Even here, relatively close to the coast it feels too hot. My friends who are further inland are sweating under temperatures that are in the 90s or well over 100.
It’s been pretty hot the past couple weeks and isn’t forecast to cool down for the next several.
I mean, at least we don’t have the type of humidity they have on the east coast where I grew up.
The point I’m trying to make is it’s miserable.
But it’s the middle of summer. That’s what happens in the middle of summer, right?
Well. Um. Here’s what happened when I checked the weather in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland:
When I was there in November, it was mostly in the mid to high 30s.
Frankly, from where I sit in the 86-degree heat, this sounds like Heaven. (Which makes sense, since it’s Iceland.)
The volcano that was threatening to erupt all through November has erupted a bunch of times.
I’ve been watching it live on YouTube every time there’s a new eruption.
There have been some truly amazing photos, including this one from the Associated Press:
I’m extremely glad it didn’t erupt while I was there, although it seems to have had minimal impact on travel.
I was also about 400 miles from the volcano, so it was never likely to have a huge impact on me except when I was flying home.
I’m struck by the fact that they keep reopening the Blue Lagoon (which is incredibly close to the eruption site and could be overcome by lava within a matter of three or four minutes). While I loved the Blue Lagoon on my first few trips to Iceland, it is incredibly expensive and very touristy. There are other, safer public places to go (including local pools that are thermal-heated, relatively cheap, and really wonderful).
I guess I was lucky to have gone to Iceland for the first time before it became overrun with tourists and became a trendier place. Maybe that’s why I like spending time outside of Reykjavik (which is a nice and very pleasant city, but maybe should be viewed as a gateway to the “real Iceland”).
The volcano does remind me that we live in a world that is constantly changing and bubbling and boiling and cooling… and expecting it not to change is foolish at best.
Earlier this month, I got Covid for the first time. I’d really hoped to be one of those unicorns that never got it (or maybe had some kind of weird immunity), but it got me despite my vigilance and despite the fact that I still wear masks when I’m inside with other people. Luckily, it was short-lived and not very severe (I’ve had colds that were worse).
A friend of mine just gave me a great tagline for the Echoes of Iceland book (and permission to use said tagline). So… I’ve decided to make some stickers with the cover photo and the tagline that I want to have available before the book comes out.
When I asked friends who’ve made stickers in the past, they all pointed me towards one company that seems to have really good quality and reasonable prices.
But it turns out that the guy who runs (and maybe owns) the company has some pretty fascistic views and funnels a lot of his money into supporting far-right causes. And I just can’t get behind that.
One of the things I’d always planned for Echoes of Iceland was to turn some of the stories into short films.
Recently, I was asked if I’d like to submit a short film for the latest version of the One Young Punk Festival, an online festival put together by Richard Wilkins and his son Rod (two wonderful folks who were at Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings Festival in Anaheim last September). They wanted their Spring Festival to concentrate more on short films and asked me if I had one. Naturally, I said yes.
Because I intended to turn a few of the Echoes of Iceland stories into short films.
And I’d taken a ton of video while in the Eastfjords.
So I selected one of the pieces that wasn’t too long (a bit over six minutes when I read it) and catalogued most of the video I’d shot. That took a while.
I came up with a very rough sense of the type of footage I wanted to include and fairly quickly had a first (very rough) rough cut.
I spent about three weeks refining that cut, playing with the sound and video to make it look good.
I used an animation plug-in to make a little bit of the video look a tad more interesting.
I realized there was a half-second of me in the video, which later was shaved back to about a quarter of a second.
I discovered that a few of the long pans looked jumpy in the edited video and I spent about a week trying to fix that (and eventually did).
I fell in love with some of the odd ambient sounds from the video and left them in.
When it was finally done, I decided to enter it into a few film festivals. The Red Moon Film Festival (which literally was the first one I entered) awarded it Best Symbolic Short. Then it got into the next two festivals I entered it into.
A few of the festivals seemed genuinely confused by the film.
One person emailed me and said it was more poetry than film. Someone else said the scenery was terrible. And look, not everyone likes everything, which is fine, but if you think the scenery in the film or in Iceland in general is “terrible” then there is probably something deeply wrong with you.
In any event, “Grace” is out in the world now and I’m really proud of it.
It is still amazing to me that I planned this trip, did this artist’s residency, was very productive (while still managing to do some work from Iceland), and have the first draft of the Echoes of Iceland book.
I wrote a few new pieces when I first got back to Los Angeles and have been editing and revising the others.
The goal is to have to book out next Summer or early Fall.
Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who followed along and I’ll keep updating as I move forward.
May the New Year bring you much joy, love, happiness, and fulfillment.
