Category: Writing

where am I? outskirts of Akureyri

I woke with that moment of disorientation but I’m at

Countryhotel Sveinbjarnargerdi

All of us laughed when she said it slow. We’re still not going to get it to be able to say it.

I mean to post pics of the south end of the fjord from the west and then the east.

Oh shit that means I have to get out of bed and find the camera blerg.

120 degree panorama, front of restaurant in Akureyri

There was blue in the sky – it was 10 degrees and still and quite nice for Northern Iceland.

Am I evil for missing my musical instruments more than brO and grandsOn. I miss Rowena and Otto so much my breastbone hurt just thinking about it.

I finished and posted another fic today (of course I’m going to post fanfic if the bus has wifi I ain’t missin’ that opportunity)  and it already has more than 300 hits and it has 33 kudos and people even commented for once.

Nice, and ferociously expensive dinner last night in Akureyri, the miniature Reykjavik.

Folks on the tour are nice. AND YOUNG, LIKE THEY’RE ALL KEITH’S AGE. There’s one older Canadian woman. The only person of colour is an Indian travel agent. He described with a straight face not being allowed to book his family into a resort someplace in the Pacific because they CHECK THE MEDIA PROFILE OF VISITORS and he wasn’t high tone enough. He didn’t have to tick the racism box, none of us were that stupid. I merely said, “An educated global traveller is somebody they don’t want? What a hell hole it must be.” We gave each other pained smiles but I could tell he was genuinely pissed but not wanting to ‘go’. He said that being an Indian global tour travel agent is the art of finding the first ten people willing to go. He says you struggle; Indians are herd animals, he said. But once ten people are willing to go the other 45 seats immediately sell out. He said it happens time and again.

I allowed myself a Viking brand beer with about half the tour in the lounge last night and we talked about the impact of Iceland volcanoes on global history IT WAS AWESOME. Also no lie that beer helped me sleep.

Well, as much as the prospect appalls, I should get dressed and slip out for a walk since it doesn’t appear to be raining. Apparently our hotel tonight is in an elf village, and we’re going to see a big ass waterfall today.

Of course I really don’t want to get up. This bed and comforter are making plans for me to stay.

 

 

this bus got wifi

I have seen my first ptarmigan. There are pairs of snow geese everywhere. I believe I’ve seen barnacle geese. Ravens are common you see them once in a while at the side of the road. I’ve seen arctic terns and a kind of duck that I think was a scaup of some description. I apparently won’t have to be too lucky to see an arctic fox, which I am looking forward to.

The roads farther away from R. are crappier, but to be candid large chunks of it wash out when the rivers on either side of it come up in the spring and with any sudden melts.

Many sheeps, mostly white but some black.

 

Posting from the road while watching mountains crosshatched with snow roll by under a lowering sky. Soon, fish soup and a hot tub in a traditional Icelandic village public swimming pool sauna.

I’m the oldest frickin’ person on the bus. (later – possibly not, but she’s tougher than I am) everyone else is under 40.. The tour leader is named Saga, which is a little feckin’ on the nose if’n y’ask me.

There are hardly any parapets or railings on the ring road, which makes the roads FEEL unsafe. Saga’s a good driver, and her Icelandic anecdotes have been quite amusing.

wakeup call

at 6, brekky at 7.

the coffee tastes like all of its bitterness was beaten into it

marinated herring and tuna on the breakfast buffet

I had tuna with my oatmeal. They don’t salt the oatmeal.

Still have no fucking clue where the tour meets, or when.

Slept okay. Now to re-pack.

 

 

then I slept through the intro

the tour company left absolutely nothing to indicate when and where we are supposed to meet tomorrow

I just sent them a blistering email saying that I was twenty paces from the meet and the lazy fucks didn’t even come bang on my door or slide a note under it.

If this is an example of the attitude of the tour company I guess it’s a good thing the scenery is so spectacular.

 

note to brO the cat that ran across the road this morning was sitting in a tiny little tree and meowing at passersby when I came back to the hotel but I couldn’t get my camera out in time

All the trees in Iceland are tiny. I saw a private garden with six whole trees in it, amazing.

I did not make it to the saga museum

This is mostly because tourist maps in a high wind are a pain and nothing in this remarkably low rise metropolis is set on the square.

Walked past a church outbound and didn’t even notice it; it’s just a plain white box of a building.

There’s no place to sit down anywhere. Why would there be? The weather doesn’t support it. Funnily the sun is just blazing down now, as it was for most of my walk. At one point the sun vanished and it blew a gale and five minutes later it was glorious again.

Kids under ten on bikes by themselves.

NOT A SINGLE CIGARETTE. NOBODY SMOKING IN CARS, ON THE STREET. I was looking.

THERE ARE CONSTRUCTION CRANES EVERYWHERE it seriously makes Vancouver look like nothing is happening.

I walked around about a tenth of downtown R to the point my feet hurt, although that was on top of all the airport walking-while-laden so…

I wanted to eat something but it became obvious that unless I had something to drink I was going to keel over so I got some really nice orange pop. It smells like orangina, fizzes like Fanta Orange and has about a quarter of the sugar. Very nice, local business and all (Egils). I also picked up a gluten free chocolate caramel brownie, and it’s really quite good. I’ll wander out later for takeout, I guess.

Missed getting into the post office by about two minutes, so I still have no stamps.

There’s a bird in Iceland whose call sounds like, “Hey there!” followed by a mechanical sounding Bronx cheer. Or maybe it was two birds singing at the same time and I mixed them together.

