In 2012, I decided that I would visit Iceland in 2017. Yes, that’s ridiculously far in advance. I like planning things. Just ask my parents about our trip to Disney World in 8th grade—there were dot-matrix-printed spreadsheets.
But, five years is enough time to plan a serious trip. And now, sure as the Mayan apocalypse, the time has arrived. I’m flying to Reykjavik on Wednesday morning, spending the weekend at the Iceland Improv Festival1 in between sampling the tourist attractions and local cuisine.
Then on Sunday morning, I’m renting a ramshackle camper van and spending the next ten days driving the Ring Road (as it’s called) around the entire country.2
Iceland is about the size of Indiana. It’s got about 335,000 permanent residents, but 60% of them live in and around Reykjavik. The rest of the country is mostly empty, wild, weird space; “it feels like someone put the American West in a blender.” It’s played a zillion different planets and fantasy-lands—the glacier from Interstellar is right next to the ice pond where Qui-Gon had a sword fight with Batman, and just down the road from Galen Erso’s farm from “Rogue One.”
There’s a waterfall, beach, gorge, lake, volcano, or cave around every bend in the road. There’s a Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “The home of the Necropants.” There’s a Phallological Museum, with the excellent URL phallus.is. There’s something called “Interdimensional Hopscotch” (stay tuned on that).
My keyboard is programmed to type bizarre Middle-Earth-looking letters like Þ and ð. I have tips on the best hot dogs and thermal baths. I’ve bought and marked up a giant folding paper road map, like it’s 1986 or something. I’ve got the optional “sand, gravel, and volcanic ash insurance” on my rental car. Just like Disney World, I have carefully-crafted spreadsheets and itineraries—and Iceland’s famously capricious weather stands ready to blow them both to smithereens. (As I type this, a significant chunk of the Ring Road is closed to all traffic.)
It’s going to be a wild time. Watch this space for more.
What I love about you is that you plan every minute, but when something blows your plans to smithereens, you just go with the flow. Must be all that improv training.