Blatant Commercial Plug

Last month's trip to Iceland cost me almost as much in winter gear as it did in hotels, airfare and guided tours combined. That fact still astonishes me. I'm amazed that I convinced myself that I needed special winter gear for a place barely colder than my home of Arlington, Virginia just because the country I was headed to had "Ice" in its name. After all, I spent almost 10 years in Syracuse and Cooperstown in upstate New York where it snowed almost daily and where the temperature sometimes would not exceed freezing for a month or more at a time. Heck, I used to walk between the two houses that served as the office where I worked in temperatures way below freezing without a jacket several times a day.

Who knows, maybe I'm getting soft in my middle (hopefully) age here and just have a need to stay warm all the time. Or maybe I was just skeptical that the insulating layer of blubber I've been working on for the last few years wouldn't stand up to a few hours outdoors walking on a glacier or something like that. Regardless of the reason, I decided caution was the better part of valor and shopped and shopped and shopped for some winter gear before heading north on December 10 of last year. I thought that my story here might be worth telling. I'll be very brief, I promise.

First let me say this stuff is difficult to shop for. All the people that work at the stores we went to are way into hiking or mountain biking or skiing or trekking or whatever (which automatically intimidates me because they are probably way fitter and more environmentally responsible than me) and there are so many shirt, jacket and bottom wear possibilities that I just didn't know where to start asking questions. The whole keeping warm outdoors concept seems to be one of layering but without context of past outdooring experiences (and let's face it, it's me we are talking about here) it's next to impossible to ask for help without any sort of prior experience. I just wanted someone to tell me what would keep a 205 pound, 45 year old man who generally runs hot what would keep him warm for a few hours outside at about 64 degrees latitude. Is that so much to ask? Apparently so.

REI. Patagonia. Eddie Bauer. Hudson Trail Outfitters. L. L. Bean. Arcteryx. Mammut. I checked out all these brands or places in an effort to find what I thought I probably didn't need anyway. All I needed was a few hours warmth out of my clothing. How difficult would that be? After probably altogether too much looking, I settled on a variety of brands (including a Washington Wizards knit hat purchased at the NBA store on line) for my trip. But I felt most comfortable going with Patagonia for my outer layers, which featured a Super Cell Waterproof Jacket over a Nano Puff Hoody up top and some Torrentshell Stretch Pants to protect whatever kind of jeans or underlayers I decided to wear. They were a bit more expensive but it seemed based on talking to about everyone in outdoor wear in northern Virginia that you got what you paid for. I felt this stuff would keep me dry and protected from the wind and would provide lightweight upper body protection against the cold. That was the theory at least.

Our first day in Iceland featured a three hour whale watching tour on the northern Atlantic Ocean. Of course, I came equipped in all my new gear which I was convinced would keep me cozy against whatever the icy sea had to offer. I was wrong. It was so freaking cold that I had to pack into a full body boat suit (for lack of a better term) provided by the boat which was pretty much like wearing three or four sleeping bags. I've never been warmer in my life, even if I did feel like I was ready for a cameo on The Deadliest Catch and there was some strange smell in there that I tried to ignore. I was finally convinced I needed some warm weather gear for this trip. I just wasn't sure it was what I bought. I was freezing in my new stuff.

But the next day we took a trip to Gullfoss (which translates to Gold Falls), a waterfall about an hour and a half northeast of Reykjavik. Considering our trip that day included four outdoor stops to commune with nature, including the falls, I of course wore all my new Patagonia stuff. I spent enough on it after all. When we got to the falls, it was just after noon, or about an hour after sunrise, and it was cold and the wind was howling. I mean really blowing hard, like you had to lean into it to walk straight and clomping down the wood staircase one step at a time was difficult because the wind threatened to take you, your companion or an article of clothing away in a particularly vicious gust now and then. 

