Good okay can everybody hear me okay all right excellent thank you I told me about this morning I can’t wait to go there um I love coming here so much um I really do and some of you I see outside and uh I ran into Nancy and Nancy Nancy what’s going on and
They told me they’d contact David and I said you know I got this trip accomplished and uh it would be fun so uh for those of you that I I’ve not met before my name is Steven War I teach the University of Iowa uh actually director
Of the School of Art of art history um like a number of you I I have been there for a number of years um I have uh been a faculty member since 1988. it seems just incredible that I would be um you know when I was there when I was
Younger I just didn’t know what it would like to be like to I just couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be almost 65 and I know that’s young but uh but and to be at the University and then I you know I told my wife the
Other day I said I really like what I’m doing I can’t imagine retiring for at least another 10 years because I really really do like what I do um in my capacity it’s University um I do you know a few things I teach University students in the art and
Engineering how to build bicycles and uh that you know it’s almost like the dream job by itself but over the past several years now I’ve really enjoyed being director of the school my job is to help people accomplish uh their work be it a graduate student an undergraduate
Student or a faculty member and I really I I didn’t know what that was like but this is work that I I really really enjoy uh it doesn’t mean that it’s not challenging in terms of you can imagine what some of you know what it’s like to be a faculty
Member one site to work with faculty um so I took a trip to Iceland and this this is a trip that I took this summer and uh like a lot of things uh that happened in life the tripping plan was not the trip that you took
And uh along the way you learn things that you didn’t anticipate you would need to learn and you’re all the better for having done it um previous to this past summer I had taken um three other trips to Iceland in the early 2000s with uh with the goal of
Completing a project that I did complete uh Icelandic Saga by cycle so I actually traveled around the entire country and I interviewed people on their Farms the those Farms that were associated with a different piece of Icelandic Saga and when I uh you know it was pretty
Incredible you go into a house and you could see paintings over 300 years of that farm so in Iowa we’ve got Century Farms in Iceland they actually have Millennial Farms so Farms that have been there over a thousand years and uh University of Iowa actually has a fairly substantial connection to the University
Of Iceland in fact I remember going to uh a parish home on the south coast of ice and back in the day and knocked on the door introduced myself and she said University of Iowa I went to nursing school there so that was kind of fun so uh
I build bicycles for places that I take trips and that bicycle is built for the specific purpose of accomplishing that trip so bicycle I have with me this evening is the bicycle that I built for the trip to Iceland and so I’ve been calling projects design build ride and
This one is the Iceland Rift now the thing about Iceland is you can’t imagine you could pack that much geological Beauty in that small of a place you know relatively speaking it’s small square square miles it’s it’s almost the same as as Kentucky in terms of square miles
But in those square miles you have geological activity going every second so I’m going to go through some of this and please raise your hand at any point and ask me uh questions and more time to see you forever good to see you okay so I’m actually going to begin
With a little bit of an anecdote the anecdote about I started something automatic here I think okay all right so in Iceland um we went through the through the interior and on this particular day um we were now crossing over to a hut this year the the roads in the interior uh open the latest on record ever because they
Had such a harsh winter and everything stayed frozen so we were traveling on a road that had yet opened and you know to begin with it’s it’s always sparsely populated we saw Zero vehicles from north to south we saw two people um but on this day uh the first River
Crossing and these are glacial streams I got my bicycle across I went back to get somebody else’s bicycle and I took the plunge that I did not want to take and it was 36 degrees and it was raining and I had observed over the past three days that uh
The days can be challenging in terms of accomplishing miles so you know I was on the Iditarod Trail my Pace on the Iditarod Trail at 5.54 miles an hour was faster than my Pace in the lava in two lava Fields that’s that’s how challenging it
Was it took one day 12 and a half hours to go 30 kilometers that that was that was a challenge so on this day laying in the water uh being 64 years old I knew that my mind was not going to be kind to me for the rest of the day
