Give Me a Bridge

I told Erika not to expect much, just a few pictures with captions. However, I find myself distinctly circumlocutory and as such I’ll be breaking up this post into two or three parts. Partly so I don’t overwhelm you, dear reader, and partly so I can go to bed.

The fjord I drove under then around

I’ll be honest with you, my first day adventuring in Iceland was a bust. Rather jet lagged, I decided a short trip keeping to the west coast would be advisable. I decided to go to Snæfellsjökull, the volcano which inspired Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (I’m rather familiar with the work, having seen the Wishbone episode). It’s the caves you see, people go in them. Towards the magma.

So I’m driving north along the coast, loving it, taking in the ocean/mountain view. Then comes the tunnel. As a Pennsylvanian, I’ve always been quite comfortable with tunnels; never before has one bothered me. Not even that one on the Montour Trail that you run through in complete darkness. I mean, sometimes you feel like you might get murdered in there, but never that it would collapse on you. But this thing is different beast all together. Who needs Snæfellsjökull? We’ve got Journey to the Center of Hell right here. It’s going down. Tunnels shouldn’t do that. They should go through. Especially when you’re already driving at sea level. I’m driving under the ocean, and apparently everyone is okay with this. I might have been able to handle even that but for the overabundance of SOS phones and fire extinguishers. Cleary it’s good to have them, but every hundred meters betrays a worrisome lack of confidence in its structural integrity. And I’m still going down. I have running through my mind that terrible Stallone movie where he’s trying to escape a collapsed and flooding Lincoln Tunnel. This is obviously going to happen to me, but as far as I can tell there is no emergency egress here. Seven minutes and many Hail Mary’s later, I finally make the surface. And you know what? They charge me 1000 krónur. It’s like paying to go to scary movie. It makes no sense. It reminded me a lot of that time when Kathlene and I got stuck in a flea market on the highway outside of Juárez. It was distressing while it was happening, and then afterward and even stronger was the terror of having to go back through. Fortunately, like Juárez, I found an alternate route home. It was 53 minutes longer, but pretty and totally worth it. Life lesson: never take the Chunnel, there’s no way I could handle that.

See that drop of blood denoting where I am? In English, too.

There are these information signs along the side of the highways here that tell you a bit about the area, history, geology, activities, etc. I decide to stop at one shortly after the tunnel incident. Is it something interesting about the mountain range? The quaint fishing village? No. It’s about Axlar-Björn, Iceland’s most famous serial killer. I’m on his home turf. Fantastic. Sure, he’s long dead, but still. This information did not make me feel better later when I thought I had a flat tire and there was no town in sight. I thought I was going to have to walk to Axlar-Björn’s farmstead and take my chances. At this point I’m three hours out of Reykjavík, not the short trip I thought it would be. It was fine, I didn’t have a flat. I also didn’t make it to Snæfellsjökull due to impassable road conditions.

Anticlimactic you say? Yep. It was.

Sunset you say? High noon.

Afterword:  

Reading over this, I realize that I’ve travelled through the Lincoln Tunnel multiple times without ever being concerned about collapse, flooding, and imminent death. It’s probably because it’s finished, and doesn’t have the uneven earthen walls resembling the Dwarves’ mine in Snow White. Perhaps I could handle the Chunnel after all.

Oh, and I even tried to take my first selfie for you guys... 

...as Andy would say, "Liz, you're so defeated."