Category Archives: Pals

a boy running around on a pillowy hill of moss under a blue sky with a streak of clouds

Iceland 2024

From mid July to mid August, we went on a long trip to Iceland, London, Bristol, Wales and the Cotswalds. It’s the longest I’ve ever been out of America. I loved it.

We traveled on IcelandAir and did a “Stopover” where you take a long layover and stretch it out over multiple days before going to your final destination. We’d never been to Iceland and it was really exciting for me after reading lots of the mythology and reading Hopeland, which has a sub-plot all about re-foresting Iceland along with lots of Icelandic geography.

Things to know about Iceland:

Iceland is expensive

Everything is surprisingly expensive. You are going to be shocked when you get a coffee and they make you take out a mortgage. Renting a car is expensive. Gas is expensive. Hotels are expensive. Food is expensive. I do not understand how anyone lives there full time. Tourism drives much of the economy, so maybe there’s some sort of locals only deal but I couldn’t see it anywhere. We accidentally bought a 50 euro stuffed sheep. Everywhere wants to sell you wool, sweaters, jackets and ice cream.
At a certain point, you just have to let go and realize it’s gonna be a wallet emptying trip.

You can skip the Perlan Museum

It’s an ok science museum! If you don’t skip Reykjavik, it’s a good thing to do while you are there and has commanding views of the city from the dome.

A selfie taken from the top of the perlan museum with a deep view of the  skyline

There is a cool ice cave experience! But if you’ve ever traveled into or onto an actual glacier it is underwhelming to go hang out inside of an icy freezer. The kids did not get into the spirit of it and mostly just huddled together in a wheelchair they commandeered and that I couldn’t get them out of.

A tiny girl in a hoodie huddled in a wheelchair in an ice cave.

You can spend a lot of time learning about Water Tigers, but we mainly learned we’d like to ride one if it’s huge.

A grinning goblin of a girl astride a huge model of a water tiger bug

One very interesting fact that stuck with me is that early settlers of Iceland harvested 80% of the trees, changing the climate. They are still trying to recover from this, which tied back into what I’d learned from the plot of Hopeland.

In general, we’ve visited tons of science museums and this was one of them. The dome and the ice cave are the most interesting to me. I also noticed a disco ball in the dome, so I’m assuming there are some sort of kick-ass dance parties there, but I didn’t get to go to one.

You can skip Reykjavik

The areas next to the Thingvellir parliament are very nice and include the The Black Cone, Monument to Disobedience, which is a star. Parking is a NIGHTMARE. I did not enjoy having a car or driving there, which must be a complete shock to read. But hey, it’s a very nice little city. It’s very nice and very little and it just didn’t have much that we needed to spend time on. Cities are nice when you can sample the food and shop and drink and try things . However, every single thing in the city is wildly expensive. Yes, I live in NYC and I am telling you I was noticing prices here. If you’ve been to lots of cities you can spend a day here and call it a win. Or just go into the center of Iceland. My original itinerary was going to be 3 days in the city and I’m glad we changed!

They eat horses

As we drove through the beautiful landscape we saw lots of horses. This seemed surprising for such a small land and we thought maybe they were just really cool and loved horses. They do! One of the ways they like horses is that they like to eat them, which we discovered when we stopped for lunch and went to a gas station cafe. It’s right there on the menu.

The food is either great or awful

I am not trying to bag on Iceland too hard. I had a very nice time. But the food was HILARIOUSLY bad at times. Lots of fried stuff, lots of cheap yucky bad for you stuff. The pizza was a standout! As in, we ate pizza that seemed like it had been described to a chef over a phone. Special shout-out to the Langbest near the airport for the least understanding of pizza and a redefinition of a classic chicken salad.

a menu featuring a "classic chicken salad" featuring bbq chicken and doritos.

On the other hand, the lamb soup in general was really good. The cured fish was great! I really liked the fermented shark – it reminded me of a good stinky cheese. The seafood in general was good and I don’t know why so much of what was in restaurants was not the good stuff.

I got to try hardefiske which is dried fish jerky and it was pretty good to gnaw on while I was getting through zoom calls.

