Everett Ó CillÃn (they/them) is a curator, organizer, and adventure cyclist currently based in Eugene, Oregon. As a co-founder of the Radical Adventure Riders, Board Member with the Oregon Timber Trail Alliance, WeGotNext Ambassador, and Bikepacking Roots Community Steward Everett seeks to foster community and connection through bike travel and stewardship. Join us as we talk to Everett about their 1500+ mile bikepacking expedition across Iceland.
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Is green a favorite color of yours Everett is I didn’t uh I didn’t really include it in this presentation it was just getting a little long but uh I was collecting portraits of moss during my entire trip and I’ve been Moss for Halloween or Stone eater for Halloween for the last
Like three years oh nice did you just use the artificial Moss you can buy from Hobby Lobby I I sustainably harvest a little bit here and there I collected a bunch when I was in Iceland too to make this tea um which was really delightful yeah let’s let’s do it all
Right well welcome everyone my name is Eric I’m Travis and this is our webinar with Everett kilan Killian about their trip to Iceland and bike packing and Moss we also wanted to thank our sponsors tamom bicycle good coffee coffee in Portland biscuit worldwide yeah good coffee and
Biscuits if you’re in the Portland area come buy their store and and pick up some though grind it fresh right there it smells delicious in there um so ever we’d love for you to introduce yourself and tell us all about Iceland sure um as mentioned my name is
Everett and um I’m coming to you from uh just south of the other Portland um in Oregon and um I just moved here to Eugene um about a week before I left for my trip so uh I’m kind of just getting settled here and have um really enjoyed
Getting to know this area kind of just jumped right in uh I think I was back in the United States for about three hours before I ended up in southern Oregon at the board retreat for the Oregon Timber Trail uh so it’s really just kind of
Been one thing after the other but it’s great should I just go ahead and dive in yeah I would say dive in and we just want to let folks know that if you have questions throughout the presentation you can just throw that into chat um and
We will be able to answer or ever will be able to answer those questions for you and otherwise we’ll uh have questions at the end as well but we’ll try to address reasonable questions like within the context of the discussion right right as they’re being uh
Entered yeah and um yeah if folks have questions I’ll try to catch some of them as we go um it’s kind of a long trip so uh I’ll I guess I’ll go ahead and get started um but yeah my name is Everett and um I am a cyclist and a curator and
Um I’ve kind of found a way to bring those things together in my life in some very interesting ways especially over the last decade or so um and I’ve been putting together these uh Expedition exhibitions or exhibition Expeditions it really varies depending upon how I
Remember to say it but um where I take different um like art installations out in the outdoors or phenomena or points of interest and I like to link them together and kind of create a route the same way that I would do an exhibition
Um so this route um is a format in that way as well so I’ll go ahead and start this up and share my screen let’s see okay I am a presenting using a different format that I’ve used in the past so uh thank you for your patience and uh let’s see works
Great um Can folks see that okay there we are yeah we’re we’re going okay um so yeah I uh decided to call the project water weather willingness uh because we crossed a lot of fairies it is a very uh moist atmosphere out in Iceland there is water absolutely
Everywhere I don’t think that I have ever traveled with only one water bottle before but here we are um luckily there’s enough streams and if you carry a filter you can kind of just scoop and sip uh pretty much the whole way um and yeah the weather is its
Own character um in this country it kind of you kind of start to befriend it and talk to it shout at it um which a lot of cyclists especially if you’re a touring cyclist you’re probably used to that um so yeah um so I have a a way of planning routes
That is a a a little over the top maybe um I kind of create these like almost CSI level information boards that I take up like a whole wall in my apartment or my office um and I put up every different type of map that I think that
I’ll be using or referencing during the trip and kind of just like to sit with it and live with it for a while um it’s nice to be able to kind of just like walk by these things so that uh when you’re actually out there and you’re on
Route you kind of have this like reference point at least for me in the back of my head where I’m like oh okay I’m at this Bend in the uh Fjord or I’m crossing over this part of the glacier and I can kind of see it in my head
Which makes me just have a little bit more comfort and a sense of safety while I’m out um in unpredictable situations calculated situations and so uh this route started off like this so this is my um old apartment in Santa Cruz um where I was living prior to moving here to Oregon
And uh so this is kind of the board in the background here and I do a lot of research for projects like this and I’m a huge nerd like I mentioned I’m a curator by trade so I like to um do a lot of like background looking into interesting
Places to go and to visit I’ve done a couple of different um uh exibition Expeditions uh over on the left here is you’ll see this kind of like Spiral Jetty is an art installation by um Robert Smithson um that a friend of mine and I did around the Great Salt Lake we
Basically found all these different outdoor installations and made a map and took a week kind of like uh hunting down these art installations in the middle of nowhere and it was a really nice experience um did this artist residency in Joshua Tree so I rode from Los Angeles out to Joshua Tree
To stay in this little uh hatch space hatch uh situation it was kind of like this little artist Colony out in the middle of the desert um so I kind of followed a similar format that I’ve done in the past for this and so these are uh just some of the books that
