THE FILM - TIME TO TELL THE STORY

Time to make notes on what worked, what I learned, what I would do and not do next time per Iceland.  I’ll continue to review elements of the trip for future reference. Concept, filming, itinerary, logistics, equipment.

First a review of the concept of the trip. I’ve done trips that are in some fashion like this since 1982.  Three times down the west coast and back home to Iowa, a couple of times from Fairbanks, AK back to Iowa, of course the Iditarod Trail. Maybe around 28,000 miles of touring and bike-packing. Design, Build, Ride Between Volcanos and Glaciers. That is, design a bike to ride across Iceland (around glaciers and volcanoes), build it, then ride it. Rinse and repeat, 2022 and 2023. From north to south in 2022 and then east to west in 2023. These (see the map below) are the routes of 1,600 km of the two trips. Overarching is a basic idea I use in my bike course: design a bicycle for a specific place to ride and build it. Then experience the place completely, as it were, riding the bicycle

This year I made a discovery, and this happened by having Tim and Lucas film for a documentary. I’m really interested in sharing how to do this shit. On you-tube there are plenty of hero videos of epic bike adventures, but few well done films of the details of executing a trip. This film will pull back the curtain and share, in particular, three things.

One critical piece of the scouting expedition is the conversations and decisions and logistics required to ride from the furthest location east in Iceland, Dalatangi (lighthouse), to Látrabjarg, a promontory in the Westfjords of Iceland, and the westernmost point in Iceland. In a way, every trip is a scouting adventure, and I have been scouting routes between volcanoes and glaciers in Iceland.  Scouting has many elements, from reading maps, to reserving mountain huts, to filming locations. Ours was done on single speed, which in itself is maybe a curiosity.

A second reveal will be designing and building a bicycle. All the bikes last year and this year, except one of the bikes from last year, was a bicycle designed and made at either Black Sheep Bikes or the University of Iowa. What kind of bike for crossing Iceland’s Central Highlands, complete with lava sand, over 70 glacial streams, and maybe 160 miles of extreme lava rock gardens?

The third, an element that is so ever present and dominate it is nearly missed.  The weather, geography and geomorphology of Iceland. Iceland is maybe THE place on the Earth that, in every direction, forces the question, “how did this come into being?”. Even more than the Grand Canyon. And of course this year there was the Litli-Hrútur eruption.