As we approached the falls, which features two drops totalling just over 100 feet in height and which are spectacularly beautiful, it got so cold and windy that the spray from the falls froze in the air and the wind blew it right at you as if in an attempt to get you away and back to our nice warm tour bus. But amazingly I didn't feel any of that in my Patagonia gear. I mean I felt the pressure from the wind and I heard the ice mist hitting my jacket and pants but no wind got through those clothes I was wearing and I couldn't feel any wetness from the spray on my body. It was that moment that I thought I had made a good choice in shopping before this trip and that I really did need to do it.

I am sure most of the other brands would have kept me as dry and warm as Patagonia but I know for sure I'm sold on this brand. It's been pretty darned cold here the last week or so in the D.C. area and I can tell you I love my Patagonia stuff as much here as I did in Iceland. But I'll never forget that experience at Gullfoss. I'm glad I was well equipped. So thank you, Patagonia. Here ends my shameless blatant commercial plug. I feel it's deserved.

Gullfoss without me in the way. So much more beautiful.

The Best Hot Dog In Town

One of the reasons I love traveling so much is that it allows me to sample some food that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to eat in my sheltered little world around Washington, D.C. When I first booked my recent trip to Iceland and started hunting around for what new culinary delicacies I might encounter there, I was intrigued. While I had no desire to sample any hakarl (a type of kidney-less shark that has to be fermented for six months before it is edible) or rams' testicles, I thought I might get to try some puffin, some Icelandic lobster or maybe even some whale, although the ethical issues with whale meat might have scared me off. In my wildest imaginings, I had visions of McDonald's serving Puffin McMuffins for breakfast. That's before I knew McDonald's had come and gone to Iceland, apparently scared off by the country going almost bankrupt in 2008.

But between a packed itinerary for that vacation and a lot of other goings on in life, I just didn't see that a lot of research into food in Iceland would pay off much. So while I ended up sampling skyr, Icelandic meat soup, rye bread baked underground using geothermal heat and a bag or two of paprika flavored potato chips, I missed out on puffin, lobster, whale and some foods that would literally make my stomach turn. I regret not spending some time looking into restaurants before arriving since our one excursion to an actual restaurant, Icelandic Fish and Chips, was pretty much as disappointing as you could get.

But despite all that, there was one food experience in Iceland I was determined to NOT miss out on: eating a hot dog on the street. That's right, a street hot dog. Apparently, Icelanders are nuts for hot dogs to the point of it being a bit of a national obsession. And if you are going to have a hot dog in Iceland, you have to do it at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a hot dog stand located in what looks like a triangular leftover parcel of land a couple of blocks from the harbor in downtown Reykjavik. There are three other locations in the city but the one to go to is the original at Tryggvatagata 1.

It has been reported that greater than 50% of all Icelanders have eaten a hot dog from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, which translates to "the best hot dog in town." How someone came up with this statistic, I have no idea. In August 2006, the British newspaper The Guardian named it the best hot dog stand in Europe, for what that's worth. And if all that weren't enough, apparently Madonna, James Hetfield and Bill Clinton have all stopped by for a bite. With this sort of mythology surrounding it, and having already hit up Tail o' The Pup and Pink's on separate trips to Los Angeles, I knew I had to stop by before we left town.

As luck would have it, we stumbled upon the stand quite by accident on our first day in country after getting off our non-whale watching trip at a time when we were just looking for a snack to tide us over before our jet-lagged bodies gave out and we succumbed to sleep. It was cold and snowy and already really dark at 4 p.m. and either the weather or the hour had scared away the line that everything I had read about this place said we would encounter. Admittedly, two other people showed up right after we got there but when we ordered two hot dogs with everything, we were the only ones there.

Ordering with everything is supposed to be the way to go here so we complied with local custom. Everything in this case means raw onions, fried onions, ketchup, remoulade and sweet Icelandic mustard. About 15 seconds after ordering, I was presented with two hot dogs which looked decidedly not like they had "everything" on them. I had apparently missed the two applications of onions which were concealed below the frank but indeed everything was there. It all happened so fast. Finding the only table there covered with a thin film of snow, we elected to eat standing up.