I use to reference this as kind of a mixture of um contemporary art books and poetry um Eileen miles is one of my favorite poets um and her work kind of has a lot of intersections with um this artist named Ronnie horn um who uh installation the
Library of water is what I based this entire route on I think there’s yeah her books in there too and if anybody’s interested in any of these books I’m happy to send some links um so this is the background map for the library of water um it’s a series of uh
Columns of water that were from core samples taken from Iceland’s five major glaciers so you can kind of see um where those samples were taken or where these orange bits are and they correspond with each of these uh columns here so each region has a different kind of sediment
And I’ll talk about that a little bit later uh when we get to the library of water in that ml um so yeah I was very interested in Ronnie’s uh kind of approach to the weather as she was visiting Iceland in the 70s and kind of became an artist and
Residence there for decades and decades uh worked a lot with the community and uh was really interested in the idea of this like um Archive of water as this kind of collective self-portrait of Iceland as a country as a people um and so I made the route based off of as many
Of these samples as I could put along my route and also visiting a lot of other different artist spaces and collectives and just like different interesting things um that you can find when you are on a bike out in the middle of nowhere well it’s not MD
Nowhere um so this is the route um I kind of put it together using some pre-existing routes um some recommendations from some friends um I did this project as part of um a project called we got next I’ll talk a little bit about that later but uh yeah
The route was roughly just under 1500 miles um even though we were doing everything in kilometers I was doing a lot of math in my head but for some reason still did the route in miles I don’t know why um but yeah this rout is available
Um on Ride with GPS uh it’s just the navigation system that I found to be the easiest for me to use and edit on the go and to share with people so that’s the one that I have been using for this trip um I had a lot of support in putting
Together this route which I’m really really grateful for see uh so here’s the route again and it’s kind of broken up between some routes that I found on bikepacking.com which some of you may or may not be famili with is um a website where you can go and find lots of different uh
Mixed terrain routes um from single track trails to uh gravel roads and everything in between and so this route is made up of um the West yards way which is this section it kind of looks like a ginger rout just like popping off the side of
The the country up in the north um and it connects the West fards way with the The Witch of the West which is a subsection of the West yards it’s some of the most remote area um in the country so there tends to be less people
Since it’s a bit further away from like rubic Maine um and there are there aren’t giant buses that go there um it’s just a series of like small Vans um that kind of shuttle people around that area so it’s beautiful um I have a feeling that within the next five years it’s
Going to be extremely crowded um but we all love to see beautiful things so we’ll we’ll figure a way to kind of mitigate that it was an ongoing theme actually for the trip as well is kind of seeing how the country balances its two major industries uh which are um
Seel processing and or sorry aluminum processing and tourism which are kind of at odds with one another and we can kind of talk about that a little bit later but yeah um kind of linking together these routes and then uh fortunately I was able to link up with
Chris Bart who’s the one who designed uh the westford’s way and he gave a lot of guidance into where to go where not to go I did an alternate version of The Divide um that goes straight south from a uh down the split as opposed to kind of going through the actual uh
Continental Divide which is on the Eurasian plate and the American Plate which is kind of interesting because Iceland itself is kind of like toggling back and forth between a lot of uh heavy American influence and European influence but it’s kind of its own uh own Spice in the middle there um well
Spice is probably not the right word because the food is quite Bland but Briny I like Briney if you like pickled things and fish this is your place um and so as I mentioned before this project um was sponsored by by this organization called we got next and we
Got next amplifies individual stories of Adventure and activism from communities that have been unre represented in outdoor and environmental spaces um they found me through this organization called radical Adventure writers which is um an outdoor nonprofit and uh organization that hosted rides and Summits and all kinds of workshops and
Things like that with these lovely people who you see up here year um we started in 2017 and I stepped back from leadership of that organization in 2020 um just to kind of work on some other projects and bring in some some fresh eyes some fresh blood um and so
They were kind enough to cover uh most of my costs for this trip which is why I was able to take three months and um actually spent a good amount of time um going through Iceland and um meeting with family and interviewing artists and um all
Kinds of fun stuff so thank you Steve and we got next yall are amazing uh but unfortunately I had a couple of setbacks um I had planned the route I had started planning in 2020 and as part of this um with this organization and uh have been planning it through the
Pandemic post pandemic I’ve been kind of like looking forward to this for a long time and uh right in the thick of training I was going to leave in um June of 2022 um except a this lovely wall here you see in the bottom center um 500
Pound wall fell on me and essentially folded my body in half um and so I had to postpone my trip um but thankfully I had some really really good support with physical therapists and I was able to um get back on the bike and start training again and
Was able to set off um almost a year later I think I started walking again in July August um and I left for this trip in early June of this last year 2023 so this is my uh this is the entire contents of my bicycle um I am in my