That much travel with so little sleep is a young person’s game. Oh well, it can’t really be avoided when you’re traveling from Iceland to the West Coast.
Started in Reykjavik and had a nice breakfast at the Guesthouse Aurora. Passed on the flea market and National Gallery because of time, but briefly met up with Martina and Joke at the Church (where they were going to an organ concert at noon).
Dragged our stuff downhill (which is much, much easier than going uphill) to the bus station to go back to Keflavik (where the international airport is), past Grindavik (where all the earthquakes and potential volcanic eruption are). Bought more lakrits and chocolate at the airport and did a little work before the flight. Yes, I wrote the first draft of another story while I was waiting. It occurred to me that a project called “Echoes of Iceland” needed a piece called Echoes, so I wrote it. It’s probably going to be the last piece in the book that should appear next year.
Amy and I were flying out on two separate flights. She was changing through Newark on Alaska Airlines and I was changing through JFK on JetBlue (and hoping they’d be better than they were on the trip over). My flight from Iceland left at about the same time, but they bussed us to a far-off gate than had us wait in a boiling holding area for about 20 minutes before we could board and I thought at one point I’d pass out.
Got into JFK and had to go through customs, recheck the bag, change terminals, and go back through Security (thankfully, I have TSA pre-check, which easily saved me 20 minutes on all that). My JetBlue flight was 45 minutes late taking off because they had to refuel so they could reroute us north to avoid turbulence. Spoiler alert: We didn’t avoid turbulence and were an hour late coming in. Also, even though the flight was only a third full, they wouldn’t let people move into open rows because they claimed the luggage underneath was being positioned to counterbalance the weight from our original assigned seats. This seems like complete B.S. to me, but my experiences with JetBlue have been awful on this trip.
Finally got to LAX a good hour late. Four bags came out at baggage claim, then nothing for 15 minutes. Finally, they announced that there was a jam and we’d have to go to another carousel. Okay, JetBlue, I get it. I have many other options when I fly and should have taken the Alaska option.
Originally, I was supposed to come in 15 minutes after Amy and we were going to wait and go back together, but when she saw how late we were, she went home, took a shower, then drove back to the airport and still had to wait around for 20 minutes while JetBlue attempted to deliver bags to their passengers.
Finally got home around 2:00 a.m. The cats were very happy to see both of us.
Up at 6:30, long before first light to drive to Egilsstaðir for the morning flight to Reykjavik.
Roads were clear for the first two-thirds, then snowier as we got closer to the airport. We couldn’t figure out how to fill the car at the first station, so we had to go to the next one (where the self-service directions were a lot clearer). It was snowing a lot and I wanted to make sure we got there in time.
When we arrived, people were just lining up to check bags. We had enough time to go upstairs to the upper lounge, where I spent a few hours talking to Martina and Clio a month earlier when we were waiting for the van to pick us up and take as to Stöðvarfjörður. Seems so, so long ago.
Gorgeous, but uneventful flight. It was a lot colder in Reykjavik (maybe 20 degrees F compared to 35 in Stöðvarfjörður) and they’re expecting snow and cold from Greenland for the next few days. We walked to the guest house we’re staying in overnight (which is right near the church) before we head back to the airport in the morning. Since I stayed at a different guest house the last two times in Reykjavik, we decided to stay at the place Amy was in before coming out to the Eastfjords. Plus, it’s called the Guesthouse Aurora… and what’s not to like about that?
We’d hoped to go to the flea market, which is only open on weekends these days. It’s been relocated, but was a highlight of our first trip — back when half the stuff being sold seemed to have come in from Russia or other Eastern Bloc countries.
The entire harbor has been built up since then and Reykjavik has really become quite the tourist destination. I have mixed feelings about this, to be honest. Reykjavik is a lot of fun and there are some cool and interesting things to do there (and excursions from there), but I feel like you need to leave the city to experience “the real Iceland.”
We looked for a post office, but wound up buying post card stamps from a souvenir shop so I could post some postcards to send back to the states.
We wandered around forever looking for some food and stopped at the Bonus store to get some chocolate to take home with us. We finally wound up at a great (and relatively inexpensive) place called Just Wingin’ It that specializes in chicken wings, chicken tenders, and chicken sandwiches. Most of the customers who had wings wore plastic gloves so their hands wouldn’t get too greasy, which honestly seems like a genius idea.
We tried to get together with one of the Icelandic musicians who played on Amy’s new EP that she mixed and recorded vocals for in Stöðvarfjörður, but it didn’t work out.
Still, a good day. It was great to be in a city and in temperatures that were slightly colder (and to be able to walk in streets and go into shops). I tried not to be too judgmental about the loud foreign tourists and sometimes succeeded.
