Hobbits In Rivendell

We’re enjoying the warm weather and the nature, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We hear owls at night (D. thinks he might wander about to see if he can locate their nest), doves at odd times throughout the day, crickets at night, and California quail – or a partridge to you folk in Glesga. Isn’t it GORGEOUS? They’re such sociable wee birds, and it was happily sitting in the tree, trying to find a date for the night (afternoon? hour?) and politely stopped trolling briefly to pose for a picture. You can watch video of them and listen to their song here.

It’s been incredibly sunny this week (to our dark-adapted eyes), and has been in the 80’s edging towards the 90’s (26°C to 32°C). Right now it’s past 8 in the evening and is 73°F / 23°C. We know if we were in the UK we’d be just a tiny bit envious of these temps… sorry, guys. Come visit us in PR, all right?

*yawn* We’re still really not over being jet-lagged, which is a shock to us: in the past we’ve managed without jet-lag quite well. This time, though, even though we fought off the dehydration of flying, we haven’t yet recovered from the several days of Icelandic sunshine which didn’t let us rest adequately. It’s a little annoying, but we’re early to bed and early to rise at this point. T. hasn’t succumbed to an afternoon nap yet, but she has been talked into reading whilst lying down in bed, which to her is near enough to napping to be scandalous. Truly, our bodies were put through the wringer this past winter, and we’ve just been pushing forward, full steam ahead… and it seems that we’ve hit a wall. That’s what vacation does for you, sometimes. Grabs you in an undertow of sleep, and doesn’t let you up ’til you’re fully rested. When we’re feeling indolent and guilty we remind ourselves – we need the sleep.

We’ve begun the house hunting, and are constantly amazed at just how inexpensive things are in Puerto Rico. We haven’t settled on anything yet, but have put out several inquiries and are hopeful that something will turn up in very short order.

The majority of our possessions are still in transit somewhere: they’ve made it out of the UK and are to be received by a US company at some point (we don’t know when). We’re hopeful that we’ll get an estimate as to their delivery time soon, so that we can book our flights and head off. The alternative is to just take off without knowing when our things will arrive, and live from these same 4 suitcases until they show up. You can imagine how thrilled we aren’t at the prospect, but it may turn out to be what we have to do…

T.’s hives are slowly but surely fading, but we’re keeping her activities low-key (limiting sun, face creams, etc.) in hopes not to encourage them to flare up again – they’re apparently systemic/stress-related! After The Great Watermelon-Avocado Gorge of 2012, we’ve slowed down on our fruit and vegetable consumption just a tiny bit – having fruit for one meal per day, and salad for another for three days running, is possibly just a tiny bit extreme – not to mention a little surprising to our intestinal tracts. Also: it’s not quite watermelon season yet, and we’re really wanting to wait for the good ones to arrive, as we’ve eaten several “meh” ones. We know the drill: food in SEASON. We’ll have to wait, but it’s so wonderful to have an inexpensive variety of fruit and veg at all!

As always, we’ll keep you all updated as to what we’re up to. At the moment, though, we’re not up to anything particularly exciting: we’re both working our regular schedules in between having visitors drop by, getting the laundry done, and marveling at the warm weather.

-D & T

The words and phrases vary – jet set, big-time travelers, world-travelers, living the high-life, globe-trotters – but most all of them have been said to us, in one combination or another. The tones have ranged from wistful to envious to resentful as the wishes have been voiced, “I wish I could go there / do that / live there.”

Dear Friends, you can go there / do that / live there! It’s EASY! Here’s how:

• Step One: Rid yourself of your house. You can either sell it outright, rent it out, or allow the bank to repossess it — it’s what all the cool kids are doing now.
• Step Two: Rid yourself of your cars, and most of your possessions. Garage sale, flea market, Freecycle: go!
• Step Three: Earn an advanced degree, and get some serious student loan debt going.
• Step Four: Be unable to find work in your home state in your degree field, or be unable to find work in academia in any other state which provides benefits, but many will be eager to hire you as an adjunct, for an hourly rate which you might have earned your first year in college.
• Step Five: Decide to live as inexpensively as you can, work where you can, and do the best you can to both make ends meet, and be happy. This last point is key – do your best, make ends meet, be glad. It’s what a lot of people are doing these days.

Friends, it’s just as simple as that!

Okay, no it’s not. Simple, that is. It’s complicated, as is all of life.

