Digital Wanderer

Basically, you could say this was the start of what we could politically correctly call the "daily hardcore" of our trip, although the great and mighty Russian language has a much more fitting word for such things. Fortunately, this hardcore was usually offset either by miracles that saved the day or by unprecedented beauty, so we endured it with joy.

The stove is simply wonderful, with a special little pot for fast food heating, all stylish and high-tech. Only one problem - the price tag on it was 120 lats. Andrey immediately screamed in a voice not his own: "I'm not going to buy a stove for that kind of money," and I yelled back that where the hell else would he go, he's the one to blame for losing the stove, and we have to eat something, you won't get far on cold groats in freezing water.

An Icelandic saying goes: "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it'll get even worse". As the guy from the last part said (I can't vouch for the exact quote):

"Iceland has three national treasures: cold water, hot water, and the weather."

The second aspect of Thingvellir is Althing, the oldest active parliament in Europe. It gathered in 930 AD on the shores of Lake Thingvallavatn, and was an absolute democracy of the most chauvinistic kind: all free men participated.

At the campsite in Thingvellir we chatted with an older married couple from Australia, looking like seasoned tourists, tough, tanned, and wrinkled. Their stove was all sooty, scratched, and dented; you could see it had survived and seen a lot in its lifetime: just like they had. Our stove, on the other hand, was bought just that morning and hadn't yet been tested in action, and we ourselves had never undertaken such a difficult trip on our own before. People and things of different generations gathered at the same table, but with one goal and one dream: to understand and feel the harsh and beautiful spirit of this country.

And almost simultaneously the ground started smoking nearby. It's a thrilling yet calming sight, you immediately realize that today wasn't in vain, all that monotonous pedaling in the rain and wind. A landscape in a magical haze, there are almost no sounds, and it makes an enchanting impression: a huge field of hot steam exists on its own, it was here thousands of years before us, and will likely be here thousands of years after.

But we didn't remember Gullfoss for that, but rather because in the cafeteria, next to a barrel of soup, I saw a wonderful sign saying "refill included". For those who don't possess my knowledge of American realities, let me explain – refill is REFUELING, meaning if you ate or drank a portion, they will pour you another one. And while in the USA this usually applies to sugary sodas, in Iceland these wonderful letters blackened a sign next to the lamb and mushroom soups.

At the campsite, as compensation for the delicious soup at lunch and the enchanting evening landscape, another beep-beep happened to us. Andrey SUDDENLY realized that he had left his backpack with all his savings and documents somewhere. At this point, I couldn't hold back a snarky thought. I remember when my bike got stolen, he said he wished the same would happen to him, because it's a huge shock in life, a chance to change something. "Well, here's your chance!" – I thought to myself.

But no matter how long this pleasant mirage lasted, we had to leave it. When we were about to return to the cold and darkness outside, a seasoned Italian asked the girls about the weather, since there's internet everywhere here. "A storm is coming," they told him. He replied along the lines that he'd rest for a couple of days then. And I proudly declared: "We have a plan, what can you do." "Please be careful," the electric fairies showed their concern. I admit I was somewhat naive and didn't take their words about the storm seriously. Big mistake.

The worst didn't take long to arrive: huge vortexes carried kilograms of dust, small stones, and volcanic sand straight at us, and all this was accompanied by wind gusts of frantic pressure. As it turned out later, the speed of the latter reached 25 meters per second, which, by the way, is 90 km/h.

After some time fighting the raging elements, I realized that we wouldn't last long like this, we needed to rest and grab a bite. Andrey already looked like a zombie by then, and reacted weakly to my call.

Ultimately, the behavior of two vagabonds who wandered into the thick of it looked like this: for half a minute you freeze in place, turning away from the silicone cubes biting into your torso, and when the gust of wind momentarily becomes so laughably weak that it's finally possible to overcome it by moving your lower limbs, you advance 5-10 meters. Repeat the cycle ad infinitum.

