Glacial Adventures

Today I decided to take another tour, and caught the bus for a hour of snowmobiling on one of the glaciers, It also stopped at a couple of water falls on the way back.

On the bus I met a couple of ladies from Los Angeles, California. They are part of a web site called Couchsurfing.com. It is a network of people that are willing to let others crash on there couch for a trip. They are staying at a couple of different peoples places while in Iceland. All told it sounds interesting, definitely worth a look into some more. Anyway this Eva and Peggy getting ready for the snow mobiles.


Peggy seems kinda of quiet but interesting, while Eva is outgoing and bubbly. She was allot of fun to hang around with for the day, and I hope they keep in contact.

Anyway we did the bus thing for a hour and a half to get there.

And there is was 4km of rough and bumpy road to drop off the tour that was going hiking on the glacier. Then back over the 4km of rough bumpy roads to the highway and on to the 12km of mostly rough road to the ski-do's .
One of the down sides of meeting new people is they make you do things :( like get my picture taken...

As ytou can see i still am a bad subject for photos :P


Anyway we soon mounted up and headed out.

The guide had us follow in single file behind him with instructions of "If I disapear down and you hear screaming, STOP!", or something to that affect.

After stopping at the top for a educational presentation, we headed back down and into the bus for the trip to the waterfalls.

The first is the bigger of the two, and the more spectacular.


The second water fall You could walk a path behind the falls, It was more of a goat trail that you had to be more than 50% to clamber over, and it was wet and slippery! The first was accurate, the slippery part was a under statement.



Anyway near the end there was a wooden bridge across the stream, and this guy from Australia wanted to have a picture taken on the bridge. Didn't know he was going to climb up on it.


As always the rest of the photos are up on Flickr, see the top of the site for the link.

MMM Sweet and sour pork

A while ago I was talking to the ladies in the kitchen, and we got talking about lunches that are served. I Gave them a copy of the Family cookbook, and found out that a couple of recipes I like were not in it :(

Anyway the ladies did sweet and sour pork for lunch yesterday, but they had to do for it 235 people :) so they changed a few things, they used pork chops.

Also used some pineapple with it and a couple of other changes, the End result was that

EVERYONE LOVED it. The ladies said they haven't had so many people coming in and saying that they liked lunch before. One guy said that he ate so many that he was ill.

So Mom your Sweet and sour pork was a Huge success. Thanks from the office!

Odd one out isn't the odd one out anymore.

For all my life I have been the only one in my family that did not wear glasses.

Well that has come to an end, I am farsighted and now have reading glasses.

It was amazing, I had not realized how bad my eye sight had gotten when reading and such, put the glasses on and things where so much clearer.

I apparently have a prism also, at least I think so, I don't know much about this glasses thing. But when I hold them out and look through them, then rotate the glasses 90 deg, it gets much fuzzier.

The oddest thing is the color of the LCD changed :) it looks like it is about 100 Kelvin cooler color now.

OMG it is Early

I was reading a good book tonight and just finished, and well that is a picture out of my bedroom window.

The catch is that is 1AM in the morning!

And to quote my favorite comedian

"What does the O stand for, OH MY GOD it is early!"

or something to that effect!

Biking my Ass Off!

Well putting the new bike to good use.

Started out the morning by biking to the hardware store, then Kringland (aka mall) and then the Canon store. And JJdeben... wants me to blog more so here goes...

You are probably worried now that I said "Canon store", but I only bought a new battery, the 3rd party battery I got a while ago is Crap! It would take about 30 photos then it was dead, while the Canon made one would take 400-500 photos between charging.. and since I have 3 4GB memory cards that each hold 379 photos in Raw format (you don't want to know the number in JPG only) I needed a backup batter some times :)

If you though that was a lot of biking, i then when and played tourist :) and this is where the photos come in...

So I started by biking south to the cost and turned left, and on till morning. Wait been reading the crystal singer novels again.. But I did turn left.

First stop was the beach, yes Iceland has a beach, they heat it, but they have a beach!

As you can see it is a small beach, but it is a beach.

Next i climbed the hill up to Pertlan (the big round dome on the hill from other photos) and took alook around there, they have a artificial Geyser there that goes off every 3 min. Aint it cool!

Then I biked down the hill, trust me much easier than up! And past this cool sort of ravine that was jagged rocks, and there was a pick nick area in the bottom. The photo doesn't do it justest, but if I had taken the one that would have, I couldn't maintain a PG rating on my blog :) There was also this cool flower growing along the path.

Well I kept biking and back past the beach (into the wind now) and along the cost heading to the point. Along the way i found this cool water fountain, it is cast of bronze and is just neat.