See, here’s the thing: a blog is only so much of one’s life. There is only so much of a personal journey that is open to public consumption. Much of the struggle and angst and despair that goes on in the background, you have no idea about… so the enviously tossed-off phrase, “Wow, you guys are just jet-setters now!” — is not only inaccurate, but allows you to believe something about us which allows you to feel free to hate us just that tiny bit, because we’re so lucky, we should be impervious to hurt. Or whatever.

That’s actually the same kind of thought-process it takes for an individual businessman to eventually embezzle millions from a corporation – “Meh, they have so much, they won’t notice.” Just a little contempt, because someone else is so lucky. Sure, we are awfully blessed, but a.) you don’t know at what cost, and b.) whatever the cost is, we’re paying it, and no one else.

This is not to say that we can control how people feel – nor do we want to! We all observe and pass judgment on all kinds of things in our own heads. Having lately been on the receiving end of a lot of assumption, though, we’re merely suggesting that things are not always as they appear… It’s a good realization for us, and will enable us to think twice before we speak.

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One of the nicest things, these warm summer mornings, is to waken before the sunrises, and just… listen.

The crickets chirp, intermittently; a musical cadence that first lulls us to sleep, then accompanies us into wakefulness. There’s the liquid warbling of some bird or other, around about four a.m. — followed by the high-pitched screech of a hunting owl, the alarmed squeak of its prey, and then, as the light bleeds into gray, a staccato high-pitched trill, as another bird stuns insects into submission through the power of its call. The grass rustles, the trees susurrate in the breeze, and the young fawns pick their way delicately across the lawn, following their doe.

For now, no one is beating a lawn into submission with a mower, no one is blowing leaves, sweeping sidewalks, and not even the sprinklers have yet sputtered to life. In the earliest hours of the day, suburbia belongs to the birds and the beetles.

It is simply lovely.

It’s been so nice to just be here – because our family wanders in and out at odd hours. Auntie Bean stops by with Meyer Lemons from her tree, and bits of casseroles, and news. T’s older sister drops by before work – often to cadge a bite of breakfast or something for lunch. Her little brother roller blades over to mow the lawn, and make himself generally amusing and useful. Her father wanders by, waves, and wanders off again. Her eldest sister and mother phone every afternoon, “just to check in.” It’s a privilege to be close enough to do all of these things, and it makes us glad that we’ll be here much more often.

The week will get busy soon – very busy, with work meetings for both D and T, errands and small tasks which will consume the hours – but we’re surrounded by the good from all directions – from the first birdsong in the morning, to the last tight squeeze from a haven’t-seen-you-in-five-years-how-are-you!? visitor at night.

Home. A malleable concept just now, which morphs into meaning so many different things.

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The Great PR House Hunt will on soon! Stay tuned…

-D & T

“Jet set” is a 1950’s phrase which sprang up with the advent of mass air travel – only the wealthy flew more than once in a blue moon, because the price was prohibitive, but also because only the wealthy had places to go which weren’t more reasonably reached by car or bus. Car and bus would not really get us either to Scotland or PR, at least not all the way.

Our last day in Reykjavik we opted for an early lunch at Café Babalú in recognition that we’d be in the airport and in the air and didn’t really want to have to break out our packed lunch / dinner until we had to. After we’d wandered a bit, and enjoyed the eclectic atmosphere of Babalú, we made our way back to Eiriksson to sit in the sun for awhile … and were greeted by a beautiful 22° halo around the sun. We sat and watched tourists for awhile and enjoyed knowing that we had only to drag our bags up from the office to be on our way.

Reflecting upon this trip, we’ve decided that Summer in Iceland is much less of the Iceland we love. The midnight sun is fascinating, but it’s also very tiring, meaning that we didn’t get the much-needed rest we had planned on, in taking three days to decompress. Also, the sheer number of people visiting — and some of the noise late at night/early in the morning that we didn’t get to enjoy the solitude we crave. On our next visit, we will make certain that there’s a decent amount of snow and rain and darkness, to keep the tourists down a bit and to help it be the land of mystery we’ve enjoyed. (Yes, there’s a tourist season somewhere for everyone…)

If you love sunshine, have endless energy, and like crowds, visit in the summer. If you seek solitude and more individual interactions, save your visits for the rest of the year.

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On the way to the airport, D. attempted to catch some views of some of the more isolated homesteads between Reykjavik and Keflavik. Some are well-kept and look like the people just wanted to live a bit off of the beaten track. Others, though, speak of long-term neglect, and make us wonder whether someone just couldn’t have salvaged something before the place went to ruin. The way the houses in many cases just seem to sink back into the land reminded us of parts of Alaska and the high mountain areas in Northern Italy, on the Austrian border. It’s something to do with farmsteads, maybe — perhaps they’re only used for a time deliberately? Who knows.

