Guest post.

A good friend of mine, Matt Mortensen, a both a fantastic chemist and photographer, has asked me to guest post on his photo blog.

You can find it here.

http://doctormortensen.blogspot.com/2010/05/guest-post-iceland.html

Why would you go to Iceland?

So I spent a week with EK in Iceland.

I've been asked more than a few times why I would go to Iceland. Here's just a couple reasons.





I took about 1000 photos, these are just a couple. We were planning on rain, wind, and gloom, and we got sunny days.

Showering in Reykjavik

Despite being an engineer, I'm an extremely non-linear thinker. Tonight I found myself laughing hysterically in my car while driving home after a nice ski.

I was totally rockin' out to the latest Mars Volta disk, and there was some lyrics that mentioned "sulfur." Rather than thinking about chemicals and chemistry, I was immediately reminded of Iceland.

Everywhere in Iceland smells like sulfur--two continental plates are drifting apart, and sulfuric gases from earth's core escape into the water. Even the cleanest water still retains the sulfuric scent, particularly warm water--which outgasses any dissolved gas since water has less solubility as it increases in temperature.(this is also why cold water yields cloudy ice cubes) In this case, it's Hydrogen sulfide gas escaping into the air. So when you're showering, you're essentially cleaning yourself with water that's smells like rotten eggs.

Anyway, I was staying in Reykjavik's hostel -- a really nice place, and I highly recommend it to anyone travelling in Iceland-- and there was only one bathroom at the end of the hall. There were sets of showers on either end of a row of sinks in the center.

The first morning, I stepped in, surveyed the empty room, saw the sinks, and one door connecting to the showers. It had a picture of someone showering, showing a little buttcrack on the bottom of the illustration. I giggled, and walked into the shower area, where there were 2 stalls.

Illustrations were fairly common in Iceland -- when their words for simple things such as "Police" are Lögreglustöð, they have to figure out some way for everyone to understand simple concepts. (Although I'm fairly sure a few girls in my room couldn't understand them, given their odor.)

Anyway, I showered, got dressed very discreetly in the dry area next to the stall, got going, running into nobody. I did this 2 more days, showering on the same left side. The fourth day, all showers were going, except for my one default shower. I hopped in and did my business. I dried off inside the showerstall, and stepped out into the sink area. Immediately in front of me, there was a young woman who had apparently just showered next to me. Across the way, there was a guy.

And then I noticed something I hadn't before. The illustration across the bathroom from me was also of someone showering, but decidedly Male. I turned around and looked at the illustration behind me.....which was of a woman showering.

I briskly, nonchalantly, & inconspicuously stepped out of the bathroom. I don't recall if either of them noticed me at all. To this day, I don't think that encounter has crossed my mind since it happened.

In my defense: This was the first hostel on my trip in which I stayed that didn't have co-ed bathrooms. In all the hostels in Norway, I just walked into the bathroom, grabbed an available shower/stall unit and hopped in, changed, and finished my business in front of the sink.

Apparently, there's different rules in different countries.

.......Some people are weird, man.

June 9th, 2007

The ninth of June, 2007, was probably one of the best days in my life.

The day before, I'd met a few people on a guided tour, and we all decided to rent a car for the next day and see the country. We decided to drive along the ring road along the south coast of Iceland. I watched this video the night before.

The next day, the four of us, Me, Alban, a guy from Paris, Pearl, a girl from Taipei, and Jamie, a girl from Maryland, (all about the same age) packed into a manual transmission Volkswagon Polo

I hopped into the driver's seat of our car at 8am, the odometer at 26km--this car had been used less than my bike just this afternoon. We left Reykjavik and found the ring road.

As we left for the country, I thought myself......"This is fucking, fucking, fucking crazy. I don't know these people at all. Iceland is sparsely inhabitied outside it's capital, and I've got a few granola bars and a raincoat in my daypack. This is a recipe for disaster."

My fears became overwhelming jubilance as the scenery started to unfold. This country is magical, you can feel it in the air and it's more than visually apparent, and I was racing into it full speed ahead.

This was one of the best feelings I've ever had in my life.

The feeling was mutual with my friends. Alban couldn't stop saying "this is just crazy" I think he meant amazing, or breathtaking, or unbelieveable...but it was crazy too.

We passed through a few small towns here & there, stopping at Vik for some snacks & water, and at another town called Kirkjubæjarklaustur for gas & food. I had to turn around since I passed the town--hey it was small--and nearly ran the car off the road(kindofa long story) and nearly gave Alban a heart attack. The gas station had a little restaurant within it, and it had plenty of rural folk socializing--not far off from what you'd see in rural North Dakota, really. I had a piece of blueberry & something??berry pie. It was some of the best pie I've ever had.

Aside from those stops, we really didn't stop at all on our way towards our two goals: Jökulsárlón and Skaftafell National Park. We knew that it would still be light out past 11pm, so we intended on making wayside sightseeing stops on the way back

We passed Skaftafell and made it to Jökulsárlón around 3pm. Here we are:


I don't think I need to describe how satisfied I was with our trip to this point. It was very bright despite being overcast. I went back into the car and got my sunglasses right after that. We took a tour of this glacial lagoon in a little boat, and left for Skaftafell.

Skaftafell is known for it's great hiking trails and it's multitude of waterfalls. We hiked to an altitude about 600 feet to find Svartifoss, one of Icelands most well known waterfalls.

Here I am enjoying the scenery(photo: Pearl)


Here we are leaving Skaftafell with the view I was enjoying above(photo: Pearl)


We stopped at many waysides along the way, and although the scenery was the same on the way back, it didn't matter a whole lot. It was still overpowering.

We stopped in Vik again to get some food, although I don't think I had anything.

As we neared Reykjavik, we were getting tired after a long day. It was 11:30pm--and we cranked up the Icelandic radiostation, which had mostly talk on earlier in the day. They were now playing a mixture of icelandic & international music.


As midnight struck, they played Pearl Jam's cover of "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away."

When we rolled into the parking lot of the hostel, there was just over 800km on the odometer.

I learned that day about the payoff of calculated risks, and I slept with great contentment.

Confusion

I was just at the grocery store, and the cashier asked me a question.

+And I automatically said "excuse me". In Norwegian.

Shit.

He replied in English.

Björkland

This place is unbelieveable. Yesterday was probably the best full day of my trip.

Iceland

I just got here this afternoon. The views are spectacular.

Tomorrow I´m going on an 8 hour tour into the countryside.