And I knew that I had two changes of clothes that would keep me dry I thought The Prudent thing would be to change into those dry clothes it was raining I worried that I would uh eventually get all my dry clothes wet and so I decided that I was at least
Going to attempt to prove the qualities of wool and I took off uh my long pants that had been more of a Windbreak and my bike shorts shorts over there over that and then I had a wool top I was wet from about right here all the way down
And uh I decided that every time during the day if if it felt unpleasant I would just let it go and just do it over and over and over again now with me were five friends and I have to say this is the best group of people in terms of working together
That I could have ever been with it was terrific and I know that you know from experience one of the most important things is to have the disposition that your day is always going to be better if you make sure that everybody else’s day is good
And we had that kind of team and that was that was excellent so I knew that I was going to be wet I was going to be uncomfortable um it’s just the way it was going to be and then late uh late in the day being you know there’s almost 24 hours a
Daylight right at this time of year this is uh on this day it was July 8th and um I the wind began to pick up it was about 10 p.m we still had about another six miles to go I anticipated and a friend’s chain broke the spare
Chain links that he had were not the right size uh I’d go through a bag I found some that did work the wind I would learn later it already gone over 60 miles an hour so I’ll explain how the weather Works in terms of ice with some images that that are forward but
The wind just gradually picked up and this is about this is just after midnight and we’re crossing the last bit of water before we make it to a Hut and we didn’t know if this Hut would be uh we’d be able to access inside we learned that they leave all Huds unlocked uh
Just for for these kinds of situations for people and we got in but as my friend James said three of the days were not lived to ride they were a ride to live because there was no shelter and it was incredibly cold when you’re wet all night okay location I’m gonna go back
I sold that too hard building a bicycle for a purpose of Discovery and Adventure you can do them better than Iceland and the central Highlands design-built ride Iceland Ridge three previous long trips as I mentioned happened there so this is this is Iceland I’m learning
How to do this quick right thing this is of course Iceland and this Glacier that you I’m going to try to use the point here this Glacier right here is the biggest glacier of Europe yeah you know and uh did HD did you go there
No so uh that Glacier is is huge and my goal you know trying to figure out where to ride was uh putting together a route that would be just you know I I would actually see what Iceland is about and uh there’s a Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland but across is Iceland here
Here’s the country hello go back here’s the here’s the island what appear like so these are these are actually uh glacial streams that make their way from the glaciers that you see down to uh to the ocean we’re Iceland sits about 30 miles uh south of the Arctic Circle and that question anybody
Yeah I get dirty yeah yeah but I do I do have a kind of finish that I use on on here you’re going to see in an image I have a bag that goes over the back and it kept me from getting too much location situated on the north of I’m just described
Keep doing this they will stay okay on the left side the North American tectonic plate on the right side the Eurasian tectonic plate that’s literally two tectonic plates they’re pulling apart and as they pull apart they release all kinds of geologic activity specifically volcanoes and so
The country is uh is one big hot spot when you’re going to take a shower you turn your water to a specific temperature and that water is all geothermically heated it’s fairly incredible but North American Eurasian tectonic plate and we’re gonna try this okay so I had to figure out around and I
Really wanted to explore the um this this the area where there was a lot of geological activity the stars that you see are uh are significant volcanoes there are more but those are the significant ones the line that you see that’s the biggest that goes down is the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge as it goes across Iceland in the ice and and make some way its way from North to South and then a second piece of that making its way down to uh to Ricky the rickies peninsula near Reykjavik amen uh good yeah I just keep doing this um Okay so
Go back again two rulers so the rat actually took me about a hundred hours to complete and I did it by going to to topographic maps topo maps going to Google Earth using a piece of software that’s called Ride with GPS to make the route and uh and then eventually
Literally calling people on farms and asking them about specific features and what was what was possible okay this is just a kind of uh image that I put together for the purpose of uh you know a kind of poster that I begin to make and Iceland again the the
