I really hoped that this truck would have a man in underwear on the other side. Nope!
I also purchased some snacks from the local market, and found some strong glue that I could use to repair my busted over-ear headphones. They hold my fancy microphone when I’m teleconferencing, and I didn’t want to spend any more time bugging my co-workers by leaning on the mute key and shouting into the laptop.
Last order of business: Repair these poor headphones.
In the afternoon it was time to cruise over to the staging area and line up. Having done this exactly once before, I was suddenly an expert. A few people strolled over to chat like they always do, and I answered their questions with a grin.
A last, lingering view of these fine Icelandic hills.
Eventually the road opened, and the boat started slurping up cars. I was among the first to go, so I could get my gear tied down in the far back of the hold.
As I busied myself with ropes and bags, a long line of cars filled up the decks, followed in the end by some enormous trucks and buses that packed in close and were then chained to the floor by the loading crew.
The reduced tourism from the lingering pandemic had made bookings much easier on the ferry, so this time I had a room for myself instead of a communal bunk. I hauled my bags into it and flopped down for a nap.
Ultima 9 used to take a 300-watt tower PC to run. Now I can play it on a laptop in an emulator and it looks just as good. That’s wild.
For the second time in two years, I am at the final day of a bike ride across Iceland. This happened much sooner than I expected: With so many other places in the world to see, I figured I wouldn’t see this country again for a decade or more.
When I reached this point during the first trip, I felt a mixture of satisfaction and regret. The regret was mostly that the journey couldn’t continue indefinitely, since I was so used to being on the bike. Once I boarded the ferry and left the country I had just two weeks to make a whirlwind tour of Europe, which I spent mostly in London and the German city of Lübeck. My mind was a tangle of work obligations and family concerns, and I was struggling with the logistics of getting back to Oakland on a schedule.
I had the same tangle of obligations and concerns in my head this time, but there’s also something very different about my mental state: Even though I am two years older and moving on from my mid-40s, I am bizarrely less concerned about “wasting“ time on the road and missing romantic opportunities at home.
It’s been difficult to avoid the feeling like the last two years have been somehow wasted, in the combination of COVID-19 and the formation and instant destruction of what I thought was a solid romantic relationship. When I arrived in Iceland this time, there was a real risk that I might feel as though I was starting over again. But this time, there was far less doubt and trauma to work through. My journey was more ambitious, more focused, and contained more logistical surprises as well, and I would not have handled those with such grace if I was feeling my way through an emotional disaster. There was no “on Icelandic plains“ moment during this trip.
The closest I got was a far more positive moment, when I found myself riding at night and looked up and was awestruck to see The Milky Way spread across the horizon, underlit by a very dim but unmistakable line of fire from the northern lights, which I was convinced I would never see on this journey. I am grateful that I came back this way during a time in my life when there was less to distract me from its unique beauty. I can now confidently say that I am more familiar with this country than practically all of the other tourists who pass through it, and I feel that has added something to my life.
I squiggled up, and up, and the wind increased with the altitude. Rainclouds pelted me and then scooted over the horizon, making space for the next batch of rainclouds in hour-long intervals.
Just before the plateau, the wind got especially bad, as I knew it would. I made a little video of my defiance:
If only the wind was blowing the other way, it would shove me right to the top of this range in less than half an hour. Instead it shoved rain directly into my eyes, making the sunglasses mandatory.
Who’s smug that he made it all the way up here in this insane wind? This guy!
The art installation has lost a bunch of portable TVs.
All those blocks used to have television sets perched on them. Now they’re gone, but there’s still an expository sign planted there. Perhaps the artist printed a different sign, inviting a different interpretation… But I didn’t get close enough to read it.
The wind relented somewhat at the plateau, and the rainclouds moved past so quickly they barely had time to drop rain. The ground was still soaked, of course.
Large patches of moss appeared on either side of me, some large enough that it was more accurate to call them fields of moss.