Anyway as I hit the end of the point, I turned from into the wind to with the wind :) There was this sign at the beach that connect to the light house, I wish I had taken a photo of it, it was this weird mix of English and Icelandic. They used English for most of the warning, Icelandic names for the area, and Icelandic for the months it was in affect...

It appears that there are birds that nest along the sandbar between the shore and the island that has the light house, that is why it is closed for part of the year, so I didn't risk it, but it was a nice view.


On the way sorta back home...


Well I got side tracked near the office, and decided to explore the docks area a bit, and see if I could get out onto the breakwater since it was a nice day. I have seen waves breaking over the break water during the winter. Well I got out to the end of it, and found a bunch of polish fisherman out there fishing...


Then biked home and wrote this, next is to collapse and recover :)

Independance Day, and Womans day...

Well June 17, is Icelandic independence day, and it is as big a celebration as you can imagine, there was about 60k-70K people in downtown Reykjavik.


UnfortunatelyI missed the parade, but there was still a lot of things going on, there was 3 main sages around down town. Unfortunately one of them was a kids stage, and they where teaching kids <> the Chickend Dance < /shudder >. Ohh the humanity, the poor kidlets will be scared for life, and even though i could not understand a word of it. The person dressed int he Yello chicken suite and the song confirmed what was happening... :(

There was one truck that kept circling through the crowd, they where playing misic and sort of dancing in slow motion.

The costumes where beutiful, and the music was neet, I am told that they repersent the elements and the seasons.

Speaking of costumes there where a fair number of people dressed in traditional clothing, The first is a picture of a friend, and her husband, and the second is just somebody. The last one is just a girl waiting for here mom at a bonk machine, either her or her mom really like pink!





There was also a model going aroudn the old cars posing and having pictures taken, I put my caamere over the photographers sholder and snapped a few picks. And hey she is pretty :)


They had a bunch of antique cars, and other groups displaying stuff.


And ofcourse there was stuff for the kids to do .

June 18th was womans day, or so I was told. I haven't been able to find any backing information about it online so no details. Alot of people where wearing pink to celebrate, unfortunatlyI didn't have my camera with me, so no pictures.

Quick trip report

I am not going to to the in depth one that I did more Marrakesh. I am also trying the linking for the photos, you should be able to click on them and goto flickr for the full sized image :)

Ok I flew into Montpelier a couple of days before Dave and Kathy arrived (flights where cheaper to be over a weekend) and it was raining :(


Sunday I put on my rain jacket and head out walking, Blackberry in hand running the GPS software :) at least I could find my way back to the hotel...

Did the same Monday, it was at least a little sunny that morning.



well after a little mix up and some anxious waiting Dave and Kathy showed up at the hotel, they thought i would meet them at the airport, i was sure they where coming to the hotel... anyway they made it to the hotel and we met up, they had a quick shower and we headed to the train.


Dave and Kathy slept for a bit as they had been up for 19h I think, and slept in a airport the night before.

We got there and Norman picked us up and drove us to there place in Eus. Margeret is Kathys cousin twice removed, and they were so kind to let us stay there for the week.


They have this beautiful farm house in a orchard about 5 min drive outside of Eus.


The Next few days we traveled around on day trips, went and picked a bunch of cherry's fresh off a friend of Normand and Margerets.,they where REALLY good.

Then we went to Fort Liberia that was built in the 1600's and they had built a tunnel up to it with 880 steps. We found out after that you are to walk up the outside, then come down the steps :) oops we went backwards!


The next day we went to a different fort, but this one was a port on the sea.



The next day we had a lazy day and just sat around the house, that afternoon we went and saw the a couple of churches, and looked around inside.

Then the next afternoon we headed back to Montpelier and then spent the next day walking the old city. It was allot more interesting when not raining!

We stayed that night in a small hotel called Etap, small is a exaggeration. I have never stayed in a smaller hotel in my life, It was a double bed with a bunk bed over top, this is there 3 adult room. Also there doesn't seem to be allot of staff, it was all touch screen to check in. It took your credit card info, and gave you a room number, and 6 digit code for the door to your room.

Needless to say there in't alot of room to stretch out, but if you are only staying a night or two, this is a good cheap hotel in France to stay at. They even have a do it your self breakfast in the morning, on weekdays.

Well that was the trip to France. Norman and Margret's house was Great, I could see my self retiring there, it was the most peaceful place I have been to in years. There is something about that country that just puts you at ease and makes you relax! Well worth the trip, and the company was superb as usual.

Now off to see the incredible hulk!