Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Iceland for all - Post 1

Aside from the fact that it would probably wreck the place, everyone should go to Iceland.  Jennifer and I went in mid June and it was stunning.  We arrived in the bright mid morning sun at 5:30 AM and then proceeded in to Reykjavik to rent our Kuku Camper.  Watch the video to get an idea of how awesome they are.  The morning started off well, I took a nap on a municipal running track and ate a bunch of weird Icelandic liquorice,  Jennifer read a bit and lazed in the sun.  Then we walked over to the Kuku headquarters for them to outfit our car.  Everything was easy and cheap and everyone spoke better english than they had any rights to.  The highlight of the morning was when they tested out the camp stove in our car before sending us off and discovered a thrilling gas leak around the canister body that resulted in our Kuku team member swearing in a couple different languages and throwing the canister and flaming stove into the street where it exploded in a fireball.  Cool.

Then we drove to the Bonus supermarket and stocked up on a bunch of junk food and snacks for the week and then headed out of town. Though the scenery was largely fantastic right out of Reykjavik, I fell asleep pretty much as soon as we headed out on the road.  One major plus about touristing in a place where the sun doesn't set is that jetlag isn't really an issue. I napped a bit and then we woke up by this giant blue volcanic pool near some bubbling fumaroles and we got out and wandered around.

We got back in and since we only had 23.5 more hours of light left, headed straight to the south coast of the island to explore some waterfalls off of Highway 1 (FYI--there really isn't a Highway 2 in Iceland, though there are a number of other lesser roads)

We ended up following a bunch of tour buses to this cool waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. The grass was so lush and green, it was no wonder that aside from tourists, the dominant mammalian life was sheep.


Thursday, June 11, 2015

TubBelay

So, all of your friends are skinny cyclists?  Nobody has arms bigger than pencils?  Feeling wantonly DIY?

That's why the good lord created a little thing we like to call mechanical advantage.

Thursday, June 04, 2015