After having roused myself from a restless sleep at 4am to leave for the airport at 5 am, I had no delusions about what today’s travel would be like: long. And adding to its length would be its difficulty. 6 men, traveling from 5 different locations around the US, converging on one remote town that would be their launching point into the back country.

Hailing from Seattle, Manchester, Dallas, Boston, and Austin, we had anticipated a landing of the first two in Duluth at 2pm, then the rest at 8. So far, little has gone to plan.

Jason, coming from Boston, was delayed first. 2 hours. Since he was to get the rental car in minneapolis and drive it to Duluth, this stranded me at the Duluth airport for 3 hours or so until he got there at 5. This precipitated my allowing myself to be bumped from my flight in exchange for a $400 voucher (yes, I’m that easily bought)- the next flight would get me into Duluth @5. Sounds like a deal to me. Bested, perhaps, only by the next question: “do you mind an exit row seat?”‘ somehow, I forced myself to deal with this circumstance, even after learning that I had been upgraded to “sky priority”.

The others, at this point suffer a fate worse than death. They are stuck in Detroit. Worse, given that Duluth doesn’t get a ton of air traffic (surprise!), they’re on the same flight that now gets in a 10:30pm.

The fun really gets started then, because after shopping and picking them up at the airport, we begin the 3-4 hour drive to Grand Marais. So going from a small remote town to an even smaller, remoter town without much cell service, directions, or camping reservation (arriving at 2am or so, assuming good time) just smacks of the banjo-twanging disaster that we all feared this would become. I know this isn’t banjo country, but I’ve been up since four. Let me have this.

But honestly, this is quite fun. Texting from around the country like refugees, plans constantly in flux…this is the stuff adventures are made of.

Who ever thought “texting” and “adventure” would fit in the same sentence?

Time to board! Time to trader Discover
magazine and crappy iPhone WordPress app for a fishing pole and
Unnecessarily large hunting knife.

My grandfather passed away on December 23, 1991 when I was 9.  He’d been battling Parkinsons for several years, and while I am extremely thankful for the time I was able to spend with him, I sometimes wonder about what my young adult life would have been like with him still around.  Would I have picked up fishing sooner?  Would he have taught me how to grow better tomatoes?  Would I finally have nailed that apple soup recipe?

While there is no sense in dwelling on the past, there is hope in looking to the future—a future with a cure. Along with the rest of Team Parkinsons, I will be participating in the annual Seattle to Portland Ride (200mi) with an estimate 10,000 other cyclists.  We will be riding to raise money for a cure for Parkinsons, and I will be riding in memory of John Krawchuk. Every dollar we raise is another dollar toward a cure and a step toward a future without this disease. Please consider donating; even the gift of $1 would be greatly appreciated.

*If I reach my goal of $500, Team Parkinsons will refund my registration fee of $100, which I will be donating directly back to research.

I’m not in the correct lane, and didn’t anticipate the quick stop—now I’m a little off balance.  I look up the road and see no cars ahead in the centermost right turn lane and hug her left side and ride the white dotted line between lanes.  This is a mistake.  When a cyclist is approaching stopped cars from behind,  he or she can get away with this.  But from an approaching car, this looks like you’ve taken the lane, which is what it looked like to the Escalade that blared its horn from behind.

In my defense, it was very light colored—the color of the tan concrete backdrop of the surrounding buildings—which is why I don’t think I saw it.  But that’s just a justification; it’s my job and responsibility to see it, and I didn’t.  But the horn, loud and jarring, scared the crap out of me and I let fly with a terrible habit— the middle finger.   This was also a mistake.

“Stay in your lane and that won’t happen!”  yelled someone from the sidewalk.  “Fuuuuuck you” I said back, making my turn.  “Back at you,” came the quick reply that both impressed and annoyed me.   I signaled left, made my way over to the far lane and stopped at a red light, shaken and aggravated with myself.  Stupid.

The light changed and I pedaled forward, and that’s when, from behind, I heard the roar of a large engine, coming up.  Fast.  When it sounded like it was on my back wheel, the sound moved right and roared up alongside me, deliberately crowding my lane.  “HEY!” screamed the driver, a spray-tanned, overly-gelled, ring-wearing , 40-something fratboy “You’re lucky I don’t drag you off that thing and beat your fuckin’ ass!”

Never underestimate the power of a 3-ton piece of metal to intimidate.  Grandma could be driving with a plate full of cookies for you and you’ll still keep a wary eye on her.  This guy was not Grandma—nor did he have cookies—and was furious.  And he was using his huge car to scare the shit of me, which worked.  Really well.  And then he chose to threaten me.  I legitimately thought he was going to swerve to run me into the sidewalk.  And I completely snapped.

“YEAH?!?” I screamed back “you a fuckin’ tough guy?  SHOW me, you big FUCKING TOUGH GUY!”

We are now riding down 4^th avenue screaming at and over each other.  Not yelling in each other’s direction—we are eye to eye screaming, spit flying, and I’m readying myself for when he pulls across my lane—can I unclip fast enough to be ready for when this comes to blows?  Can I even expect to defend myself in bike clips on asphalt?  And more importantly, is the car giving him that height or is he seriously that big?  Mistake number three could be a big one.  We ride the rest of the block.

“…I’ll fuckin’ beat your ass!”  He screams back at me as we continue to yell over each other.

“…fucking show me!” I yell in his face “come SHOW me what a big FUCKING tough guy you are!  FUCKING SHOW ME!”

“…you’re just a fucking punk!  That’s what you are—a fucking punk!”

“…fuck you, tough guy—go drive your fuckin’ Escalade!”

He begins to drop back and I snarl into his faux-mirror sunglasses.  Maybe the Escalade comment confused him.  For clarification, that’s an insult; there are two kinds of people who drive Escalades—rappers and douchebags, and the absence of a grill suggested I was dealing with the latter.  As I look forward again a small white car cuts me off, brakes, and throws on its signal.  Worried that the guy has dropped behind me and might actually hit me if I brake hard, I pass the car on the right hand side of the lane.  The Escalade doesn’t follow and heads back to the Jersey Shore.

The more I think about this the more it bothers me.  Not because I was threatened, and not because of the disproportionate power of Escalade vs. Trek Portland, but because of one simple fact: I was the asshole biker.  I made a careless move.  I made a mistake.  And when I did so, I escalated the situation by mouthing off.

As anyone who knows me would say, mouthing off and getting myself into trouble is nothing new—but completely losing my temper and becoming one half of a rolling grown-men-acting-like-adolescents show on 4^th Avenue is.  And that made me think about my cycling.

I’ve been bike commuting for about 3 years now, and I think of myself as an ambassador.  I stop at lights, I do my best to be forgiving with cars and drivers, and I signal before I do anything.  I despise cyclists who run red lights more than cars do.  But regardless of my efforts, I always get into tiffs with drivers, whether it be me taking a legal left hand turn, or me legally taking the lane I’m entitled to, I am always aware of the number of drivers who view my kind as a nuisance and an inconvenience rather than the tax-paying part owner of the road we’re both using.  And after you deal with that for a while, you get defensive—because you’re legally right—and you start making bad choices.  Like adopting the middle finger as a knee-jerk reaction.

I realized after much contemplation that in the back of my mind I was thinking about my riding conduct as a karmic debit system—in the game of me vs. cars I had obeyed far more rules and had been more forgiving of cars than they had of me—so I felt like I had a little extra leeway—like they owed me.  But there is danger in this kind of thinking—because just as every cyclist gets lumped in with the no-safety-gear-wearing-law-defying hipster on a fixie, I was lumping cars into a collective of latte-swilling, text-occupied, hunks of metal death that were always in the wrong.  The one car I mix it up with has no memory of all the “I’m sorry I didn’t see you” waves I’ve calmly collected from its brethren.  Reality is very different—there is only one chance to make a first impression, and though we as cyclists are already starting a mile back in the marathon with so few designated bike lanes, a city that largely views us as a menace, and a 2-ton weight disadvantage, we have to remember that we are locked in a struggle of inches.  Ever car is a person with an opinion.  That wasn’t a Windstar that you waved through at that four-way—that was Maggie, mother of two, and a voter who now might think more positively of cyclists the next time McGinn proposes more bike lanes.  Public opinion matters, and every time we have a good interaction with a driver, that takes apart the stereotype that we’re law-defying packs of cycling hooligans.  Conversely, every time we have a bad one, we solidify the stereotype.

Hence my overwhelming sense of shame.  I can hardly think of a worse way to have conducted myself.  For three years I have taken pride in being a courteous rider and winning over pedestrians and drivers one at a time, and through my defensiveness and immaturity undid not only my hard work, but so much work done by the rest of the cycling community.  I was in the wrong.  I made a bad call and was then vulgar in front of a large audience, probably with children in it.  How will they view cyclists now?  I traveled down 4^th avenue in a shouting match exemplifying the very image we are trying to eradicate.  In our slow inching toward more rights and resources, I set us back a foot, and for that, Seattle Biking Community, I whole-heartedly apologize.