Also along the way, though, we spotted many places where people had piled rocks into simple pillars, or into difficult balancing acts. We also spotted several places where there were rocks which had been set up to resemble people, apparently. These aren’t small rocks, so we figure that they must have had to use heavy machinery or a lot of coordinated muscle power to get them into place. We wonder, will someone in the future study these things and determine that they were of some particular significance, much as we study such things from ancient peoples and ascribe meaning? Or will they (rightly?) determine that someone was simply bored and had time on their hands, so decided to make use of the locally-abundant resource of lava rocks?

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For the Iceland-SF leg of our Reykjavik exit, we were overtired from the endless sun and unable to sleep or rest. Twitchy and needing distraction, we slogged through movies — Eragon (we barely made it through, it was so awful), Sherlock Holmes (we thought it was sort of like James Bond meets Victorian Europe, it wasn’t faithful to Holmes at all, but had nice clothes), and finally wrapped up by watching Astropia – a quirky, random pick that we just thought looked weird enough to qualify as Entetainingly Bad SFF. Astropia is an Icelandic film, subtitled in English, and is a love note to gamers. We truly enjoyed it, and suggest that you watch it (available at the link) if you’re at all geeky or into comic books, role playing, gaming or even if you’re just interested in spending an oddly endearing hour and a half.

After three movies and numerous trips to annoy the stewardesses by asking for water (one gets used to them being sullen, and does it anyway) we finally arrived in Seattle. Customs there– which we had dreaded — was a breeze, and the agent who scanned our bags and then pawed through them (“your cheese showed up as liquid on the scan, so I’m going to scan them again separately”) even asked if he could repack for us! (We declined.) The Seattle Airport is organized and quiet – at least where we were – and was a nice place to have our packed dinner (rye crackers, cheese, hummous, veggies).

After hours of sitting around in SeaTac the airline announced that they were offering an upgrade to first class for $50, in order to accommodate the full flight and the stand-by people they’d oversold to — tsk, tsk, Alaska Air! — and we gratefully accepted. It wasn’t exactly luxury, in a small plane, but having a seat where we weren’t pressed sweatily against others for an additional two hours made a difference in our sanity, making it well worth the money. Neither of us had sat in first class before, and have since decided that the biggest difference is that the flight staff NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE. ” Can I get you something else?” is the question of the day, and unfortunately, as the stewardess couldn’t speed up time, we merely wanted to be left alone! By 1 a.m., it was finally over — we were picked up, driven to our temporary home, and settled, had dug through our (4 identical) suitcases to find our evening toiletries, peeled ourselves out of our gross traveling clothes, showered, and crashed into bed.

It’s good to be here, though we’re still vastly low-energy, T.’s face is covered in hives (we’re still not sure what that is about) and we spend time sitting around marveling at the abundance of sunshine and summer fruit, staring, and smiling in a vague fashion at the parade of relatives wandering through hugging us and asking us if we want another bite of artichoke or watermelon (Yes, please, and thank-you.). Thanks to REALLY hydrating, we are adjusted to Pacific Time mostly, and will each be back working electronically tomorrow — T. has novels to craft and revisions to finish, and D’s sure his boss would like to hear from him sooner rather than later. Until next time…

-D & T

Sun! Glorious sun! Which means we’re not going to the Blue Lagoon after all, as the sun brings out the bar crowd. We liked the Lagoon better during the dark/cold days when there was no outdoor bar, and everyone hunkered in the hot water, separated visually by streaming sulfur clouds. We all looked like those Japanese monkeys, but it was peaceful. If you go, do wear a swimming cap, or coat your hair in shea butter – otherwise, you will not be able to let go, float, relax, or get a brush through your hair at a later date. Further, don’t wear flip flops in, as you do lose them – the water is utterly opaque. And thus ends that Public Service Announcement.

We’re a mite disappointed at the flat, calm sea today when we have no time for whale watching, but we hope our new Polish buddy gets a chance to go out, and we’re glad that for his sake it’s stopped raining – he came for the long sun. And the bars. Let’s hope he’s finding what he’s looking for.

(Meanwhile, this blog post is being written by someone who needs to be showering, doing dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, and packing plane snacks, but who is blogging instead… Y’know what’s weird? We fly out at 6 pm GMT and arrive in Seattle… at 6 pm, PST. An eight hour flight, in the blink of an eye. Kinda.)

