[Photos taken 01 – 03 June 2023, posted online 17 February 2024. There’s been another eruption since my last post! This one took out the hot water pipe to the Reykjanes peninsula, but it was fixed by building a road on top of days-old lava, and reconnecting a new pipe on top of it!]
June was a busy month. It began with Bjarki departing on a multi-day trip with his graduating-class to celebrate the end of their journey together. Trips like these came about to stop 10th-graders going on drunken binges downtown to celebrate finishing their compulsory education!
Then I was off on a whirlwind-trip to California to attend a memorial ceremony for Professor Len Tyler, who’d passed away a few months earlier. It so happened that I also managed to wrangle together a meetup with lots of old friends, as well as inviting myself onto the campus of a company that I’d had remote meetings with for months. The biggest drawback was that I missed Bjarki’s graduation ceremony, but the boy did good, and passed all his classes!
Thursday 01 June 2023
Kid going on a three-day trip with his class-mates. What’s deceptive about this image is that his bag is in fact quite large and long.
They were headed to the north of Iceland to the same adventure-site (Bakkaflöt) as Anna’s class went to four years prior.
That evening I went bowling & pizza-eating with my team at work, as new people were being added and we needed a bit of get-to-know-each-other.
Driving home at 9:30 that evening I stopped by a couple of kids that were holding on to a calm dog that they’d found walking around all by her lonesome self. I posted this photo onto the neighborhood-Facebook-page, and then we walked over to what I suspected was her home. Thankfully my suspicion was correct!
Friday 02 June 2023
In my travel clothes, documenting the green grass in the backyard.
Documenting where I parked the car…
Walking to the forever-under-construction airport.
New record? 8.1 kg total?
I bumped into a very familiar employee-in-training in the duty free store!
Icelandair’s Saga Lounge, sometimes fancy-adulting is nice.
Another rare luxury, a plane parked by the main building!
Remains of WW2?
The edge of Iceland.
The edge of Greenland.
Shouldn’t this be more solid?
Approaching Seattle. I’m guessing that’s Mount Rainier in the distance?
Signs of civilization. There were hiking paths everywhere!
Circling Seattle. The tip of the wing points to downtown.
Downtown Seattle in the distance.
Every inch of the waterfront appeared claimed on the city-side.
There be trees!
Going through baggage claim before immigration.
First time I’ve seen an Ikea bag as luggage. It seemed to do really well!
On a tram going between terminals. It’s always a bit confusing.
Fancy art close to my Alaska airlines gate.
Unfortunately, my flight to San Jose was delayed by about 2 hours. I tried finding out how long the car-rental at San Jose was open for, but had no luck, so I was a bit stressed.
Finally, at 4:30 in the morning as seen from my body, I entered the Alaskan air plane.
There was still one car rental counter open when I arrived, and I was assigned this monster of a gas-guzzler. I was too tired to go back in and argue for something smaller.
A sight for tired eyes! I’d arranged to stay at a friend’s house, which always beats a hotel by a mile! Big thanks!!
Saturday 03 June 2023
Heading out to the farmers’ market!
Rows and rows of tents.
Live music!
Look who we found! More old friends!!! What are the chances?! (Answer: 100% as we’d preplanned to meet there!)
Most stalls offer tastings of the various fruits.
Yum!
All the cherries!
Bonanza!
Kiddos keeping busy.
Lounging in CA is hard to beat.
Lunch, and general catch-up!
A meet of minds.
Proof I was there!
Amazon delivered boxes!
The boxes being put to fun use!
I really needed some movement and coffee to survive the day, here’s a pretty front yard on the way downtown.
Signage.
The best reviewed coffee house downtown was properly swanky.
No stopping!
About to head out to early dinner in my monster truck.
Dinner in the old San Antonio shopping center area. When we left in 2010 I’m pretty sure there was a large Sears store and parking lot there in that spot…? Somehow there are now gorgeous trees?! Then it was back to home-base and straight to bed! Zzzzz!