The landscape is the star and it is wildly varied

The landscape is wildly varied from bleak moss to moss on very big rocks and cliffs to geysirs to one small pretty nice city to rocks that support some sheep and/or horses. (I did not make it to cool glaciers or puffin beaches.

A bleak view of the keflavik landscape from a hotel window.
Near the airport it is really flat and just like this. Everywhere.

Landing in Keflavik (where NYC flights land) is incredibly underwhelming. We stayed in an airport hotel that was sad and small and charged us for 2 rooms when we could easily fit in 1. The Konvin hotel is not good.The landscape was one of the bleakest things I’ve ever seen. In general the architecture was concrete. Everywhere looked like a good place to be murdered and that might be the most exciting thing to happen. I immediately thought I’d really screwed up by booking so much time in Iceland and that this was going to be a really hard week.

Driving from Keflavik to Reykjavik was transformative. The sun came out, the clouds cleared up and we drove into a beautiful little city of flowers by a sparkling sea. We spent a beautiful day in Reykjavik (which you can skip) and spent time at the Perlan Museum (you can skip it) and the family went to the Penis Museum while I took a work call (I will always regret this).

The deeper in the better

We drove further into the middle of the country and stayed at a very fancy hotel in the middle of nowhere. It is entirely geothermal powered and heated. We climbed up into the hills and had a fantastic time exploring. I tried to climb some volcanic rock with Max but it broke off and cut up my hands so I couldn’t go up high with him. Instead we clambered around and down through giant pillows of moss. It was like walking on the moon! You could see the geothermal plant, which they do not include in the promotional photos. It’s over there.

Max perched atop a prominence
matt doing a selfie pointing at the geothermal plant
It’s very close and it smells like eggs

It was very luxurious. I loved the food, the hot tub outside, and the deep view from the hot tub outside. I stayed up late because why not and had a beverage in the northern lights viewing lounge. Mainly I viewed the lack of night time until I was too tired and went to bed. This photo is from a little after midnight.

a gorgeous sunset through huge windows with a icelandic rocky landscape.

To get there we drove through stunning ridges and wild mountain ranges. I have no pictures because my family slept through all of it as I exclaimed “Oh wow this is amazing wake up please take a picture”.

You are not supposed to touch Iceland

We did not realize this originally. We thought it was a landscape to get into and climb and explore. However, you are not supposed to touch it. Those photos earlier where we are joyously playing around in the landscape, climbing around and laughing?

Those were a very bad thing we did that we did not realize would be a problem. Here is a ridiculously cute video from the Icelandic government on the subject.

So many places you visit in the Golden Circle are behind ropes. They look amazing, but there are signs all over saying “do not walk here”. I don’t understand why the sheep and the horses don’t cause an issue but I do. Still – if I’m in your house I’m going to do my best to honor your rules, so we didn’t enjoy any more moss walks.

Thingvellir is gorgeous

This is the site of the first parliament. It’s where you can see the landscape splitting apart from the stress of the plates. There are waterfalls galore. Most of it is roped off and there are special paths, but there are some spots that are rocks you are allowed to play on. Max was really disappointed that you aren’t allowed to touch most of it, but we talked about how this is a site that gets SO many people that it would fail under the traffic. They’ve also nicely incorporated a lot of plaques that show what happened where – legislating and murdering.

Geysirs, Craters and Waterfalls

Grinning Z giving 2 thumbs up in a yellow rainjacket in front of a giant volcano crater

The blast craters are pretty sweet. For this one, we hiked it and played with the rocks and walked around it.

The Geysir is really impressive, but we didn’t get a picture of it erupting. This is what it looks like until it goes foom. All around, hot water is bubbling out of the earth and you are behind ropes with many other tourists cooking together in the smell of old eggs. Still, it feels magical when the eruption happens. Imagine being the first person to walk into this landscape, following a stream and finding a fountain! That right there, that’s the origin of the term geyser.

The original geysir, right before the pool of water becomes very exciting briefly.

There are lots of waterfalls in Iceland – I think the Gullfoss is well worth the visit. I love being near that much raw kinetic energy in action.

The fauna are not playing around with you

The sheep and horses mostly just roam wild and are fine. However, I need to make two shoutouts to the bugs and the birds.