Garage here in Eugene I moved everything up here uh was here for a few days and then packed up my bike rode to the train station in Eugene and took the train to Portland where I stayed with my cousin for an evening um and then headed off on
A plane the next day so in my kit I’ve got a very kind of basic but pretty minimal kit I don’t like to bring a lot of stuff because the more stuff I have the more stuff I’ll lose on the trip um I’ve been doing this for about almost
Two decades at this point so I’ve kind of like narrowed things down over the years so you’ve got your waterproof socks two pairs of wool socks basically it’s two pairs of wool everything so t-shirts long sleeve shirts one pair of pants you know kind of the deal um I did
This trip with my very very very dear friend Tessa holes uh who is um actually uh launching her new book this winter into the spring called feeding ghosts and so this is kind of her big that she was done with the book but unfortunately as uh the publishing world if you’ve
Ever been involved with that before uh it gets messy so she ended up having to find uh coffee shops and culture centers and borrow computers do a lot of last minute edits that ended up being really challenging but we each brought our own tent uh even though we ended up just
Using mine the entire time because it was pretty cold and so you get a lot more body heat if you’ve got two bodies in the same tent so this is kind of the kit here um it didn’t really get above like 60° the whole time that we were out
There and so um lots of different layers because when you’re riding it’s really really windy so you’re like really really pushing hard and you’re getting really sweaty so that’s why the wool is super super helpful and I also have synthetic Downs um just because it is there’s just so much moisture um once
You get wet you would never get dry you’re wearing cotton or synthetics and uh my skin doesn’t like that so uh that’s the that’s the kit um I flew out in late June like just after the solce um I have family who lives in these are my cousins in the
Middle here Fiona and Alex um fly into the airport which is like an hour south of the city of fik if you you’ve been to Iceland a lot of people have uh it’s kind of a bizarre uh one-hour bus ride uh from the airport to like anywhere really um so the day that
I landed was also the day that the most recent eruption occurred there was another one that actually um set off yesterday or the day before um which is like a two mile long Rift um that they had been expecting for a long time and it’s much bigger than this one that you
See kind of like at the end of the road but this photo is taken um just right outside my cousin’s apartment and you can see the volcanic activity just in the distance um it doesn’t affect the people of the city uh in terms of like lava flow or anything like that but it
Is the off gasing of the chemicals that can be pretty gnarly so there’s a lot of uh air alerts um and especially the day that we left so the day that I got there uh the plane like arrived at 700 in the morning and I couldn’t really check into
My Hospital H until 4 in the afternoon so I had this giant box the bike box that I was kind of like lugging around I was able to ditch it somewhere with a nice coffee shop owner um went and met up with cousins uh went to a bunch of
Different Galleries and art museums I was so tired I don’t think I didn’t sleep on the plane so I slept in like 24 or 48 Hours um so I was pretty tired uh just kind of getting going and I got there a little bit before Tessa
Um arrived so I was able to check out this is like an art installation and some like alley with some artists who brought some uh pieces out into the highlands to do a photo show over on the left is like some pretty typical architecture for um for Iceland there’s
A lot of like metal side sighting and things like that it’s like a giant fishing Village but entire country uh it’s interesting it’s very in a lot of places uh structurally Square this is my friend Tessa here when she arrived unfortunately um when TSA took her bike out of the box uh it
Opened up the protector that was covering her chain ring she had just ridden across the um the Yukon on this bike in Alaska and came straight from there working on a project with the Arctic wildlife refuge and so her bike was already a little had already seen
Quite a few miles and the chain ring just sheared off like a full four teeth so we were just panicking because we were supposed to leave and like the next morning um like running around the city it’s very hard to find a bike shop um in
Iceland honestly um a lot of them are rentals and the ones that aren’t rentals um are just these like giant um kind of like Sports Authority type uh places that are in the suburbs of the city um and once you’re outside of town it’s uh friends of friends just call people who
Might have some bike tools and uh folks will help you out but yeah that was a our first mechanical of the trip um and for some reason chain Rings haunted us the entire time and heading out of the city um it took a while for us to actually just
Like get out of town There’s a great network of trails that head out of foric proper um there’s all these like really neat playgrounds with zip lines and things like in every city every city every town has an outdoor playgrounds through to the public um a pool with a
Hot hot pots um and like recreational centers it’s a really neat to see the priority like people prioritizing outdoor recreation and activity um but our first day out there was a a it wasn’t there in the morning when we left it wasn’t there when we checked the
Brother report the day before but uh as to be expected the wind just kind of came out of nowhere and knocked us sideways um this is the most intense wind I’ve ever experienced so in the middle This Is Us laying in a ditch there’s not really a whole lot to hide
Behind it’s pretty exposed and um we’re like laying in a ditch to honestly catch our breath um have a little bit of a snack that first day we ran into like seven other cyclists who were just like pushing their bikes on the main road trying to get out of the city um the
Route that we put together uh ooids as many paved roads as possible um but there is only one major road um in the country which is the Ring Road and it uh or one major paved road so it tends to have a lot of traffic so we tried to