North volcanic Zone the East volcanic Zone the West volcanic Zone I wanted the route that we took to navigate uh this entire area and so uh those red dots that you see was throughout that we took another try Okay so it’s okay you get an advanced uh image
So uh a lot of people know of course that uh Iceland is is curious and then it’s really far north but it’s relatively warm so our uh our average December temperature is colder than the reykjaviks even though Iceland is so far north and that really has to do with uh the the
North Atlantic current that makes its way up and around the top of Iceland what’s happening right now though is Iceland is experiencing climate change by getting a little bit colder in the north and that’s because the thermal line that uh moves that that North Atlantic current over the top
Is uh is being diluted in terms of uh the amount of salt in the water because of the glacial melt from Greenland and that is slowing down uh the movement of the water and that of course will uh affect the weather as well over the top
You can see the effect of Greenland in those lighter blue lines average temperature of the day doesn’t vary very much it goes from uh you’re still about 46 to about 56 during the day and uh you know at night when we’re in the interior we’re actually uh up around 3 000 feet it’s
Colder we saw temperatures like I said 36 degrees that was that was normal okay wind speed wind speed in Iceland is uh uh given out in terms of meters per second and uh I became fairly adapted at making the conversion from miles per hour to meters per second
But on that evening that we reached that Hut the wind continued to increase until it went not only right there it went all the way down so for 18 hours the wind was over 41 meters a second over 89 miles an hour just incredible and in the morning when we got up wasn’t
Heated inside iron frame went to get water down in the river and we had to crawl to go get it because the winds were so strong and we got it back up there we spent today we didn’t go anywhere the wind was so strong that it was blowing rain
Through the walls of the of the building it’s just incredible this is a a listing for remember that this is a listing for the Mountain Road Sunny opening day earliest the median the opening day latest and this year broke just about every record so it really didn’t open up until much
Later and and in a way there was there was a bit of a blessing and that meant that the rivers were the glacial streams were lower if that makes sense because there was less melting going on uh or after they took it you see a topographic or elevation profile and you
Go from coast to coast and in the interior you go up sharply and you’re on a high plateau in a low a volcanic desert essentially black sand and questions anybody okay I made Maps I like to make maps I put together a a chart or not chart I guess
A set of key sheets so this has all the directions I gave it out to each person this is the route that we took so we flew into flew into reykjav in into Reykjavik essentially or Camelback is where all planes land winter Reykjavik spent the night and then flew from Reykjavik up to
Accurate in the north and uh strategy I took two bicycle boxes each person had two so a box inside of a box we packed our bike in a box and we put that box in another box we left one box at the hotel in Reykjavik then we flew to accurary
And then we put our bikes together in accurate and we began to head south and on that first day we had a real feel for what the weather is going to be like so we got to Accurate just afternoon we had everything back we’d gone to the grocery
Store we headed up north along the coast the wind began to increase we took a right and the wind increased to 70 miles an hour and uh it rained and it rained uncharacteristically heavy they announced the yellow alert and I didn’t know what that was until that day and
From then on I did know that day that we had those heavy winds in the interior the winds were were everywhere somewhere not as strong but they closed the Ring Road in the South because cars were being blown off it was still strong so through the interior between
The glaciers and then down to the South is what we meant so at the bottom here is actually the North and then Vic is the very top is uh is the South similar uh area but a little bit closer the glaciers so we went right through there in terms of path
Again one of the maps that I made the length we were there for two weeks and we rode 11 of those days and the others were spent so we were there for uh for 14 days 11 of those were rioting days and as I mentioned we we could struggle and
Sometimes just to go 50 kilometers and five days were extremely difficult uh I began to realize that it took us to go about 200 miles through the highlands uh what it would take it would have been quicker to go around the entire country on the Ring Road by bicycle
Training was was set involved anybody okay the kit so I packed lights I had about well there it is this is all the gear that I took on my bicycle uh those are my wider shoes to cross with my passport my beautiful spot tracker so Lori my wife
