, we’re all here to share, right?)
I’m certain that Icelanders get really upset with tourists sometimes. We’re such a mixed bag. I get the impression we’re seen like a migratory birds: Not exactly loved, but accepted as part of a process. We fly in for a season, wander awkwardly around the landscape pooping out little piles of money, then bugger off when the weather turns.
Oh boy, no more lumpy rolling!
Tinkering with the bike and thinking about migration brought me to the idea of interconnected economies again. Iceland just keeps leading me to it. How many threads could wrap around the world, plunging into the soil of distant countries, tracing the origin of the things I consume here in one average day? A hundred, perhaps? How many of these threads am I pulling when I do something completely unremarkable, like use a crosswalk, or eat a candy bar?
I looked around: Hey, is the grass on this lawn native grass? Did the cement poured to make this curb come from a ship? How about the rebar it was poured onto?
(Answers: Grass: Hard to tell, considering the legacy of the Vikings. Cement: Yes, most likely from a large supplier in Norway. Rebar: Yes, most likely from an American company with a branch office in Ísafjörður or Reykjavík.)
A bunch of patches on the inside managed to slow the disintegration, but not stop it.
Taking this tire along for a while just in case the replacement is bad.
I installed the new tire, noting that it rolled perfectly but didn’t have a whole lot of tread left. I decided to keep the old one packed away for a few days, just in case the replacement decided to suddenly explode.
A thoroughly used tube.
The patches did help, but the tube still got eroded.
My 20-inch tubes were a literal patchwork. With the good one inside the new tire, I decided it was time to apply my remaining patch to the other one. At least patches were a thing I could potentially buy at a bicycle shop … assuming there were any in this quadrant of the island.
I handed the box back to the clerk for recycling, waved goodbye again, then hit the supermarket next door – the only one in town – and filled a sack with food so I would be well stocked for the next three days of traveling. Then I zipped back across town to the campsite, where I settled at a public table in time to do a work meeting. Once that was done I gathered everything from my campsite and said an overdue goodbye to Höfn.
Chomp chomp says the pony!
As I pedaled north in a pocket of comfortable silence created by the wind matching my speed, I thought back two weeks to the terrain I’d passed heading into town. The memory felt like it was of a different country. I felt less like I was resuming my journey, and more like I was embarking on second one. My mind had been thoroughly elsewhere. Mostly back at work. Now here I was again, setting out.
What exciting things lay ahead? For one, the first tunnel of this tour.
Oh boy, a tunnel!
… But before that, it was time to make a detour, to an intriguing map marker I’d pinned several years ago. A campground and restaurant built near an abandoned movie set.
Viking cafe? That sounds like my kind of thing.
Do your legs remember how to pedal?
They’re enjoying working again!
How many miles do you have to go?
Today? Only about 10 more. For the country? Probably about 150. Not very hard at all. If I don’t take any days off I could get to Seyðisfjörður and the ferry boat by next Wednesday.
That would leave me about 1 month to check out the Faroe Islands and Denmark, and possibly go north into Norway and Sweden. Not nearly enough time. I decided I should file that “work abroad” paperwork after all, even if it only bought me a few more weeks.
Sunset over Höfn.
I found the campsite in the late evening, and set up my tent in some extreme wind. With one guyline tied around a big rock I got the walls stable enough, but every now and then the wind would kick up alarmingly and shove the roof of the tent downward. As I laid inside in my sleeping bag watching a really cute but poorly-aged anime called “Ruin Explorers”, the wall of the tent kept diving unpredictably down onto my head, and smooshed gently across my face. Rather than being annoyed, I started laughing. It was like being aggressively flirted with by one of those dancing noodle men you see outside car dealerships with a fan blowing air into it.
“HI! I’M YOUR TENT! MMMWAH!! … HI AGAIN, I’M YOUR TENT!! I LOOOOVE YOU. MMMWAH! LET’S GET PHYSICAL!”
When it was time to sleep I got up and rotated the sleeping bag around so I was facing downwind. The tent wall made out with my feet all night, which was satisfactory for us both.
Fact And Fiction
It was a night of very poor sleep. It wasn’t the wind, it was my sleep apnea. Don’t develop sleep apnea, kids, it’s just a complete pain.