Avoid the Ring Road like the plague um but the wind is blowing so hard I don’t know how well you can see it in this photo of my uh cockpit handlebar situation but it uh I was pushing so hard into the wind while I was riding that it actually turned my headset and
It wasn’t even loose uh so I had to stop and kind of like reset everything on my headset you can kind of see how it’s like turned in like this weird way it was like such a bizarre angle that my just front wheel was at riding almost parallel to the ground
Um and we ended up having to uh seek shelter in this like abandoned uh like uh Box Car um that was on a farm just off the road and we didn’t want to it was it was getting to a point where it was unsafe for us to be outside um we
Couldn’t really it’s like the type of wind that like blows your mouth out and you can’t really catch your breath even when you’re standing still um so it’s pretty kind of spooky um so we found this place and we tried to get warm cuz that wind chill was really really cold
And kind of tried to map out some options because we only ended up getting like 15 or 16 miles that first day and we had planned to do about 40 to 50 I think um but we did what was safe because that’s what you should do I was
A a cycling guide for a number of years and so I always prioritize safety like uh like the grandpa that I am uh but thankfully uh the people who actually managed the farm we left them a note with a rock on top uh just so that they wouldn’t be freaked out if they
Came by and found us like popping out of this shipping container in the morning um and they ended up actually inviting us in and we uh had coffee and we talked until like 2 or 3: in the morning um by this point it was still light outside at
That time of day um meanwhile the parents uh or the kids of the parents we were uh staying with uh had made these flight suits I didn’t take photos um of the flight suits but they were just like outside playing the wind these like tiny kids and apparently
They did it all the time flying each other like kites it was wild um so we finally made it to borus uh which is kind of like finally out of the city out of the suburbs over the Fjord and we’re heading toward the west fjords so kind of pointing to them at
This point um these photos the sunset was probably around 12:00 at night um or around there so it’s not necessarily like full Midnight Sun but it’s like Sunset like Twilight for hours and hours and hours um but by the time I left in September it was getting dark at like 3:30 in the
Afternoon there was snow on the ground so things change quick uh we had because of the Delay from the wind situation uh we had decided to stay in bless for the morning we went to the Pool and sauna to stretch out a bit and we decided to try to catch the bus to
Um so that we could get back on track for our route but um it’s very difficult to get your bike on a bus in Iceland especially if you’re heading toward the west FS something that I did not know uh earlier because all the people that I to
Are like oh you can put your bike under the bus which is true uh but only if there’s room and there’s very rarely room um the buses run on the Ring Road itself and so there’s often um people trying to avoid the Wind by getting on the bus so uh it’s kind of
A hit or miss kind of situation so we didn’t make the bus and we just decided to keep riding and the wind had died down the next morning so things were much better um this is heading north to stri where the library of water is and
Uh kind of this peak you can see this like pointy guy over there um is a old um dormant volcano area uh this section of the country it’s kind of like the flange to the West that’s just under the West yards um was actually the um
Location of Journey to the Center of the Earth the Jules bur science fiction book like one of the earliest science fiction uh books of its time talks about this German chologist who like almost basically kidnaps his son and takes him into the center of the world through a
Portal in a volcano in Iceland so um I’m a big audiobook person and I’ve decided to listen to that audiobook uh while riding through here and so it was interesting to get those Fantastical descriptions while kind of looking through this landscape um this is is also along that
Route where we were having lunch is like tucked up behind that mountain there but this is what most of the roads look like if they’re paved um off the Ring Road so it’s kind of nice they’re really small there’s not usually a whole lot of traffic um and it’s pretty pretty
Delightful see that have a view of the library made it to speaky and we’re what’s the name of hotel hotel bra f feel I think I’m I’m working on it um so we made it we have a very cute little room here uh very little but it fits our massive
Bicycles and two beds and the fun part is you can see that I I have a view of the library of water right over there like right there from my bed so that was fun um we finally made it to St which is where the library of
Water is and um I’ve been kind of reading about this project for a really long time um this is one of The Columns of water um that was part of that glacial uh core sample that I mentioned earlier and uh just kind of an interesting view to kind of walk through
This space um it’s really fun there was some other uh curators getting a tour um not a lot of people actually come to visit this space um which I think is interesting it’s kind of just like there and um I guess it’s kind of a nerdy stop
Off but um I personally enjoyed it very much long before gr started making work really about this place but also work as an artist in general she came to Iceland and up her Motorcycle ever could you turn the volume up on these videos at all unfortunately I don’t think that I can turn up the volume um on this end but if you want to turn it up where you are I apologize for the inconsistency work as an artist in general she came to
Iceland in 197 and packed up her motorcycle and rode all around the island camping in different places really kind of getting a a feel of the space just in a very open exposed kind of way a little bit my v t bit but just Tad less exhausting
Um and she came here to sleep this moment and um really love this building uh from the outside it kind of looks like an artic gas station SL Lighthouse which is how she describes it which I think it’s fabulous but you can see it kind of