Knows that everything is okay and fuel for my stove and then uh 18 pounds of food dry food which I will never eat again uh dehydrated food and all my clothes and everything packed up and ready to go I can’t tell you on the one hand it’s
Really fun to to plan and prepare on the other hand this is really exhausting and at some point you just don’t want to do it you just want to get going yeah I am trying to figure out just the precise way to touch this there were six of us all together
So the bike uh titanium bicycle uh that I made for this I write a single speed it was really good there single speed you’re always in the right gear because you don’t have any choices so you have to think about it James and Karen my two friends father
And son who are Black Sheep bikes they come to the University of Iowa they’re actually going to be here in three weeks uh it was really interesting the first day so one thing you all know that nobody knows when they’re younger but you know that they don’t know is that
Everything is temporary it’s not going to last forever and on the first day Tara who’s 24 was just all about this great adventure and riding no problem everything’s great after 16 hours and not going very far he was more like oh my God I I feel horrible I don’t know
How I’m going to do this what if I can’t do it do it holds everybody back and then he just really began to get stuck in his head and so um I waited up for uh Taryn and his dad and um talked to to James’s dad and on the left
And I said Tara’s really feeling it you know it’s pretty difficult he didn’t know it would be the step and I said well we’re going to change this we’re always going to stop at 8pm if we can and um and it’s really tough day at 3 P.M we’ve
Gone 30 miles felt so good no problem it took us until after midnight to get the next few miles that was just so difficult I stayed back and I talked with Taryn and I said so how you doing I’m okay he said how’s this going to be and I
Said you know Karen unfortunately you’re 24 you do not have the luxury of knowing that it all goes away it’s going to be okay you’re going to feel horrible and then you’re going to feel fine and you’re going to feel horrible and you’re gonna feel blind and he said so that’s what my
Dad knows I said exactly so he was good for the rest of the time getting to the airport Carol John and Scott and we flew out of Minneapolis the direct flight is is really good it means that we don’t have any issues of losing luggage or a bicycle uh Midway I
Can’t say enough about Iceland Air just exceptionally good all the way around the Hampton we’ve worked with them Karen Okay so he’s holding us up I discovered this miracle drug in Iceland that I did not know about it’s called coffee I’ve never drank coffee I I I remember
The one time I tried to drink it was in 1981 when I came to Iowa City to find an apartment in the summer to work the next morning and I was driving all night and I thought everybody says they drink coffee to keep them like August and coffee it made me
Sick to myself like it kept me awake and I just never drink coffee I had very little sleep I the the conditions were really rough the first few days and I was genuinely worried about everybody’s safety and comfort and trying to figure that out and um
I decided okay you know I’m gonna drink some coffee I took a drink of coffee my life changed just like that and I drink coffee every morning until I got back this is all of us outside of a gas station just before we left and um Karen
Myself Scott John Carroll and James and it’s probably about 42 degrees outside right now light rain we’re in accurate the good thing about gas stations in Iceland is they have everything so anything that you need is there you need fuel for your stove it’s there if you need hot dogs
Hot dogs together so Iceland has these famous hot dogs they’re really really bad for you there are only a little bit above the roller dogs that you see at truck stops but when you’re hungry these are just the best things in the world so I eat plenty of these when I had the
Opportunity this is uh we’re just getting ready to depart accurary James and Karen myself uh later on I learned that the the storm that we had that first day was incredibly strong and you can see it just make its way up over the country I’m going to try something here okay
All right the first really cool place got a pause did anybody go huh it’s just like okay gallifons so Iceland has incredible waterfalls you know it just keeps moving see Lindsay’s really she was hired because she’s really good at this right yeah it looks like that that’s the case thank you so
Waterfalls everywhere in Iceland it’s almost like you can turn just to the side there’s going to be a waterfall this is some pretty incredible again most of it is glacial in terms of the water our bicycle is all lined up I like this picture a lot um
Is this okay in terms of beauty okay all right so is this okay okay so our bicycles all lined up uh getting ready to head into the interior uh it’s pretty interesting so one of our groups said the ride in the first day that said Steve
I don’t know how to tell you this but I am terrified of water and I’m really worried about having to cross all these Rivers and I thought to myself now you tell me we made it uh but it’s just one of the things that you’d ever do