Well, emails from Glasgow recently contained the indignity of today: The Olympic Torch is this very evening going to Glasgow… and going DOWN WOODLANDS ROAD. WHERE WE USED TO LIVE with the craptastic boiler and the people wee-ing/puking on the back steps. And PAST THE UNIVERSITY GATES. WHERE WE USED TO GO. And ALL OVER THE WEST END. Our old grounds, where we used to stomp. Or whatever one does in one’s stomping grounds. Of course everything exciting happens WHEN WE’RE NO LONGER THERE. Of course. Our dear Mr. S. is supposed to be taking pictures for us with his umpteen hundred fancy cameras, but it just won’t be the same. Hiss. Boo.

All right. The tub scrubbing really does need to happen. Nothing much more to say, anyway – just giving ourselves one more excuse to share pictures on the blog.

See you later – or, rather, see you soon!

Today has been a bit more random than yesterday, as it involved a scramble to locate the swimming suits. This is distinctly not fun when you have so much luggage and D. has this tendency to say things while packing like, “we need something to pad the network storage box” and there goes some small article of clothing. He recognizes this … and we survive it not being fun (after all, we really really would not like to lose all of the photography from the last 5 years, etc.). But this morning was a distinct scramble, even after locating the swimsuits, as it also saw us both having to quickly prep for our trip to the Blue Lagoon. We gulped down some leftover latkes as soon as we had both put in our contacts (a necessary item – wearing eyeglasses in the Blue Lagoon seems distinctly not fun), hustled ourselves up the block to Hotel Leifur Eiriksson … and stopped in at Cafe Loki for a slice of cake and a latte, while waiting for the tour bus. Breakfast of champions: cold latkes followed later by cake and a soy latte (both of which were awesome).

We arrived at the Blue Lagoon at just before noon and didn’t get out until 2:20 – just in time to shower, dress, and head out to the bus at 3:15. We got back to Leifur Eiriksson by 5:20, D. went to the store to pick up some ingredients for our travel snacks (Mr. B., you will be getting some melon-mint gum … and also some salty licorice gum. Be warned. Be afraid…) while T. dashed back to the apartment in driving rain to arrive 1 minute shy of her writing group’s start.

So, a day well spent, if quite a bit filled with odd observations about fellow travelers and spa-goers. We are well and truly content with the Blue Lagoon … so much so that we’ll be returning there tomorrow. This means, of course, that we will not make it up to the top of Hallgrímskirkja this time around.

There are so many places to visit here, and things to see. Every Icelander with whom we’ve spoken has asked whether we’ve been to somewhere or other, telling us that we really can’t leave without seeing it, and what a shame it is that we’re only staying such a short time. Well, we tell them, we’ll be back: we plan to stop here for a few days here and there, as we intend to keep flying Icelandair on our travels to and from Scotland.

Our next visit will be at a time that they are heading towards darkness, and we have been promised snow (really: it’s a very awesome experience to be sitting in an outdoor sauna while it’s snowing). We don’t know exactly when that will be, as we have yet to hear from our choir director about dates for concerts, and are trying to schedule our returns to Scotland with those in mind. Perhaps next time we’ll make it to see the view from the top of the church, or to see the other interestingly double-steepled church which seems to be forever lurking as we’re headed elsewhere.

Tonight, we pack and clean and prepare airplane snacks, as they don’t feed you on Icelandair. Then D. may work on getting some pictures up before we try to get some sleep (it really is difficult, this being-light-all-night), to awake and lug our belongings down the stairs – all forty-five of them, erg! – , into a taxi, and onto a bus. We’ll then soak in happy bliss until we scramble to get on the 2:15 bus to the airport.

We will miss Reykjavik, and wish that we had all sorts of time and money to simply live here. The people are friendly beyond belief, and will happily chat with you for as long as you’re willing to chat. The scenery is dramatic, the architecture is beyond quirky, and the Icelandic culture is truly unique. We feel really blessed to be able to visit, and we’re glad we could drag you along.

We may post again before we leave, but the likelihood is that we’ll simply resume posts sometime on the weekend, when we’ll be in California. Until then, please enjoy a slideshow of our Iceland photos, both from a year and a half ago and from this trip. The show includes video, so be prepared if you watch it (and simply laugh that they dubbed over the Kim Possible cartoon).

-D & T

Yesterday we left Glasgow for our extended travels. Below is the view from the airplane, in which we can just make out the Squinty Bridge, the Armadillo, and a few other locations. It’s rather a tumultuous leaving for us, as we lived in Glasgow itself for four years, and lived within an easy drive to Glasgow for the past year. We have committed to coming back, though, so we’ll regard this as just the beginning of the next phase of our relationship with Glasgow and Scotland.

