Travel

Let It Go, Flow

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Apologies to Paul Simon for the title (“never look back, Jack”). I’ve been writing an account of our trip to Iceland in early March – a travelogue of driving adventures, Nordic history, and stunning scenery. But all good sagas need intermissions – a time to break out the mead (or whatever it is the Vikings drank), roast some lamb (or whatever they ate) – and just generally sit around the fire and stare at the sky.

And so it is with my Nordic epic. I started this blog almost a year ago because I thought it would be the simplest way to share our then upcoming trip to Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains with everyone who had expressed interest. But I rapidly discovered that I was getting something else out of it entirely – a chance to write outside of the tightly constrained boundaries of legal writing (my profession) and an opportunity to speak in what I like to think of as a more authentic voice.

Yet I can’t escape my Type A tendencies. As I faced writing this weekend about our final days in Iceland, I realized, “I really don’t feel like writing about that now.” And you know what? I don’t have to. I have to fight the impulse to turn everything into a homework assignment for myself, making this blog just one more weekly deadline to add to the numerous and all pervasive deadlines I deal with on a daily basis.

I’m a really disciplined person, in most ways. It’s what has enabled me to climb these mountains even though I started at age 50, and I’m soon to be 54. It takes a lot of will to climb up and down the world’s most boring staircase between two and four times a week almost every week since April 2010. No, I’m not kidding.

But it’s one thing to be disciplined and another thing to let it enslave you. The discipline of making myself write at least once a week here is one thing. But it’s another thing to feel I have got to write Part 4 of Iceland when I don’t feel like it, even when there’s no court or client demanding I do so. And it’s also another thing to feel compelled to publish this on a Sunday simply because I’ve arbitrarily imposed that internal deadline on myself.

So today I’m going to go with the flow. I did do my stairs today (in fact I wore my mountaineering boots and I’m sure I looked even more peculiar than usual), but I’m going to press publish tonight. Even though it’s Friday.

And how about you? How do you keep from turning things that are optional into obligations?

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Iceland Summits: A Glacier Melts – Part 3

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Day 3 of our Travel With Friends Trip was to be the Iceland version of a summit. We had peeled off from the more typical tourist sightseeing regime and made our way to Sólheimajökull, an outlet glacier of Mýrdalsjökull, which is Iceland’s fourth-largest glacier. It offered the opportunity to don crampons and climb on ice for a couple of hours. And at least J and I could regard it as some sort of training for our upcoming trip to Cotopaxi and Chimborazo (only three months from now!).  Because of our out of the way location at the Efstidalur Farmhotel, we were a considerable distance away, and had to hit the road bright and early for our 10 am rendezvous with the guide.

The theme of “the weather gets worse” continued. After surviving the narrow snowed over road on which the hotel was located, we ended up on a mountain pass. All we could see was a line of yellow tipped stakes outlining the contours of the road, and it was only on the way back we realized how close we were to the ocean. We finally turned off onto what was described on our map as a 3 km road that could take 20 minutes to travel. It was dirt and lava rocks, pocked with huge ruts. Eventually we reached the end, in howling wind and hail – only to find the long promised cafe where we were to meet the guide was closed and there was no other sign of human existence. In our excitement of getting there and maybe finding a bathroom, we had all jumped out of the car without properly fastening ourselves up against the elements, and accordingly were drenched. There was no bathroom either.

Finally, another car pulled up and out with it our erstwhile guide from Icelandic Mountain Guides. From New Zealand, he bounced between Aconcagua, the Alps, the Cascades – all the best climbing. I’m not quite sure how Iceland fit in, but there he was. He assured us that although conditions were not good now (read “you will be blown off the face of the mountain”), he’d been watching the forecast and the weather should clear by 2 pm.

One of the many churches dotting the Icelandic landscape
One of the many churches dotting the Icelandic landscape

So with several hours to kill, we drove back along the rutted road to the village of Vik. Supposedly a quaint fishing village, on that cold icy day all we located was a collection of warehouses and small homes with barely any commercial establishments.  We did find one hotel with a cafe and a sign stating it opened at 11. We rang the bell and eventually the owner shuffled down. After I inquired if  they were open, he went back upstairs to check with the wife, and following an onslaught of Icelandic argument apparently between the two of them, grudgingly returned and opened the cafe. We ate greasy pizza while another few drenched lost souls staggered in, all of whose plans had also been laid waste by the weather.

