All Hope is in The Islandic Pony!

Moebius is dead! Oh no!! Now who will do all the dreaming for us...!!

 Ah, the least we can do is try. Bye Moebius, see you in your dreams.

For me, on the other hand, things still get mooooving around here. If it´s anything that it does, it is moving! So much happened here lately, and in such amazing intensity, i don´t really know how to tell this all to you without turning it into chaotic nonsense, but -what to do?- i give it a go anyway. You can also just have a look at the pictures.

I cycled around Snæfellsness peninsula with at its furthest point the infamous volcano Snæfellsjökull -you know: Jules Verne, the-entrance-to-a-passage-leading-to-the-center-of-the-earth and all that riddim. I tried to climb it on my birthday and it turned out in a half disaster with me walking in circles somewhere up there in crazy winds on snowfields, so what to do but to go down again and to hell with it. The day after, whole day of cycling in wet snow, which means: it falls on you to just turn into water + significant headwind = coldest day of my life. What more to say: it was total crap. And although weather seems to change here every ten minutes, that day it stayed like that the whole day. But what is one day anyway. And take a look at that pony! The Icelandic pony is the amazing enlightened Buddha come into being. I never saw even one that didn´t have its ears straight up, they are ALWAYS in a good mood, in no matter what conditions. Bow down...for the Icelandic pony.

I hope my Pony
Knows the way back home

But as a matter of fact, i don´t have a pony

So i´ll take the long way home

 So the storms of Iceland. They are totally insane and absurd. Imagine getting into the wrong bar with the wrong attitude, and BLAM-BLAM-BLADABAM! One on your nose, one from the left, one from the right, uppercut, and a kick in your back. Whattaaa...! And you look up, totally surprised, -BLAMM!- and so on. The wind, it´s a well-trained and furious kick boxer and he doesn´t mind beating the shit out of you. Tomasz from Reykjavik, who´s voluntary duty as a Search an Rescuer it is to warn people about the madness they get themselves into, told me about this Brazilian cyclist who got caught by the wind and lifted 20 meters high with a sad ending, and i wearily absorbed that, stacked in the memory in a dusty corner.

But some days ago, it was the only thing i could think of, when cycling at 45 degrees lateral toward the street. Braking like hell, trying all kinds of new "special technique"-cycling positions to keep the bike somewhat rolling on the road, all came down to the same conclusion: a half second of lesser concentration, and i am on the opposite side of the street. One second, and i could kiss the streets goodbye, and instead start kissing the stoney fields. When the street took a 30 degree to the left, though, oh-boy how mad! And the noise! A howling beast! How good! On flat parts i got pushed quickly to 50km/h, and braked when i got there out of fear for those fierce sidekicks. Even uphill, from standing still, i got pushed uphill around 25 km/h, with peak of 29,7 km/h. Without pushing! And whattayaknow, next day is calmish.

Making some tea, always a good idea.

So the magic of Iceland. You can ride 25km/h uphill without pedalling. And "You...can never hold back spring?" Did i see that song pass on facebook lately? "You can be sure, i will never stop believing..." Etc,.. Tralala,... Well, i just stopped believing. You can actually hold back spring without any effort; just like it was never there, just like it will never be there. All possible... here, today, in Iceland!And also, Iceland is the only NATO member which maintains no standing army. How magic, in today´s world.

 

So the pizza of Iceland. This has nothing to do with Iceland, but anyway. There it was. I decided not to take the ferry to the Western Fjords, too much snow it seemed, and instead stayed a day longer in Stykkisholmur.Good decision, and not only (but even more so) for the pizza! Thanks! And the two days after Stykkisholmur were really Days of days.

In Iceland, pizza time means that it is time for pizza.

So the capriciousness of Iceland. I decided to take the gravel road out of Snæfel. IT WAS AMAZING!!! Everything snow. And the sky is open, and now and then only one cloud comes, bringing strong wind and hail, and before you know madness is gone again. And then it snows. All the roads white, landscape white, i even had to push for an hour through too-deep-snow, calculating how long it would take me to the next town,...i got to 36 hours or so. But fortunately it wasn´t always that bad. At times when it was heavily snowing, me dressed like Darth Vader with a yellow fluo jacket so they see him, the interiorising sound of being totally wrapped up in all kinds of windstopper, listening to your own breath, i was like snowboarding in deepsnow, plowing the road out of nothing. No view, just plain white everywhere. Eye saturated of so much white looses ability of depth, so here i am, slipped into another dimension. And those yellow sticks on the side of the road...My ayahuasca vision! If the shaman would have told me " You will float in white infinite with egyptian golden symbols showing you the way", i would have nodded and say, yeah, whatever man. As long as i pay you, right?

So you know: there is a road.

Google can have his street view! I have my own.

If it were coffee brewing up there, it would have been damn good coffee.

So far the bicycle-fotoshoot.

So the hot springs of Iceland. The Rough Guide says (beside their depressing comments about anything there is to see in Iceland): "From the hot spring you can marvel at the 20 km long here and there snowy mountainside of Tindastöll (989m), and on the other side the ocean. A typical icelandic experience." They also have this totally unacceptable habit of copy-pasting (juli-aug) behind everything they write, and they don´t say nor even suggest you should go up the mountain first in order to have that top of the notch icelandic experience. 

A big heart for my big love

Grettir swam from the isle to the shore where the hot spring is, but just before he got in, two girls had a look at his weenie and had a good laugh with it. Therefore, according to the Saga, its name: Grettirslaug.

"Coffee Time" means it is time for coffee.

And only this: in the beginning, i was a bit timid about my purpose. People asking me: "Why", "Winter", etc,... and me always saying, well i have to work in the summer, but what a lie! I mean, i do work in the summer, but that has nothing to do with it! It is just so incredibly fantastic! I love it so much! It is...GREAT! Would i say to people visiting Belgium, don´t drink beer in the winter because it is cold? Of course not! Beer is good, even in the winter. If from today, it would start to rain untill the end of the trip, i would still be happy, because of how it was untill now! So from now on, i will really have to bite my tongue not to scream:

"Why?? What do you mean why!!"