The hot dogs we ate here were a quick cheap meal that provided a bit of warmth both in terms of the temperature of the food and the feeling that we were doing something uniquely Icelandic and they were very welcome. The taste itself was not as salty as a regular hot dog, either through a lack of salt in the sausage or through being masked by the sweetness of the mustard, which definitely shone through the sauces. There was also something crunchy in the toppings which was either the raw onions, or something in the remoulade. The texture was almost like tiny sushi roe combined with Rice Krispies. Not as sketchy as it sounds.

I've eaten a lot of hot dogs in my life. Possibly too many. And I'm just not sure I have a perfect hot dog. Most hot dogs I've eaten have been microwaved or boiled in my own place and slathered with mustard and sauerkraut. I just haven't had a lot of restaurant dogs. By default, this was without a doubt the best I had in Iceland. I'm not sure it beats Pink's for flavor but the no wait line here vs. the hour and a half wait for a hot dog on a hot Los Angeles May night was definitely better. More than anything else, I feel stopping by here was something that had to be done to feel like I really had been to Iceland and I'm glad we could fit it into what was an extremely packed agenda. I'll go back for another next time I'm in town.

Black Death

Sometimes it seems like half of what I write about in this blog is food and booze. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I wouldn't have traveled to Kentucky this past fall if it weren't for bourbon and I wouldn't have had the same memories of Bavaria if I hadn't eaten so many sausages and drank so much beer. And so I think it's appropriate that my recent trip to Iceland gave me a great story involving both food and booze. This post deals with the booze part of that couple; a post covering the food will follow very soon.

Different parts of our globe are often identified with the distilled spirits they produce. At least for me they are; I just can't separate the booze from the geography I guess. When I think Russia, I think vodka. Scotland has Scotch, Kentucky has bourbon, the Caribbean has rum, Mexico has tequila and mezcal and on and on and on. Six months ago, I never would have identified Iceland with a distilled spirit. After having spent about a half a week on that volcanic rock in the Atlantic, now I do. Now when I think Iceland, I think brennivin.

Two shots and a water, as recommended.

Iceland, like a number of other countries, has had an interesting history of temperance and alcohol bans over its history. Just like in the United States, the country experienced a period of prohibition beginning in the early 20th Century. The initial period of prohibition lasted from 1915, when all alcohol was banned (booooooooo!), until 1921, when Spanish refusal to purchase Icelandic fish unless Iceland imported Spanish wines forced the reinstatement of wine as a legal beverage. Way to go, Spain! Woo hoo!

The re-introduction of sprits to Icelandic society was next. A national referendum on prohibition in 1935 allowed the legal sale of distilled beverages in the country for the first time in 20 years and at that point, most of what the temperance movement in Iceland had sought to ban was now legal. This is where brennivin takes off, but I'll come back to that in a paragraph or so.

I guess once wine and spirits were legalized, both the drinkers and the non-drinkers quit arguing for a while, preferring the status quo to continued struggle, because the sale of beer remained banned until 1989. No, that's not a typo. Icelanders lived without legal beer, that most wonderful of all drinks, for an astounding 74 years and two months until March 1, 1989 (now known as Beer Day). Ironically, the straw that broke the camel's back there was the Minister of Justice's 1985 ruling that bars could not add liquor to legal non-alcoholic beer to simulate real beer. I guess the silliness of the whole endeavor was sort of obvious after that.

Here goes nothing. Skal!

Once the ban on spirits was lifted in Iceland, it was time for brennivin to step forward as Iceland's national drink. Brennivin is technically a schnapps, which is a fermented beverage where the base of the alcohol (in this case potatoes) is fermented with the liquor's flavoring as part of the fermentation process, as opposed to being added later. The primary flavor in brennivin is caraway seeds, although there are other herbs and spices in there, most notably cumin and angelica. Sounds yummy, right? 