Had to use one guyline here, on account of the high wind. Still a pretty good site!
It was an indirect problem: To open my airway, I have to sleep on my side. But to do that without my ribs hurting, I need a body pillow. So on bike tours I take all my laundry and stuff it into the sack my sleeping bag is usually kept in, and put that against my chest. Last night I didn’t stuff in enough laundry and I was too lazy and cold to go digging around for more. I was also too lazy to locate my jaw insert, which was an even dumber mistake.
All night I kept rearranging my pillow to try and open my airway enough that it would stay open when my body went completely limp from entering REM sleep… And instead, I kept choking and waking myself up. Classic sleep apnea. What a stupid lesson to keep learning!
Well, the cars starting up and slamming doors only about ten feet away didn’t help, and the headlights of the late arrivals bothered my eyes until I deployed my sleep mask, so it really was a group effort to make me tired in the morning. But the sleep apnea was most of the problem.
HYARR TIME TO RAID THE SNACK SUPPLY
I rinsed my face in the restaurant bathroom. It lacked a mirror which was probably a blessing for my self-esteem, since I always look ghastly when I’m underslept. Then I shuffled over to the cafe side of the building, bought snacks, and set up the laptop to get more work done.
A great spot for an all-day hack-a-thon!
I also took some time to plan my route ahead. If I rode every day, I could get to Seyðisfjörður and the ferry boat in less than a week. I didn’t need to lock my schedule down because there were plenty of campsites ahead on the route I could just roll into. Assuming I could buy a ticket for the boat to leave the next day, I’d have about four weeks to explore the Faroe Islands and Denmark, as well as Norway and Sweden, before my visa hit the 90-day limit and I was forced to fly out. It would be nice to have more time.
Handy map on a napkin box.
I decided to apply for a “work-stay” extension, like I’d been pondering in Reykjavik. The final document I needed was a letter of permission from my boss, so I put together a draft of that. There was a place to submit all the paperwork in Egilsstaðir, the county seat of Norður-Múlasýsla, one day out from the ferry terminal. If I still wanted to apply, that would be the place. No need to bother my boss about a letter until then.
A simpler weapon, from a more savage age.
Several hours passed in a montage of code, email, and design documents. The snacks disappeared. On the wall I noticed a panoramic photo of the mountains I passed coming in, and realized rather late that I was in one of the most photographed areas of the country. The range includes a mountain called Vestrahorn. Tourists use that name for the whole range.
You know your cafe is in a beautiful place when you can look at the photographs adorning the walls and find the cafe itself at the base of the mountain.
There were a lot of photo shoots and films taken here. I guess that helped to explain the presence of the Viking movie set.
I wrapped up my work and exchanged the laptop for some warmer clothes, then went strolling around on the beach.
I get the impression that most of this is leftover material from back when the viking movie set was constructed.
Seawater does terrible things to metal.
By the time I spotted the movie set, it was pretty late in the day, and the cloud cover made the light weaker than usual, providing a sense of actual “evening”, which is rare for Iceland. Still plenty of visibility though.
Pretty majestic spot for a settlement. Well chosen, location scout!
I was strolling across the blasted heath, towards a place built for the purpose of staging a drama about the crafty and warlike Vikings. Suddenly I had a weird idea: How about I complement this by listening to an audio production of … MacBeth?
TIME TO RAID THE SETTLEMENT! ARRR!
I had a copy of it on my phone, and started it up. Thunder rolled, and the Weyward Sisters gathered around me and began to whisper about battles, and betrayal, and blood.
Hard to tell how accurate any of this is. What would a building of this shape be for?
The movie set had been built and abandoned years ago, but retained a presence in tourist culture. Eventually it came to the attention of another movie company, and now there are plans afoot to retrofit the buildings for use in another Viking epic. Like Hobbiton in New Zealand, this place may find a second life, and then a third life as a more permanent attraction.
Evening darkened very, very slowly as I went poking around the abandoned, half-modern half-ancient structures, listening to a 400-year-old play delivered by exceptional actors, with eerie sound effects and music.
Yep, there's a house in there.
It would take some serious cleanup to make this building livable again.
I wonder what they were using this giant curtain to conceal?
The walls of the roundhouse looked very unstable, but the door was surrounded by delightful carvings and I was very tempted to try pushing it open.