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Eventually we departed Vik to head back to our long gravel road, but on the way we took a detour to Reynisfjara beach. A black sand beach with tremendous cliffs and rock formations – brutally windy and cold but stark and beautiful. It didn’t require much imagination to visualize Vikings landing there in their long boats. There was a cafe there with a huge glass window overlooking the crashing surf – next time we will know where to go.

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The glacier hike, although not particularly challenging, lived up to our expectations. As you ascend, the ice has become so compacted that in the winter it is a startling shade of clear blue, varying from periwinkle to deep turquoise. It’s set against black lava, some of which is even banded into the ice itself. There’s an ice tunnel just sturdy enough to crawl through – not dark as the light from the tunnel opening is refracted against the clear glass of the surrounding ice. A delicate tall ice arch had formed in one spot – by the time we were descending, it had fallen. Sadly, the glacier, like all glaciers worldwide it seems, is retreating. Where we were standing on rock near the cafe had been glacier just the year before.

It was finally time to bring our day to an end, and we had several hours of snowy driving to get back to our hotel. We had one more day left, and it was time to make plans.

Iceland Part 2 – The Golden Circle, or All Roads Lead to Fludir

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When last we left our intrepid travelers they had just finished slipping and sliding across a parking lot in Reykjavik, tattered map in hand, hail and wind gusts abounding. But day 2 they woke up bright and early to another Scandinavian/English breakfast to boldly embark on the next part of the great Nordic challenge, also known as the Golden Circle. It has a certain Wagnerian overtone – Ring series and all that.

Speaker of the Law
Speaker of the Law

The Golden Circle has three main stops.  First is  Pingvellir or Thingvellir (I don’t have Icelandic characters on my keyboard),  the seat of Iceland’s Parliament starting in the 900s and, according to the signs, the oldest Parliament in the world. Unbeknownst to the ancients they had picked a valley located on the exact rift between the Euroasian and North American tectonic plates, which are pulling apart at the rate of a tenth of an inch a year – in geologic terms, the equivalent of a Daytona 500. You hike down the valley past such illustrious spots as the Drowning Pool and, my personal favorite, the Speaker of the Law Rock. Now if they would just put one of those in a courtroom….

After exploring the seat of ancient Icelandic government, the next stop was the geyser, Strokkur. Unlike its larger cousin, the Geysir, it erupts every few minutes, so no one leaves disappointed. It wasn’t too crowded in early March, but must be a nightmare in high season. Mind you, through all this, husband J was bringing his Florida driving skills to bear through wind and rain and ice and snow. What friends M and S didn’t know until the last day was that he’d waived the collision damage insurance. Strokkur was dutifully impressive, shooting its 20 meter high spout with the regularity of a factory whistle. I personally found the little steam spouts percolating out of the side gullies and small bubbling puddles just as interesting.

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Continuing our tour – along with a few hundred people doing the exact same route – in fact, I started to recognize people from stop to stop – we journeyed onto the famous waterfall of Gulfoss. After encountering some quite bad weather on the way there, we didn’t even realize we’d arrived. You’re on a high plain, seemingly with no topography, and then an elaborate visitors center appears out of the middle of nowhere. We actually sent S out on a reconnaissance mission before we all ventured out to confirm there really was a waterfall in sight. It is an amazing confection of spray and rock and mist. Not quite as massive as Niagara Falls, it has two tiers and at that time of year, one side is frozen into sharp stilettos, contrasted with frozen rolls of ice that cascade down the side of the valley.  The falls then flow around a bend and plunge into a narrow ravine that must be enormously deep.

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Aside from the falls themselves, Gulfoss has quite a remarkable gift shop. We had to convince S that he truly didn’t need to take a seal skin back to the United States. Ethical issues aside, the guide books are full of warnings of the dire consequences such attempts will result in at U.S. Customs.  Of course, it is quite likely said seal skin really was produced in some quaint Icelandic greenhouse specializing in man made fur. More on the greenhouses later.

