Snowballs In August

That Sound You Hear? » Real by Brad Paisley
Days Until My 21st Birthday » 45
Big News » A woman in Bangladesh is selling one of her eyes because her husband left her and now her child is going hungry. Okay. That sounds just about right.

Now, today's story...

No, that title is not a euphemism for something. It's a literal descriptor. At the end of our UK trip in 2000 (which I cleverly dubbed UK2K for the purposes of designing the patches), we spent a few days in Iceland.

I know, it seems out of the way, right? Actually, it was a money-saver, believe it or not. Icelandair was less expensive than flying British Airways. The only catch is you have to stop in Iceland at some point during your trip. Yeah, like we're gonna argue with them.

We landed in Reykjavik (the capital) to change planes on the way to Glasgow, Scotland. Then when we came home from London we stayed for three days in Iceland before heading back to the States. Except my dad and I stayed an extra night because we got bumped off our flight (intentionally). We wanted to stay a little longer and enjoy the country on Icelandair's dime. And we did.

Iceland is one of the most beautiful places on the planet and certainly the most beautiful place I've ever seen myself. And it came right at the end of our trip, after London, when we thought it couldn't possibly get any better. It was around August 2 or 3 and we were doing all the Icelandic tourist stuff.

We rented vans and drove all around the southwestern part of the island. We hit a couple massive waterfalls, the Blue Lagoon, and the border of the American-European tectonic plates. And we drove up on top of a glacier. (Though not before Jeff put a few dents in the hubcaps of our rental vans by driving like he was in a monster truck rally. I wish I had gotten pictures.)

Still, up on that glacier — it's hard to describe. You can look around for miles and just see nothing. Maybe a paved road here and there. But otherwise nothing. It was so beautiful. So naturally we started throwing snowballs at each other — in August. There aren't a lot of places you can do that. For us Floridians, anyway.

We were up there for quite a while too. I remember I gave up the camera for a little while so I could sneak up on some people. I gathered up a pretty good sized snowball and pegged David squarely in the back of the head — by accident. I don't remember what I was aiming for. Of course I took my fair share of hits too.

Anyhow, I believe every person should visit Iceland at least once in your life. It's just a cool place. They have a great travel video here if you're interested (again, not being paid, but should be).

Fictional: Now that you've read the non-fiction, maybe you should head on over to read the fiction. Seriously, it's not a bad story, and it's only updated twice a week. I put Chapter 4 up this morning. Today's chapter is from Brock's point of view. Have a look.