Tag Travel

It’s hard to beat reigning wind

I have to confess that I cheated today (and it’s only the first day!). I got my bike all fitted out from Reykjavik bike tours and as I started cycling, it started raining.

It took me approximately 4 hours to ride 12 miles and I wasn’t even close to where I’d planned to camp for the first night. My waterproof trousers were drenched and when I stood up my shoes made that squashy sound like when you step in mud. I was on flat ground, cycling on the lowest gear, and still struggling because of the headwind. Then add in the hills and I was a goner. The thing that kept me from full tantrum mode though was the little ray of sunlight that created a full rainbow right in front of me.

At the top of a hill I’d been pushing my bike up, a guy with a pickup truck flashed his turn signal and a little further up he pulled over. I struggled back onto my bike and fought my way through the head wind and rain to the truck. Ten minutes drive and one hill later, the guy pointed to the side of the road and said ‘that’s where you’d be 2 hours from now if you’d kept riding.’ We drove another 15 minutes until actually getting to Selfoss.

After all, Ireland is only one “C” away from Iceland

Okay so I know I didn’t fly out of Ireland and it is very different from Scotland, but I had to do it for the pun. Geographically, it’s pretty close and I couldn’t help myself. Today begins what I am sure will be a cool (pun intended) adventure if nothing else. Traveling alone, I find I meet way more people and cycling alone will be an adventure in itself for sure. Already, I’ve met a musician moving from Detroit to Berlin and hitched two rides with different people. Today, I will get my bike and pray the rain doesn’t come in to heavy.That’s all for now!

…And it’s all very amoosing

The picture I have here are leaves from a lupine flower. Someone told me that people call the water droplets that form on them lupine diamonds – I like that something as ordinary as a water droplet can become as precious as a diamond.

What I would like to do with this entry is to spend a lot of time on it. To read through my 23 pages of writing from my trip and put together a really nice, consolidated piece that I can edit and re-edit before sending it off into the world. After finishing that, I’d like to spend more time tweezing out all of the different stories I can find from my trip. However, I only have so much time (one day exactly) until I am whisking myself off to my next four-week adventure filled with magic and children so I wanted to send out at least some sort of tip-of-the-hat to Alaska into the world before I left.

If there is anything I learned on the trip, it is that there will never be enough time to do every tourist attraction or see every single monument. I learned that rushing from one view to the next in hopes of catching the next spectacular sight takes away from anything that could be actually enjoyable. Everyone has seen a picture of a train or a bear; capturing that picture is not worth it if it means you see everything through a camera lens. No amount of people on Facebook envying your trip will make it any more enjoyable for you.

What I love about traveling is when I start to slow down, see the people of the area, and just wander with a smile on my face. I get to meet these incredibly interesting and kind hearted people whose stories I am sure I will remember far longer than I will any grand mountain or animal sighting. It is those moments where I stop and realize how lucky I am to be where I am in the world that make traveling feel like such a treat. The funny thing is, is that those things really do not require traveling – I can meet interesting people everywhere if I am willing to listen and I can always be grateful for where I am on this world. So here’s to hoping I can live like I am traveling a little bit more every day because I am always going somewhere.

You could get kilt that way

I apologize for the terrible pun my Scottish friends. I like the idea of starting of with a pun though because as I take after my dad, I think puns are hilarious.

Starting up this blog, we’ll see how far I get but I figure it may be handy to keep people updated (who wants to retell a story 50 times? me!)

As a sum up of life so far across the pond I’d give it a solid 9.8 out of 10 – loosing .2 from the getting soaking wet walking in the rain but please Scotland, don’t pull a “stick-it” movie moment and have every day be rainy just yet.

From plane ride, to horrifying car trip, to dorm, to freshers week, to classes, to Wuthering Heights, to accapella, to rock climbing, to Great Expectations, to The wasteland, to poetry, to now I’d say I’ve had quite an adventure and it’s only 6 weeks in! I don’t think I could succeed to write in six weeks of description so, as the pessimist would say, probably shouldn’t try but as the weeks tick by on this increasingly less exotic feeling adventure I’ll to what I can to share what’s happening.