The Longest Day

Day 1 March 31 and/or April 1

At 9:37 p. m. EST, sitting on an obscenely fuchsia colored plane somewhere over the northern Atlantic, Astrid asked herself, “How did I get here?” She used to ask herself that question a lot in the years after she moved from her humble bucolic home in north central Pennsylvania to Virginia, then to Kentucky, then to Michigan.This rhetorical question had visited her less and less in the past few years, so the query surprised her on that bleary eyed over-night, circadian-rythm-destroying trip to Iceland.

She knew how the plan came to be …

“How about Iceland?,” Bjorn asked as Astrid was preparing dinner one evening over Christmas break. 

“What? You mean to go there? What? Why Iceland?” 

“There are some really good deals online, and they expire tonight. We should be more spontaneous,” he said. 

“What’s in Iceland? Ice-land? It has “ice” in the name for a reason. Really?” Inside, Astrid was desperately trying to beat down nervousness and fear as Bjorn explained the photographic draw of the place. “Give it a few hours and think about the pros and cons, then talk to me again,” she said, but she actually meant “Give me a few hours for the fear and worry to dissipate, then ask me again.”  

The Sun Voyager

Most people went south for Spring Break. That was way too easy. An hour later Bjorn mentioned it again. Astrid had gotten over her initial shock, was still not over-enthusiastic but  curbed her reluctance, prayed for courage and dove in. 

“If you think you really want to go … why not?”

Later that night Bjorn told her that he had missed the deadline for the cheap flight, and for a few days, she basked in an uninterrupted-by-challenging-travel future. But there was another sale for flights to Iceland and before too long, the trip was finalized for Snorri’s Spring Break. 

And of course she knew how she got there physically …

The weather was rainy and dull on the drive to Chicago. Music from the iPhone wouldn’t stop playing over the USB along with GPS  in the car. As planned, the family stopped at Jewel Osco to turn in an expired I-PASS transponder, but got a new one instead (they didn't want a new one). “I only exchange them, I don’t refund the money,” the sassy Jewel-Osco lady at the desk insisted. So now they had two IPASS transponders. 

As a fitting start to a far-north trip, the family stopped in at Ikea for lunch, but Astrid picked up a dark chocolate bar and a pour-through coffee funnel as well.

Waiting ...

When they arrived at their gate at the airport, their plane wasn’t there. Besides having the gate blocked by emergency vehicle and personel, the microphone at Gate M18 had microphone problems, so the large man there used his sonorous voice to shout announcements at the Iceland-bound passengers waiting there. The flight was delayed forty-five minutes, which gave Astrid time to look and observe, write and wonder. It also extended their landing time to a more humane hour than the originally scheduled 4:20 a.m. 

Astrid waited watching fellow passengers, wondering about them, their lives, their goals, their selves. She gleaned more and more tiny details every time her gaze swept over their faces. A family from Kentucky consisting of mother, dad and son sat across the row of seats. The teenaged son played a Nintendo Switch to burn the time. Further down the row of seats sat a pair of young women friends, together for an adventure, wearing leggings and sparkling new hiking boots.

The airplane attendants walked by, turning heads with their bright, all-pink uniforms. When the plane pulled into the gate, it commanded as many stares: it was the all-fuchsia aircraft of Wow Air.  There was no confusing it (or forgetting it) with another airline.

The slow, impatient loading commenced, and soon the pink plane was in the air. 

… but mentally, she had no clear idea how she came to be flying over oceans to sneak around other countries while trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. In addition to being terrified of strangers, the dark, dogs, bears, roosters, baths and hydrogen peroxide, she was so often scared of her own shadow as a child.

A torturous six hour flight, filled with sleeplessness despite exhaustion, pain from sitting in one spot for too long, RLS and general airplane malaise, landed them in Keflavik Airport, into the general confusion and mild busyness of 5 a. m. in the morning. By the time they went through customs, picked up their luggage and bought a SIM card for their phone, it was closer to 6 a. m. 

The car-rental place was packed full of eager tourists dropping off and picking up and not enough attendants (it was Easter Sunday morning, two of the employees had called in sick), but the family were more than willing to burn the morning hours waiting patiently. When they got on the road at 7-ish, they headed to their first destination,  The Blue Lagoon. 

The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa, but the family wasn’t there for a dip in the waters that day. As they pulled into the parking lot with their white Kia, fresh with a tank full of diesel and the cab smelling of it, a large, unmistakable, black, bird was waiting in the parking lot, searching for morsels. Astrid watched the raven as Bjorn parked the car and got out, leaving the door open for the extraordinary chill to fill the cab and creep deep into Astrid and Snorri’s clothes. 

“Shut the door, shut the door, shut the door,” Astrid muttered as she stretched over to the driver’s seat and pulled it shut, only to have it open a few seconds later again by Bjorn. 

Weird water

“I’m going to walk down and see this water, you should come,” he said, Camera and Tripod in tow. 

“I’m going to warm up a little first,” Astrid said, poking the seat warming button a few times to full heat. Snorri dozed in the back seat. 

She watched as Bjorn walked onto a trail and disappear behind piles of moss-covered lava. The landscape leading up to the spa was flat but covered–like many of the plains in Hawaii–with lava, jagged and sharp, except this lava was draped in an army green moss. Half an hour later, Bjorn re-appeared, encouraging Astrid to go out and see. 