Joking aside, the place does exist, and I know that because I am currently sitting in a sleeping room, patiently awaiting my tech–Jeremy–to affix me with wires and suction cups before my 11pm bed time.  Already the place has a surreal feel to it.  Walking through a parking garage with your own pillow (recommended for the study) feels a bit like trying your boxers in your high school classroom; it’s not indecent, but its far more intimate a detail than you care to share with strangers.  Upon entering the building, however, things felt even weirder.  The hospital was largely abandoned, with lights dimmed or off, and as I walked the corridors looking for 320, I wouldn’t help but think of every sleepless little boy in every children’s book my mother had ever read to me–wandering the dark halls, pillow in tow, looking for the light to show him where he was supposed to be.

I found where I was supposed to be–in the waiting room with two other people–both holding pillows, thank you–with very puffy and bloodshot eyes.  “This where the slumber party is?”  I asked, staring at the guy.  “Yeah,” he responds with a smirk.  I sit down.

Soon Jeremy takes me weight, blood pressure, and heart rate and whips me off to my room.  I sit and stare out the window for a while.  The room itself is actually quite nice–there’s a large adjustable bed, a desk with a computer, a private bathroom, shower, a few lamps, a standing closet, and a huge picture window with thick black plastic drapes.  The tones in the room are relaxing–tans and avocado walls and birch colored wood.  The window looks out over a cemetery, whose peaceful sloping greens and flowering trees compound the relaxation of the place.  I may not make it until 11.  It’s hard to believe that Home Depot is on the other side of this block.

I’m here, as are the other patrons, because I am not sleeping.  Well, I’m not sleeping (allegedly) correctly.  I’ve always snored, but recently it’s gotten far worse, and in addition to snoring, I’ve stopped breathing for extended periods–a condition known as sleep apnea.  Sleep apnea is a condition in which a sleeping individual either stops breathing or has an obstruction (throat structures, etc) block the airway until a panic reaction causes the body to jerk and struggle until it can breathe again.  This can happen–literally–hundreds of times a night, and because it induces a panic reaction, the sleeper is never able to get his or her brainwaves down into the deeper, more beneficial, sleep patterns.

Our task today is to determine if I have obstructive apnea via a sleep study.  Over the next 8 hours or so I will sleep, hooked up to wires and sensors (and video camera), and Jeremy will keep tabs on me as I send my sleep data to the machines for the doctor to look over later.

It’s 8:42 PM  It’s really quiet, and I’m starting to get bored.

*                                                                                                      *                                                                                                             *

10:45PM

I’m wired up like a high quality stereo system.  Jeremy came in and pasted innumerable wired and receptors to me while we discussed some of his past careers.  While his answer to why he was working as a sleep tech was only slightly more encouraging than “because they were hiring”, he shows a real desire to help people, and actually has some really cool stories once he warms up to you.

His favorite story is about the sleep-eater (I know, I didn’t believe they existed either), who would consume 5,000 calories a night.  While asleep.  And that’s not the interesting part.  The interesting part was the destruction this man caused once people started attempting to restrain him.  At first they secured his legs, but he broke the straps; then the tied him to the bed, and again he broke free.  Finally, they strapped him completely to the bed–arms, legs, stomach, chest, shoulders–the whole bit.  That held him in place.

Just kidding.

Turns out he ended up tearing the entire bed apart to get free, and again, this is all while they guy’s sleeping.  When the doctors would talk to him after he would say that all he could think about when he was asleep was how hungry he was.  Thank god he wasn’t an anger sleeper.

Jeremy tells me about his time in the Coast Guard as he glues receptors to my head, and then tells me all about his time as a commercial diver as he wires hoses around my face.  He’s an interesting character.  But then again, in the land f wired brain activity and insomnia I’m entering, most people are pretty interesting.

His arm jabbed the air viciously to river right, and as water smashed over the bow and the crew paddled ahead.   I had decided, apparently, to make an example of myself by doing everything in this instant wrong.  In the panic I did not realize that I was actually pulling in the opposite direction that I wanted to go; I’d moved from my post to the back of the raft up the side and tried–as panicked guides do–to muscle the 1400lb boat myself, and finally,  as the raft began to spin wildly our of control, I froze, unable to decide what to do.  Which is why we went over the rapid backward.

“What are you doing?”  Asked Kenny once we were in the slackwater, starting at me from behind his black transition lenses.  I considered this for a moment before answering.  “I got confused.”

“Well you’re better off going down a rapid backwards than sideways,” He added.   This wasn’t meant to comfort, or to pretend I’d done something right.  This was a simple fact.  Now we move on; Kenny turned around to sit facing forward in the raft; he’s been sitting backward so he could stare at me as I guided.

*                                                                                                   *                                                                                             *

The explanation went something like this; a guidestick is like a wrench in the way it pivots the raft–which is like a nut.  That’s how you turn the boat.  Try it in the shallows a few times.  Got it?  Excellent.  Let’s go.

It was with this level of ceremony that we started out on our first day on the water as guide trainees.  The previous day we’d spent learning knots, rigging, raft breakdown, how to throw bags, and what each piece of equipment was.  We’d finished the day early, had headed to a local bar with the townies, and rather than drive all the way back to Seattle, I accepted the invitation of one of the other guide trainees–Tucker–to stay at his friend’s cabin, and experience which, in itself, necessitates explanation.

Detour!

*                                                                                                   *                                                                                              *

We’d turned around three times on the same road before we decided that this pitch-black, heavily-wooded road with thick moss overhangs was the right way to get to the cabin.  Tucker had gone off ahead in his car to make sure (again)–Mike and Erin had gone a few miles up the road to find a place to turn around the van and trailer assembly, and I stayed marked in the blackness, periodically switching off my light to test the creeepiness of the place before switching them on again quickly so as not to allow the ambushing mental-hospital escapees too much time to approach my driver’s-side window and ruin the sport of the whole thing.

Soon both vehicles returned and we continued up the road, past a gate, and around a mind-numbing number of curves to a bathroom where we brushed our teeth since the cabin had no running water.  We left Erin and Mike there and continued on our way to the cabin.  A few miles later we pulled over to a dark hillside.  I grabbed my bag and my skull-smasher Maglite because I couldn’t find my headlamp and trudged up the incline behind Tucker.  Slowly, a cabin came into view.

Making our way in through the back door, several things became abundantly clear.  The first, and most noticeable, was the smell of being inside a bag of moldy bread.  Tucker had mentioned the place smelled like mold, but after 5 minutes in there, I felt like I should brush my teeth again.  The second, and perhaps more lingering thing to notice, was the universal fact that adorable vintage child decor–while cheery and kitcshy in the daytime–becomes completely horrifying to look at at night, particularly by the light of a Maglite.  I’m not sure, but this may be the point at which the zombie apocalypse jokes started.

There is something decidedly unnerving about walking around a silent, abandoned house with a flashlight, particularly one festooned with little cowboys and pictures of 1950s-era kids staring from picture frames, so we set about brightening the place up.  Tucker was tasked with lighting the white-gas lanterns, while I took on the project of building a fire.  After refilling the lanterns and pressurizing them, Tucker succeeded only in lighting one lantern, and by “lighting”, I mean it pulsed dramatically.  Dim BRIGHT dim BRIGHT dim BRIGHT, repeating the cadence about every three seconds.  As far as the fire goes, I assumed the flue was open given the inches of wet ash I’d removed from the log cage, and started a meager fire.  After splitting some wood with an ax we deputized as a tool rather than a decoration, I built it up large enough to look around for a bit without fear of the fire going out.

I was given the upper bedrooms, which were largely clear, with the exception of a pile of clutter across the small hallway.  Tucker took the downstairs bedroom with the big mattress, which looked quite comfortable.  So it should have been of no surprise to us when we turned over the mattress to find a healthy sprinkling of rat droppings everywhere.

“Hey Tucker,”  I said smirking, “what’s that terrible virus from rat shit?”

“Hantavirus.  Shut up.”

Walking back into the living room it became apparent that rain getting in does not necessarily indicate an open flue, as smoke filled the air and transformed my flashlight beam into a solid blue streak, not unlike every 80′s horror movie I’d ever seen, a similarity I decided to purge from my mind.

Exchanging a mutual look of “aw, fuck it”, we closed the glass in front of the fireplace and went to bed.  My pillow did not contain any treats from mammalian house squatters.

*                                                                                                                      *                                                                                         *

After our day of learning how the raft was to be set up and broken down, and our brief briefing in the shallows, guide paddles were thrust into hands and we were told “go”.  The basic layout in my boat was Kenny sitting in middle, the rest of us paddling on the sides, and one person on the guide stick in the back of the boat trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

The trick to guiding it to stay close to the laminar flow but not in it, be aware of the helical flow coming off the banks and obstructions, aim for the inside corner, and always cross opposite the current.  Make sense?  No?  Try assessing all that while looking a quarter-mile downstream while Kenny grills you on every decision and everything that you don’t see.

“There’s an island up ahead.  Which side are you going to go on?  Right.  You’re going to want to go to the left.  See how there’s more water moving left?  Even if you didn’t you see how the water is higher on the right?  That means the water is blocked up–maybe a gravel bar or something.  You gotta look.  Tell me what you see.  Where”s the helical flow?  Why are you aiming on the outside of the corner?”