Right around here, I set down my rain cap and it blew off the back of the bike. I didn’t realize it was gone until I’d pedaled half a mile away and felt my head getting wet. Drat!
Around me the clouds drifted low, and did strange things to the light.
As if to complement this rugged weather, I got a random text message from my nephew Nick, asking about rugged ancestors:
“Didn’t you say that grandpa is part Mongolian at some point?”
I spent some time narrating an answer into my phone, and sent it in pieces.
“Well, there’s no recorded history for his family on his father’s side, before they left the Volga river settlements. No one knows whether they were there for 50 years, or 150 years. With marriage traditions what they were, that’s as much as seven generations. It looks like somewhere along the line, someone with epicanthal folds on the outside of their eyes must have gotten involved. There’s no documented evidence for it other than ‘your grandpa’s father was born of a group of people who collectively all lived in X place for somewhere around 100 years’, though. Which isn’t much to go on.”
“Even less information is available for your grandpa’s mother, who was part of a large family that moved down from Canada shortly before she was born.”
Garrett: “Does the ’51’ mean you’re five-foot-one at this point?”
Ben: “Hah! No I was six-foot-two. ’51’ is the year I graduated.”
“And her father, Hans, was born in Denmark and comes from a large Danish family that crossed the Atlantic more-or-less together when he was a little kid.”
“Companies like 23andme do their best to nail down certain genetic trends to certain regions by correlating documented evidence and family anecdote with sequenced genes, but when it comes to the last 200 years or so in Europe and Asia, things get vague quickly.”
“Besides, as I am fond of saying, ‘your genes are not special; the way you were raised is special.’ You and me and grandpa and grandma are all from families that place a high cultural value on education and graciousness as the route away from not-too-distant poverty. Which is why we all feel more comfortable around people who embrace the same, no matter what they look like or where they got their genes.”
That fun diversion, including looking up the various photos I used as illustration, carried me across the plateau and down the first run of dramatic, whooshing descents towards the town. When I came around the arm of the mountain and saw lights in the distance I paused for a snack and a photo.
Good ol’ Valoria, always ready to stop for a photo — and hold my snack while I’m taking it.
A night-time approach photo to match the one from two years ago.
One more whooshing descent, burning the brakes, and I arrived in Seydisfjordur. Only order of business: Check in and go to bed.
The hostel room was quite cozy. No one in the building was wearing a mask, even in the common lounge area, which I could only shrug at. The rules have always been loose at tourist-heavy spots.
“Home is where the wifi is,” goes the saying. I guess this town is a little slice of home.
Before leaving the hotel I placed my camera on the windowsill and took a picture of myself against the blank hotel wall. I could crop this down and make something approximating a passport photo if I had no other option.
In the hotel lobby I managed to harass the printer into spitting out the last two pages of my bank statement, then a tiny passport-size version of the photo I took upstairs. The color was horrible. This would probably not work…
I rode two doors down to the bank, and hit the ATM outside it. I extracted 12,200 in Icelandic cash, then marched into the bank and had the teller wire it to the visa processing center. I asked for a receipt, which I added to the stack for the application.
Next I rode over to the restaurant and bought some pre-packaged fish for eating on the road, and then went across the main street and down a block to the post office. Time to send some gifts to some nephews!
I drew a little card to go in the box, including an anachronistic horned bicycle helmet:
Maybe I really should find some goat horns and glue them onto the helmet…
The package was expensive to ship, but nephews are worth it.
I also found a large envelope that was perfect for containing my visa paperwork. As I paid the bill I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew where I could get a passport photo. She led me outside and began pointing at streets and talking in Icelandic, so I handed her my phone and she pointed at an icon on the map that was right next to my hotel. It appeared to be the computer store I’d been looking at the other day.
I rode over there, marched inside, and repeated my question about passport photos to the clerk, a big bearded man in a smart red vest. He smiled and said, “come with me,” and waved his arm toward a door leading into the back. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his forearm reading “CANON”, in the same lettering used by the Canon photography company.