Looks out over onto the whole town here and actually looks out onto the town’s actual Lighthouse which is way up there on the hill but I’m here now I’ve been here for about two hours um I was reading a bunch of stuff back in this Library they have over here um
And I’m slowly making my way through um the book that I have been coveting for a long time um the weather reports you which is difficult and expensive to find copy so I’m excited to sit down and read it that since there’s nobody else here I’ve been recording myself reading EX of
It so that I have it in the future and I can just kind of listen to it as an audio book even though I’m a chronic mumbler I can understand me but it’s pretty incredible to be in here um by myself it’s just this really exceptional experience of walking through
These Columns of water each one is about 50 gallons which is like a tonage of water was very heavy um and each one of these columns was taken from um ice collected from one of Iceland’s five major glaciers and so each one has a different kind of mineral
Composition of it was kind of floating in the ice and that’s kind of what creates this different color brown and yellow kind of reflection on the bottom is all the sediment from the water settling at the bottom um this installation was uh installed in 2007 uh there was a long
Ongoing process about three years in the Ming um this space was once the community library um but now there’s a new much larger Library uh down at the bottom of the hill and so the space was designed to be an archive um an archive of water an archive of responses to landscape and
Weather so on the floor you’ll see too there’s all of these uh words for the weather and both English and Icelandic and after riding through this weather for the last five days um my skin is like like healing and I feel the effects of the weather it’s been like
Its own character in this in this story of this trip and uh to see the different Landscapes that the ice takes um is pretty neat I’d have to say one of my favorite samples I wish I knew where it was from is H is this guy right
Here it just kind of looks like you would go Yellowstone National Park And look at some of the areas around the guys um so I have this uh on my Instagram if you’re interested in this project I talk about it much more in detail there I won’t play the whole thing here because I know that we’re talking about bikes and not art but I
Think that they’re kind of but was that uh Robert Fu quote which is H art is what makes life more interesting than art um which is actually why I’m leaving the field of art to become a therapist um so after library of water we popped
On a ferry um to kind of uh get the experience of uh arriving by water to the West yards so it’s about a 1hour ferry trip um and this is the road on the other side of the ferry um it was about 8 kilometers from the ferry to
Where we were setting up camp um there’s a couple of campgrounds next to this really lovely uh Hot Pot this is our Campground here um actually in the backyard of a house that some people were restoring because all the other campgrounds and hostels in that very
Very very small town uh were full uh things just really um book up very quickly in the summer and um we ran into these uh this father and son who are doing some um refurnishing on a house and uh let us stay with them which just
Very very kind uh this is the hot spring that was uh just across the street and so this pool looks out over onto the ocean so you can kind of like sit in the hot pot and then get out and run into the ocean and take a cold plunge and
Then run back in um just as long as you try to avoid the birds uh the they’re incredibly territorial during this time of year H because it’s um all their little babies are been born uh so this is also along the west yards um just really interested in these like
Almost like sculptural looking abandoned like signage and houses and all of these things um we ate a lot of this like weird meat stick situation which is like this length of a jump rope I think I actually ended up jump roping with it at one point um but you know it’s got a
Good amount of uh fat and calories and salt which is all the things that you need while you’re riding um this is kind of our first leg of the West FS which is that little ginger root section sticking off the side ever what are you doing life we were going construction so
Earlier today and uh somehow I lost two chain ring bolts these two and so I ended up moving this one over to here and then we did the last 30 miles just like with my fingers crossed it’s hard to find and small toon and so we my guying it right now
And uh how do you feel about the fact that these zip ties are not your color palette I’m fine with it I need to I need to Branch out it’s healthy H so Tessa is a very likes to wear Lots of bright colors and um always makes fun of me because I think
Everything I own is like green black brown or gray uh but yeah this train rooming bolt situation was wild um I had actually just put on I like installed a new drivet train before I left and I ratcheted down those bolts but we were going through this construction zone
Which was construction on an unpaved Road it was literally them building a cliff uh because it had just like washed the screen like washed out um so it was incredibly bumpy and boldery and they must have just shook loose shook loose and uh I ended up actually riding with
Those chain ring bolt zip ties for the next 100 miles I think but until we got to isor which is the uh one of the only bike shops outside of fic in the country um run by a guy from Texas named Tyler Wacker which is kind of funny good guy good good
Okayy um this is part of the West F’s Way section and um you have to go through this part of the route at low tide otherwise um the water is kind of like up to here it would be like over my head in a couple of hours so you have to kind
Of time that section just right um so you can get through there um since Tessa crawling in another hole she loves to climb on everything um but yeah some of the views off the side of the route are just like incredibly gorgeous a lot of water Crossings uh in Iceland so wherever you
Are there’s probably a river and you’re probably going to have to either ride through it um or walk your way through it um I had brought like separate um seal skin socks and these like water grippy Aqua Soxs to do river Crossings and I used them for a while for the