The island we’re talking about is at least 500m upstream, and after staring at it for a good three minutes, I think I can kind-of maybe see that the water on the right is higher; but this is never something I would have noticed or even assumed would happen.  Helical flow, laminar flow, the current–somehow Kenny is looking at the river and seeing this, and all I’m seeing are waves and chaos, and when he gives me the guide stick after lunch, there’s little I can do but point to the inside of the corners and hope like hell.

“There’s a class 3 coming up.  Can you handle it, or do you want me to take it?”

Of course I can’t handle that.  “Yep,” I say, “got it.”

“If you screw this up you’re going to dump the boat.  Don’t screw this up.”

I am going to kill everyone in this boat.  Holy god.  But this is a test, right?  It’s got to be a test.  “I’m on it,” I say.

“Don’t screw this up,” Kenny says in his chilling monotone.  “Don’t you screw this up.  You know what?  I’m gonna watch you. “  And with that he turns around and sits on the thwart right in front of me, staring.

“You’re eyes are everywhere!  You’re not focusing on one spot!  You’re constantly scanning!” he barks.  I’m scanning for all I’m worth.  The whitewater is coming up fast, and it’s big.  Class 3s had been a joke to me when I was rafting; they are much, much bigger when you’re guiding. “Look more!  Look at the whole river!  Everything!”  I’m making myself dizzy; I’m less scanning and more inducing a seizure.

“Look!” Kenny barks again “what are you seeing?  See the helical flow?”

“Yep.”  Nope.

“Ok, here we go!”

We crash into the whitewater and I feel it rip along the bottom of the boat with a dull roar.  It jerks the raft back and forth.  I point to the inside of the corner.

“Good!”  Kenny says.  Excellent.  I have done something right.  First set of rapids completed.  Here come the second, and here’s where it all goes to shit.

I aim to the inside of the curve and brace myself.  Wrong.  Kenny points to river right.  I turn.  Kenny points harder.  I turn.  Point.  Turn.  Point.  Turn.  Now he turns around “what the heck are you doing, TURN!”

And the rest is history.  What was I doing?  Getting stressed and pulling the wrong way.  Then when the yelling started I crept up the side and tried to power the boat myself instead of using the crew.  Pointless.  Now the rapids take the boat, flip it around, and with not leverage from the side, I can do nothing.  We do down backward.

Once we are through Kenny’s yelling stops, he lectures for a bit, and I am sure–SURE–that I am done for.  No one could have possibly screwed up so bad as to shoot a rapid backwards, and that’s when Kenny turns around again and holds up his fist.

“First class three rapid?”  he asks.

“Yeah,” I breath.

“You survived it,” he says, bumping my fist with his.  “Need a bit more practice.”

As I sit here eating coffee yogurt and writing before we leave for my dive today he teases Stephen about sleeping too much.  At the same time, the wind outside screams across the plain with a force that causes the whole house to creak—and this is what I worry about.  Is it unseasonably cold?  No.  Is it periodically raining?  Yes.  Is it unseasonably windy?  Why, yes, yes it is.  And that’s a perfect combination to get you in trouble with exposure. Were it freezing and blowing a snowstorm, that’d be one thing—but when it’s relatively light and clear, you don’t think about the fact that if you get wet and then wind picks up, you’re not going to have a lot of time before you start getting cold.  And as we’ve come to appreciate, this place does not have a lot of cover to hide from the wind.  There are a few rocks to hind behind; that’s about it.

So the one thing I can hope for at this point is that his stupid plan falls apart and when he tells the guides his plans and asks for a ride into Rekjiavik, they’ll tell him what a bad idea it is and he’ll scrap it.  Unlikely to happen, but it’s the best I can hope for at this point.

I didn’t sleep much last night either.  I’m plagued by thoughts of him getting himself into trouble, about having to tell my parents that my little brother has been lost on a mountain, about losing someone who’s been such an integral part of my life for so long.  The thoughts fly faster than the winds that threatened to tear off shingles last night, which ultimately they didn’t, but they did take several pieces of porch banister with them.  At 2 in the morning I’d considered going out into the fray for a moment, just to see what it felt like to stand in winds that roared loud enough to scare me awake, but was worried that something might hit me in the darkness, and that I’d get locked out.  But honestly, it was the sound that scared me—I’d never really heard wind that loud and I was scared of it.  The night was plagued with a whole roster of things to fear.

*                                                                        *                                                                        *

Today we dive Silfur, which is in Pingvellir National Park, the location of the rift between the two divergent tectonic plates and the spot where we will be taking our snorkel/dive tour.  Given that the location is only about an hour away, we shouldn’t be surprised that the wind is just a vicious and blows the car back an forth along the road as we drive around the park looking for the meeting spot.  Coming off the lake, the wind is even colder, and as it picks up and freezes water droplets from the whitecaps blowing across the water, it takes on a sadistic, stinging quality.

Our guide, Louis, had said the ‘camping sign’ was the meeting point, but there are many of those.  What he should have said, however, was the welcome center.  True, it did have a camping sign, but one would think that the proximity to the large, heated building serving hot beverages would have been the distinguishing characteristic of the parking lot.

I am the only diver today, so it will be me and the guide, while Dush will be diving with Emma, who is one of the coolest people I’ve met in my travels.  More on her incredible kickass nature later.

The orientation is as one would expect—the divers will lead and the snorkelers will follow on the surface.  Wind chill is something to consider, and being that Silfur is a glacial lake, the water is at a healthy 2°C.  An unexpected surprise for me though, is that I’ll actually be doing two dives—one with the snorkelers, and one alone while they stay in the van and warm up.

We don undergarments in the car and Louis becomes very happy when he realizes that yes, I am an experienced coldwater diver, and yes, I have dove drysuits before.  And then he makes me happy when he takes them out—with the exception of the neoprene neck seal, this is my exact suit.  This is going to be cake.

After a quick pee, which takes a 90-degree turn and shines golden in the sunlight, contorting for about 50 feet downwind, I gear up in record time.  It feels good to know something this well, and I know diving.  I then set about helping Dush and Emma, and here’s where I should mention a few things about Emma.

Emma has to be in her mid-70s at least.  She’s a small, gray-haired woman form Dover, England with a friendly demeanor and the personality of a feisty grandmother who would make you cookies and then ask if you wanted to go mountain biking.  Another aspect of Emma is that, due to an auto accident several years back, she now walks with two canes, and moves somewhat slowly.  But if she didn’t have my age tripled, I am positive that she’d be helping me get my gear on.

With Dusch suited up I help Louis with Emma, which takes a while, but is a testament to her commitment—putting on a drysuit for the first time is a pain in the ass regardless.  We grab our fins and walk Emma up the path to the metal staircase that leads to the water, and after a bit of finagling, we’re all in.

From the surface Silfur looks like a lake in any glacial area—the water has a dull gray look, the rock is brown, and the rift itself varies from widths of about 3-20 feet.  Underwater, however, is a world of astounding beauty.  The brown rocks explode into a rust-red color, mostly from he dying algae, but also from the ambient light reflected through the water column.  The water is the clearest I have ever dove; it is easily 150’ of crystal visibility, and if the exposed part of my face didn’t burn like fire I’d think we were diving tropically.  The water has a deep royal blue color so beautiful that I can’t help but smile, letting little trickles of water into the mask that immediately freeze on the inside of lens.

We cruise about midway down the rift—Louis slightly ahead, Emma and Dush slightly behind.  Louis watches me closely for a minute or two, but it’s pretty obvious that I’ve done this before.  Any my frog kick is better than his anyway.

It feels really good.  Not just the location, but the diving.  I’ve always loved diving, but something is different now—it’s a part of me.  As I swim along, I drop down to look at trout, rise slightly to swim over a rock bridge, and do a couple of corkscrews just for the fun of it.  It feels so good to be comfortable in the water, and it feels even better to be able to not even think about the gear I’m using and just enjoy the majesty of the place I now have the privilege of experiencing.  I swim on my back for a little while and blow bubbles up at Dusch, 40’ above, then take my regulator out of my mouth and take a few gulps of the glacial water.  It’s absolutely delicious, particularly after days of sulfur-saturated tap water.

As we approach the end of the first pool I drop down to 50’ and notice a dull blue light emanating from a small cavern at the floor of the valley.  As I peek in I see that there’s actually a small tunnel to the other side: an overhead environment.  I look up to see where Louis is, but he’s already in the next pool.  The temptation is too great—I drop down, carefully kick through, corkscrew onto my back, and come up from the hole on the other side.  At this depth the bubbles look like silver drops of mercury racing to the surface, and as I slip up the orange rock face I rejoin the group, grinning as much as my frozen face will allow.

After essentially making a belly-crawl through a shallow section we get to the section known as the “Cathedral”.  With the depth here reaching about 80’ the two completely vertical walls of the strait stand in dramatic relief to the blueness of the deep water and the brightness of the shallows.  There’s a bit of a squeeze at the entrance, and I stretch out my arms and hold myself there for a few seconds, a human bridge between two continent-sized plates.