Oh great great smiling faces as as we start out this is at three o’clock in the afternoon we’re actually in a lava field but it’s grown over and uh we didn’t know that uh it was going to take many more hours just to go a few more miles okay so uh a uh
Image of John and Scott and then Taryn and uh his dad camping outside the dingle bell Hut the first night John in the morning I’ll do this see if I can okay now he’s in China make uh it’s actually a video subbing it up and see if I
Was like here we go I got it good to go so I just shot see video of getting on my bike riding through but in terms of change yeah I hope my phone with one hand riding my bike so this is this rack there are places where you
Can’t even tell there’s a actual place to ride foreign I was really worried about it so when we did have that I got off we all got off and we walked because that’s not what we wanted some of the lava was really difficult for that reason yeah so this is outside the Hut the first night Dingle fell
Or it’s in the morning but the the night the the Hudson we stayed in the first day um I I like this little video this is what the interior is like it’s just okay so bearing go Go for it We it was good and the rest of the uh yes yeah they did and you know I actually made two of them uh and that was kind of fun just so it’s really interesting uh you would think that this is a virtue but it’s it’s actually just out of
Necessity I can’t have more than two bicycles because if I do I drive myself crazy I just don’t like to have that many things and so I make a bicycle I ride it for a year or two and then I give it away so all my friends have bicycles and uh
And I really in uh in with a solid attempt in the last three years of giving away nine bicycles I just don’t need them because it’s just too much thinking um and they’re not they’re not doing a whole lot you would think that oh that so cool he gives everything away really
I just don’t want to think about it uh another video but I’m going to move this one on so this is Karen Ryden and Robert peel so there was one it was 28 but uh in others really no more than 12. and you know I’m gonna actually just because thank you
So Lindsay can I I am going to go ahead and increase the images um because I think it’ll help seeing some of these others thank you oh gotcha so big yep okay all right I think you’ll be able to see these a little bit better so my bicycle with all the gear
And you know who else was here many years ago Neil Armstrong so this is actually where they uh uh trained for the landing on the moon so I called where I slept that night to see a tranquility so this is a Sea of Tranquility but you can see the black
Sand down below because you can see my footprints and then you see all this lava that has solidified and the Interiors really like that it’s not everywhere I feel hot in the morning uh just you know black sand desert everywhere you know it looks Barren but it’s
It’s like you’re on in on I was going to say another planet but really another world uh again where we came to a night I called it Sea of Tranquility really strong winds by the way and it took all of us from sitting to working together actually four of us each time
To set up one tent because the wind was so strong and then the wind would die down later normally that path would be clear this time of year or the time of year that we were there but again it was very late and so the road
Still had snow and we had a number of sections that were long that we just needed to Trek across tearing in the water really cold water Terry I can’t believe it just walked out the middle and stood there filled up his bladder that also is a filter now
Reality is you could drink water everywhere in the interior just by dipping in the glacial streams though are high in minerals and those minerals can upset your stomach and so we filtered water another their place is just like this where you’re trying to figure out where to ride your bike
And the sharp rocks these are sharp rocks John coming up from one of the rivers uh coming across we had five big ones in one day and there were you know there were smaller ones there were days where we crossed over 20. again that first or that third night hunt
I sent this as a text to my friends uh I’ll say this isil can kill you I know see why it’s rated nine out of ten in terms of difficulty it’s potentially every bit as dangerous as Alaskan winter cold rain hurricane winds sections that are difficult to ride if something
Happens to you in the central Highlands it could be days before someone can come and get you our consensus best done on fat bike trails 3.0 Tire set trouble in some spots three of the days will ride to Lynn literally we recognize we could be in very serious trouble without finding shelter
This is outside that Hut that we made it to when the winds were so strong everybody’s smiling headed out really quite good my bicycle that’s an intersection that’s when an intersection in the interior looks like and that’s about as good as the road gets somebody graded it at some point