There was a full photo studio in the back room, with a neutral backdrop set up for taking passport photos. This solved my problem nicely! And no doubt it’s here because I was far from the first person to have this problem.
While the clerk powered up the hardware I asked him about the tattoo. “Yeah, I was drunk at a concert,” he said by way of explanation. “But this guy from Canon saw it on my arm and said he wanted my contact information, and then he sent me a whole computer in the mail!”
“Fantastic!” I said.
Snap snap, grin grin. Wink wink nudge nudge. “The photos will be ready in about half an hour,” he said.
I rode back to the restaurant and ordered a sit-down meal, thinking about how lucky I was to discover all these resources. Free use of a printer, passport photos across the street, a bank of the same kind required by the consulate right next door – with an ATM – a post office across the way, and then at the top of the hill a few blocks along the way to my next destination: The office where I need to drop off the finished application. All within walking distance if I didn’t have the bike. Or dumb luck? Or thoughtful civic planning?
I scooted up the hill to the visa office with my envelope. There was nobody in line.
Half an hour later it was submitted, and then all I could do with respect to the visa was wait. Maybe this office would sit on the paperwork for a few days before sending it to Reykjavík for evaluation; maybe not. Maybe they would reject the whole thing on a technicality. We shall see!
Back at the hotel I chatted with friends about American culture in Iceland. They were amused by my photos of the 50’s-style “Skalinn Diner”. Andrew pointed out that you’d actually need to look pretty hard to find retro American dining among the hundreds of restaurants all around the Bay Area back home, but it was there, in the form of Mel’s Diner and Fenton’s. Or you could go for the lowest-common-denominator modern version, with Denny’s and IHOP.
The conversation went kind of sideways from there:
Me
So is there any 50’s-style dining by your house in Crockett?
Andrew
Not on purpose.
Me
Hah! Maybe the big franchises are scared of the name. “Crockett.” Like, is that a verb? Is that something you do to food?
Andrew
It’s a weird name.
Me
It kinda sounds like the name of a detective from some old TV show.
Andrew
Yeah, there should be a 70’s TV show called “Crockett and Gooch”, and of course Crockett drives a pickup and wears cowboy boots.
Me
And Gooch is an orangutan.
Andrew
That drives a Trans-Am.
Me
And at the end of every episode, Crockett lights up a cigar and Gooch smacks it out of his mouth.
“Next week on Crockett and The Gooch: Crockett goes undercover to bust up an animal smuggling ring, and Gooch is incognito at the zoo. Can they catch the tiger by the tail before Gooch becomes a stuffed animal? Don’t miss this ape’s Great Escape! Wednesdays at six, on K-DIC: Your local loss leader.”
I told James about this, and he got in on the act:
James
Alternatively: Crockett And The Gooch is the most celebrated country radio station duo on this side of the Mississippi.
Me
Like, a wacky radio DJ duo?
James
“Welcome back to K-ROCK (k-rock) 106.5 (.5), for your morning dose of do-si-do, I’m Crockett and with me today as always is the Gooch (the gooooooooch).“
“We’re gonna be bringing you the rowdy rural rabble rousing country cowboys’ craziest concoctions for your commute, so get ready for “McGurket and the Tin-Whizzlers” new toe-tappin tune “I Just Ran Outta Beer, and the Truck Ain’t Real Near” comin to yooo on the 5 (on the fiiiiiiiive).”
Me
Oh my god. “Ya hear that Gooch? We’ve got radio DJ alter egos!” “Ook oook!” “Yeah, and it’s the perfect music for chasing down these drug traffickers!” “Oooook!” VROOOOOOMM. “Whoah slow down you crazy ape!”
James and I got to wondering: Did Icelanders’ exposure to American radio extend to crazy DJs? Because that would be awesome. I would love to hear an Icelandic take of a crazy radio DJ.
Sjanni is a great fellow and I wish I’d had more time to spend with him!