We take a left and head out into a section no longer sheltered by the rock formations—our pull out.  The snorklers have a rough time of it; I can see Dusch and Emma struggling to get across the lake in the wind, and eventually it becomes apparent that Emma has exhausted herself and starts drifting back towards the open water.  It looks like a hard swim regardless of your condition.

Louis goes back to help her and I spend some time inspecting the silt bottom and the occasional rock crags that open within it and plunge down into darkness.  Cracks to the belly of the earth.  After a few minutes I check on their progress and see that Emma has actually been blown with Louis back further, and is threatening to drift into the lake.  I surface to see what the issue is and become immediately aware of the problem: as soon as I reach the surface the wind hits me and I start being propelled through the water with impressive force—the smallest parts of me out of the water act like sails in the harsh wind.  Almost immediately my mask freezes in the wind and my vision is blurred.  I scratch enough of an opening to see Louis hand signaling to me.  Surface, grab Dusch, make it to the exit point, and get out. It looks like he’s going to take Emma out there and walk around.

I swim back over to Dusch, signal to her that we’re going to head over to the exit point—wherever that is—and get out.  I start swimming back, but she isn’t making any progress.  I realize that since so much of me is underwater, I have a much easier time moving into the wind than she does—I’ll have to help.  I give her my hand and start towing her through the water, which tires me out more than I expect it to.  Making things even more confusing is the fact that Dusch has no idea what’s going on—she isn’t sure why I’m towing her, because she was just kicking to stay in place.  Either she didn’t get the hand signal, or we misunderstood each other—whatever the case, we get to the shallows and I’m already tired.

I can’t find the exit point.  At least, I’m fairly certain that this isn’t the exit point as we are now knee-deep in mud.  Dusch just kind of slumps back in the water as I try to stand, which is not easy when your legs are already tired, you’re cold, and you’re standing knee-deep in mud-covered rocks with 100lbs of scuba gear on your back.  In a wind storm.

After a minute or two of looking and seeing nothing I make the executive decision that we’re getting out and we’re going to find the trail.  About 50’ from where we are I find it, and instead of walking left to the van, I turn right to go find Emma and Louis in case they need help.  Walking through a wind-raked glacier environment in the flat light of winter is a humbling experience; doing so in full scuba gear is positively surreal.  Lumbering up the trail, crunching in my frozen suit and being pushed back and forth by the wind, I eventually meet up with the others.  While I had hoped I would be waved off in an “I’ve got this under control” way by Louis, it does look like Emma could use more help.  We’re actually much farther away from the car than we anticipated, and one look at Emma tells me that she’s already exhausted and probably getting cold.

Holding my arm out to her, I let her take hold of my left in a way that allows me to support her, but would also allow me to fall without taking her with me.  I have to walk off the trail, and the gear I’ve been carrying for 15 minutes is already getting very heavy and I’m starting to stumble a little.  The last thing we need is for me to clumsily take this poor woman down.

With painstakingly slow speed we make our way to the van, with Emma stopping more and more frequently to catch her breath.  The exposed skin of her face takes on a reddish, almost purple hue, and the sheer exhaustion in her eyes makes me wonder if we shouldn’t just carry her before she goes hypothermic.  Every few steps I make sure to add some cheeriness in my voice and tell her that “we’re almost there” or “the hard part’s over”, but I’m nearly exhausted myself—I can only imagine how she feels.

Before long we crest the top of the hill and it’s all we can do to not rush Emma too fast down to the van.  We get her out of her suit and tuck her away while Louis and I catch our breath.  I tell him he can go fetch his gear and that I can handle degearing everyone since I know the suits.  He hoofs off back to grab the gear he’d taken off at his exit point; I don’t envy him.

*                                                                        *                                                                        *

The time our side adventure had taken afforded us an ample surface interval, so as soon as Louis gets back we suit up again and walk to the platform.  I had made the mistake of taking off my neoprene hands—neoprene three-finger ‘lobster claw’ gloves for cold water diving—and was having trouble stuffing my numb fingers back into the gloves, which had now frozen solid.  It may be age more than physiology, but by far the most frustrating thing I’ve experience in cold weather is not the discomfort, but the complete loss of strength and dexterity.  I had always assumed that stiffness or loss of strength in the fingers came only after the pain of a limb partially or completely freezing, but the fact was that the only feeling was annoyance that my fingers refused to bend, or to clench strongly enough to pull on a frost-covered glove.  It was like repairing a motherboard when your hands were asleep.

Once I had resolved the glove situation and had gotten into the water again, the serenity took over.  “That’s better,” said Louis.  He was right; it all melts away once you’re in the water.

Louis was able to enjoy himself a little more this time, and though he kept a close enough eye on me not to let me dive any of the caves this time, he really understood the appeal of the place.  Instead of racing through, we drifted at a snail’s pace, at one point floating on our backs in the Cathedral for a solid 5 minutes, just watching the silver bubbles drift up between the two slabs stretching to the surface.  It was as much about the joy of simply diving as it was about the amazing place we were in.

When the dive was over we joked underwater about not wanting to get out, making the sign for ‘up’ and ‘cold’, and ‘fuck that’.  The walk back to the van this time was much faster, and I had been way, way off with my mud exit.

*                                                                        *                                                                        *

“What do you mean we have to leave?”

Kevin and Stephen are pissed.  They’ve been waiting for the diving to finish for two hours; they’re hungry, and they’re bored.  The funny thing is, they were told we were diving, it’s not going to be any warmer up on the glacier for Kevin’s Moron March, and has no one ever heard of a fucking granola bar?

“Eat a fucking granola bar.  If you don’t have one, I have a few.”

“We ate those already.  We need real food.”

So it is with this lack of pomp and circumstance that I leave Pingvellir National Park, having never had an opportunity to explore its ridges or waterfalls that make it famous, possibly never to return, because I have two brothers who apparently don’t know how to pack for a day out of the proximity of a fucking 7-11.  But I got my dive in, so I concede the battle.

The problem is that since we’re out in the middle of nowhere, it’s going to take us forever to find food, go somewhere else, and possibly see anything before the sun goes down.  In essence, our day will be shot.  I start to bring this up but drop it when the whining starts.

Since everything is so spread out in Iceland, particularly in the rural parts, and since it is winter, and since no one in their right mind would travel out in this weather, there are very limited options.  Particularly since it is 4pm and restaurants, if any would eventually open their doors, wouldn’t be doing so for at least another two hours.  And again, this is a problem because 2/3 of my parents’ offspring don’t understand the many and varied virtues of a fucking handful of granola bars.

After attempting several places on our drive back toward the cabin—where there is no food—we find ourselves, somewhat depressingly, back at Geysir.  The hotel restaurant is closed.  What is open, however, is the food court near the gift shop.  I am prepared to turn my nose up at this, and I am alone in this sentiment.

“Let’s do this,” says Stephen, opening the car door.

So it is here that I find myself, ladling lamb stew into my mouth in a food court next to a gift shop selling “I Fucking Love Iceland” T-shirts, asking myself if this is the authentic Iceland experience that I had so dreamed of having.   My mood is only lifted when Dusch tells me that this, in fact, is.

“Yeah,” she says blandly “that’s what winter tourism is here—you’re mostly eating out of gas stations because everything is closed.”

Ah, so we’re scrounging adventurers rather than inept tourists.  This I can stomach.

We stretch our time in the gift shop as long as we can and finally consign ourselves to the drive back to the cabin—for 5 hours of darkness.

In the cabin we decide to assuage the loneliness of the dark with a time-honored Icelandic tradition—drinking.  Not real drinking, particularly after actually experiencing what the Viking beer we had purchased actually tasted like, but more passing around the bottle of Brennivan and taking healthy pulls off of it.  At one point, we receive a knock at the door, which we dismiss as the wind.  After the second knock I go out to verify that it’s just the wind and learn that it isn’t, as a man about my size steps out of the darkness and scares the living shit out of me.  I’d thought he was a werewolf.  I still don’t know why.

One of the owners of the cabins, he’s come by to say hi and see how we were enjoying things.  Doing my best to be neighborly, I offered him a drink.  “Oh no,” he said, eyeing the bottle we were passing around and laughing, “only tourists drink that shit.”

The rest of the night was spent with me writing, Stephen and Dush playing cards and having girl talk, and Kevin doing his quiet-pouty thing that he does when he doesn’t get his way.  He went to bed at 8:30.

Dusch had gone to talk to him about his idiotic idea for a hike because we’d mentioned it to the diving guide and it had received a less-than-encouraging response.

“Is he a professional?” he had asked.

God no.  He’s a fucking dayhiker, at best.

“Does he have a radio?”

Nope.

“Does he have winter experience, a map, or someone to go with?”

Nope.

“You can’t let him go on that mountain.”

Yeah, no shit.