Folks in Iceland started distilling brennivin as soon as the government of Iceland told them that they could but the packaging was a little bit different than it is today. The current packaging features a mouthwash-green bottle (brennivin itself is clear) with a black label featuring the silhouette of Iceland on it; the original bottle label was also black but it prominently displayed a skull and crossbones label. Both the black color and the ominous label were designed to discourage people from drinking it (clearly not the American version of capitalism). The label had the exact opposite effect to what was intended. Brennivin sold well and it ended up with the nickname "black death" which has stuck to this day. 

After learning about black death, I knew I couldn't leave Iceland without a taste, so on our first night in country, exhausted after an overnight flight which featured about five hours of uneasy sitting up sleeping, I walked into a bar on Laugavegur (Reykjavik's main shopping drag) for a shot (or two). My choice of establishments was Lebowski Bar, which as the name suggests, is dedicated to all-things-dude inspired by the Jeff Bridges movie The Big Lebowski. While I understand there are many folks out there who love this movie, I'm not a Big Lebowski guy so to me it was a bowling themed bar, complete with moving neon bowling balls and pins on the outside and Brunswick plastic laminate bar tops. I got it. But I was there for the brennivin, not the decor.    

Brennivin is kept chilled so it was not visible walking into the bar but I knew they would have it. My request for two shots of brennivin was granted, with a question from the bartender: did I want a glass of water with my brennivin? After asking if I needed one, and being assured by the bartender that he always keeps a glass of water handy when drinking brennivin, I agreed to two shots and a water chaser. Time to taste.

I have to say my expectations were pretty darned low here and they were exceeded mightily. I expected any liquor with a nickname like black death to be awful but I was pleasantly surprised. If I can paint any sort of picture as to the flavor, I'd say it was pretty much like drinking rye bread, a result more of the caraway than anything else; the cumin and other flavorings did not make themselves evident to my weak taste buds. While rye bread flavored alcohol might not sound that thrilling, I was really OK with it. I can think of way worse things to drink. And brennivin is 75 proof so its relatively low alcohol content makes it really drinkable with no burn going down the throat. I'm sure I could down a lot of this in a night in Reykjavik if I needed to prove my worth to Icelanders. And I did not need the chaser. After my two shots were down, I left the water as poured on the bar and walked back into the dark and cold, ready to return to my hotel confident I'd crossed one of the essential experiences off my Iceland list.

Oh, and they sell this stuff really cheap at the airport. I have a half liter chilling in my fridge as I write this. Come over and taste it with me if you are ever close by. Skal!

I like to stop at the duty free shop. At least I do in Iceland when there's brennivin to bring back!

Glacier Walking 101

Despite the lack of an Aurora Borealis sighting, I had an incredible time in Iceland. Every day over there included either some unique Icelandic moment or an "I never thought I would do this in my life ever" experience. While the first and second days we were in Iceland were amazing, by far the best day was the last full day we spent in country when we headed to the south coast of the island and went for a stroll on a glacier for a couple of hours. This is definitely something I never thought I would do in my life.

Iceland is the 17th largest (of 45 if you include Monaco and Vatican City) country in Europe but it is home to more glacial areas than all the other countries in Europe combined. A lot of this obviously has to do with its position on the globe, although there are parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland that are further north. More than 10 percent of the island's total area is covered in glaciers with about 80 percent of that total concentrated in the glacier Vatnajökull on the southeast of the country. We didn't make it that far on our trip.