“It’s not far, just a short walk,” he said. 

Giant Auk

She opened the door against a healthy wind and shut it quick for Snoring Snorri’s benefit, zipped up her coat and walked down the trail to find a blue-green stream running through black lava landscape, steam floating up from who knows where. She took a few iPhone pictures for her “weird water” collection and made her way back to the car. 

Next they drove along the steaming, lava landscape down to a beach featuring a large Great Auk statue and Bird Island, a large rock off the shore where white birds nested, flew and flit. A few minutes after parking, a large van with big tires pulled up in front of them, with “Thor Photography Tours” on the side. It wouldn’t be the last run-in with them. Bjorn opened the door and shut it this time, but didn’t shut it with enough force, and the car told him so with ding noise. A brisk Icelandic breeze blew in through the open hatch as he collected his photography instruments. Astrid and Snorri shivered. 

Astrid and Snorri stayed in the car as he walked off to capture  images. When he came back, Astrid got out for her tour of the beach. 

“It’s not that cold, 2 degrees Celsius,” she said after coming back. "Those rocks, they look like they just fell into the ocean", she said. The rocks looked like pillars of stone stood on end, and pushed close together. The ones at this beach look like they toppled, due to the ocean waves.  

Driving in another country will always be challenging. Driving in a country where they drive on the right side of the road, whose language is not English, is less challenging than driving in the UK, but still has grand potential for getting lost. Outside the exemptions of Ás [OUSE] and Vik [VEEK], the names of streets, towns and landmarks in general, rarely have less than ten letters in their names and it would take about a week for Astrid, the navigator’s assistant, to become accustomed to them. Even Miss GPS didn’t specify street names, she just said, “Turn left, veer left, turn right, etc.”

On the way into Reykjavik, they were rerouted a few times before finding a parking spot along a quaint street just a few blocks from Hallgrímskirkja, the Lutheran church built to resemble a Viking longboat.  In the nearby bakery, Brauð*, Bjorn bought two sticky buns from three red-headed bakers, brought them to the car and shared them with Snorri as Astrid gnawed on a protein bar. After their snack, they walked up to the church, admiring the unique architecture, and the Leif Erikson statue sitting victoriously in front of it. A short, cool, windy walk down to the ocean shore, past small houses, tattoo and vape shops, led them to the popular silver long-boat sculpture, The Sun Voyager.

This first day was their only day scheduled to tour Reykjavik, the capital and largest town in Iceland. They weren’t there for the city night life or the food, and finding something to fill the time before they could check into their hotel was a challenge, but they finally decided to tour The National Museum of Iceland. 

The National Museum of Iceland

Bleary eyed and sluggish, they roamed three floors of the museum displays of ancient Viking artifacts and re-creations of their culture. For Astrid, who reveled in history displays, it was bittersweet. So much information and interesting artifacts lay before her, but fatigue and pain interfered with real absorption and appreciation.  

Astrid was rethinking these double-long days of vacation. They really were torture to her, and by the end of that day she would be using all her strength to fight off sleep to stay awake to give directions. But there seemed to be no practical solutions. 

By the time the family left the museum, the double-day was getting to all of them. After a few more re-routes and missed turns in the car, they found a grocery store, Kronan, where Bjorn walked in a daze, searching for lunch and breakfast foods for the days ahead. They bought apples that came from France, bananas from someplace warm, granola bars and oatmeal cups. 

"I meant to have the car in the photo!"

On the hour drive to the AirBnB, Astrid fought hard against fatigue. Her head dipped and jerked as sleep snuck up on her. She couldn’t keep her head up, was in serious danger of whiplash, but was concerned Bjorn, who was driving, would fall asleep. She couldn’t sleep, she had to keep him awake because she didn’t want to be another Iceland tourist statistic. The landscape around them was dramatic and epic, but the lack of sleep was much more prominent. Snorri snoozed in the back seat, not helping with her fight with fatigue. 

Their drive ended at a vast lake surrounded by lofty, snow capped mountains. Their hostess showed them the details of their quaint cabin and  as soon as she left, they promptly settled in for a nap. 

A geyser

Astrid slept so deeply, with dreams so real, she woke up confused as to where she was. For a moment, she thought she was back home in Michigan, but home did not have a pine-clad room, nor did she sleep under a white eiderdown blanket.

She woke with a better attitude, rested and refreshed, but her feet were cold. 

They drove smooth roads to a field of Geysirs, complete with restaurant and hotel, where water boiled and exploded out of the ground. 

Redheads are fashionable in Icleand

For a late dinner, they stopped at Heradsskolinn Boutique Hostel in Laugarvatne, where it wasn’t "no shoes no service," but the opposite, with a sign greeting them just inside the door saying, “Please take off your shoes”. So, in their stocking feet, Astrid ate a chickpea salad, Bjorn had pizza and Snorri his recurring favorite, ham and cheese baguette, beside a large table of hostel customers. Their server was a tall, bespectacled young man with dark hair, who was polite and helpful. 

“This is the place where they bake the bread in the ground and they have a geothermal spa,” Bjorn said as they ate. Baking bread or dipping into waters of any kind was the last thing on Astrid's mind. She just wanted to sleep. 

*Brauð- the last letter of this word is not an o, d or any English letter. It is like a d but with its little stem tilting to the left and with a little cross. It is pronounced "th". 

Nature doesn't need your money.