With every question Louis’ eye’s had grown larger and larger—shocking, I’m sure, that anyone could be that stupid or that arrogant, but then again, he’d never met our middle child.  Kevin had then spoken to Dusch when she’d confronted him about this, and he appreciated it, he said, and he’d take it into consideration.  Moron.  Consideration?  If consideration was in the realm of his mental capability he wouldn’t have a goal of becoming another moron statistic on a plaque in the Mountain Rescue office.  Of course the Big Brother can’t say anything about how incredibly stupid it is to go into a hike alone, with no winter hiking experience, no map, no compass, no radio, no plan B, and no rescue—which was a delightful tidbit that Louis had shared with us—a goal of hiking the most dangerous hike in Iceland in the most dangerous season to do it—because I wouldn’t understand.  Because I haven’t winter camped, gotten lost in the winter on a mountain, experienced a white out on a summit, or gotten my fingers and toes frost-nipped.

Ah, but wait, I have, and that’s why I refused the hike—because when you have a little experience with these things you learn to have a very healthy respect for them.  Kevin exists under the shelter of those who protect him—he has his whole life—and he has come to think that his successes are his own skill rather than the help he’s unaware he’s getting.  The fact that he can complete a triathlon and is well conditioned isn’t going to mean shit when he’s in whiteout conditions and can’t find his cabin and his fingers start to freeze in the ridiculous gloves he’s brought for the hike.  2 people have been killed already this year, and the bad season is just starting.  Our guide had to turn around when he was with a group of experienced hikers in May.  But don’t worry—Kevin knows what he’s doing.  He’s done lots of research—like the one fucking website he sited from some guy who did the hike in ’03.  I’m sure more stupid people will litter the mountain with their corpses this season, but I can do little more than hope that one of them isn’t that of my little brother.   

With a later start we are wanting for something to do.  After some consideration of the map, we opt to go for broke—we’re going to head for Dusch’s glacier lake and grant her a life’s wish; to lick a glacier.  It’s a foolhardy goal, since light will likely fade before we get there, but it’s something to do and we’ll likely see something cool along the way.  If nothing else, we’ll stimulate Iceland’s trashed economy by buying huge quantities of unnervingly expensive gasoline.

We drove for barely 45 minutes before we start seeing white spouts falling from cliffs in the distance; waterfalls cascading down from the high country.  One of the endearing qualities of Iceland is the fact that pretty much anywhere is game to go; if a farmer has his fence open, go on in.  He’ll probably want to chat with you.

Before we make it to the waterfall, however, we make a turn onto a gravel road.  Our interest has been captured by a braided river through what looks like black volcanic sand.  I park the car and we get out and have a look around.  It’s not exactly sand that the river cuts though, I realize as we walk around the bank. I snap a few pictures and realize very quickly how much this is not exactly sand, because when I start to move again my feet don’t; I’ve sunk up nearly to my ankles.  After dragging my feet out I warn Kevin and Stephen, who immediately come over to the area and try to get themselves stuck as well.  The properties of the sand are such that by tapping one’s foot, a wet spot appears.  In about 10 seconds, the tapping sends little shockwaves through what is now a dinner-plate sized puddle.  Any time beyond that and the foot starts to sink.  It’s weird.

The waterfall is a short drive away and well worth it.  As is the case with most waterfalls we encounter in this country, it is water.  Falling, specifically.  The cool trait of this waterfall is that there is a path behind it, so walkers can completely circle the spout, get it from multiple angles, and as was my experience, find numerous ways to introduce water into the housing of a camera.

While Dusch, Stephen, and I are exploring this multi-angle waterfall, Kevin searches for the entrance to his hike.  Still sticking to his guns and being adamant about going on a hike that he is inexperienced and unprepared uninformed for, Kevin walks up and down the banks searching for a spot to die of exposure.

We travel another 30km down the road and see an enormous waterfall—and this is the one that marked the start to Kevin’s hike.  Rather than a high-falling spout, this waterfall forms a forceful semicircle, sending water plunging down into a pool and launching spray outward for an incredible distance.  As we walk closer to the waterfall from the parking lot, I run ahead to the edge of the water, stand for a about 10 seconds, and run back, completely soaked.  The rain pants hold up fine; the down jacket does not.  Still worth it.

Following the path up the side of the waterfall I climb a few hundred feet and see Kevin coming from a spot off trail.  “There’s some scary shit over there,” he says, pointing back over his shoulder. “you might try it in nimbler shoes.”

The small path leads out to another view of the waterfall, about halfway up.  The walls of the canyon amplify the sound of the thundering water so much that I feel the reverberations in my chest.  The path winds right along the east canyon wall, but a smaller path eeks out along a lone rock bridge to a small, single spire of rock that has it’s own miniscule path; the entire rock formation is maybe 10’ high.  It becomes very clear what Kevin was talking when I reach the base of the rock—it’s a hand-over-hand climb to the top over wet rocks and moss with a fall of several hundred feet on three of the four sides.  But the thought of viewing this from the top is too great.

There’s a feeling that my friend Sean talks about when you’re in a scary situation, or when you’re come to a realization that you’ve made a dangerous mistake.  It’s a tingling in the balls—a warning to a man that things are about to go wrong, and this is the feeling that cascades over me as I summit the spire.  The climb up was slippery, but nothing some careful foot placement and strong handholds couldn’t help—the problem was obviously the climb down, and that’s when the tickle welled up.  This was a stupid thing to do, and as I felt around for a solid foothold with my mud-slicked Sambas on wet moss, my back to a 200’ drop into the crash zone of a waterfall, I decided that I’d play it a little safer for the rest of the trip.

With only on mini-slip that sent my heart racing like a lab rat I made it down, walked back to the main path, and ascended to the top of the waterfall.  There I decided to take the slippery, steep path to the top of the waterfall’s edge, and instead walk back with everyone to the car.

*                                                                        *                                                                        *

After making a decision to bomb it for the lava tubes another 60km out we’d stopped for gas in Vik, finally handled the fueling-up situation, and were driving through another lava field when we needed to make a pit stop.  It was there that we jumped an electric fence and jumped around on a field of moss-covered lava rock.

What looks like a coating of bright green moss over black volcanic rock is actually about 6-inches of spongy green moss over black volcanic rock. It doesn’t sound like much, but when the flowing ground around you gives way with every footstep as you look over hundreds and hundreds of yards of the stuff to the mist-covered mountains in the distance it’s hard not to feel as though you’ve discovered a new alien biome.  And as is the nature of moss, the silence that permeates so much of Iceland becomes deafening here; it’s an auditory black hole where our yells of excitement die in mid air.  Nothing escapes.

Sadly, we end up missing our turnoff for the lava tubes, which I blame on the navigators, and we lose the rest of the daylight—which means more night driving for me.  Four hours of it, actually and it’s agonizingly slow.  Playing with the radio has become a way to pass the time, since each of the well-spread-out towns usually has one radio station broadcasting in Icelandic, but it’s nice to at least hear something.  About every forty minutes or so the soft hiss will explode into the voice of a Icelandic townsperson, which is a bit like having an hitchhiker we’ve forgotten about start speaking very earnestly in a language that is laughably complex to us.  Half the time it’s funny, mostly it scares the crap out of us, but at least it’s keeping me awake.

After stopping again in Vik and gassing up (and feeling proud that I’ve finally mastered a pump that gives directions exclusively in a language that may be elvish, we make it to Selfoss, the biggest city in southern Iceland, which is about the size of a large New England ski town.  Of the 4 restaurants we see, we go to the most local-looking one (having collectively vowed that we’d sooner starve than go to a Subway or KFC).  And unsurprisingly, it’s a pizza joint.

One thing that I’ve noticed about Iceland is that, like most other countries in this time of interwebs and collective global connectivity (I stopped counting the number of times I’d heard ‘Facebook” in the Icelandic vernacular) is that the culture that usually brings people to an area very much becomes that: a means to bring people to the area.  Don’t get me wrong—I completely understand.  As sad as it was to travel to empty marais in New Zealand, I couldn’t blame the youth for choosing to go out into a world of internet and commercialism rather than sit around a fire and tell stories of ancestry.  That’s a fun vacation, but I remember the boredom of the teens in the Cook Islands—and even began to share it after 10 days.  It’s nice to have people living this way to know that people do, but no one necessarily wants to be those people.

So much of the traditional food and culture that I’d hoped to experience here was not what I’d been looking for.  Those cultural attractions that are only promoted in the tourist season were of little interest to me anyway.  But there truly is something a little disappointing when you’re in Iceland and the one local restaurant open has menu options of burgers or pizza.  But perhaps that’s just part of the new culture and I should accept that instead of chasing ghosts of a lifestyle that no longer exists.  Or maybe the Icelandic bleakness is just starting to get its fingers around my mind.

We briefly poach internet at a local café and then head home.  We still haven’t cracked the code of the hot tub, and while it’s warm, it’s just not warm enough to brave the windstorms that have been ripping across the plains for the past two days.

Dusch and I spend some time out on the porch searching for the northern lights, but they’re not out tonight again.  The wind gives us a maximum exposure time of about 4 minutes, but when the snow starts flying it becomes even less.  We make it a game of walking beyond the wind barrier of the porch and into the full gale, getting blown back, laughing, and then doing it again.  But after our hands go numb we decide to call it a night.  For the first time we’re all truly exhausted and are asleep in minutes.

