Iceland: Day 1

01 January 2016

Back in the day, Dad would take me to Grundy County Speedway to watch old, beat-up junkers take laps around the dirt track until each car crashed, someone broke down in turn three, or on the very rare occasion, a checkered flag waved. I would make it through about an hour of loud engine backfires, rumbling tin bleachers, and hooping and hollering fans (family members and locals that had had a few too many) before inevitably and routinely folding my fingers behind my head, kicking my feet up on the bleacher before me, and soundly falling asleep until Dad was ready to leave. Sleeping: something I find so easy to do that I think someone might be slipping Ambien into my morning coffee.

I’ll sleep just about anywhere, no matter how much commotion is going on around me. That being said, I found such a task next to impossible in my quiet bed of fleece sheets and down pillows on 31 December 2015. I stayed up just until midnight to celebrate the coming of the new year and promptly crawled upstairs and collapsed into bed expecting my next thoughts to be spoiled by the sound of that irritating jingle of my six o’clock alarm. But it seemed to take forever to stop my mind’s eye from repacking my Patagonia bag and running through every situation in which I would need something that I did not pack.

But I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the irritating jingle of my six o’clock alarm was only matched in unwelcome by the crust that had formed at the corners of my eyes and the fact that I wouldn’t be sleeping in a bed so soft, so toasty, and so much a part of “home” for almost two weeks. All the same, I ripped the sheets back, took a quick shower, drowsily slipped on my only packed pair of pants and my polar-insulated hiking boots, and stumbled out of my room. Shortly thereafter, I was chugging a seemingly ineffective doppio. Did I somehow manage to make a caffeine-free espresso? Without a lick of exhaustion, Mom was already up (as she usually is), looking both excited and nervous about my travel (as she usually does). The look of a mother is unmistakable and ubiquitous: it is the combination of love, trust, pride, and the tension between “my baby” and “my young man.” Dad was still getting ready upstairs and in no rush to get out the door. I guess Mom wasn’t either, but they show their cards in such different ways.

Traveling really isn’t that foreign to my family, though. My parents have always placed an emphasis on new experiences, so we have driven across the country on countless road trips and sailed across the Caribbean to places like Barbados, Martinique, and the Cayman Islands. And I’ve traveled sans parents across the continent during a short stint as a travel writer and around Europe during my study abroad in London. It is because of my parents that wanderlust and an insatiable desire to seek the unknown possess many of my waking thoughts.

The only explanation for the very obvious apprehension in Mom’s voice and Dad’s lectures during the forty-minute drive to the airport is that parents will be parents. Oh, and I guess my recklessness doesn’t really help—a trip to the Arctic on 1 January really isn’t the safest way to kick off 2016. When we pulled up to the terminal at Midway, Dad gave me the routine “Be safe, watch out for yourself and your stuff, yadda yadda yadda” speech and Mom gave me a hug and a sincere “I love you.” I just wanted to get through security and to my gate as soon as possible.

There aren’t any nonstop flights from Chicago to Iceland, so I took a Southwest flight from MDW to BWI. It boarded at 08:45, departed at 09:30, connected in Manchester, and landed in Baltimore at 14:35. Each leg of the journey was only about an hour and a half (don’t forget the time change). I was fortunate enough to grab a seat in the first row for the second leg of the trip, and when the flight attendant saw my hat with the eight gold stars of the flag of Alaska, she asked if I liked the wilderness. “Oh, I’m actually on my way to Iceland. So I guess I would say so.” I was just as surprised as she was when on-my-way-to-Iceland rolled off my tongue.

Because I knew that I would be cramped in a seat over the ocean for the next few hours, and also because I didn’t realize how far apart they were, I trekked from the bustle of Terminal A to the emptiness of Terminal E after landing in Baltimore, where I went from presenting my driver’s license to presenting my passport.

The following is not intended to be a promotional. If you do not like the word “complimentary” when it comes to carry-on bags, checked bags, or inflight peanuts and pretzels, then WOW Air has a spectacular deal for you: a flight to Iceland only costs $260! But more than likely you will have some luggage; I had one checked bag (which cost $48 one-way) and my carry-on Patagonia. WOW Air’s free carry-on limit is only 5kg (about 11lbs).