But by then it was mid afternoon, and we felt it wise to get somewhere within striking distance of the Farmhotel where we were to spend the next two nights. As three of us are lawyers (well, M has relinquished the profession in favor of a more divine calling), we followed the “detailed itinerary” provided to the tee, arriving in the bustling metropolis of Fludir in late afternoon – but only after driving through a pounding snow storm on what became our new best friend of a road, I think numbered 341. Little did we know that Fludir would become our navigational tool for the remainder of our stay in the Iceland countryside.

On the way to Fludir
On the way to Fludir

As a point of interest, Fludir has a population of 394. It is located in the unpronounceable municipality of Hrunamannahreppur in the Southern Region, Iceland.  And the way we navigated, we ended up going toward, through and around Fludir for the next couple of days, since all roads seemed to lead to it.

After quickly passing all of its few commercial establishments – including yet another of the  ubiquitous Icelandair hotels, S finally broke down and went into the Fludir equivalent of a convenience store to ask where the Efstidalur Farmhotel was located. It was at that precise moment that J and I both had the same realization. We had noticed some weeks before that the hotel we were booked at was not the hotel featured on the self drive tour company’s website, but was actually located in an even more remote spot, further east and away from Reykjavik. Oh. And the itinerary from the tour company, of course, presumed we were staying at the hotel people were normally booked at. Oh.

So, J and I were not overwhelmingly surprised when S tromped out to announce that the hotel was not here but there and we had another half hour of fun driving in the snow before arrival. But the convenience store lady had given him a very detailed map which became our Bible for the next couple of days.

Through more snow and sleet we went, eventually driving up a steep hill to an actual dairy farm. Cows all around, out buildings, and a small low building of ten rooms, five of which overlooked the wide white valley of fields below.

We were home for the night.

Main building at the Efstidalur Farmhotel
Main building at the Efstidalur Farmhotel

 

 

 

Iceland Part 1 – A Day in Reykjavik

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An unusual combination of destinations
An unusual combination of destinations

Husband J, friends M and S, and I arrived at Sanford-Orlando International Airport on a Tuesday afternoon still not quite believing that one could board a plane there and step off in Reykjavik, Iceland. Yet that’s exactly what happened. After a fairly smooth flight on budget airline Icelandair we arrived in Reykjavik just after 6 am.

For some reason both sunrise and sunsets are late this time of year in Iceland, so we made our way in near total darkness to the Icelandair Hotel Natura. Icelandair seems to be as much a hotel and tour operator as an airline and Icelandair hotels are scattered throughout the country.

Although the Hotel Natura is one of those blue paneled, five-story 1970s style buildings, the inside is warm and wood and dotted with sculptures of people made out of wooden boards who sit at various points throughout the lobby. We arrived just in time for an incredible buffet breakfast. One side was English (eggs, bacon, baked beans [except they were chickpeas]); the other Scandinavian (two sorts of herring, salmon, fish salads, and dense, grainy breads). We had arrived in Iceland expecting nothing but fermented shark or its ilk. The food we encountered almost everywhere turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It was also a pleasant surprise that we could check into our rooms at 9 a.m.

View from Hotel Natura
View from Hotel Natura

After we crashed for an hour or so, we decided it was time to explore the city. We took the number 5 bus from right outside the hotel to the Hlemmer bus station, braving sleet and rain. Apparently this has been one of the worst winters in Iceland in recent memory. The bus station was like all bus stations – but I loved the table in the center with books available just to be picked up, read, returned or donated. We started off down the main drag, Laugarvegur. Even touristy souvenir shops were filled with interesting, tasteful items. Marvelous design in Iceland, clean and bold and modern, both jewelry and clothes.

But the weather was getting progressively worse, which turned out to be a theme of the whole trip. We staggered our way to the end of the street toward the harbor in the belief there was a Viking Saga museum that had looked interesting. Eventually, soaked and with a disintegrating wet map we found it – only to discover it was some sort of Disney-esque Viking wax museum. Being from Florida, we felt very little need to pay the equivalent of $15 each to go in. But there was a very nice cafe where I ordered mead – which seemed like a sufficiently Viking thing to do, and the young waiter who looked like a red-haired Viking himself, told us how to get to the National Museum, which was the one we’d really been aiming for.