Having just taken a shower, I am appreciative of this point.  I reek of sulfur.  But after more than twenty-nine hours with no sleep or shower, I decided to trade my own smell for a more regional (and I hope, acceptable) one.  The sensation that will take getting used to is the slimy feel of the dissolved element; it’s hard to really feel clean.  Frankly, I don’t think anyone in the cabin minds the smell right now.  I’m the only one who has taken to drinking the water from the tap, which also smells the same, and revisits tenfold in the frequent burps and general digestive disapproval.  As it is, we’re preoccupied, periodically running outside to see the snowstorm and try to spot the Northern Lights (no luck yet), and fighting off the jetlag.  Well, at least I’m fighting—the others have folded and have little hope of sleeping the night through after their 2-3 hour naps throughout the day as I drove around the island.  As I write this, my littlest brother Stephen, the tallest by 4 inches, lies curled up on the smallest of the couches, a kitten trapped in a Great Dane’s body.

The day was largely successful—not as packed as I’d hope, but when you’ve skipped a sleep cycle, start exploring a foreign country before dawn, and are surrounded by what looks like tundra and a never fully-rising sun, it’s hard to not become at least a little disoriented.

After picking up the car we’d gotten a crash-course in the differences in a foreign country.  The hardest thing about going to a country where they speak English and have a generally western approach to life is that things are familiar, but just not familiar enough.  Cars all work the same, and they drive on the same side of the street—but try to find a place to eat breakfast at 7:30 am in Keflavik.  You won’t.  What you might do, as we did, is pull into several appliance repair shops and a dry cleaners because you think the colorful emblem looks like something a business would advertise food with.  You’ll likely then mask your shame by turning your head away from the washing machine parts and stating that this place doesn’t any good or that it doesn’t look open yet, and then pull a U-turn out and continue on.

An hour later we have fueled up with coffee and yogurt from a local gas station and are pressing on towards the cabin, which is on the way to Geysir, the home of the original geyser.  I learn very quickly that while the island is small, and distances look that way on the map, it actually takes a very long time to get places.  And all roads are single two-lane roads, very narrow, and stretch for great distances between towns, which are sometimes no more than a dozen houses or so.  Hearing about an island with a total population of 300,000 people is one thing, but actually seeing that population spread out over an entire country is drastically different—particularly when 200,000 life directly in Reykjavik.

While the travel is slow, the driving itself is rather fast.  These narrow roads offer a generous speed limit of between 90-100km/hr, which may not seem fast until you see the way drivers lean to the curb slightly when passing each other.  And by curb I mean the steep drop off into a lava field.

Highlights of the drive were shameful, yet exciting.  About an hour out of the main city we began to see signs of geothermal activity—rising plumes of white steam that blew steadily from mossy ground.  I supposed I’d assumed there would be signs or ropes or something to denote the presence of such things, but Iceland really has a more utilitarian view of this.  Vents popup randomly throughout the region, farmhouses appear to have utility sheds where the tapped ground energy is used for home heating or converted into electricity.  What’s incredibly interesting to me is probably very droll to them—like when a friend from Bermuda visited and couldn’t get over that we had squirrels running all over. I know!  Squirrels!

And though I told myself that this wasn’t that cool, I couldn’t help but feel the thrill of a new landscape when I’d gotten out of the car to relieve myself on a barbed-wire fence and had had my foot sink into the soft moss and cause an eruption of steam up around my calf.  I don’t care how boring locals think that is—most exciting restroom experience yet.

Approaching our cabin we decide to stop at Crater Lake, a spot that Dusch had found in the guidebook that was known for it’s vibrant colors and deep, deep blue water.  Parking in the lot we very quickly realized that, while the point of interest was just 100’ over a ridge or so, we were going to need more layers.  The Icelandic winter had given us no grace period, and the cold wind cut though casual clothing as though it wasn’t even there.

The crater, sadly, is unimpressive in this light.  What was supposed to be a vibrant, colorful pool looks more like a gravel pit at a construction site.  Sad, but there are no complaints about heading back to the car as we all turn and lean into the wind.

The cabin is located on Rt. 37; there are no denominations, mile markers, or exits.  This is how most of Iceland works—disclosure of a road, and that’s it, because you’ll eventually run into it.  Renting a GPS for the week seems a little unnecessary now, since the country has about a dozen roads.

The man who greets us at the main hall I will call Chuck, because his real name baffles the bounds of linguistics.  Given the love of ‘y’ and ‘j’ coupled with an obsession with polysyllabic names, this should come as no surprise, but it still causes a bit of foreigner shame when you hear a name, your eyes bulge slightly, you smile, and you nod—just like the non-English speaking immigrants in America that are silently judged.  How can they be in our country and not bother to know the language?  Shoe.  Foot.  Other.

He opens the door and we walk into a hall adorned with a reindeer headmount.  Kevin let’s the dog in.  Chuck yells at the dog and tosses him back outside.  The dog proceeds to jump up onto the door and looks through the picture window, right at me.  It’s a smart dog—he’s looking at me not in an “I want in” way, but more of a “you see me here, let me in…or pay” way.  And then he starts turning the handle of the door.  This dog is smart.

Chuck sees this, yells at the dog again then turns to me reassuringly—“he can’t turn all the way”, he chuckles and shakes his head, which is kind of like laughing at a horse for making a mistake in calculus.

The cabin is very homey, and while we don’t appreciate it at the time, we will when we return form the raw outdoors later that evening.  It features a tiny kitchen, three sleeping areas, a dining room, wrap-around porch, and a hot tub.  After Chuck show’s us around, including how to regulate the heat of the hot tub and the cabin from the pipes outside, we unpack, relayer, and head out again into the day—it’s barely 11pm, though the sky still says it’s about 4pm.

*                                                                        *                                                            *

Geysir is marked in the distance by leaning towers of white steam that drift across the volcanic landscape and scatter across the road like a fog.  Parking the car and walking across the road we are engulfed in steam and…again…the smell of sulfur.  The landscape is the normal moss-covered rock with the exception of the small streams and pockets carved out by searing volcanic activity.  Periodically there are depressions that bubble and intermittently belch steam into the freezing air, and at other spots spectators can stand and actually feel the gurgle and deep rumbling of superheated water underfoot.  Feeling the actual vibrations is rather unnerving, and that feeling doesn’t go away when one notices that the safety parameters here consist of a shin-high rope fence around flows of boiling water.

A sad bit of history—the original Geysir, while still here, only erupts a few times a day presently.  It had been on a more regular schedule, but varying stories detail the spout’s fall from grace, the most interesting of which is that in an attempt to coax the geyser to erupt, tourists threw stones into the pool and eventually clogged it.  While almost certainly a parable attempting to keep people from throwing crap into the pool, it’s most interesting to me in the assumption that people would believe that throwing stones would be enough stop a force that launches hundreds of gallons of superheated water 40’ into the air.  Tourists are, in either case, very stupid.

Fortunately, one geyser, strokkur (don’t mind if I do), erupts regularly at about the 6-minute mark.  Every few minutes the pool drops down, then surges back up and everyone standing around it gasps.  Then it fills back up.  Then drops.  And just when it looks as though it’s done, the pool…lurches.  From standing flat water it lurches into a convex bubble, an enormous blue jewel, for just a second.  Then, in an explosion of white, the bubble gets torn apart and launches into the sky as an enormous tower of steam.  It catches you off guard.

*                                                                        *                                                                        *

By the time we got to Glennfoss we were getting pretty cold.  Even though the car was warm, it took very little time outside before the chill of the air cut through clothing like cheesecloth.  Minutes.

Glennfoss is a waterfall, though this seems improbable as the boardwalk leads down to a vast frost tinged meadow.  Upon cresting the edge of one side of a large gash the origins of the waterfall become clear.  Like a knife’s edge, the waterfall marks the point of erosion for the river, gouging a deep, 100m scar in the earth.  Water thunders down from three sides of the waterfall, cascading onto secondary falls and sometimes straight down to the riverbed; the river rushes on, buffered by looming vertical faces of rock hundreds of feet high.  The thunder of the falls sounds oddly like applause—the spray coats everything in its path in a fine watery mist, which freezes and gives every surface and brilliant white glint in the lowering golden sun.

The mist also makes steep slopes challenging.  The steps down to the waterfall itself are right in the path of the mist, making them beautiful, but also incredibly slippery.  No one is down at the water fall when we get there, though there are no shortage of gawkers from our vantage point.  Without even looking at each other we start to head down.  It’s not easy going, but there’s a railing and we’re young enough to heal quickly.  About 10 minutes, a few falls, and an uprooted railing post later we’re on the actual waterfall.  It’s breathtaking.

The force and the volume of the water are matched by the unusual nature of the falls themselves.  Aside from falling from multiple sides, the water has a deep gray color with white caps.  All surfaces are encased in ice formations, and the water seems to move in slow motion.  A closer look reveals the reason; half of this water is slush: the waterfall has begun its slow freeze for the winter.  Post cards in the gift shop of people walking on it confirm: Golfoss becomes a gnarly frozen water sculpture in the winter months.  As excited as I am about being here now, I can’t help but wish I was able to walk on the towering frozen mass like so many people in the pictures.