The woman who mostly led the heart-to-heart conversations with us was named Elizabeth. She fully lived up to her name, being quite a ceremonious person, but nonetheless left a very bright impression. Interestingly, my main association with this name is the heroine of Julian May's excellent book series "The Saga of Pliocene Exile". In the book, this woman was quite the piece of work, a snob and an intellectual, but she brought a lot of good to those around her, so the fictional image overlapped with the real one in my mind, and it's impossible to tell where I'm endowing the person with the character's traits and where I guessed correctly.

That's how we woke up from the cold during the night too, tossing and turning in place, warming up our chilled muscles, and sinking back into sleep.  Fortunately, when you drag yourself and your bikes off-road all day in the fresh air, that isn't hard to do. I slept in a bandana and a beanie, otherwise I'd be totally screwed. I must say, this was probably the first day when no special hardcore stuff happened to us, except for that very cold I described. We were even lucky with the rain: it fell hesitantly, intermittently, and didn't water the tourists all that diligently; apparently, the local Perun was already tired of straining himself these past days.

You get up in the morning, your whole body aches from fatigue, but you have to pack up the tent in the rain, brush your teeth, and look for your slightly dried but still wet clothes amidst crowds of gloomy brothers in mind, or rather, in the lack thereof.

It also turns out that you vainly shoved your little things behind the thin, slightly warm radiator – because the toilets, radiators, and basically everything around, squinting slightly from the splashes, is hosed down with water in the morning by caretakers in rubber boots.

And this truth lies in the fact that sometimes hardships and even, seemingly, unnecessary complications give life flavor and a spark. The road was so rocky that we could barely even drag the bikes, and this went on for 12 kilometers. Along the way we had to cross three fords, which I was very worried about, because who knows the reasons why the road is closed. The fords turned out to be quite passable, and the sign was likely there because part of the path was washed out by streams, and even a superjeep would have rolled over on such slopes. But to us, it was a piece of cake.

Having struggled down a path entirely obscenely strewn with sharp-edged cobblestones, we finally reached the coveted shack, not even suspecting what it was. We were hoping, of course, for who knows what. That they would take us in out of pity, like last time? Or that they would at least let us pitch a tent nearby and use some amenities?

Everything was going well. True, since the very morning, moving along the road, we had seen only one car, meaning the places we had wandered into were becoming increasingly wild and deserted. Naturally, in this case, the universe absolutely had to remind us that we hadn't come out for a picnic. In the middle of the day, your humble servants ran into a very wide river, almost like a lake. Maybe we would have rushed to cross it without thinking about the difficulties, but ATV riders crossed the river from the other side, and it suddenly became very clear to us how serious an obstacle stood in our way. The depth of the river was almost waist-high. It doesn't sound very threatening, but only to those who haven't seen Icelandic rivers. The thing is, the current in them is very strong, the water is murky due to suspended sand, you can't see the depth, the bottom is made of small and large stones – it's unstable and walking on it fast, especially with a bike, is impossible. Add to this a temperature around zero, and you'll understand why crossing this twenty-meter-wide ribbon seemed to us an impossibly risky undertaking.

It turned out that our path lay across a huge plain in front of a glacier. In the distance, something incomprehensible was glowing, looking like a lake, which was quite surprising and scary – does the road really go through a body of water, and does something even more difficult than the river before await us?

However, you should never guess and try to predict future problems – life will show and tell everything itself, and everything will become crystal clear and simple.

Half the journey is done, and it's high time to do a brief review of sources and other useful information.
Campsites
Culture
Routes

I don't know how visible it is here, but over the day we descended from six hundred meters of altitude, and the total drop (if you count the alternating ascents and descents) amounted to a whole kilometer. It's actually very exciting to bomb down at breakneck speed on a heavy (though not quite so heavy anymore) two-wheeled steed, trying to hold the bucking handlebars on the edge of a cliff, and hoping that the Taiwanese aluminum factories followed the Swiss-American specifications exactly, and the thin hydroformed frame will withstand the fat Icelandic boulders.