The bugs are not playing around with you

We went when it was very nice out in Iceland. It’s gorgeous weather. This is also apparently prime living and mating time for their bug population. The biting flies were so numerous it was just silly. I took a picture of our license plate.

a license plate just peppered with dead bugs

We saw people walking around with nets on their faces. Once we cooked some food at home and we opened a window when the smoke alarm went off. This was a tragic mistake as all of the flies then ate us. We are no longer alive, we are mostly in the bellies of now dead flies, presumably on some license plate.

The birds are not playing around with you

As I returned our car, I walked by some bleak landscape that was incredibly important to local birds and they were super angry with me. They shouted at me and dive bombed me but never actually hit me.

This video is a minute long, but I only started filming after I finally noticed I was being attacked, that the birds were specifically ticked off at ME.

I do not speak Icelandic bird and I was unable to communicate that I didn’t want their eggs so I just kept pushing on until they were satisfied they had defeated me.

They probably still squawk about their triumph.

Iceland knows how to soak

The highlights of our trip were either hiking in a crazy environment or sitting in warm water. All over, there are hot tubs and public baths. Like Japan’s Onsens, the Icelandic hot baths are great. We went to a few and my favorites were the Secret Lagoon and the Blue Lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon is very good

The Blue Lagoon is super famous and very expensive, but it lives up to the reputation. It’s probably the best use of a waste product in existence! The whole lagoon is the output of a nearby Geothermal power plant. The water can’t be recycled through the power plant due to the extremely high silica content so they turned into this idyllic spa in the middle of volcanic rubble.

Z and Sam in the blue lagoon

The high silica content of the water causes the beautiful white and blue colors. They encourage you to smear it on your face as a mask!

Sam, Matt and Z selfie in the blue lagoon with silica masks

When we drove up, the road takes you close to the town of Grindavik, which is evacuated due to… Volcano going boom. And the road has, I kid you not, steaming lava nearby. It doesn’t seem like it can be true, but we saw the road just going through it. It cracked me up to drive to a spa through a literal hellscape. Imagine this, but a road. And more smoking.

Closing thoughts

This is clearly more post than I should have written, but it was a real adventure and I know I’ll forget the stories if I don’t write. They’ll all leak out of my ears and I’ll be surprised when someone asks me what Iceland was like! It seems like we could go back in 4 or so years when the kids can handle bigger hikes and we could get some time to enjoy the nightlife. All in all I’m glad we went, but if we return we will go farther in and head out from the city faster.
The landscape is the real show in Iceland, so it’s better to get out as far as you can to go see it.

Matt grinning with a rainbow coming out of his head.

The absolute helplessness of Tier 1 support

I just got a new phone. I held off as long as possible because it just seemed wasteful when the old phone worked fine. It seems like the network support for sub-5G phones is decreasing though – and that impacts my experience.

My old phone was old enough that it didn’t support eSIM, which I discovered was a problem when I was in London buying a short term plan.

So when I got an error while trying to activate newPhone, I had an inkling this was probably the issue.

I opened a support chat with this info “I have oldPhone, which doesn’t support eSIM, and I suspect that’s preventing activation of newPhone” – but with more details.

Friends, it took 40 minutes of troubleshooting to come to a conclusion, and yes, that was it.

I was frustrated. My experience has been that trying to steer just slows down the process through the support tree. And so it feels helpless. I can’t get them to do the thing faster and so I have to sit.

I am empathetic though – following the support tree is required for the job, and they won’t get fired for following it. I sense that they, too, feel helpless- they cannot take a short cut.

Of course this lends itself to being a position that is automated away, since there is little benefit to having a human typing the words they don’t come up with.

And at the end of the, of course, they tried to sell me insurance.

Everything’s a trade-off

My hands, damaged from pull-up and hanging practice with callouses I have to file down or risk tearing off.

My fitness goal for 2024 is to be able to do a single one armed pull-up on each arm. I still want to maintain my previous progress of being able to do a pistol squat (and improve it to be less ugly).

This means I now have to do hand maintenance, which is new to me. I have to take a FILE to my hand to sand down callouses or they build up and TEAR OFF.

Jan 2024 Media Diet

Books

I started a couple of good ones as well. I track all that over on bookwyrm.