Back at the gift shop I buy some post cards and we enjoy lunch and wi-fi access.  Lunch is lamb stew and is perfect for the occasion.  Wi-fi access is what it is.  I’m able to email my parents a picture of us to let them know that we’re alright.  While the interconnectedness that technology provides has done some incredible things in connecting people, I can’t help feeling a little saddened by it.  The fun of travel is to immerse oneself in another culture—to become vulnerable and truly open up to new experiences in that pliable state.  That’s why I despise tour buses, and why I’m growing to increasingly dislike internet abroad.  Tour buses send tourists whipping around the country with a huge group just like them—voyeurs.  The come, snap pictures, perhaps even talk to the locals, but then go back to the bus and discuss what they’ve seen and what they’ve experienced—they are taking the time to put their experience back into their own cultural perspective with help from the rest of the group.  Rather than take a moment to assess the validity of another culture’s life choices, and to consider perhaps adopting them as their own, they run to the group and separate those influences from themselves.  The same is true of the internet.

Rather than allow the separation—and at times alienation—that can come with travel, tourists can retreat into Facebook updates, emails, and IMs to friends and loved ones.  Of course checking in is a courteous thing to do—but to interact online at the behest of spending the effort with real people who may not be interacted with as easily is a crime to my thinking.  At that point you’re not thinking about letting people know you’re safe—you’re clinging to them as a line-up.  You’re using them—consciously or unconsciously—as a means of orientation.  They remind you who you are, where you come from, and most importantly, where you are.  That you are an accountant and you’re on a trip, and that the trip is finite.  That’s not the point of traveling; you are supposed to forget who you are, because every time you forget who you are there is an opportunity to assimilate something better into your personality.  What a fantastic and interesting person one could be if he or she truly took a part of every place visited with him or her.  Short of seeing the natural beauties of the world and the common wonders of differing and past races that man has spawned, it is by far the most important part of traveling, and to squander it is an absolute tragedy.

*                                                                        *                                                            *

After Golfoss we really had no battle plan—with no ideas and nothing jumping out of the logbook, we started looking at the map—there I noticed a road to a glacier.  For lack of a better option, we went for it.  The road carried on past Golfoss and in between two large glaciers.  About 5k past the waterfall we came across a warning that this area was for 4WD vehicles only.  Fortunately we had one.  Then one further down the road mentioned the road was only for 4WD Jeeps, the monstrously cool abominations that zoomed down the Icelandic F roads (RAV-4s with Monster Truck tires), sadly, we forgot to read this one.

The road went to gravel, then to washboards, then to large potholes.  The terrain grew stranger and stranger.  Iceland, I am coming to realize, really looks like a foreign planet.  Steaming fissures dot the landscape that itself looks like the scarred surface of the moon, while expanses of rough-hewn rock reach out in all directions toward mountains far off in the distance.  And as we climb higher, we begin to see more and more snow.

The mountains get larger too, but it’s relative.  This clearly isn’t a huge mountain region that we’re in right now—sizable mountains are sprinkled throughout the landscape, but they aren’t enormous.  We drive on and on, and after an hour reach a sign that says “ofaert”, which means “impassible”.  It didn’t look impassible to me, but it seemed a good time to turn around (and if something had happened to the car, it would be hard to explain how we had ‘accidentally’ drove an hour down a forbidden road and broke down).  We stopped at the sign and while my jetlagged brothers continued to doze in the back and Dusch fumbled in the front seat with Gladys, our temperamental GPS, I got out to run around in the rocks.  The wind was cutting, chilled after being pushed across the cool rock for miles, but I didn’t mind after being stuck in the confines of the car for so long.  I found an inexplicable pile of lavarock about 50’ tall, and because I could think of no reason not to, I started to climb it.  A few rocks immediately fell as I scrambled up, making hollow, chalky cracking sounds as they tumbled down the slope.  When I’d finally made it to the top I took a moment to look down at the little Suzuki Vitara down below, and then take in the 360-degree view of this strange new place.  The mountains were of a strange scale—they held the shape of large mountains, but didn’t look to have the height.  The vast plains were rocky and rough, and had not had the opportunity to be smoothed by time.  The road wound through the land with impunity; the forces that would tear it apart appeared to be absent at the moment; I couldn’t imagine it would stay that way long.  So far, my impressions of Iceland had been different than my expectations.  But then again, I thought as I started to climb back down to the car, that was half the fun of the whole thing.

Doing my best to look past the choppy gray water to the horizon, I brace for the next set of rollers that send the boat lurching from starboard to port, violently clanging the scuba cylinders strapped together against the seats with bungee cords.

“It’s goin’ to be like this the whole time, eh,” says Captain Aaron, a man so Canadian that he makes the Red Green show look less like a comedy act and more like a documentary.  “You’ll want to hang on and make sure them tanks are strapped down good.”

It’s the second day of wreck diving in BC, and I think I’m getting seasick, and I never get seasick, but as Janet passes around the ginger motion-sickness lozenges, I make sure to pop one in.  I didn’t have high hopes, but it seems to work almost immediately–the spice of the ginger settles my stomach, or perhaps just gives it something else to focus on beside the churning dinner that threatens a reappearance.

We’re currently moored on the shot line to the HMCS Cape Breton, a Canadian battleship that was sunk about a decade ago to make an artificial reef.  This will be the first dive of the day; then we are slated to dive the HMCS Sasketchwan, which lies in the same strait, on the ocean floor at about 130′.  As soon as the ladders are down we start dropping in; my buddy and I have been suited up and ready to go the whole ride, and as people double check air and dive plans,  Aaron (not the captain) and I stride-enter off the boat, hand signal that we are ok to eachother, and descend into the dark green water.

At 15′ we attach an 80′ aluminum stage bottle of 31% to the shot line in case we find ourselves in need of a decompression, which shouldn’t happen since this dive #1 and our body tissue has had a whole evening to release the stored nitrogen from the day before.  We continue down the line as the boat begins to appear, a massive expanse of gray standing out against the dark green of deep water.  With a few pops into our BCDs we come to a stop and float just above  the deck of the Breton, which lies at 90′.

Like most wrecks in the Nanaimo area, the Breton is covered in sea life–giant barnacles encrust every surface, crabs and shrimp scuttle from the light, and rockfish stare out at every angle from in crevices and on top of perches.  The most notable presence on the Breton, however, is the vast coat of plumose anemones, which are common on wrecks, but for some reason or another completely coat the sunken vessel with such vehemence that it looks as if the ship has been wrapped in a feather boa.

Aaron motions in the direction of the stern and I signal my agreement.  As the first divers down, the water is incredibly clear and we can see for 50′ in either direction.  We make our way toward the stern, gliding a few feet off the deck itself, and criss-cross through open rooms on the inside of the ship–which is a habit of Aaron’s that I’ve gotten used to and have come to enjoy.  If we were going by the book, any time we were to ‘penetrate’ the wreck, we’d be running a line (which entails tying a string at the entrance and periodically throughout the ship so you can find your way out again by feel).  While the term ‘penetrating the wreck’ sounds like Saturday night action at a sorority, it’s actual the serious part of this type of diving–a penetration is actually going inside the ship, which means an overhead environment that will have escape complications.  You may only be 90′ down, but if you’re 50′ from the entrance, you’re really going to be swimming 140′ before you get to breathe.

On it’s head, this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but that’s what can get a diver in trouble–consider how long it would take one to alert his or her buddy of an air shutoff–5?  10 seconds?  You flash a light, they look at you, you make the signal, and your buddy gives you his alternate air source.  Now assume you’re in a spot where you can’t turn around easily, which is the case with almost any penetration–there is downed machinery, feet of substrate, and hanging wires or pipes to contend with.  Nor can you float up or you’ll crash into the ceiling.  Making things worse-and the reason for laying a line in the first place–is the ‘silt out’.

As it does with most structure underwater, silt forms in eddys or other areas of slowing water–like rooms in a ship.  Being very fine particulate matter, silt is stirred up with very little motion, and once it’s in the water column, it stays there and can reduce visibility to zero.  Complete blackout.  It can also take hours to settle out again, far, far longer than it would take to drown a diver.  So consider how much longer that 5-10 seconds to acquire air and surface would take if one buddy has to swim alongside the other–and since he’s likely semi-panicked–he kicks up a bunch of silt, crashes into the ceiling, and becomes disoriented.  Assuming both divers are now on that one air source, they are now faced with a situation wherein they are breathing air down at more than twice the normal speed since they’re probably panicked, in zero visibility, unaware of where the door is or how to locate it,  and have no way of using any of their safety gear because they can’t find it.  That’s why it’s a big deal.

So when Aaron started first doing this I was a little apprehensive.  After a while, however, it just became a part of the dive.  there were a couple of ground rules–we’d only swim through rooms that weren’t heavily silted and in which a straight passage from the entrance to the exit was clearly visible.  Running a line through these would seem more trouble than it was worth anyway.