According to our plan, we were going to spend the night at the Langbrók Cafe campsite, but the wind was blowing at our backs, and it would be a sin not to take advantage of it, so we decided to push a bit further, to the small town of Hvolsvöllur (I can't vouch for the pronunciation). As you remember, the hardest part of the journey was over for us, and ahead we expected smooth asphalt, towns with shops, campsites with electricity, normal food, and overall a pleasant and chill life. Did it pan out? On that day, when we had just barely left the interior, it seemed like it would. As always, it turned out that Andrey and I are too naive, although for life that's a good thing – if you assess it realistically, moving forward is kind of tough. What surprises the new days brought us, you'll actually only find out in the next parts.

I got banged up pretty good, so I rested a bit on the shoulder and took a painkiller. However, we had no other options - I gritted my teeth, and we moved on. I felt quite nightmarish, both morally (because of my neck) and physically. That is, that very hardcore I promised you in almost every episode happened again. It seems, though, that this wasn't enough for providence, because we hadn't even ridden for twenty minutes when Andrey complained that his bike rack was acting weird.

Having admired the church, which was filled with pilgrims to slightly less than 5%, we pushed on across the boundless expanses of Iceland, filled only with wind and sun. The last day on the road awaited us, on a smooth highway with no cars, plenty of supplies, and ahead – our coveted goal in the form of Reykjavik. What could be simpler, it seemed?

Fortunately, there are always pleasant surprises in Iceland. In this case, it was those very bubbling mud pits that we hadn't seen yet, and which the Norwegian cyclist told us about. Near this particular pit, a German in a truck approached us, asked if we needed anything, and gave us water and chocolate bars. I would have been surprised, of course, but by that time my emotions were pretty blunted, so all I could say to him was that Icelanders had already helped us a lot, and thanks for the chocolate.

We were strolling unhurriedly through the center, and noticed some graffiti – it turned out to be a small square – a gathering point for alternative youth. Granted, the capital of Iceland is so permeated with the spirit of hipsterism, partying, and boozing that you can't tell – where's the mainstream youth here, and where isn't it. Unlikely that anyone there bothers with this question as much as I do. I periodically feel like I don't fit in anywhere – I'm a bookworm and a geek, but I hang out at the gym all evening, I'm a cycle tourist and generally an advocate for a healthy lifestyle, I've never touched a drop of alcohol, but I go to smoke-filled raves to dance until morning. And a materialist and atheist to the core, but I go to yoga, and the Buddhist worldview and philosophy make a lot of sense to me. I believe I have strong moral principles, but their breadth is such that for most people they are too liberal, and voicing my tolerance for minorities in a circle of conservative normies means asking for trouble.

The rest of the songs were no less gloomy – about witches hindering a rider, and other harsh peasant life. There were, of course, love songs too. It was all very intimate and inspired, you literally feel like an elevated, spiritual intellectual, until the thought of the 15-lat ticket price flashes by and yanks you back down to earth like a hundred-kilogram anvil.

While I was examining this exhibit, a middle-aged woman walked up, let out a ringing laugh, and began actively discussing with me the fact that Icelanders' sizes were rather small, whereas her ex's – wow. Then we somehow got talking about gender relations. It turned out she's from California, lives in Paris, and just can't bring herself to dump her boyfriend from London; she keeps going back to him, even though he's an asshole.

I will omit the rest of the personal details from our conversation, except for one funny one: it turns out she made a cast of her boyfriend's phallus too, as a keepsake. They say men can't even understand why women keep photos of their exes, and here we have the next step of evolution.

I still can't manage to understand what that even was, and how to perceive our journey. Whether it was hard or easy, important or not, whether it was too hardcore, or if we could go on a trip like that one more time – I can't wrap my head around it, it all stands out too much in its power and unusualness from ordinary life experiences.