Archive for September, 2010

In what is either a bold and surreal or a foolhardy and grim travel choice, we have elected to return to Iceland. What would be foolish about that, you might say? If you were me, you might be especially thrilled because Iceland is fast becoming my favorite place ever. But, here’s the thing: we’re going to go in December.

This photo was requested of me yesterday. It’s a pleasure to find it and remember it. It was taken in May of 2001 underneath the Fremont Bridge on Fuji Velvia 50. It’s a 30-second exposure, which I can tell you because 30 seconds is the longest non-bulb exposure my Canon EOS A2 would take. Flash at beginning of exposure, Ben was a real brick, stood really still. I ran in after about 10 seconds and also stood still.

Lucy Bergmann has a problem. Her astrophysicist husband has just been killed, crushed to death by a grand piano while walking around in Amsterdam. His Wile E Coyote-inspired exit leaves Lucy in possession of of his just-clinched proof of extraterrestrial life (as evidenced by pulsing red dots in a computer program, naturally) on a flash drive (no backups, but of course). Lucy adopts the weird obsession of wearing this ‘memory stick’ like a talismanic necklace. Ah. And this is just the first chapter.

Even on a small brochure map, the Loire Valley seems a bit wide-flung, but David and I are well-seasoned road travelers who tend to wipe through a lot of miles in an hour or day. So when we planned out our trip to the Loire Valley this summer, we assumed we’d hit the highlights: salty Muscadet on the coast (maybe some bruised-looking sea clouds for good measure); a dabble of honeyed Vouvray; a dalliance with the sere perfection of Sancerre on the eastern end. As it turned out, we never got more than 20 miles away from our inn near Saumur during our whole wine trip.

Emerging from my dazed over-stimulated WOW after several weeks, I can finally process the caliber of the stuff I saw floating around Europe for a month with David. First up is Djúpavík, an almost intolerably photogenic and surreal abandoned fishing village in far northwestern Iceland. To get there you drive along the Arctic Ocean on a tiny road and you feel like you’ve discovered something no one else has ever seen.

This used to be my front door. It’s in Edgbaston, a neighborhood in Birmingham, UK. Birmingham is difficult for me because I like it okay but it does not like me. For one thing, when I lived there, it rained every day. Did I mention that? It is actually not an exaggeration. I got over that, but then when I finally made it back for a “hey, Brum, what’s up?” visit this past June, it pulled a fast one on me.