Approaching the stern we came across a large open work deck, and as Aaron peered into  a room that did not pass our test (literally filled with feet of silt), I noticed something out of the corner of my eye that seemed a little too vibrant and clean to be a part of the ship.  I swam toward the starboard side and craned my neck around a large piece of ladder scaffolding toward the basketball-sized object.  Looking back at me with beady little eyes was the largest Puget Sound King Crab I had ever seen.  After informing Aaron of my discovery and playing with the tank-like crab for a few minutes, we let her alone and she clicked across the deck sounding like crampons on granite.

We noticed the skylights about the same time.

We were heading back to the line to ascend when a series of 8 windows rising out of the deck came into view.  Shaped like an alps ski lodge, the structure was comprised of 4 windows on either side, each big enough for a diver to fit through.  We dropped down to the deck and kneeled, perching right at the bottoms of the window, staring down into the inky black like children peeking over a neighbors fence for a lost ball.  We shined our lights down.  There was no bottom that we could see.  We were staring into what appeared to be an enormous access room.  A metal utility staircase wound around and around the walls of the shaft, starting from the top floor and spiraling down into the abyss we could not see.  At each floor of the ship there were rooms and hallways, but our lights could only see down to the third one.

A look at our air confirmed that not only could we not safely enter the wreck, but since we’d been oogling for so long we were right to blowing our safety margin to get back to the surface.  We headed back to the line.

*                                                                                                             *                                                                                                                      *

Aaron and I had had the same reaction to the skylight–an unquenchable need to dive down through it–a need to search for secrets and see something unseen.  To find something.  There was a burning feeling in my stomach that to not explore this massive window into the soul of the boat would be something I would regret every day until I did.  Unfortunately, we were heading to the next dive site, so the courageous fantasy of the dive remained vibrant in its consequence-free cocoon, an  daring opportunity lost to circumstance.

It turned out, however, that the next dive was 50′ away.  In a feat of naval engineering that strains ligaments from its sheer jaw-dropping force, the technicians who sunk the HMCS Cape Breton also managed to sink the HMCS Saskatchewan 50′ away, bow to bow, 130′ down on the ocean floor.  Think currents.  Think drift.  Think about the no-second-shot and no re-shift stakes of a project like that.  And then think about the fact that the boat was sunk with explosives.  That’s some math.

All of a sudden the hypothetical dive planning and gas management that Aaron and I had been talking about–the travel gasses, sling bottles, redundancies, and penetration strategies–all became real.  And once we approached the captain with our proposal–that we be allowed to swim over and dive the ship again while the rest of the group went on to the Saskatchewan–and were met with a shrug and a “go for it”, it became really, really scary.  It’s one thing to talk about having words with a big jerk at the bar after he walks out; it’s very different when he walks back in after you’ve already opened your stupid mouth.

We weren’t doing anything new, or really even that risky.  But we would be using techniques that were new to me in practice, and I battled with the two conflicting thought processes of a relatively new diver:

1) that pushing yourself out of your comfort zone makes you a better, more experienced diver,

and conversely,

2) you dive your plan and dive what you know, because you don’t try a new play on game day or you get killed.

And this was game day; there would be no other divers on the wreck.  If we fucked up, we’d be on our own.  This was also going to be the deepest penetration I’d ever done.  Adding even more to the mix was that we’d gotten short fills from the shop (less air than normal) and my little adventure of almost running out of air on my decompression stop yesterday was still freshly seared in my mind.  So understandably, I was a little concerned about trying a hail mary in the deepest part of the wreck with less air than normal and the closest help being hundreds of yards away and 130′ up.

The plan was this: rather than hang the stage bottle, we’d use it as a travel gas to get to the skylight: both of us would breathe off the one tank until we got to the entrance.  Once we were there we’d switch to our main cylinders  and I’d clip the tank off my shoulder strap and waist-belt and, slinging it under my left shoulder, use it as my redundant air source.  This way if my primary system failed I’d have a complete backup independent of my buddy to get me back to the surface.  It also meant swimming through tight spaces carrying an entire other scuba tank, which I had never done.  ”You’ll be fine,” said Aaron.  Well, time to make a good story or become one.

*                                                                                                               *                                                                                                       *

Before the captain chugged the rest of the group off to the buoy marked Saskatchewan we step off the deck of the boat and bob in the water as someone hands down the stage bottle, which I clip off to my harness.  Making sure the air is on and pulling the regulators from the bungie cord retainers, we make a quick descent down the line to the deck of the ship.  Having been the first ones down before, it feels familiar, but the fact that we are alone changes the feeling to something muted.

We swim straight past the doors to the  upper deck, past the looming wheelhouse and towering superstructure, and come to rest at the base of the 4 slotted windows.  2000psi left in the sling tank–a nice safe margin.  We stow the hoses, flash the ok sign, then an entry sign, and with a fist pump, Aaron drops from view.  I clamber up to the sill of the window, wiggle the extra tank through, take a deep calming breath and drop in after him.  And then everything changed.

As soon as I was in the wreck, apprehension was blasted away by the overwhelming fascination and the desire to explore this foreboding new space.  The shaft was even larger than I had thought, and as Aaron and I slowly circled each other, descending further and further down into the black regions we had been unable to see, the ship began to show us her secrets.  In each of the four walls were doors and doors into rooms packed with machinery–enormous gears, flywheels as large as tables, and all shapes of twisted and gnarled piping snaking in all directions like mummified serpents–rusting brown-orange or otherwise encased in a decade’s worth of sea life, animals never exposed to the sun, but existing in these nether regions, recording their existence with generations of calcium deposits on metal, undersea tickmarks of the passage of time.

Down we circled–down down down.  100′ came and went, then 115′, then 120.  As I circled I began to follow the wrapping staircase corkscrewing on the descent–the visual reference making me think of the men and women that at one point served on this ship, and how strange it would have been to tell them that, as they kept her innards running, a scuba diver would one day be gliding up and down the open air of their workplace.

Pointing my flashlight down I saw the hazy dullness of the dirt-covered steel floor–we were almost there–and I added some air to my BCD to slow to a stop when Aaron started wildly flashing his light at me: EMERGENCY.  As I grabbed my backup and prepared to ascend to him I saw him tap his wrist–depth.  Shit.  A quick look at my gauge showed that I was at 130′.  While the maximum depth for recreational divers is 135′, we had decided to dive a nitrox blend on this dive–enriched air–with an oxygen blend of 31%.  Higher concentrations of oxygen displaces nitrogen–the gas that causes the bends–but also becomes toxic at depth and will cause convulsions and loss of consciousness if in too high a concentration.  Each blend has a maximum operating depth; 31% is 130′.  Good catch, Aaron.

I ascend a few feet make a sign of mopping sweat from my brow.  It’s cool he signs, and then bumps my fist with his, spreading his arms and looking up.  He’s right to be awestruck.  Looking up we can see much more detail, and the four walls dotted with rooms and tangled in staircase stretch all the way up to a tiny green rectangle–the skylight yawning far above.  I watch in the stillness for a few moments and listen to the sound of my own breathing.  Sheeeeet.  Foooooo.  Shhheeeeeet.  Fooooooooo. Each breath sends a rush of silver bubbles upward, fast at first, and then slowing as they settle into their pace on the long journey to the surface.

As we inspect the machinery on the floor Aaron notices something and signals to me–its a passage out.  About 30′ away there’s a large dull green square cut in the side of the ship, deep, near the ocean bottom.  The way is obstructed with piping and machinery and more than enough snags to trap us both.  I look at him and throw my hands up; what the fuck are you talking about? Aaron holds his hand flat, palm down, and moves it out from his chest toward me, then dips it in an arch and comes back up to the same level.  I look back-go under all the crap.  Ok, this we can do.

Beneath the tangled marasse of metal is a small throughway–about 5′ wide by 3′ deep–just enough for us to fit through single file.  As we are drifting through the tunnel with tender, careful twitches of the fin, it opens into a larger room–or really the surrounding pipes and poles spread out.  To my amazement, we are actually in one of the ships old men’s rooms.  The wall to my right is lined with stalls, each sporting a 1960s-era toilet, now filled with debris and the occasional anemone, but with the porceilin still gleaming white.  We bear left of the toilets, then right at the sinks, past the urinals, and though there’s no reason to, I take a deep breath of air as we drift out the hole and into the expansive emerald green ocean.

A gauge check shows we are still at 130′ and have 1500psi left plus reserves.  After Aaron and I are done high-fiving and executing a few celebratory corkscrews we decide to head back in the way that we came and ascend to the line through the shaft.  Because this skill set has been mastered.

*                                                                                                                     *                                                                                                            *

Back on the boat I breathlessly explain what we’d done in painstaking detail to Jeremy who calmly listens and nods until I babble myself tired.

It was like, I was saying, it was like National Geographic stuff!  It was like something I never imagined I could do!  Everything I saw–everything there–could only be seen by me.  It was like I was the only seeing this snippet of time in the life of the ship!  It was so personal–I saw things no one else has seen!

“You were an explorer,” Jeremy said with an understanding smirk that explained more than my rambling words.

Yeah, I say to him, I was an explorer.