Mead in Reykjavik
Mead in Reykjavik

After another half hour of fighting our way through wind gusts and snow, some which were strong enough to lift me off my feet, and with our poor map literally in tatters, we arrived.  I have no photos to speak of because the weather was such I didn’t want to take my gloves off nor did I think my phone would survive the elements. I think we walked through a very nice residential area – the houses are sided with corrugated metal, painted as though it were wood, with gingerbread moldings. The museum was worth the snow and sleet – the history of Iceland from its first inhabitants on, and it gave us a good background for what we would see on the rest of the trip. Not only were there Vikings on this previously uninhabited land, but Irish monks paid a visit. I am convinced Irish monks were the international tour guides of their time as they seem to pop up everywhere.

By then we realized we had practically walked back to the hotel, which was just on the other side of the municipal airport – but which was also a long and exposed walk around the tarmac. After debating a bit, we rejected M’s suggestion we walk and brave more pelting snow – and by then hail – and slid our way across a parking lot to get a taxi. That walk across the icy parking lot ranks as one of the more treacherous aspects of the trip.

That evening we had scheduled a boat tour to try to see the Northern Lights from the Reykjavik harbor. Needless to say, the trip was cancelled, but as a substitute we were able to opt for a nine course sharing menu at the Kopar Restaurant on the waterfront. The weather, which truly does change every 15 minutes (but sometimes only to get snowier), cleared just enough to see the moon against deep blue sky.

Moon Over the Reykjavik Harbor
Moon Over the Reykjavik Harbor

Next up – exploring the Golden Circle and the valley between two worlds: Pingvellir – the meeting place for Iceland’s ancient Parliament, on the rift between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. More summits to come.

Live From Iceland –

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Sitting at the airport about to return from solid white out in Iceland to sunshine in Florida – much more to come in succeeding posts when I’m not about to catch a plane. Iceland: Glaciers to windswept sea to white on white against grey skies, and blue ice pitched against black lava. In the meantime, a quick photo:

Blue ice on black
Blue ice on black

 

West Orange Trail – Starting from the Other End

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Pedestrian Bridge Over Apopka's Main Street
Pedestrian Bridge Over Apopka’s Main Street

Saturday presented with a solid drizzle of rain from dawn to dusk and thereafter. What better occasion than to try out some new gear to check how waterproof it really was.

Husband J and I decided a few more  miles on the West Orange Trail would be an appropriate testing ground. But this time, instead of starting in charming Winter Garden, we decided to begin our hike 22 miles away at the other end of the trail, just outside of Apopka. We have a goal of ultimately walking the whole thing in one fell swoop, but before we do so we thought we should have walked all its pieces.

The trailhead on the eastern end is nothing short of unimpressive. Literally nothing but a small sign marks the trail, which runs along a busy commuter road, and it’s hard to tell where the regular sidewalk ends and the trail begins. It’s equally mysterious why that particular point was selected – there’s certainly no distinguishing characteristic. There are a couple of strip malls, populated by places like “Beef O’Brady’s,” Pizza Hut, a grocery store and the inevitable 7-11. And no parking – except for the strip malls.

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After a couple of miles of cars whizzing past, we were glad to turn down a side street where the trail finally diverged from the roads. It wound back behind several schools in a wide concrete band, at one point on a well-built boardwalk that meanders past a deep gully, unusual for Florida. There were some houses tucked behind it and I couldn’t help but wonder what the bear population was. For those of you not from Florida, black bears have developed their own suburbs in all of Orlando’s outlying areas. As the boardwalk ended, we passed a huge Seventh Day Adventist church and several expanses of open land. It was not clear if they are parks, grounds of commercial establishments, or simply placeholders waiting for development. And there is some topography- there is at least one real hill and by the end of he trail, my Map Your Walk said we’d gained a whopping 65 feet.

The trail finally reaches the town of Apopka itself. A pedestrian bridge, shown in the top photo, crosses Main Street. There’s a restaurant called the Catfish House right by the bridge – which looks as though it would be an appropriate place for celebration when we finally do the entire trail. And it looks a lot more interesting than the Duncan Donuts, which appears to be the other food choice.

Next West Orange Trail hike – well, we still have about 12 or so miles before we’ve walked all of its bits and pieces. I’m hoping for a little less 4 wheeled traffic on the next part. As for the gear – it worked admirably. Patagonia Alpine climbing guide pants repelled water just as advertised and my new hiking boots – yes, after five years I have a new pair of Renegades by Lowa – continue to get broken in. And just as well – because the weather reports for Iceland – where I will report from next week – indicate snow every day!