Sections that were just too big and wide to um to ride through um but toward the end it was just like such a pain to put them on and take them off each time I just started taking my boots off I ride blundstones because it’s easy and I find
Them very comfortable I just pop them off and just walk Barefoot through um even though it’s cold uh it’s only for a short time so this is uh also on the west y’s way area we found this glacial stream dream that was just like perfect bathing temperature um this is also like 10:00
At night we found this great waffle place another thing I love about the West fors is you can find a waffle in any small town small town being uh two to three buildings um or sometimes just one building and uh yeah grab a waffle if you can’t they’re great
Um we uh Tessa was a chef um in a former in a past life and uh so she always likes to bring a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and things so every time we got a chance to uh we’d grab a tomato uh or some
Vegetables we ate a lot of caviar from a tube uh because it’s uh harvested um there from a lot of the um salmon farms and so if you’re on a budget which Iceland is very expensive to travel in and you uh want to eat cheap Ry bread
And caviar telling you it’s like got a ton of fat ton of calories lots of salt um and it’ll get you where you need to go lots of tinned fish um all kinds of good stuff uh also lots of very cute lighthouses which uh Tessa was color matching every single time which is
Always fun we love a color matching moment we love to see it uh this is at the end of that kind of um Peninsula area that was in the last couple of slides our bikes got so muddy that we had to wash them off of the gas station so oftentimes in a lot
Of these places similar to the US um in a lot of small towns the only grocery stores that you’ll be able to have access to are often gas stations so instead of eating like gas station burritos like you would in the US there’s lots of gas station hot dogs
Apparrently hot dogs are the official food of Iceland which is funny um and uh this is a honor way to e of foda we actually like lost the route we’re on it here which um there was a landslide that kind of wiped out a big section of the route and that’s the
Roadway down there but this very cute Farm dog uh came running up to us from the farm and in the US I’d be like oh God no dog um because usually they’re coming to chase after you I’ve had uh dogs take out clients on bike tours in
Tennessee and it’s uh pretty gnarly but this dog was so friendly he actually rode with us all the way to the top of the mountain uh literally for like two hours just like up into the snowfall and so um that was a really uh
It was a really big climb so I got very very warm my friend and I were just like biking in tank tops and shorts and the snow um up on the top of the crossing there’s a big tunnel underneath us so if you were in a car you’d be driving
Through this like 20 minute long drive in a tunnel so your options with a bike or if you’re walking or just go up and over um which took us to e f and the Fjord Hub which is the bicycle shop that’s run by Tyler Wacker who um is
Part of the West Ys way challenge if you’ve heard of that bike race that happens now every year um around the West fiords um what Tessa and I did in about uh two weeks uh people do as a race in like seven days um we are not Racers at least
Especially not anymore um after my injury I really kind of like scaled back our mileage um so we were really cut of like not taking it slow not taking it easy but just like going the pace that felt right for our bodies which um we’ done a lot of writing
Independently um but uh together we kind of just decided to you know engage in some like Mutual softness because we’re usually just like so hard on ourselves um and it was nice to be able to just like take the time we needed I was able
To go into the um hot pots every day which is really great for my chronic pain um in my lower back for my injury this is the uh Harbor that the bike shop is in it’s like best view of any bike shop I’ve ever been to um just a really really lovely Harbor
Town um and then this is the rest of the West yards way over here on the left is um the biggest hot spring in Iceland um like biggest hot pool rather like constructed hot pool um and it’s at this Old Salt Factory um and it used to be
Part of the salt making process at that factory it’s like this very like brutalist looking Prussian concrete building um and then sheep just lots of sheep everywhere everywhere everywhere I miss them um this is our first like major like Summit Crossing um and there are these spools that were kind of the
Only thing to kind of seek shelter behind um it got really really windy again and we kind of ended up taking about 11 hours to go 40 miles um it’s longest time it’s taken for me to do that kind of distance it was pretty brutal um but we made it we linked up
With a photographer Whit hasset who followed us for the rest of the Witch of the West yard section so the factory is an old abandoned Heron Factory um that this couple this family took over and they built hotels and they do this art exhibition inside of this like abandoned
Factory um more on the west F’s way heading out on the Witch of the West it’s named that because of all of the Witchcraft references um more of a salty delicious fish food uh then we get to the North there’s a lot of really interesting geological features in the north lots of really
Neat hot w s uh laundry day if you’ve ever done this trip it’s uh one of my favorite trip hacks is a you wear your rain jacket as a skirt and wind jacket as a top and wash everything else um it feels a little silly but honestly it feels fashion as
Well um getting to the north um we’re about to get on a ferry to uh Bic which is up in the Arctic Circle um some of the worst pizza I’ve ever had uh we got the night before and I took it with me as breakfast to get on the ferry um I
Highly recommend to not eat day old uh pizza with ground beef on it before going on a really really bumpy fery ride for three hours um about half the people on the ferry ended up uh instead of taking the fairy back flew back to acet which I think is really funny but this
