Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Catching up II
Or the wings and the fangs and the eating of the eyeballs.
I'm finally back at home again after a week in which I've driven 1600 miles, visited a number of touristy places and heralded a Viceregal Court. Yes, it's been busy even without attending a full SCA event.
On Sunday afternoon I went back to the site to collect our guests and take them out to the Green Lagoon. We happened to stop at another gift shop (and a supermarket) on the way at Reykjahlíð, which is sufficiently close to the water at Mývatn to be infested by midges. Icelandic midges are not like their Scottish cousins; they are much larger but don't bite very much. Nevertheless, they are rather annoying, and C was particularly plagued by the creatures. They were, according to him, giant monstrous beasts well known for the wings and the fangs and the eating of the eyeballs. This, naturally enough, became the phrase of the post-weekend. In spite of the lateness of the hour when we got back (we had burgers in Akureyri at 23:15-ish) we still managed to spend a couple of hours discussing (but not playing) an assortment of board, card and roleplaying games.
It was therefore not entirely surprising that we didn't get away as early as planned. Particularly since we'd decided to do a bit more fencing in the morning (making the most of having fencers around the place). The original plan was to pop into Akureyri for a final couple of items then head down to Reykjavík via Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss but instead we made it as far as Borgarnes before deciding to give up and have dinner instead. There's a little Filipino restaurant in the town that does great lumpia. There was a slight delay on the way when we went over a speed bump a little too rapidly, causing the mass of luggage in the back to shift slightly. Then a hissing noise and the smell of WD40 began to emanate from the boot, requiring us to stop, wind down all of the windows and almost completely unpack the back to get at the can of WD40 sitting in the plastic box that holds the toolkit. Oops.
It was (again) midnight before we got to M's apartment and we opted for water instead of coffee, given that we were hoping for an early start. Hoping, but not actually achieving. The plan was to be ready for 9 with the fallback of being ready for 10 and the chance of getting to the Saga Museum and maybe something else before heading for the airport. It was quite impressive that we did actually succeed in most of this one, with the result that today I not only managed to order three times the required number of waffles but also took part in my first shield wall.
The waffles were at Perlan, of course. We'd gone to the Saga Museum because it does the potted history of Iceland for SCAdians and other persons of a historical bent, has the most SCAdian-friendly (if wildly expensive) gift shop and has waffles in the cafe on the fourth floor. Every time I visit the museum I pick up more beads (one day I will do the viking garb and I intend to have lots and lots of strings of beads between my tortoise brooches) and this time was no exception. M commented that one of the bead designs looked like eyeballs... which resulted in me making up a memory necklace for C consisting of beads representing the wings, the fangs, the eyeballs and the body. The only problem was that the two 'eyeballs' beads turned out to be different colours that looked the same under the dimmer light of the museum. Drat. Ah well, it was a fun concept all the same.
Naturally then there were waffles (and pizza). I'm sure that I only ordered one waffle (with strawberry jam and ice cream) but they delivered three. The team demolished them anyway, before we went in search of Íslendingur, the replica viking ship that was sailed from Iceland to New York. The boat himself used to be out in the open but has now been moved to a new purpose-built museum building. Best of all, you can actually go aboard the boat, which comes complete with the round wooden shields that had been hung off the gunwales. It was inevitable that these would be picked up, examined, hefted and so on. C&D have a photo of the five of us, three forming a shield wall and the other two behind.
Eventually it was time to finally head for the airport and many hugs of farewell. I think that again the Shire has made quite an impression on our visitors. :) After that I just had the 300-mile drive home. Overall, including two return trips to Keflavík and three days of various meanderings around the north I think I've done about 1600 miles in the last week. I think I'd quite like to sleep for the next week, but I have a meeting at 10:00 tomorrow in work. At least I can get an early night... except that it's almost 23:00 already. Oh bother. Better get to bed right away then.
I'm finally back at home again after a week in which I've driven 1600 miles, visited a number of touristy places and heralded a Viceregal Court. Yes, it's been busy even without attending a full SCA event.
On Sunday afternoon I went back to the site to collect our guests and take them out to the Green Lagoon. We happened to stop at another gift shop (and a supermarket) on the way at Reykjahlíð, which is sufficiently close to the water at Mývatn to be infested by midges. Icelandic midges are not like their Scottish cousins; they are much larger but don't bite very much. Nevertheless, they are rather annoying, and C was particularly plagued by the creatures. They were, according to him, giant monstrous beasts well known for the wings and the fangs and the eating of the eyeballs. This, naturally enough, became the phrase of the post-weekend. In spite of the lateness of the hour when we got back (we had burgers in Akureyri at 23:15-ish) we still managed to spend a couple of hours discussing (but not playing) an assortment of board, card and roleplaying games.
It was therefore not entirely surprising that we didn't get away as early as planned. Particularly since we'd decided to do a bit more fencing in the morning (making the most of having fencers around the place). The original plan was to pop into Akureyri for a final couple of items then head down to Reykjavík via Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss but instead we made it as far as Borgarnes before deciding to give up and have dinner instead. There's a little Filipino restaurant in the town that does great lumpia. There was a slight delay on the way when we went over a speed bump a little too rapidly, causing the mass of luggage in the back to shift slightly. Then a hissing noise and the smell of WD40 began to emanate from the boot, requiring us to stop, wind down all of the windows and almost completely unpack the back to get at the can of WD40 sitting in the plastic box that holds the toolkit. Oops.
It was (again) midnight before we got to M's apartment and we opted for water instead of coffee, given that we were hoping for an early start. Hoping, but not actually achieving. The plan was to be ready for 9 with the fallback of being ready for 10 and the chance of getting to the Saga Museum and maybe something else before heading for the airport. It was quite impressive that we did actually succeed in most of this one, with the result that today I not only managed to order three times the required number of waffles but also took part in my first shield wall.
The waffles were at Perlan, of course. We'd gone to the Saga Museum because it does the potted history of Iceland for SCAdians and other persons of a historical bent, has the most SCAdian-friendly (if wildly expensive) gift shop and has waffles in the cafe on the fourth floor. Every time I visit the museum I pick up more beads (one day I will do the viking garb and I intend to have lots and lots of strings of beads between my tortoise brooches) and this time was no exception. M commented that one of the bead designs looked like eyeballs... which resulted in me making up a memory necklace for C consisting of beads representing the wings, the fangs, the eyeballs and the body. The only problem was that the two 'eyeballs' beads turned out to be different colours that looked the same under the dimmer light of the museum. Drat. Ah well, it was a fun concept all the same.
Naturally then there were waffles (and pizza). I'm sure that I only ordered one waffle (with strawberry jam and ice cream) but they delivered three. The team demolished them anyway, before we went in search of Íslendingur, the replica viking ship that was sailed from Iceland to New York. The boat himself used to be out in the open but has now been moved to a new purpose-built museum building. Best of all, you can actually go aboard the boat, which comes complete with the round wooden shields that had been hung off the gunwales. It was inevitable that these would be picked up, examined, hefted and so on. C&D have a photo of the five of us, three forming a shield wall and the other two behind.
Eventually it was time to finally head for the airport and many hugs of farewell. I think that again the Shire has made quite an impression on our visitors. :) After that I just had the 300-mile drive home. Overall, including two return trips to Keflavík and three days of various meanderings around the north I think I've done about 1600 miles in the last week. I think I'd quite like to sleep for the next week, but I have a meeting at 10:00 tomorrow in work. At least I can get an early night... except that it's almost 23:00 already. Oh bother. Better get to bed right away then.