Our destination Friday morning was the glacier with the almost unpronounceable name of Eyjafjallajökull, specifically the spur of that glacier named Sonheimajökull, which is somehow way less of a tongue twister despite its 14 letters. If the name Eyjafjallajökull sounds familiar at all, it is because it sits on top of the volcano of the same name which erupted in April of 2010 ceasing all air travel over the north Atlantic Ocean for six days. Eyjafjallajökull is by no means the largest volcano in Iceland (the whole country is volcanic, after all); its neighbor, Katla, last blew in 1918 and is overdue for an eruption. Our guide for the day told us an eruption from Katla has the potential to halt all air traffic in the northern hemisphere for six months!

The trip to Sonheimajökull takes about two and a half hours from Reykjavik, including the last five kilometers on a snow, ice and slush covered gravel road which our 15 passenger van handled with alarming ease. I'm not sure what kind of tires that thing had on it, but our guide and driver, Atli, didn't seem to have any problems, even going up hill or down some pretty steep slopes with 90 degree bends immediately at the bottom. I spent five winters driving to work in snow every day in upstate New York and I was impressed.

Crampons on! Ready to go!

Once we reached the end of the road, a parking lot full of other vehicles smaller and larger than our van, it was time to gear up. We zipped up our jackets, pulled up hoods, donned gloves and were handed an ice axe (never really thought I'd use that term in my blog) for the walk over snow covered volcanic rock and debris to the edge of the glacier. There we stopped and learned how to strap on our crampons to our boots and were ready to ascend onto the blue ice of the glacier itself. The crampons themselves were sharp but very flimsy looking and looked almost like the old time roller skates that you tied on over your sneakers. Not super encouraging.

Glaciers, despite their solid appearance, are anything but a stationary block of ice. They are constantly flowing on a layer close to the earth that is either liquid or semi-frozen and they contain tunnels and voids that change as the glacier moves. Our guide gave us one rule to follow before we stepped onto the glacier: follow in his footsteps exactly. I wondered if this word of caution was alarmist until, as if to prove his point, he poked around the glacier with his five foot long walking stick and then managed to submerge the entire length in snow, explaining that the hole he had just found may go as deep as 20 meters (over 65 feet). Point taken. I'm following him from now on.

Our guide, Atli, demonstrating how deep the snow is in spots by burying his walking stick into the snow.

The trip to the top of the glacier was gorgeous, a nice slow pace with plenty of stops to look around at the Game of Thrones beyond the Wall landscape punctuated by a mini rock avalanche that made us glad we were not close to the cliff where the rock fell. We mostly walked on snow covered areas and stayed in a straight line but walking on the clear ice was amazing; our crampons served us just fine. We managed to find an ice tunnel to walk through and saw diagonal striations in the ice that were caused by the movement of the glacier.

The color of the ice was otherworldly. It really is noticeable as completely different from the color of regular ice. There was a frozen lake at the bottom of the glacier that looked nothing like the glacier itself.

We got to the glacier at about 2:30 p.m. so after an hour to 90 minutes on the glacier, the sun was setting and we turned around it was getting to be time to walk back down in the fading daylight / early night (yes, early night after sunset at 3:20 p.m.!!!). So after some last pictures at the top of the glacier, we started back downhill.

The view from the top.

Walking uphill on solid ice is pretty easy: gravity works with you and I tend to look at the ground and not focus on the top of the ascent since I like to see where I am placing my feet, especially if not looking where I am going means I might drop down into a snow filled ice tunnel. Turning around and walking down is a whole different experience. My first reaction when I turned and started heading down what seemed to me to be a very steep and very slippery ice slope was "how the hell did we get up here and where's the path home?"

Looking downhill allows you to see all the curves and shapes in the glacier. It is simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, knowing that one false step, one slip, will send you on a long slide down over very hard surfaces into a frozen lake (in other words, pretty much sure death). I, of course, elected to walk down immediately behind our guide, meaning if one of my fellow tour takers slipped and fell, I'd be in danger of being taken out as well. I stepped very carefully and firmly on the way down, driving the spikes of my crampons with purpose until we got off the steepest slopes, which seemed sometimes too steep to hold me on a series of metal spikes.