At least moved the gravel they do yeah so they have just huge monster trucks that uh you can adjust the air pressure of each tire from the cab of the vehicle and you’re I’m going to show you an image of the the the search and rescue vehicles okay I’m going back
Okay so uh but yeah this is a road you can actually see tire tracks that are that are in there this is what my bike looked like packed up uh you know I had my tent uh in the back right here and it keeps hanging off
Frozen food into the other bags uh my GPS unit uh batteries some more food and in my bottles uh water and sometimes food so I would take a dehydrated food and put it in the bottle fill the bottle up with water just let it sit over a few
Hours and eat Cold Lemonade or cold oatmeal and it got old really quick again through the interior and just really beautiful okay can you see I see that song okay gotta kind of see what’s going on here well thank you see all those flies [Laughter] oh well it happens so when you stop
Uh you get a lot of flies eventually invaded to the south of the the island and so this is on the coast uh I’m not a Beer Drinker or a drinker uh not a coffee drinker not enough I’m a water drinker for sure but they had Viking beer and
They loved it and that’s what they’ve got and boy it felt good beautiful cathedral downtown Reykjavik Eric’s red or actually Leif Erikson statue so uh since this new song Okay so I’m going back uh next next summer and I really kind of just needed to Scout and see what was going on and
Um I’m pretty fortunate in the the enthusiasm that people have for for the trip uh my brother-in-law is one of the best drone videographers in the world you know many movies he’s done footage a lot of commercials he’s really excited he’s going back to Iceland with his
Drones uh and we’re going to shoot a movie and um this is one route another route is actually from the furthest tip in the west to the furthest tip in the east and going but going for about right there there over in that Glacier and uh
And then up to the West few words but my brother’s gonna go and then uh James and Taryn and John are going to return and hopefully it’s going to be really good now especially that we know what the interior is like and are there questions yes
Oh you know did they pop up and I just said something okay I’m glad you said that today while I was talking let’s go back actually let me go back and see if I listen to this we camped good enough this is what this is the extent of trees
Uh okay okay I’m going back okay so Iceland search and rescue is all volunteer but they go through two years of training it’s paid for us for the most part by donations and uh you know the challenge is it’s a country of 375 000 people and they have a million over
A million guests in the summer so they’re just too many people to keep track of and their disposition is if you’re dumb enough to get yourself into trouble it’s on you and uh this summer when the volcano erupted which by the way we were only
Two and a half miles away but it hadn’t erupted yet um people they didn’t you know people just go right out it’s just what they did they didn’t try to hold people back it’s just impossible but these are the vehicles that they used to get through the interior get through there
Questions more questions yes so there’s a big trekking hiking uh enthusiasm through Europe and through Iceland and the Trekkers will come to Iceland to hike and the Huts themselves are spread out about every 35 to 50 miles you can you can find otherwise you’re camping out but they’re spread out
Through the interior now you’re supposed to reserve them and I can imagine when there are a lot of people they’re hard to get into but when we were there we only saw two people they were both Trekkers and one in each of the of the huts and so when I
Go back this next time uh I am going to reserve all the HUD Center that I think according to the itinerary that I’m imagining and uh proceed accordingly because you know it’s fine to camp out but uh the conditions can really be difficult and uh it’s not bad to have a roof over
Your head other questions yes the biggest surprise um thank you know I guess it wasn’t a surprise as much as it was actually experiencing it and and that thing is uh just how um vulnerable you are in the highlands because there is no shelter and the wind
Is strong and there’s rain and when a couple of times when we were really really wet really really cold uh you could feel your vulnerability in a way that I didn’t even feel in Alaska sometimes because there was no place for shelter now we could set up a tent
And we thought that you know if we needed to we’d set up one of the two-man tents and we would all get in but uh it was impressed upon me just how overwhelming uh the actual environment could be yeah yeah is there something else that you will be
Doing to try and mitigate that sense of vulnerability I’m going to take more changes of dry clothes uh I’m going to I’m going to take uh I’m going to take real food uh and I’m going to uh I’m going to take a double tent instead of a single tent
I’ll be mentally prepared to spend more than a day in that tent if I need to I’ll take Stakes that will actually be able to better Anchor it down in a high wind I will um I’ll keep the the same single speed gearing that I had uh
