* * Coming home from Iceland

Thirty or so feet in front of where I’m sitting, the pilot of this Icelandic Air Boeing 757 figuratively puts the pedal to the metal, squirts of aerospace kerosene stream into the combustion chambers of the twin Rolls Royce turbojets and great gulps of rarefied sub-arctic air are sucked into the six-foot diameter nostrils. Our aircraft lumbers down the runway at Reykjavik’s Keflavik International Airport, pointed westward, gaining speed. The front of the aircraft angles upwards. The main wheel-sets bottom out. We are airborne, winging within seconds over the North Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve been lucky enough in my life to fly many times, but takeoff still thrills me. The thrust and the feeling of power. The ability to actually be flying. The possibilities for destinations.

In this case, we’re returning home. We’ve spent 16 days circumnavigating the island of Iceland, mostly on its major road, Highway 1, driving clockwise from the southwest corner where Reykjavik, the nation’s capital and largest city is located.

So why Iceland? It’s been on the travel Bucket List for some time. It is astonishingly rural, with only around 320,000 people, over half who live in the Reykjavik area. It is famous for its thermal pools, volcanoes, waterfalls, glaciers, and trolls. And friendly people. And attractive women! It’s one of the world’s most literate places, and over 30% of its citizens have a college degree.

Why travel at all? It’s expensive and it can be troublesome and uncomfortable. The more exotic the location, often the more problematic. Luggage can get lost. Passports and/or money can be stolen. Pitfalls abound.

Iceland is relatively easy to visit. It’s only about a 6-hour flight from Washington, DC, our current destination. The native language is Icelandic, scarcely recognizable to English speakers, but fortunately virtually everybody speaks English as well and don’t seem to mind doing so. It’s an island, so it’s impossible to get too lost. It’s definitely a First World country, so modern conveniences such as charge cards, ATM machines, and clean restaurants are common.

We had a great time, seeing the sights, eating the food, meeting the people. It’s always a bittersweet event, going home. 

Still, though, why travel? I consider myself a travel writer, and my two published books of non-fiction are travelogues. Yet I always struggle to articulate the benefits. Seeing another country and living for awhile in a foreign place exposes the traveler to new ideas, new people, new friendships, and worlds of possibilities. The benefits are necessarily inherent and seem to fall into the category of, “if you need it explained, you won’t get it.” Years ago, Boeing ran an ad in the Seattle Times that was a full two-page spread, showing a photo of nothing but a cloud-filled sky. It said, “Tomorrow you can be anywhere in the world.” Everyday people have travel opportunities that 100 years ago only were afforded to kings and queens. It’s a big world out there and it must be seen.

We fly the great circle route, so our route is more northerly than might appear on a flat map. We fly over Greenland, and I am surprised by what I see from my vantage point at 36,000 feet. Somehow, ignorantly, I always thought of Greenland as more or less monolithically low on the coasts with a huge, glacier-covered plateau on the interior. Our flight over the southern tip reveals a deeply mountainous, extraordinarily cold world, where chunks of ice float in the rivers and snow covers the flatter areas.

Our Iceland trip was splendid, filled with impressive sights of ships and fjords, waterfalls, glaciers, icebergs, and wildlife. We met the locals and visitors from Thailand, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, England, and France. We met a man from Washington State who rowed there, in a ROWBOAT, from Scotland via the Faroe Islands. There’s way too much to tell here, but I detailed my experiences on my blog on my website at www.bikemike.name.

We fly over the Labrador Sea and soon see the landscape of Northeastern Canada. It is peppered with lakes and small mountains. It seems largely uninhabited as well.

Coach class is crowded, and even being small I am cramped and uncomfortable as we cross the US/Canadian border. It always befuddles me that Boeing, with its brilliant engineers, can’t design a seat that stays comfortable for more than a half-hour, much less six.

Tired and hungry, we de-plane at Dulles and begin the drive home at around 9:00 p.m. I’m immediately shocked by 1) how hot and humid it is, 2) how much traffic there is, and 3) that darkness is falling. In 16 days in Iceland, owing to its northern location, and nearing the summer solstice, it was never dark.

Home beacons.