When deciding to leave Scotland, we decided that we needed a break somewhere along the way – to stop, regroup, and just relax for awhile. We’re in Reykjavik for just that reason, and to enjoy the 20+ hours of full daylight (well, OK, lightly overcast daylight) for a few days. We arrived yesterday and had to cast around for a bit to find our apartment rental. We ended up being dropped off at the Central Apartments instead of the Central View Apartments, but the lovely proprietor generously offered to ferry us to the right place – after telephoning and searching for it online and much fumbling about in search of the correct website. He was truly wonderful to us, and we’ve told him that we know where we’ll be staying when next we visit!

In any event, we arrived at our apartment at last after a terribly long slog which began at 6 a.m., when we arose to finally pack our luggage and clean the flat. Yes: we left it until the last day, but managed to finish packing and cleaning a good four hours before our flight, whence began the traveling part of the marathon of endurance. We took a taxi from the flat in Kilsyth with all of our various bags, as 1) we couldn’t face the idea of trying to get them onto a train, and 2) it may have cost £5 more to take the taxi. Then, the hauling of luggage began in earnest: 4 suitcases, 2 carry-on bags, 2 laptop bags, 1 camera bag, and 1 violin all had to make it into the terminal and onto the airplane. Fortunately, the check-in guy didn’t know how to charge for excess baggage, so took our two carry-on bags into the hold at ho extra charge, leaving us with computer bags and camera and violin.

We arrived sweaty and miserably worn out, but also quite happy because we’re in a neighborhood which we know well and we have a kitchen this time around (last time we made do with putting food on the window sill and closing the curtains in front of them – it was Winter in Iceland, after all). So we dragged ourselves to the local market to pick up some food (we returned again this afternoon, as our shopping choices after 12 hours of packing and traveling were rather random), passing by our favorite church.

After a dinner of flatbread sandwiches we decided that we really ought to get to bed, despite the sun being still well up in the sky at after 10 p.m. We didn’t realize until this morning that we can hear the chimes of Hallgrímskirkja from our apartment (this, also, after D. had to pull up the blinds at 4 a.m. to verify that, yes, the sun was indeed well up in the sky, and after the travel alarm-clock went off at 6 a.m. as it had apparently been accidentally switched on during the transition). With that lovely realization (at the decent hour of 9 a.m.) we wandered off to have breakfast at the Loki Cafe. We arrived before the owner got there, and enjoyed a quiet conversation with the guy at the counter (he’s just finished high school in Spain, and will be off to college in Denmark next year) before breakfasting on some truly delicious Icelandic morning fare: T. had pancakes with cream and caramel plus a boiled egg, D. had a boiled egg sandwich on freshly-baked rye bread.

After breakfast we went for a wander around Reykjavik. We’re surprised that so much has changed in just a year and a half since we were last here, but the graffiti art still persists, with something incredibly odd painted on just about every opportune side-of-building. The graffiti is one of those aspects of Reykjavik we particularly enjoy, and quite possibly shouldn’t be called graffiti, but more … “free mural art” or something.

Some of the art projects are difficult to understand (“what’s up with the guy looking blissed-out with a sitar?”), as are some of the food items (“salty licorice chewing gum? really? let’s try some!”). T. refused to try any salty licorice flavored chewing gum, but D. couldn’t resist and pronounces it “mostly all right, after the initial saltiness wears off.”

Tomorrow we’ll be off to the Blue Lagoon, to boil ourselves in volcano water for as many hours as we can stand it. Hopefully we’ll get some better pictures of the place, as there’s nothing which can really convey the sheer scope of the place. As it won’t be sub-freezing and snowing tomorrow, we do stand a pretty good chance of getting some decent shots.

We have no plans yet for Friday, although D. wants to take the elevator up Hallgrímskirkja for some panoramic views of Reykjavik, so that’s likely on the agenda for Friday. Then we’ll be returning to Keflavik Airport by bus, to brave another bit of extreme travel: over the North Pole when we’re so close to Solstice, to stop in Seattle for clearing customs, then on to San Francisco.

We’re enjoying Reykjavik, and trying to get in some good photography, but we’ve both realized why we didn’t last time: Iceland is such a relaxing and relaxed place that it’s difficult to get up the desire to push, to see, to do. Everyone seems happy to stop for a long conversation, and life seems quite a bit slower here than even Scotland seemed. So, while there will certainly be photographs, they’ll only serve to tease you with this place, and you’ll have to visit yourselves to see what it’s like.

-D & T