Uh the the ring gear that I take I’m going to take two different kinds of rain gear one for real heavy one for just a little bit lighter um I’m going to take uh almost something to take exclusively wool gloves I had a couple of different things
I definitely will have a mosquito net over my head um try to think of other things You know I had a Camp Pillow uh but I think I’m going to take two Camp pillows I’m not going to eat dehydrated food it was just horrible after a few days just horrible and everybody now one thing that did save me I had these bars that were about just about this big
And they he had a thousand calories they tasted horrible but uh I was guaranteed that I would have really consistent good nutrition or at least I would have what I needed and so I as much as I hated him I would hate them because when it was raining there
Was no time to really stop and set stuff up you just want to keep on moving and so I I would do that the biggest thing that’s going to change my brother and my brother-in-law are going to have a vehicle that if there’s an emergency I’d be able to call uh
But I want to I want to do this video and really the only way to to do that is to have something that can transport those uh those drums um you know other other questions yes nope building a new bike why is that um a couple of reasons one is
Three reasons one I could do it the other is uh it would be I I think what one thing I’m going to do is I’m going to change the seat tube angle just a little bit I’m going to change the wheelbase to make it even shorter and um I
This bike will actually take five inch tires and I use it in the winter for that I’m going to make it just a little bit narrower so that doesn’t take tires quite that big and then I’m going to open up uh the foreign area so that I can put a large bag and
I’m going to suspect the question I’m going to drop uh some of those panniers that I had and I’m going to concentrate my weight in the middle now when I when I cross the before my thinking was I’ll use some headaches and I’ll let the water go through here
And and then I also thought if it’s really bad I’ll take off panniers I’ll carry those separate from the Viking and carry the bike across my experience was I’ll probably be okay and if not I’ll just take off the frame bag that has everything in it when
You’re crossing the river with the bike you have to angle your way so that the river which is pushing the bike and you but especially the bike drifts at a kind of line so that you’re okay you’re not going to be able to fight the
Current you kind of have to go a little bit with it it’s like a compromise you’re not going to go all the way down to the river but you’re also not going to go straight across and um you know that’s that’s reality uh you know probably um
Um what else might I do one thing I’m going to do this time that I next time that I didn’t do is you know I don’t know if you know this term I just learned it it’s called it’s OG Original Gangster so what that really means is this thing was done years ago
And you’re doing it or you were the person back in the day you’re over these times there’s no cell phone there were no ATMs uh when I when I traveled before in the early 80s especially uh I took these crazy things called Travelers checks and I carried cash
And I uh used a pay phone and uh I didn’t have an odometer and I had a AAA map and that’s how I did it I can remember the first time I was on the Iditarod Trio 1995. there’s no GPS I literally had a
Topo map and I look back and I think oh my God how did you do that that is so scary why did you you didn’t even think about it so this time I’m just gonna I’m not gonna take a GPS or any of that I’m just going to take a
Nap with me and I’m gonna ride my bike and uh that’ll be okay and I think that it’ll be enjoyable yes relational yeah you know I anticipate this next time they could be up to here in some spots but not much more than that and um the current can be really really Swift
Uh and it can vary kind of dramatically through the day depending on uh the amount of sunshine and heat because of the Melt but for the most part they’re all navigable there are no bridges in the interior and so you’re you’re you are crossing them other other questions yes settlement so
There through the interior there there are zero outside on a ring Road or just off the Ring Road in some kilometers there are a lot of farm stents and uh and many of those allow you to stay they’re called also guest house and you could you can
Stay at those and we’ll actually utilize I think a couple of guest house on the as we get as we’re in the door to begin and in the South as we get there yeah does that yeah I was just wondering all the sex with the real food and all that is it going
To be heavier yeah but you’ll think it’s still okay yeah I think that I would be really good if I had cheese and crackers and sausage for three minutes and that would be really really good that’s what tasted good every day and I you know it was it was just not I mean