Oh Jeff I forgot to mention that just before we turned into the street for the hotel a cat crossed four lanes like a boss just in front of us.

I suppose if I felt like walking I could go to the Phallological Museum. It’s walking distance from here. But maybe I’ve been enough of a dick today so I should stay here in this bright cozy room.

 

in the room

Just got about five hours of sleep, so I guess that’s me done for the day. I’m gonna check my itinerary to see when the forced heartiness of the welcome to the tour is going to be thrust upon me.

All the electronic bits and bobbles work – charging etc accomplished with difficulty or heating up too much; unfortunately those world-class ratfondlers at Bell Mobility TURNED MY ROAMING ON THE INSTANT I MADE LANDFALL.

In Iceland.

I’ve tried everything to get it turned off, but each time I turn the phone back on it’s automatically locked in place at the top of my screen. So unless I want hundreds of dollars on my next bill I have to take the ****** sim card out – and manage not to lose the SOB.

NO SOAP IN THE HOTEL ROOM. Past Allegra, possibly low key remembering something from a travel site, brought bar soap. YEAH ME. I likely could buy some, but if there’s one thing I learned from a $280 taxi ride, it’s that everything in Iceland is so expensive that it’s pointless being angry about it  — it was worth it, candidly, just to not have to drag my bags any farther — KEF is a nightmarish little airport AND THEIR FUCKING INFO SIGNS DO NOT SHOW THE EXIT OR WHERE YOU GET TAXIS since the place is designed to run you past every excuse to strip your bank account. The blonde woman taxi driver spoke better English than most Canadian politicians, which, now that I ponder it, is likely not the highest praise. ONE error in usage in a 45 minute ride? Which I have heard native speakers make?  Cazart. However since my Quaker, Mennonite and atheist forebears would rise up in a body unless I got the cheapest way back to the airport, that’s what I’m planning for the return ride; the bus system in Iceland is pretty damned good.

Although tourists will pay a set fee (thousands of dollars) to get DRIVEN AROUND ICELAND on the ring road. The driver loves those – you just go home for the day afterward, you’ve made as much as you’re going to.

At the end of the ride – tips don’t happen in Iceland – I was desperate for some token to show her how much fun I had talking to her – I took the little button from the Daagerad brewery in Burnaby which I’ve had on my bumpack since Paul and I went there last and told her, it’s advertising but it doesn’t have any words on it and she said IT’S A MOON!!! and put it on her lapel. If you go to the bottom of this page you’ll see the moon and star design – the button was in black and copper.

I didn’t get her name. Bad me. But she said, just as I was getting out of the taxi, that as I had lumbered up to the taxi stand (thank you JESUS I’m out of KEFLAVIK airport) one of the *other* woman taxi drivers said to my driver “That looks like a very interesting person,” which you know, from a taxi driver isn’t necessarily praise.

Anyway, I send up a beautiful prayer for her because tomorrow she’s cleaning up the lingering mess from having her storage locker burn down, including trying to recover baby pictures. I was so tired and emotional I nearly burst into tears when I heard that.

I hope they give the housekeepers ear protection, I need it for the vacuum noise which I honest to god thought was a pressure washer being used indoors, but is just the vacuum being thrashed about upstairs.

Man, I feel better for having had a shower. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna dress and wander over to the Saga Museum and possibly get something to nosh on the way back, since I haven’t had anything substantial since 5 pm Vancouver time yesterday. After I check the itinerary, of course. Can’t miss the mixer that inevitably starts these dos.

pics

safe at the Kea Storm in Reykjavik although god knows when I’ll get into my room and my body thinks it’s 1 in the morning so at this point it’s likely I’ll kick into midnight mode and just keep going.

Uneventful flight.

Ferry to Victoria just departed from Horseshoe Bay

You can really see the sediment from the flooding Fraser right now contrasted against the normal colour of the Strait.

The lounge at the hotel.

Ten reasons to watch the Expanse

Whether or not it finds a new home, since the people at Syfy who run programming appear to have up and all suffered from necrosis of the brain.

  1. Intelligent scripts.
  2. Perfect casting.
  3. Almost fucking perfect space action.
  4. season 1 episode 3 ‘CQB’ REMAINS the best 44 minutes of TV set in space although there are episodes in all three seasons so far that can compete.
  5. a little side note re representation; my buddy Mike said he watched the show and the first person you see is a Chinese woman. He says to himself, How Nice For Them, they ticked the box with a woman of colour. Then a couple of episodes on the Captain of the Donnager proves to be ANOTHER CHINESE WOMAN and Mike starts thinking that it is possible somebody got representation right. RIP TERESA YAO YOU WERE AN AWESOME CAPTAIN
  6. Amos always says what’s on his mind, but he lets somebody else be his conscience.
  7. Calling Martian Marines Mickies is one of the funniest things evar
  8. Some of the most chilling – and understandable – villains evar. I mean, if you’re going to take as given that evil needs to be one or both of two things, rich and zealous.
  9. Thomas Jane as the investigator. That haircut was his idea.
  10. There are books which allow you to go where the series can’t, although I have to say I prefer the series because it’s easier to share.

5K words

I’ve written 5K words on the fanfic.  I was very happy when I woke up this morning feeling more like working on HOTM;;;;;;

let’s see if the feeling lasts.

Totally loving where I am with the kids and grandkid this morning. Alex is aware that I’m going to Iceland to look at waterfalls and volcanos.