I was looking forward to today’s ride because it included a tunnel – the Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng – 20,000 feet of road straight through a mountain and open to cyclists.
I stopped in town for some breakfast and email with nephews. One of them was feeling despair over the state of the world.
It’s difficult to pay attention to work when the world is slowly ending. I can’t stop seeking information about the collapse. I wonder if I’m crippling myself by going to college to get a degree that might not be worth all that much and it might not matter if the country has burned down yet or been flooded or both. Also corporations are buying all the houses here so I’m fairly certain I’ll be renting my whole life. I’m sure my 20-something endocrine system isn’t helping here either.
I thought for a while, then emailed back:
Civilization and the planet will survive while you to spend some time concentrating on your own development and diversification. It’s a process and you don’t need to tackle it all at once or figure out where it should go. Take it one step at a time, one day at a time.
What I didn’t say at the time, was that I could remember being his age many years ago, and overhearing my sister – his mother – expressing the same frustration and despair. And I remember our Dad replying with pretty much the same advice.
That gave me two interesting thoughts: First, that young people are always prone to think the world is ending, because they haven’t been around long enough to see otherwise. So conversations like this will happen forever, no matter how good or bad things get.
And second… How much worse was this, centuries ago, when the world seemed to be at the mercy of inscrutable gods, and people usually didn’t quite live long enough to learn that the world would carry on past their own hormone-addled youth?
That’s the morbid angle on this “wisdom”: It truly sets in when you witness people your age – or even younger than you – dying, and then observe years, then decades, of the world continuing without them. And perhaps not into a future they would have expected, but in some way that’s real enough, and teeming with other living people who still have to deal with it.
This global pandemic business. Great for the soul, yeah? Ugh. Interesting times — who needs them!!
Today’s route appears to go straight up over a mountain! No wait, that’s a tunnel.
And there it was… The portal down into darkness. I didn’t realize until I got this close that the tunnel slopes downwards from here, for the entire run. A good idea for drainage purposes, and also for dramatic effect. It feels a whole lot like descending deep into the earth.
10 whole minutes of coasting silently downhill into the mountain. Very trippy.
And then, off I went. The slope seemed to grab the bike, and the cool air being drawn through the tunnel by the turbines on the ceiling streamed over me, making it feel like I was going faster. I had a brainwave and put on some music from the Skyrim soundtrack: The chanting and drumming of Sovngarde. I had plenty of time to play through the entire track, because 20,000 feet of tunnel is nearly 3.8 miles (6km). At a breezy 15 miles an hour on a bike that’s fully 15 minutes of creeping downward through solid rock, imagining that I’m on my way to some eldritch ruined city abiding in total darkness, teeming with ghosts and adventure.
I love being a nerd!
If you look close you can see the tunnel I came out of.
If you look close you can see the tunnel I came out of.
Once I was out of the tunnel, I paused for a look back. The exit was clearly lower on the mountain than the entrance, making the mass above it even more impressive.
The town of Reyðarfjörður was on my right, sporting some nice waterfalls and snacking spots, but I was too interested in forging ahead over the hills to Egilsstaðir, where the next room was booked. The wind could turn against me any time, and I didn’t fancy another late night on the road.
I was tempted to walk over and put my feet in, but I figured the water would be far too cold, and my socks would take far too long to dry.
If I’m reading the sign correctly, the motorist was only 16 when she died here.
The rest of the journey was a slow pedal against mild headwind, through a narrow and relatively featureless valley. I say featureless, but it was still very pretty. I listened to a podcast about world economics and kept on cranking.
I arrived at an intersection, and suddenly realized that for the first time in many weeks, I’d crossed my own path from 2019. Once again I was in Egilsstaðir.
Time to find more snacks!
Here’s a place that looks like it can serve up a lot of calories.
Snack-laden, I found my hotel and wrestled all my gear up several floors to the room, including the bike. It was good to be indoors and warm again, and the food gave me enough energy to put in some work hours before falling over.