I had one morning I was really tired three hours of sleep I needed this new drug called coffee I had leftover hard dehydrated spaghetti that I had made into meal in my cup and so I had spaghetti coffee and it tasted just fine but my preference is cheese and crackers cheese and crackers
Over and over right but you know we we got to this highland hotel after we got out of the Highlands unbelievable food just so much I was starving I eat two hamburgers and I took a third one to bed with me and I ate a piece of it and I stuck it underneath
The bed and the woman who was working at the receptionist desk I said so when’s breakfast and she said it’s between 7 and 10 times so I’m not sleeping a whole lot I wake up we gotta go it’s 9 30. we were just so wiped out and we quickly made breakfast
And then and and with my friends and everybody has a different disposition towards uh buffets and minus that you pay for it you can eat it and so uh Scott’s disposition was you eat what’s on your plate and you don’t take anything with you and so Scott looked at me like what
What you doing I made all these ham and cheese sandwiches from the breakfast buffet and I loaded them up and he was giving me a hard time until lunch do you have some of those ham and cheese sandwiches that you make and so uh we did that but um
Yeah cheese and crackers yes this is really interesting so the Interiors almost devoid of life uh there are the the silence that’s there when the wind isn’t there is is really loud uh it’s uh it’s you know the bugs were the ones that were flying around an
Anterior no birds but you get to the coast and there are a lot of birds um there are foxes that are uh out uh but there’s a section that we went through that the hardest part actually that part where we had to win there’s a there’s a square area that historically
Is kind of like the Icelandic Bermuda Triangle uh where everything happens and back in the in the original settlement days when people would come across the island to go to the all thing the first parliament in the world uh they would have to navigate but one thing that they always did was
Avoid that square in the middle of the of the island in the highlands they would go all the way around the coast even though it took much longer because it was so Barren and potentially you know life-threatening because of the of the stuff that could happen you’re really high
You’re on a small island you’re an ocean currents are affecting the the wind the surround and the further the closer you get to to the Arctic uh the more you rely on the stability of the climate but ironically if it gets thrown off it can be really significantly different so you know I
Was I tried to ascribe to people right now something cool is happening in the North Pole we don’t know the polar vortex is being created it happens every year and it remains really really stable and for Iceland that polar voter takes in the winter is a big deal it it keeps
The country wood but the island what it is and then what happens is uh with global warming there are anomalies and it allows that polar vortex to break up and shift and come South so that when I’m in northern Minnesota in January it’s you can be horribly cold minus 40 degrees
Iceland really depends on a level of stability that is is not what it used to be and so there can be really extreme conditions in the interior and in the north of the summer it’s actually getting colder thank you other questions yes what’s your duration
So for Iowa City it’s two to one and then um in Iceland Iran uh a 28 tooth chain ring up front and uh 19 inch or see a night in the back um so you know less than than two to one um and that worked okay you know when
You’re riding a single speed you’ve got uh two gears uh riding and walking and so when the Hill’s too steep you get off the mark and and you know I’m I’m I think the older I get the more I I just appreciate having a single speed I
Just don’t have to think if I go into a long event and with people that are a lot younger uh on gear bikes with thinner tires uh by the by mile 150 I’m all good because I can’t go fast uh I just rest you know when I can’t go
Fast and then I go fast up the hills because I had no choice but to stand up yeah other questions Michael you ride any hot springs along the way or anything like that yeah Hot Springs are are located everywhere and you know more often than not the hot
Spring is in proximity to another spring that can be cool and so you can actually find the right bathtub temperature so you can place yourself in proximity to both of those so that you get the temperature that you like not this time uh and I also didn’t see boiling mud
Which is really dangerous but uh you know you smell the sulfur everywhere in the country you know it’s just such an interesting place it’s just so geologically rich it’s just off the charts uh you know yes so it’ll be about a 20 minute film uh it’s going to be about uh
Uh that it’s going to be about designing the bicycle so there’ll be some video just for a video bit of Designing it there’ll be some video in our shop at school of building the bicycle the titanium bike and then the majority of it is going to be doing the ride itself and um
As we you know make our way across other okay thank you