Is the island we were headed to up in the Arctic Circle it was my birthday so I wanted topend it with puffins and this weird um concrete ball that gets rolled around um around the equatorial line of the Arctic Circle um so it kind of moves around over time and creates this
Pathway on the Northern side of the island um so our little Puffin friends who are just super cute we were invited to this uh nice small local bonfire that looks like it should be in like a Nordic metal music video um it was just the town getting
Together and an excuse to hang out with each other um and burn a boat apparently um this is in a was vising my aunt and some family there a fun hot springs that was also inside of a boat and we are on the Divide this is what
Seven days of food looks like um luckily we had plenty of water we didn’t really know would be up there there are a few kind of um Outpost stations um but no really reliable food sources so we brought everything this is just my food for seven days um we ended up doing that
Section in five instead of seven um but the first day we rode out basically as far as we could ride that still had grass so we could camp for the first night so we were out of the boulder um lots of beautiful Moss There She is
Again um but once you actually get up to the top of the plateau it looks like the moon um it’s just new and black rock and these like glaciers where you can’t really tell what is the sky and what is ice it’s pretty fabulous um there’s a lot of really random
Activity that happens up there and still lots of like tourist activity up on the plateau still so you’ll see these buses that go around these like wild Corners um seems pretty sketchy to me um also there’s a lot of damning for electricity um there’s a lot of people who talk
About Iceland having a lot of hydroelectric energy this is true in terms of um City centers using the heat for power but a lot of it comes from uh damning the water flow from the glaciers um which is a topic for another day but I could talk a lot about that you can
See kind of the difference between the reservoir water which is this brown murky water and this just blue turquoise water that’s coming into the reservoir it’s just kind of shocking to see that um this is on our way to L um which is this section um right on the divide
That has these Hot Springs Rivers I didn’t take too many photos of actual Hot Springs just because there’s a lot of um skin and I wanted to be respectful of people’s privacy um but this is up in the middle of the plateau at this place called The Mountain Mall in L and it’s
These like three buses that drive up there every spring they stay for summer and then they drive back in the fall and they just kind of like set up this like outdoor market so there’s a restaurant um coffee shop and a grocery store out there so that was H that was a
Treat this is also coming off of um realizing it’s getting uh well into the hour so I’ll kind of speed through some of these um more amazing geological features uh lots of horses and uh uh neps out in the tundra this is in a South now um Tessa is
Sitting on top of a piece of a old bridge that got blown away during a a water break when a GL glacial melt kind of broke through and wiped out that whole area um this nice climbing Hut that some local climbers let us stay at because
All the camping was just a mad house uh the south is super super super super busy um because it looks like this it’s gorgeous um some more coming out of the South again our friend n one uh I went to pump up my tire and actually just exploded it completely off its
Rim um and then we finally make our way all the way to the east um and in the East we ended up in sadus fod which is the furthermost Easter Town um that’s also where the ferry is so you can take the ferry to Denmark from here
Um and also the Pharaoh Islands so uh it was here too this is the boat that takes you to the Pharaoh Islands in Denmark uh we ended up getting there a couple days early and so we found these people sorting groceries apparently um there’s this local food co-op that Imports
Groceries from Denmark and then distributes them um farms in Denmark distributes them around um Iceland and they had a bum shipment so we were helping them sort stuff out and they ended up just asking us to work for them for two days so we got free food and
Produce for the next couple of days which is great so I just wanted to say it’s it is five of um ever we want to hear your whole presentation so we’re going to stay on and I just want to let everybody know that this is actually
Being recorded So if you do have to leave you can check out the recording later and but you can stay on I we we still want to do like Q&A and everything so ever don’t feel like you have to rush we’re really into this so we want to see all
Of whatever give us it’s great like I said I was putting this together and I totally realized that I hadn’t looked at any of these photos since I got back in October so um there’s only a few left and thanks for folks who want to stay on
Um I’m happy to answer some questions as well um but this is basically the end we ended up taking the the to the Pharaoh Islands for um about a week and then instead of going on to Germany I decided to come back to Iceland uh you can pop
On a plane just roll your bike right on and right off the plane just bike to the uh airport it’s kind of amazing so I went back to e of fod um to do some surfing and to work with the visit West fjord’s folks um on developing a tour a
Guided tour out there um this is what they do in the shoulder seasons is they’re trying to incorporate surfing lessons uh into their bike rental stuff in is fod um but when you’re tired of Surfing you can just sit in a glacial River in your wet suit it’s always fun
Um yeah so this is is kind of um the end of images at least and uh yeah if folks have any questions I’m happy to answer them sorry I was just kind of like um but I thank you for your patience that was so incredible ever
Thank you so much so yeah if anyone has any questions um you can pop it into chat um we’re kind of moderating that oh great um are there any questions right out of the gate okay um excellent so did you have any questions you wanted to
Yeah I so ever you’ve done this trip sounded like there was some there was a lot of Awesomeness in fact other than a couple like bad lucks it sounds like the whole trip was perfect so is there anything that you would recommend someone do if they only had a week like