TV

The Brothers Sun – This was really good. Fun, violent, funny. Real challenges and character arcs and good twists. The fight scene at the driving range was incredible. A deftly shot, well choreographed smash. Loved it. Michelle Yeoh is getting what she deserves. Justin Chien is great.

BLUE EYE SAMURAI – Stunningly smart. The twists are vicious. Gorgeous as well. Gets dark.

Over the Garden Wall – a really off-kilter cartoon from one of the creators of Adventure Time. Kids and I liked it a lot. They said it seemed like Centaurworld, which was also very yum.

I rewatched Shoresy because it really helps me SET THE TONE.

And I’ve been slowly working my way through Moonlighting, which is such a treasure from my childhood. Jason Lefkowitz turned me onto this – I love the casual 4th wall breaking, the bits they throw in to fill time, the Christmas episode that pulls back to reveal the whole production company singing. And the actual episodes are also good!

Krapopolis – I love everyone in this and cannot bother myself to watch another episode unless I want to fall asleep.

Chad and JT Go Deep – a heartwarming dumb silly journey. Half dramedy, half hidden camera prank show, funny. A Tim and Eric flavor sprinkled over it all.

Movies

Maggie Moore is a very light dark comedy. Really enjoyed this – Tina Fey is good at being not just Liz Lemon. Jon Hamm is good at being not just Don Draper. Micah Stock steals the show as a very pathetic villain.

Dredd – I was stuck in bed with a bad back and thought I’d check it out. It’s horrible. It’s one of those movies that takes the fascist joke seriously and makes it unfunny. Very violent and gross and well shot.

The Imitation Game – brilliant. Deserves all the praise it got.

Counting to 90

I’ve been doing stretches in the morning.

This post is about that and a new meditative technique. It’s uh, the title.

My trainer, the incredible Christina, saw there were some exercises where I was limited by mobility, not strength. For a pistol squat, at a certain point I couldn’t go lower without tumbling over.

So, at the end of October she challenged me to do a set of stretches every morning for 30 days. It’s based on these from the Strength Side guys.

  • 1:30 Seiza
  • 1:30 Squat
  • 1:00 Downward Dog
  • 1:00 Crab
  • :45/side Long Lunge
  • :45 Horse Stance

Not too much! Too much doesn’t get done.

I’ve been using this on most mornings as a way to be silent, mindful, meditative and fully inhabit my body instead of jumping into a million thoughts and todos.

After I get the coffee brewing, I do these stretches before cooking breakfast. I’m doing it this way to take advantage of something I learned from my book club inspired reading of Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am setting up a chain where the obvious thing to do while the coffee brews is to do these stretches. Not look at all the slack messages from India that have piled up in the night. Not check my calendar. Not check the news. Just do my stretches while the coffee brews. This is actually working for me as a way to create a good habit. It feels great.

Just one thing is irritating though.

My timer going off on my phone after 1:30 is jarring. Setting the timer again is disruptive and lets me look at notifications. Midway through a stretch I find myself tapping the phone to see how much time is left (as if it matters!).

So I switched to just counting and it’s going great. One one-thousand, two one thousand…

Turns out if you just count and concentrate on the counting, you can get all the way up to 90 just fine. Turns out that counting helps me focus and be single-minded – it’s a meditation technique.

When I’ve finished counting and stretching, I find myself loose and ready and centered. I can eat, clean and get kids ready easily. I can thumb through notifications and Slack messages and make sure I’m ready for the agenda for the day. But I’m doing it because I’m done with what I wanted to do first in the morning.

Managing health overwhelm

Just finished this great episode from my favorite health nerds at Wild Health.

It’s a short, very accessible episode focused on how to do “not too much” health. It’s especially good because these are really data intensive folks that go deep on lots of different tailored practices. Here they talk about not doing all the trends, focusing on what actually helps you embody what you value in your life.

Elisapie – Taimangalimaaq

Found via Said the Gramophone’s Best songs of 2023. I don’t know what to do with the earnestness of this. The song is beautiful all by itself, but with the video it becomes a whole ‘nother celebration.

She’s got a ton of other transformative covers, and I’m listening to some more of those.

This stuck out for me as being like a sad-sweet-Sufjan-Stevens take.

Take a moment if you can for this original – as growly and dangerous as early PJ Harvey.