Random Thoughts Of a Flatlander in Training

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The Recalcitrant iPad
The Recalcitrant iPad

Some of these thoughts didn’t surface while actually  running, stair climbing or the like, but since those activities occupy a lot of my time, they were certainly in close proximity.

1. Technology baffles. Of all places and times, yesterday at the hair salon – after a morning run (despite appearances, aspiring climbers get their hair done too), my previously faithful iPad informed me that it had finished updating and would I like to activate it. As I hadn’t updated anything, I was a bit taken aback, but followed His Highness’s commands and briefly my iPad started working again….only to give me the same message a few minutes later. This time, however, my attempts at activation were met with the ominous response – “activation failed.” At that point I began to wonder if my iPad had been in communication with a neighboring iPad at the salon and they were engaging in concerted activity. A long visit with Apple phone support, involving iTunes and downloads of software updates, proved unsuccessful – leading to that most
frightening experience of the 21st century – a visit to THE GENIUS BAR AT THE APPLE STORE, presently scheduled for Tuesday. But this morning, I pressed the magic buttons again and amazingly – the iPad seems to be working. We’ll see. I’m not canceling my date with Mr. Genius yet.

Parsley and Kale
Parsley and Kale
Turnips from seed...
Turnips from seed…

2. Earth is good. Even though, horror of horrors, our temperatures here in Central Florida dropped into the thirties this week, the vegetable garden is continuing to produce. After a hard and busy week it is amazing the difference that the mere act of pulling weeds can make to your psyche. When people ask me how I can be afraid to peer over a balcony of a New York penthouse, but gazing down the steep pitch of a mountain doesn’t bother me, I answer that it’s the earth. When you’re on a mountain you’re always rooted to the ground. Not so on a steel and concrete structure.

3. Randomness amazes. One of the more interesting features of said vegetable garden is the plethora of plants that come up seemingly out of the blue. But after a few minutes of wonder, you remember, oh yes, I did plant Italian parsley there a couple of years ago. Or, that sorrel must be the remnants of the bitter war I waged with the world’s hugest sorrel plant in 2012 (do you know how few uses there are for sorrel?).  As of now, I have onions that sprouted from last year’s crop; some miscellaneous carrots whose seeds had apparently lain dormant for a while; and flat parsley. Remarkably enough, this gardening technique extends to my composter. One advantage to failing to turn over its contents is you never quite know what might start growing. I’m pretty sure I have bean plants coming up.

4. Iceland is around the corner and Ecuador approaches. Next week this time we’ll be getting out the winter gear and we have to put more money down for the Cotopaxi and Chimborazo trips.  Eyes on those goals. They keep me going every day, together with a healthy dose of randomness.

End Games or Beginnings? Mt Hood.

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On the way to Mt. Hood - photo from a car window

End games. What a great phrase. And it is what I think about as I trudge up the stairs with my backpack to prepare for this summer’s summits.

To remind myself of one of the original reasons I embarked on this journey to Cotopaxi and Chimborazo and what the end game actually is, here’s an account of an unsuccessful trek up Mt. Hood in June 2012.

We had just returned from our hike along the Inca Trail with daughters #1 and #2 in May 2012. But June is a month of brides and we were already scheduled to attend a wedding of a dear friend at the Columbia Gorge Hotel on the Hood River. What could be a more obvious add-on than an attempt on Mt. Hood.

We left the lovely afternoon wedding reception perhaps an hour early and drove off in the general direction of the biggest mountain we could see. Now, we’d been to Mt. Hood before, many years ago when the daughters were small, but that involved a car, a visit with old friends, and lunch at the ski resort. It did not involve ropes, plastic boots or crampons.

This time, we stopped at a grocery store to buy what we thought we might need food wise, and continued on up the winding road featured in the intro scene of the movie of Stephen King’s The Shining. It’s steep and windy and the pine trees lean in at you from both sides of the road. We eventually arrived at the Timberline Lodge, built in 1936. It was constructed entirely by hand, using many craftspeople from Europe, as part of a Depression era Works Progress Administration program. It is perched at the side of Mt. Hood at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, and an entire ski complex has grown up around it. The rooms are small, and retro. No televisions; there are quilts; and the phones have rotary dials.

