Year in Review (2)

Don't fall in.

Almost as soon as I got back from Atlantic City, I started packing for the trip to Iceland.  A few friends with means and interest travel on a regular basis and have invited me in the last couple of trips.  I have the interest, but not always the means.  In any case, it was a ten-day adventure through some of the more interesting terrain the world has to offer.  Traveling can be problematic for me.  I travel because I enjoy visiting new places, and I go through the occasional bout of wanderlust.  But when I get there, I find places I'd rather live—and the wanderlust reawakens instead of subsides.  I decided that living in Akureyri would be best, or at least nearby, but there were plenty of other places to live.

Waterfalls were exceptionally common in Iceland.

Iceland was simply beautiful.  It is the northern version of New Zealand, minus the wildlife peculiar to that land.  (Iceland actually doesn't have much in the way of native zoological interest.  The horses are essentially all purebred from the original Norse horses.  It is forbidden to import horses or to receive one back once it's left the island.)  Waterfalls were common.  The vistas were stunning, and again very common.  The geology is unique (it's made up of tons of glacial volcanoes).

The food was rather expensive, but that's the norm for a country that doesn't produce a whole lot of its own.  Lamb is a staple (as in New Zealand) and formed the basis of my favorite meals:  a "meat soup" at Gullfoss and lamb cold cuts with B at Ásbyrgi.  The seafood soup was also really, really good.

I confess that the language geek in me really enjoyed Icelandic, which is essentially Old Norse.  They can still read the Sagas in the original language, which is a bit like you or me reading Beowulf.  There is something about languages that move you closer to people.  I have often opined that to really know someone you need to speak his language.  (A long digression in my head is snipped here.)

The doors are open—but is anyone home?

The sun never really set in Iceland, a feature which made me want to revisit in Winter.  The temperatures in the south are moderated significantly by the Gulf Stream.  It never gets very warm (I think the high while we were there was in the 50s), but it also never really gets very cold (our guide said that it never got much below the 30s in Reykjavik).

The temperatures fluctuate rather more in the northern part of the country, which we traveled through quite extensively, visiting fjords and volcanoes.  (The latter, in particular, was one of the tougher marches I've been on, and we did not really come prepared for cold weather.  M and B returned to base to sit in the van while the rest of us walked through biting wind to get to the destination.)


It was interesting to get perspectives on religion there, too.  Unlike the US, most of Europe has state churches, and I honestly think that this has seriously contributed to the demise of religion there.  There are two principle ways to try to stamp out movements, and one of them is by adopting and modifying it to such an extent that it loses whatever power it once had.  And even in the revivals, I think it is likely that the church will be a shadow of its former self—a Media to Babylon, as it were.  I saw one evangelical church that was open (on the last day of my trip) and another that was boarded up in Akureyri.  It is a thoroughly secularized and liberal society.

Our guide described the conversion to Christianity as a practical one, but I cannot help but think that at least some of them must have been genuine conversions.  The approach to Gođafoss (where the first chief convert discarded all of his idols) is beautiful.

All in all, it was good for the soul.  The land was what you've seen in movies, without all of the digital grading to make it look good.  It made me long for a day when my ability to appreciate things won't degrade by experiencing them.  One of the worst parts of the curse is that we become desensitized to beauty.


In any case, I returned from Iceland in time to run the black belt test with D, whose experience in PT and an awesome mean streak have adapted him to basically ruin everyone's life for about 28 hours.  I help out some, but I'm not as skilled.

4th Fireworks.

At the end of June was a trip to Center City for an Independence Day concert with some friends and new acquaintances.

July started off with a bang, quite literally:  blueberry picking, E's birthday, and the requisite fireworks.  The following week brought the annual karate party, an affair joyeux for the newly minted black belts, team members, and instructors.  All in all, a good time was had, although it seems that no one has given out the prizes quite yet (one-on-one time with instructors).

The week following was a trip to San Francisco for some friends' wedding. It was a good time:  I met a number of L's college friends, managed not to make too much of a fool of myself, and more or less enjoyed the city a great deal more than expected.  I am not really fond of them, but SF turned out okay.  I think the politics of the city would get to me sooner than later.  That and the noise.  And the people.

By Pier 17.

All that said, we were pretty well treated while in SF.  Our tour of the city mainly included a stop by Coit Tower (by way of Filbert Gardens) on the advice of an independently-wealthy chocolatier / restaurant owner who invited us to Saturday Brunch at her French café.  The food there was delicious, though it was a bit loud.  As it turned out, this was good news for me since they were busy describing their religion of dance and the occasional visit to a synagogue.  L and I have a fairly boring story about how we met (at church), but it seems to occasion comment.  Needless to say, had I been hearing much of what they said, I probably would have liked them a bit less.  It's the ungracious SOB in me, I guess.

Good eats, as Alton would say.

This story isn't quite finished, but my day is...so it's time to get out and hope for part three tomorrow.