Interesting carvings!
As I stared at the door, Scene 3 of Act 2 began in my headphones. A drunken porter woke up to the sound of furious knocking on a giant door, and began shouting as he made his way through the castle to answer it. To my disbelief and then delight, I recognized the porter as David Tennant. I was only familiar with his work in Dr Who.
Maxin’ and relaxin’ in mah viking camp.
What fun! I had my folding chair and footstool with me, which I’d been carrying in a sack along with a few remaining bits of food from the cafe. I assembled the chair in front of the lodge, put my feet up, and listened to MacBeth slowly go insane.
Good afternoon! I’m listening to an audio production of MacBeth, and just heard the phrase “one fell swoop.” Is this play the origin of that phrase?
Shakespeare often used images from nature. “One fell swoop” sounds like the sudden, obliterating attack of a bird of prey.
Very dramatic!
… I just looked it up. Yep, he was the originator. He refers to a kite – a hunting bird – and to his family as chickens.
Ah hah! That definition of “kite” makes this passage clearer to me:
(Macbeth is seeing a ghost) “If charnel houses and our graves must send those that we bury back, our monuments shall be the maws of kites.”
I thought he was referring to kites like the ones we fly on a string. Some sort of metaphor like, our monuments will be empty of bodies, so the wind will whistle through them like it whistles through a box kite.
But now I see it could be something else: Our monuments will accumulate bodies only to vomit them up again like birds feeding their young.
Kites not only eat live things, they eat carrion too.
Oh dear. So the metaphor is, with the dead walking, birds will pick them clean, so we might as well declare the birds themselves to be grave markers…
Yeah, i think so.
How delightfully gruesome! … It’s … Murder most fowl!
When the play concluded I went back to music, picking some nice electronic stuff by Biosphere. Then I wandered over to the fence at the edge of the movie set and took a few pictures with the fancy camera, trying to capture the strange light I was seeing.
Three superimposed 30 second shots from the iPhone. Not bad considering it was quite dark out.
Wall of the viking settlement movie set, with just a hint of Aurora Borealis in the sky.
More of the viking movie set wall.
When I pulled them off the camera later, the photos were pretty good.
With bits of Shakespearean dialogue floating through my mind, I picked my way back across the swampy grass to the seashore, and then along to the road that led me back to camp. At one point I put a foot wrong and got a wet shoe, which I left outside my tent flap.
The scenery, the music, the Scottish Play, the blustery wind and the glowing sky, had all combined to make one amazing day that I would remember for a long time.
Sole Witness To An Accident
When you gotta dry your pants…
Across the bay from the viking settlement — a radar station!
Hmm something odd about this landscape but I can’t quite figure it out…
Strange coastline near Höfn
Pretty shpooky!
Lighthouse near Höfn in the morning.
The closer I get, the more majestic it becomes!
An Icelandic mining operation.
Do I look ready for my first tunnel of this tour?
I’m definitely an old nerd, because when I see this sign, I think of a video game console.
This one is nice and modern.
Okay well there’s a little wear and tear, but still pretty modern lookin’.
Enjoying tunnel!
Out of the tunnel, into the fresh air again.
I think this sign is saying something about city versus country speed limits, but it’s way too complicated.
Tired of traveling? Take a rest, in the big red random chair.
Hay wrapped up for later chomping. Gotta have that when the weather gets as bad as it does in Iceland.
The car, where it landed.
The first impact dug up a big chunk of turf and flung it to one side.
The rear wheels came down in the same place just after the front ones bounced up.
Pretty cute spot!
Another fine camping spot.
Amazing Coast All Day
September 4, 2021 Filed Under Curious, Happy, Introspection
Didn't get a chance to pay for your spot? Be a good citizen and leave some cash.
Aha! I think I found the Icelandic version of Pride Rock!
This bay is protected by a long thin arm of land that smooths the waves on the ocean.
So fluffy!
Got a piece of cardboard? Maybe you can slide down!
A cool panorama along a bend in the coastal road.
Grateful for the sudden sunlight.
A column breaking through the clouds.
Awww, don't run over the dude! He's just walkin' here!
Whole lotta symbols in the next town. Not sure what a bunch of them mean...
If you don't dry your frillies on the radiatior, some other camper will come by and do the same.