This was our first experience on ropes and ice. One main guide company leads climbs up Mt. Hood, and they supply most of the equipment, from helmets to plastics boots to ice axes and crampons. Neither husband J nor I had used any such exotic gear before. Kilimanjaro just required leather boots and a strong set of legs.

The first day consisted of skills training. The two of us were the only climbers in our party. Our guide, Phil, was from Ireland, had learned to climb in and around Sheffield, England, where my mother is from, and had trained under classic alpinist climbers in Chamonix.

We knew knew we were off to interesting start when we checked in at the guide office. Just a few days before, an expert climber, climbing solo, had fallen to his death. Some of the guides had been involved in the rescue attempt, and were filling out accident reports as we were signing all of our liability waivers.

We spent several hours on an ice bank behind the hotel learning how to move on rope, self arrest, and the varying types of steps needed to ascend a mountain. Rest step (well, we knew that one from Kili), traversing (ascending steep sections in an s shape), “duck” steps straight up ….all the while remembering to keep that ice axe in your uphill hand.

By early afternoon the sun was beating down and it was time to go back to rest and prepare for our 2 am date with the snowcat that would take us to the point where we would start climbing. Even though it’s a little hard to sleep at 7 pm we managed a couple of hours before we got up at 11:30 – we knew it would take us ages to strap ourselves into all of our unfamiliar equipment without tangling ourselves up in carabiners, climbing harnesses and the like.

We expected problems as soon as the snowcat arrived – and out tumbled three very shaken looking climbers – a middle aged couple with a grandson – who had arrived at the point of departure up the mountain only to decide it was too windy and wet even to attempt a climb. They came down without ever even getting out of the cat! Phil said he had never actually seen that happen before. We had been watching the weather all afternoon and knew things didn’t look promising. We were offered a raincheck (appropriate use of words) but a Florida residence didn’t really lend itself to an impromptu trip up Mt. Hood any time over the next twelve months. We told Phil we recognized the risks and the likelihood we wouldn’t summit, but we wanted to go as far as we could while staying safe.

After we were unceremoniously dumped out of the snowcat at about 8,500 feet, what we didn’t know about mountain climbing became more and more apparent. Winds were gusting up to 50 MPH or so, and we were still struggling to get goggles on over our climbing helmets. That should say it all. Our lack of experience was obvious. The procedure for attaching our ice axes to our packs had become an absolute blank. Phil immediately took off to test the snow and to check conditions – which were awful. It was too soft for crampons. We took off, sinking into snow up to mid calf on most steps. Phil broke trail; I was in the middle; and J was behind me. There were very few other headlamps heading up in the swirling fog/rain/snow, and all I could do was keep watching Phil’s light in front, and follow along in his footsteps.

After several hours, it was clear we hadn’t fitted our boots, pants, and gaiters together properly, and we were getting ice and snow in our socks. My supposedly waterproof gloves were soaking.  And the wind was picking up, close to 60 MPH gusts. Fortunately, it was blowing toward the mountain, or I am convinced I would have been blown off. We started to feel chunks of ice and snow and, I suspect, some rock, hit our helmets,and ultimately reached a point that required crossing a large exposed area. At that point, Phil gave us the best of all guide advice. “We are not going to summit. No one is going to summit tonight. And I can’t keep myself safe and that means I can’t keep you safe.” The follow up was obvious – we had to descend.

As we descended, it became apparent that my short 5’1″ stature made it easier for me to go down – husband J, at 6’2″ and with a much higher center of gravity, had a harder time. I was able to glissade (boot ski) down as the sun rose over Mt. Hood, while he was a ways behind. (Two years later, on Elbrus, he made up for it with a much stronger descent than I!)

As the sun rose, we passed by the ski trail groomers, looking very zen, and could see the untouched ski runs that would would soon be home to the summer ski school skiers of Mt. Hood.

Did I mention that at some point we realized we had managed to lose both of our ice axes?

It’s a summit we didn’t achieve. But we played the end game. That afternoon, after a few hours nap, we found part of the Oregon Trail to hike. End games aren’t ends – they’re beginnings.