The most important cost-reducing travel hack I can offer you is this: Wear it or stuff it! If your airline has a carry-on weight limit that you know you’ll surpass, there is a simple way to avoid being charged extra. I was probably carrying about 23lbs of gear in my Patagonia, but I didn’t have to pay the $48 surcharge because before I checked into my flight and weighed my backpack, I put my fleece, down jacket, raincoat, and basketball shorts on over what I was going to wear on the plane. I then put my camera around my neck and under my many layers, stuffed my pockets with gear (the GoPro, extra camera batteries, those thick wool socks), and wrapped an oversized scarf around my neck. Although I broke a sweat just getting to the front of the queue, I managed to wear 12lbs. Sure, I may have looked ridiculous, but I saved fifty bucks by sweating for ten minutes. As soon as I was checked into my flight and my bag had a magic tag that indicated it was within the weight limit, I stepped aside and stripped away all those layers, stuffed them back into my bag, and preceded through security a happy camper.

After an excruciatingly boring three-and-a-half-hour layover in the international terminal at Baltimore, where the only two things I could do to occupy my time were eating an overpriced burger at a restaurant called Passports and reading Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, I boarded flight WW117, a purple and white WOW Airbus A321 on course for Keflavík, Iceland. I think the main difference between those that enjoy traveling and those that don’t is in the importance they place in flying with a view. And as someone that definitely looks forward to that 35,000-foot landscape, my 30A seat was by the window.

Lucky for me, the middle seat was left empty for the entire flight, which gave me that little bit of extra space to kick off my shoes, stretch out my legs, and try to catch a few z’s. We backed out of the gate at 18:25 with an ETA of 05:10 (+1) at KEF.

It wasn’t until the flight crew began the routine safety instructions that I wholly believed that I was on my way to the land of fire and ice. Instead of hearing “In case of a water landing, a floatation device can be found under your seat,” I heard “Í tilfelli af vatni lendingu, a flotbúnaður má finna undir sæti.” I was not prepared for the sudden change in language. I didn’t think that people actually spoke in Icelandic…it was just as much a myth as Vikings wearing Nordic helms and bloodied fur coats; but as fantastical as these things are, they are just as true as you and me. Icelandic is a flowery, flowing language that could easily be mistaken for Quenya, the language of the High Elves of Middle Earth. But I won’t get into too much a reflection of it until we meet Sikky and Hawk on 6 January.

The sudden shift in language as I scanned the English safety instructions found within the trifold booklet wasn’t intimidating as much as it was intriguing—I’ve spent time before alone in countries without having the ability to communicate; heads-up: the people of Fiumicino, Italy, do not take kindly to those that do not understand that restaurants on the beaches of the Mediterranean close for Sunday afternoon naps.

The flight wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that good, either. We flew over a wicked storm that wreaked havoc across the ice caps of Greenland, so the majority of the five-hour-and-forty-five-minute flight was highly turbulent. I figured the roughness of the skies was just one way Móðir Jörð was preparing me for my time in a land where the planet herself was being ripped apart. All the while, between trying to nap, feeling we were falling out of the sky, and trying to make out whether or not we were about to crash land in the ocean or on some frozen, unpopulated wasteland, I had a few Sigur Rós albums playing on repeat. My heart leapt, not because of the turbulence, but because I came to realize that I was on my way to the land that inspired the creative genius of this band in all its ethereal glory.

Altogether, I probably slept an hour or two. My inadequacy of sleep was not due to the tumultuousness of the overnight flight, but rather for the same reason I couldn’t sleep the night before. In no time I’ll be waist-deep in snow and watching northern lights dance across the sky…I wonder if I can see them out the plane window now…I’ll try again in ten minutes. But my only regret over the course of the flight was not ordering something to eat halfway to Iceland, as my stomach was running on fumes by the time the blackness of the Northern Atlantic Ocean turned into the hazy yellow street lights and shadow-strewn snow of the Suðurnes peninsula.