Ultimately we all made it down off the glacier without slipping, although we did have one fall once we got back onto more solid snow covered volcanic gravel. We arrived back at the parking lot in the fading light of the day, when the low cloud covered sun made the almost monochromatic landscape totally black, white and gray. The couple of hours we spent walking up and down an ice slope, at its heart such a simple exercise, was literally one of the most exciting things I have done in recent memory. Not that we needed it to salvage the trip or anything, but that day made the whole trip worthwhile. I won't soon forget it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the company, Icelandic Mountain Guides, that led our tour. We didn't pick these guys (they were handed to us as part of our IcelandAir holiday package) but we couldn't have ended up in more capable hands. In addition to showing me an experience I won't ever forget, we soaked up a ton of knowledge from our guide, Atli, on the drive out and back. I learned more than I could possibly hope to about Iceland in less than four days and we got so much out of that tour. I would recommend anyone looking to go on a glacier walk to seek this company out. They were incredible.

The House Always Wins

OK, so let's get this out there right away: I didn't see the Aurora Borealis while I was in Iceland this past week. My $2,000 gamble didn't pay off. I'll have to try again some other time. And no doubt I will someday, whether it be in Iceland or somewhere else. I'll get to see the Northern Lights eventually, even if I have to station myself somewhere for a month or so and do nothing else but look at the sky every evening. But that's a long way away in all likelihood.

I usually do a fairly good job of setting my expectations at a realistic level for something like finding the Northern Lights where there are so many variables in play which are totally out of my control: the right solar conditions, the right temperature and clear skies are definitely conditions which I cannot even influence in any way. And so when I boarded my flight at Dulles Airport Tuesday night I was prepared for failure and the disappointment that would bring. I knew picking such a short window of time meant everything would have to fall into place perfectly.

My itinerary for this trip included only a three night stay and I knew the first night was probably a loss because I would surely just pass out early that day due to the lack of sleep on the overnight flight Tuesday evening. But Wednesday's activities brought a glimmer of hope. I took a whale watching trip that day just after noon (or since we didn't see any whales, it was basically just a boat trip). While looking hopelessly at the Atlantic Ocean for anything resembling a whale, we met Steve from the Isle of Sheppey in England and his wife, Anna, from Belarus (by Steve's own admission a total eastern European mail order bride scenario but it worked out - they just celebrated their tenth anniversary).

Steve and Anna had seen the Aurora Borealis two nights before just outside of Reykjavik. I had a chance between not seeing whales to check out the pictures Steve had taken and hope that I would have a chance to capture some similar images. The Northern Lights usually appear in pictures as mostly green and yellow waves of particles across the sky and Steve's pictures looked substantially similar to those posted on Northern Lights tour websites. But his account of seeing the Lights in person differed from his photographs. While his pictures showed a lot of green in the sky, he described only white lights, explaining that he was told to take photographs using an eight second exposure on his camera which would produce the signature colors of the Lights. I never really thought those photographs were taken as anything more than a single quick shutter click, but I'll surely remember Steve's story if I ever do get to experience it myself. I went to bed that night cautiously optimistic. I kept the curtains in my room open just in case the sky lit up in the night (it didn't).

Special Tours: Not so special last Thursday night.

The first thing I did the next morning when I got up was to check the Aurora Forecast on the Icelandic Meteorological Office's webpage. While not ideal, the forecast showed the possibility of some clear skies later that evening just west of Reykjavik, meaning over the ocean. Fortunately, I had scheduled a night Northern Lights by Boat tour that night as part of my vacation package so maybe there would be some hope. I set out on a most of the day bus tour to Iceland's Golden Circle with my fingers crossed that I'd get a break that night.

