Internationally Painfully Hip: The West Coast to Reykjavik

I think I left my brain in Reykjavik, but I’m attempting to write anyhow. PHEW! Read on, if you please, it has been quite the adventure thus far.

I’m terribly sorry its been awhile since my last update, but you would not believe the trouble I’ve been getting into. You’ll have to excuse the length of this post, as we have a lot of catching up to do! At the end of September, I moved out of my apartment, sold all my stuff at like four rummage sales, and drove off into the sunset. Literally… my bestie, Abraham and I started off my 2 month long journey in a rickety old Volvo without AC driving toward the sun to Los Angeles on the hottest day in its recorded history (115 degrees to be exact). I think it was symbolic or something.

In Los Angeles, on a much nicer day, I did an awesome shoot with the adorable and talented Nicole Hill. The next day we made a sweet stop in the beauteous Santa Barbara and the legendary La Supa Rica Taco Stand. With a bellyful of queso ambrosia, we made our way through the foggy cliffs to the gnarly, dusty dirtroad hills of San Simeon, where our lowly rental Hyundai proceeded to get lost (on our way to a friends’ addressless address). But after some spontaneous car camping, our achey bodies awoke to be offered chicory coffee, bacon, eggs, and a melty cliffside soak in a flame-heated cast-iron bathtub overlooking morning ocean fog.

After some quick but heavy stops in Big Sur, Santa Cruz and Carmel-by-the-Sea, we arrived safely and with relief in stunning San Francisco. A very good friend put us in his cozy murphy bed to prepare our road-weary bodies for a romp around The Haight, Golden Gate Park and a hike up Telegraph Hill. When we returned to our rental after five hours, we found it towed to the tune of $475 for a very slight overlap of a curmudgeon-owned driveway. OUCH. There went our already too measly travel budget.

Not to be defeated, we kept on keeping on. Luckily my sister, her husband and my ambrosial nephew were happy to see us in Sacramento, where we laid low and saved up our resources for a week. From there we flew to Seattle to stay in the hippest apartment in the PNW, with my dear high school friend David and his incredibly welcoming beau, Charles. They put us up in their cozy, Versailles-worthy living room, fed the shit out of us, bought us expensive drinks at a bar straight out of Mad Men, and saw Abraham off to British Columbia and me off to Reykjavik.

Reykjavik! I said goddamn. Nevermind the remarkable architecture, the stunning, hipper-than-thou women (every venue felt like a modeling convention, I kid you not) and the genetically perfect men (who I assume must all share the same talent for kissing via the liquefying way they coo their consonants… unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to sample them all), the mysterious light, and the otherwordly landscape…
The Iceland Airwaves Music Festival alone is worth all the jetlag, chilly wet weather, unpronounceable street names, and undrinkable beers in the world.

Bands of note that broke my brain with their sheer proximity: The Antlers, Junip (I was drunk enough on Heineken to think it was a good idea to climb on stage with them, which, astonishingly, no one seemed to mind), and Dan Deacon. Also? Every Icelander must be born with an instrument in his hand. Amazing.

On our last day in Reykjavik, my dear librarian friend, Barrie was too jetlagged to use her pre-paid horse-riding excursion, so miracle of miracles, she let me go in her stead (steed?)! So I had a very special day galloping through some very special lava fields on a very special breed of Icelandic horse in some very special freezing rain. Apparently, I must have packed an extra brain to blow.

If you need a higher visual/blathering ratio, here’s a slideshow for you:
Hit the full screen button in the bottom right corner of the player to zoom.

I am now in Copenhagen, but have yet to see any sights as I have been forced to be tethered to my computer with work stuffs all day. Not complaining though! Tomorrow holds a long walk to through a botanical garden and to check out David Lynch’s paintings at the GL Strand Gallery. Huzzah!

I got a wild hair and changed my mind in the last couple of days, so the rest of my itinerary looks like this:
Oct 18: Copenhagen, Denmark
Oct 26: Berlin, Germany
Nov 5: Vilnius, Lithuania
Nov 11: Brussels, Belgium
Nov 17: Antwerp, Belgium
Nov 18: London, UK
Nov 22: San Francisco, CA
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Tomorrow! Photos of stylish Europe-dwellers. WEE!!!