Summits – The To Do List

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Part of the broken trekking pole
Part of the broken trekking pole

We have reached that point of every major travel adventure where the to do list seems as daunting and insurmountable as we fear the summits of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo themselves might be. So on Saturday I suggested to husband J, as he struggled with a new computer which seemingly has no spam filter, that perhaps he would feel more organized if he made a list. He didn’t follow this sage advice, and for that matter, neither did I. But I did think about what I would jot down in one of the many notebooks I have left over from the daughters’ school days that I use for such purposes (I can’t bear to throw away unused paper), if I were so inclined.

1. Go to Iceland. Now that may not be first on most people’s list of mountain climbing preparation, but it is a fact that we will be spending five days in Iceland in the beginning of March. And that upcoming adventure has created other subset of to do lists that I won’t even begin to address here.

2. The gear check. This is an inevitable part of any expedition and one that I both anticipate and dread at the same time. Certainly we are in much better shape than we were back on 2011 when we climbed Kilimanjaro but now we have broken gear to deal with and new and unusual gear to get. We are in good shape for crampons, but have never before had to buy any rope. Since the guide company supplies rope I’m still not sure why we have to have our own as well – an emergency supply in case we fall into a crevasse on the way to an outhouse? The possibilities are not reassuring. We have to call Travel Country to see if the balaclava/face mask I ordered has arrived and if climbing helmets in a smaller size are in stock yet. And we have to replace the trekking poles that somehow daughter #1 managed to break on Mt. Washington. I still don’t know how she hiked the last 5 miles not realizing that one pole was 12 inches shorter than the other. And this is just a fraction of the gear issues.

3. Order zinc for lips. As those of you who followed our climb up Mt. Elbrus know, it never occurred to me that my allergies to regular sunscreen meant that I couldn’t use Chapstick with any sort of sun protection. In fact, this didn’t occur to me until I was on the side of the glacier on summit day, realizing that I looked and felt like I had kissed a hot burner on a stove. Never again.

4. Write to do lists for work, training, family and trip. Yes, this is a circular blog post. But I can’t think of any other way to try to have some certainty about what remains to do for the next few months. Should it be one giant list, or multiple lists for each area? I’m trying to make some order out of chaos – but I’m afraid that if I overthink it I’ll be doing the reverse. Wish me luck.

An Ode to Airports – Terminals Aren’t Terminal

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When I started this blog last April, one of my first posts was entitled, “Where am I going and where have I been?” It was made up of exactly one photograph, as at that point I was still working my way through the intricacies of things like figuring out that a tag wasn’t a piece of paper with a price written on it (and was a far cry from a backyard game).

But a layover at the Miami airport this weekend provided the perfect graphic to answer that original question – at least for the next six months. As I looked at exotic destinations on the departures screen, many much more exciting than my 40 minute jaunt back to Orlando, I saw the below:

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Where am I going? Quito, listed there near the bottom. (Or Orlando, depending on your time frame, shown just at the top of the screen.) And where have I been? Well, Raleigh-Durham – where I grew up – appearing right under Quito. (Or Orlando, once again, depending on your frame of reference.) For the record, “Raleigh-Durham” is a misnomer – I grew up in Durham!

Airports are like that. You can smell the adventure waiting at the other end of a flight. I still find it remarkable that 100 plus people can be sent 30,000 feet high at over 500 mph. At an airport, you can sum up the where you are and where you want to be in one screen shot.

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Another example – note the Havana, Cuba destination. I’m not sure I can recall ever before seeing Havana listed on a departure screen, much less right above Houston, Texas. What better way to show a shift in geo-political realities.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my family always arrived at the airport dressed in Sunday best and several hours before any scheduled departure. My brother and I regarded the waiting at the airport as much a part of the trip as the actual journey. I still remember the iconic TWA terminal at JFK, and how slick and modern Dulles Airport was, rising out of what was then a rural area outside of Washington.

Photo by Joe Ravi, lic. CC-BY-SA3.0
Photo by Joe Ravi, lic. CC-BY-SA3.0

As the reality of the Cotopaxi and Chimborazo climbs sets in (right now I am at the slightly terrified stage), I just need to take it one step at a time. And after the training – the next step is going to be at an airport. And whatever happens, I know that when I set foot in one of those ultra modern terminals, it’s not a terminal in the sense of an end. Yes, it will evoke memories of where I’ve been – but even more excitement over where I’m going.