My days. My nights. My life. Lived well.

Not just a country with volcanic activity wreaking havoc on travelers’ plans, Iceland has been an escape for Damon Albarn (who owns a bar in Reykjavik) and the home of Bjork (who, coincidentally, escaped to London). Any time Iceland comes up in conversation with Rob, I’m always spouting off facts I learned when I went there in 2000 for the Iceland Airwaves music festival. So, I found a few pics from my first digital camera ever (which I owned for about a month before taking these), and I assemble them here for you so every time you hear the word Iceland, you’ll now have these random facts bouncing around your head. The only thing the pictures and the facts have in common is Iceland.

1. Because Iceland is so isolated, its gene pool is very pure and homogenized. It was considered a commodity in the late 90’s when the government allowed a company to create a database using health records from the early 20th century onwards. There was a huge ethics battle, and people ended up having to opt-in. They were still able to get over 1/2 of the population to participate. A joint venture with Hoffman- La Roche led to the discovery of new genetic indicators responsible for certain diseases, but no drugs were able to be developed as a result.
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2. Iceland uses a patronymic system for deriving last names. The last name is derived by the name of your father, followed by “son” or “daughter”. So in an Icelandic family, it is possible that 4 family members could have different last names.
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3. It is no surprise that Iceland is rich in clean, geothermal energy. In fact, 80% of Iceland’s energy is clean energy, with fossil fuels only being used to power cars and fishing boats. As a result, there is little pollution.
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4. Iceland’s main international airport was built by the US military during WWII. After the war, it was an important refueling stop for international civil aviation. However, until a new terminal was built, visitors had to go through US military checkpoints. It’s about 45 minutes from Reykjavik and only handles international flights.

In 1981, upon our return from a family trip to Sweden, we had to stop at Keflavik for some sort of emergency landing. At 4 years old, I can vaguely remember the military checkpoints.
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5. Anyone who was hung over on a Saturday with some time to kill in the early-mid 90’s (why, hello there, college) remembers ESPN’s coverage and many reruns of World’s Strongest Man competitions. Iceland dominated the World’s Strongest Man competitions from the mid 80’s to mid 90’s. From 1984 to 1996, Jon Pall Sigmarsson and Magnus ver Magnusson dominated the competition, placing first 8 out of 12 years, and when neither won, they placed second (well, except for 1989, when Sigmarsson placed third). When you remember that the entire population of Iceland is about the same as my hometown metro area, it’s quite a feat.
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You can view these larger over on Flickr. Next up, I’ll get to blogging some of our trip to Japan!

I’ll update more tomorrow, but for now I will give you 3 videos.  Last night while we were sleeping, it stormed more and when we came downstairs today we discovered there had been about 3 inches of water at some point overnight because the carpet was squishy, water was dripping out of computers and stuff had floated and been carried over to other parts of the basement.  It’s been a rough day and with the help of our neighbor Ryan and James and the guys at Five Star here in Indy, we have stuff moved out of the basement and fans and dehumidifiers doing the evaporation work.

And because I don’t want to leave you on a depressing note and for a little perspective (because there are people worse off than we are). Here’s some super cute kitties. note how the one at then end starts growling when they try and move his food while he’s eating. I don’t know how to embed this one, so just click this link: Attack of the Hungry Kittens

Later taters.  I’ll keep you updated.