The Golden Circle is composed of three natural sites: Lake Thingvellir, a site of historical and geological importance to the Icelanders; Gullfoss, a 100 foot high waterfall; and Geysir, one of the first geysers ever to be discovered (and the namesake for all those that followed). The scenery was incredible but the tour got back a little late, so we took a cab downtown to get some dinner in plenty of time to catch our boat. Excitedly, we asked the cab driver if she thought we would see the Northern Lights on our tour. The answer was a flat "no, it's not cold enough." And if that didn't dash my hopes enough, they were killed when we got to the very imaginatively named "Special Tours" company office and found out the tour had been cancelled due to windy conditions. Better safe than sorry I guess but there went one of my two chances.

Gazing hopelessly up at the Iceland sky Friday night.

So then it was down to Friday, my last day in Iceland and my last shot at the Aurora Borealis. Friday gave me the best shot at a spectacular sighting because I planned to get out of Reykjavik and away from the city's light pollution. But after a long drive out of town, a few hours strolling around a glacier and a quick traditional Icelandic meal, our tour guides declared the sky too cloudy and there was no way would see the Lights that night. Strike three. I was out. No Northern Lights. Not on this trip.

I'm glad I went to Iceland, even if the primary reason for me going never panned out. The country is beautiful and I'm glad my introduction to the place occurred in mid-December. I really did keep the hotel room curtains open all three nights I was in country in hopes that I would wake up at some point in the night to a fantastic light show. It never happened and my disappointment was honestly almost palpable. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am committed to try again. It may not be soon and it may not be in Iceland but I'll be back to look up at the night sky again someday.

Iceland's night sky, Friday December 13, 2013. Yes, this is a real photograph.

The $2,000 Gamble

At a little after 7:30 p.m. tomorrow (weather permitting), a plane that I will be on will be leaving Dulles Airport and heading north. Way north. Further than I have even been by about two full degrees of latitude. The furthest north I have ventured in my life prior to my trip tomorrow was in the year 2000, when I traveled by car to Jyväskylä, Finland on my summer of '00 Alvar Aalto pilgrimage. When I land in Reykjavik, Iceland Wednesday morning, I'll be closer to the north pole than I have ever been before.

So I know what you are thinking: it's late fall (almost winter in fact) about two weeks before Christmas and you are heading somewhere cold? Yep, that's right. I know most people at this time of year are thinking somewhere in the Caribbean or Florida. Not me. I'm going to a country where the temperatures at this time of year hover right around 32 degrees fahrenheit pretty much continuously and where there are fewer than five hours of light in the day. Sounds fun, right? I'm really looking forward to it. This has in many ways been a long time coming.

This short trip is going to be packed: a little over three days with four organized tours in and around the Reykjavik area. Before this week is over, I'll have been on two boats; walked on a glacier; toured national parks; and hopefully will understand a lot more about a country that as a kid, I always wanted to visit for some reason. I always used to write stories when I was in school in England that had characters living in Iceland.

My main hope on this trip, however, is that I will get to see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, a natural light display caused near the polar regions of the Earth by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. The phenomenon causes bands of colored light to illuminate the sky and is especially visible on cold clear nights. It is considered one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and it is without a doubt the singular inspiration for this quick trip north. I'm hoping for clear skies all week and temperatures in the high 20s.

I think we got a sweet deal on this trip. I managed to pick a packaged vacation from IcelandAir with our non-stop flight, three nights' hotel and four tours (including some meals) for about 38 cents less than $1,000. Then somehow, someway, I managed to convince myself I needed new boots, socks, base layers, fleece outer layers, gloves, coat, a storm shell (pants and coat) and hat (Wizards hat, of course) which set me back almost as much as the trip itself. Now it's less of a sweet deal but it's not like I will never use the clothing I have bought ever again. I'm hoping the gamble is worth it. The weather forecast predicts cloudy skies every day so I'm not super optimistic. If I manage to see the Aurora Borealis at all, I'll consider it money well spent. And if I don't, I'm sure I will have a great time anyway. I'm just hoping for a payoff worth more than $2,000.