What’s the you got to go this is one week I can that’s all the time I can afford absolutely um actually my my route that I put together is like all taken from routes that you can do in like 7 to 10 days and all of those
Routes can be modified as well um and if folks are interested in putting together a new Loop um I I have lots of recommendations um that I can send on Ride with GPS but um the West Ys way is just really incredible um it’s great if
You are not a super technical rider but you want to do some mixed terrain um I rode a mountain bike you don’t need to ride a mountain bike but um because of my injury I was just trying to get as much soft squish as I could um and it
Really helped for the Divide sections as well um there’s also a bunch of different ways that you can do the divide the section that we ended up doing uh you can do in five days and so you can fly into reik or fly into um well the airport it’s actually not in
At all um and fly to aari and then bike The Divide and then just hop on a bus back to the airport so that’s a nice fun in andout you can also fly to e Fielder and back I think um with your bike even it’s like about $100 for roundtrip
Tickets to e fodo fromc so it’s actually cheaper than the bus um but yeah I highly recommend all of those they’re really delightful and I wanted to know um do you have any other Big Adventures planned uh aside from life well like the adventures yeah
Um I would like to do the Oregon Timber Trail again um like I mentioned before I just joined the board and I raced the Timber Trail back in 2021 and had such a great time but there were sections of it that were closed because of all of the
Fire activity um and I met some other writers during that trip I went there not knowing anybody and it was a grand apart so like start off as like 50 strangers and then you’re like best use at the end it’s always fun it’s like summer camp for adults um and so I went
Want to go back into do the Timber Trail again or at least different sections of it um and I’m going to be as a bike packing routs Community Ambassador I’m going to be um leading a couple of small overnights like out in Oak Ridge which
Is a section of it um but I’m also putting together a route uh also in Iceland with a friend of mine Mac um H to this place called V which in Icelandic means hell and so we’re calling it uh to Helen Back and uh it’s it’s very similar um
Geologically to the The Divide section um except for it starts in the east in igle stutter and goes out past all these like thermal rivers and um volcanoes and um we’re excited to kind of test that out hopefully this summer um but I’m currently waiting to hear back about
Some programs for going back to school um so we’ll see how that turns out ever we have a question from Todd and as a as an aside here here Todd’s actually going to be a guest with us in a couple months as well to talk about his Adventure his question is well first
Of all he’s fascinated by how you put something like this all together what kind of Life do you envision for your material following the trip itself could you talk a little bit about the relationship between conceiving of and planning a trip and finding support and context for it beyond the trip itself
That is such a excellent question thank you Todd um so uh this trip actually because it um partially sponsored trip um I was doing a lot of video like these photos sorry I was like so many photos blinding amount of photos um I have so much content and that’s because um we’re
Putting together a short film with we got next uh so Whit hasset who joined us for a section of the route um is a filmmaker and so she joined us for some sections of it with a drone to get some aerial shots and things like that and
Between her footage and my footage where we going to put together kind of like a short film um about the trip itself um they’ll have a lot more of that and hopefully the plan is um that we’re going to be with some of the other folks
Who are part of the program so we have someone who caned to um the Arctic Circle through Canada through the Canadian Tundra and like people who uh like backpacked across Croatia and things like that and so we’ll all be kind of traveling as a group um talking
About those things and in term of support um I’ve been doing this for such a long time that I feel really uh grateful to have access to uh the people that I have access to in terms of like asking lots of questions and favors um my bike is actually put together
Completely of like donated parts or secondhand parts from friends and so um I feel really supported in these projects in terms of like both information and resources um and feel very lucky for that um yeah in terms of beyond the trip itself I mean I have this like secret dream not so
Secret dream I’m telling you um about really thinking about the sematic relationship between um mental health and cycling um going back to school um for uh to become a counselor and really kind of want to work with uh people in the outdoors specifically in a more structured format
Someday great well um yeah yeah thank you everyone for joining thank you Everett so much this was extremely well-polished presentation of your adventure and really interesting loved all the culture and art that you brought into it we uh we have so for everyone listening like our next webinar which is
Also going to be really interesting in a very different way is about bike fit and physical therapy as it relates to people on bicycles we’re doing that Wednesday January 10th you’re always welcome to join Everett you too and actually one last thing is Everett if people wanted
To follow along with your adventures um do you have any social media platforms that you’d like to share sure um as of right now um I am on Instagram um I’m mostly only really posting stories at this moment um but hope to be picking it
Up again so there’s a lot of stuff about this trip that’s over on there right now check it out it’s a grandpa Everett Grandpa Everett yeah well can add a link too as well um because we’re going to put this recording on our website as well so people can come back and check
This out great thank you so much every and good luck with school thank you thank you have a beautiful rest of your day thanks good to see you