Iceland

"Recovery from complete and utter exhaustion facilitates creativity." -Philip Gary Smith

I'm tired.

I realize that's an awful start after 4 years of silence on this blog, but it's true.  I woke up at 3.30 am (local time in California) to say goodbye to my little brother who was moving to Arizona.  My flight to Iceland left at 2:15 pm.  The plan was to stay awake, have a few drinks at an airport bar before my flight, and sleep most of the 9 hours we were in the air.  I will say that I executed the first half of the plan to precision.  The trouble came when I boarded the plane.

Long story short, I had an aisle seat, my chair didn't recline, and I sat next to a couple that was a little more "hands on" than I would have appreciated.  Luckily, the girl diagonal from me was watching movies most of the flight so I got to enjoy silent versions of "Zootopia" and "Dark Knight Rises".

Nevertheless, we made it Iceland at 5:45 am local time.  It is now 3:20 pm locally so I have been awake for something like 4,397 straight hours and am delirious.  I have also discovered that my power adapter doesn't work with my 3-pronged laptop charger so I need to solve that problem at some point.

Anyways, let's talk about Iceland.  I am traveling with my friend Brian Crow, who lives in Portland, Oregon.  We tend to be flexible with our itineraries so we get along just fine.  We got our rental car around 7 am and addressed the biggest issue we had immediately.  Our empty stomachs.  The problem is, Iceland only has a population of around 320,000 and a large percentage of them have gone to France for the upcoming soccer match.  No where on the island was open to sell breakfast at 7 am on a Saturday.  We drove around Reykjavik, a city that holds 2/3 of the population, for an hour before finding a gas station that sold food.  It also needs to acknowledged that they might have more Subway restaurants per capita than anywhere on Earth, although none are open.

With our stomachs full and our spirits higher, we headed for the number one tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon.  While outside there was a biting wind and temperatures around 46 F, inside the water it was anywhere from 96-102.  A very relaxing start to our Iceland experience.

After we had a good long soak, it was back in the car for the hour drive to Selfoss.  Due to exhaustion we decided this would be our last stop of the day.  We have set up camp here at a hostel and are trying to stay awake until the respectable 8 o'clock hour and hopefully cure jet lag.  While the first day may seem uneventful to you, it has been a struggle for us.  3 coffees and a 5 hour energy proved ineffective.  Tomorrow we have a lot of hiking planned so rest is needed, as is food.  For now, I am going to conserve my laptop battery.  More to come soon.